I’m Sick of Washing and Drying

Let’s start with this: I am not an insecure person. But, I am insecure about how Watt feels about me. Why wouldn’t I be? I only know how Watt feels about me when I am with him and I am not with him enough to feel that.

I feel connected to him when we are not together. But I do not feel him connected to me. He confirmed that what I was feeling was right. He didn’t say it in those words, but it was enough so that I didn’t have to guess anymore at why I felt the way I’d been feeling.

This confirmation happened in a phone conversation. I was telling Watt how I needed us to be connected more between the times we see each other. I was reminding him that I needed more texts, here and there, or just an extra call a week (this would help to keep the sex great, to keep what we have going and to not loose momentum), and I said I didn’t know if it was the girl in me, or the me in me, but, regardless, that that is what I needed.

That’s when he said it, that he feels way more connected to me when he’s with me, when we are together. Well, shit. That explains that, doesn’t it? I thought.

Let me back up.

Remember when I said I was hemming and hawing and fearing around, in the last blog entry or two, and not spitting out the words I needed to get out? Well, before I got the words out, before I said what needed to be said for me, and before I got my truth out there straight to Watt, telling fear to fly off, I started with hints, with easing into it with texts:

The texts (most of them are included) went something like this:

To Watt:

Not sure if you got my buzzed vm last night, but it was bound to happen. Been get’n cnfsd/mixed signals 4while. Don’t hear frm u 4 days, then u r always happy to see me. U leave me a great vm recently, then day l8r, give me impression could B dayz b4 I hear from u next. My feel’ns r bruised. I know I adore you, but u hv me Qstn where u r w/ mixed msgs. Wonder’n if I am wasting my emotion.

From Watt in response:

Hey! I called u back last night but I still don’t have a vm. I wanted to get off the phone to do work, but wanted to talk before it got late…I didn’t know you were wanting more day to day, was having fun just being with you as we are.

Another msg From Watt in response:

I’m not trying to hurt either. You’re too awesome for that.

To Watt:

Am having fun as we r, too and didn’t realize I wanted 2 hear frm u, C U lil’ more, ‘til u said u wanted 2 c me sooner/left that gr8 msg. Then when u made odd insinuation last night I might not hear from u 4while, that’s when I realized each week when 3-4 dayz pass, its not always clear if u want 2 c/tlk. Guess girls r more obvious/vocal than boyz. Silly girlz n boyz.

Another msg From me in response:

And maybe if u could help the natural short bus, girl part of me out (h8 b’n a girl sometimes… LOL) & I could hear from you sooner than 3-4 days, hv u be clearer when/that u wnt 2 c me, c u at least once a week, I’ll not get my feelers hurt.

From Watt in response:

Ok. I can make sure that we steer in a good direction. :>)

After that last text, Watt writing to me in black and lit-cell-phone-background white, that he’d steer us in a good direction, I thought he would. I thought he’d call me that night to check my temperature. He didn’t. I thought he’d call me the next night to ask to see me. He didn’t. I thought He’d want to see me that nxt weekend. He didn’t. That’s when he went to his family birthday party.

I am not bum-jacked about all this with Watt. I am not. Not in the way you might think.

I’m grateful I have this connection in my life. I am not even going backwards in spirit, just in story. See, I am trying to put out bigger and better bread crumbs. How else are the gals closer to my age going to understand how utterly frustrating it can be dating a man from a different generation and how hard it is when your intuition fights against your wanting.

Chloe knows about the dating-a-younger-man thing. She just moved in with her younger man. But her man is only about 7-10 years younger than her? Can’t remember, exactly, the age spread. (I suck with ages.) And, her man is so head over heals in love with her that Chloe is mostly saddled with moving-in-together growing pains. (So normal. And Chloe is awesome. She’s got this one!)

The point is: Chloe, my love, if you are reading this, I am going crazier than you could imagine on the other dating-a-younger-man things. I’m hoping my tits don’t sag more, before he figures out there are better boobies out there. I’m hoping my crow’s feet don’t scream louder, before his face starts showing the night before just as much. I am hoping he still likes my ass as much as he does now, before he realizes that my ass ain’t that great and it’s about to catch up with the back of my knees.
But, at least my hormones are back in order from that damn Birth Control ride I was on for awhile. (I’ve got that going for me.)

This is how my neighbor Chad puts it, this is what Chad says is at play, just as much, if not more, than our age difference… Chad tells me to keep it all in perspective. He says, first of all, I should remember that I am not going to live forever, so while I should think as if I will live that long (I should plan for tomorrow), I should live and love as if I am going to die tomorrow. In other words, lead with your heart not your brain. In other, other words, love with your heart, not your head.

More?

Where did Chad get this little pearl of wisdom? Gandhi, of course. "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." - Mahatma

That’s Chad, the tough-as-shit street kid who paraphrases Gandhi’s words and says: Don’t let your quest for knowledge interrupt your life today. (Then I think, Don’t let the love I want take me away from the love I might already have.) Then Chad goes on to say that he thinks that consumerism has taken away a man’s hunter/gatherer/protector role. To put it bluntly, Chad says the 70s, women’s lib, F’d up the economic model of the family from the 50s, so couples cannot survive on one income any more which means everything else get f’d in the process.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Chad said. “I love how powerful the fairer sex has become. It’s a turn on. But, men don’t know how to bring home the saber tooth tiger any more. We still want to puff up our chests, bring home the meat, but now women can do that on their own.”

Then Heather, Chad’s wife, says, “Yeah. Now all women want men to do is to bring home the cosmopolitan.”

She’s right. That’s where I wonder if we have mixed up our gender roles so much, and have mixed up where to draw the line in the generations for how we evolve, that we have gotten to this place where women want a man to bring the cash and the cocktail home. We want him to pay for the auto repairs instead of being able to do it himself. At the same time, we’re screaming Be the same fish in the same water. Do all the things the cave men and the 1950s man did before you, did before the world changed around both us.

They can’t do it, men, be everything of yesterday and today at the same time, Chad is telling me. Many men feel like fish out of water, or like they’ve evolved into lame mudskippers. They are supposed to be able to use their pectoral fins to walk on land, and they are supposed to be uniquely adapted, but they don’t feel quite right. Not on land or in water. Men feel like they’re caught betwixt roles, identities, generations, and expectations.

What does all this mean to me? It means the man I am dating is from a generation where the rules have changed even more than they’d changed when I was first dating, and that puts me in a situation where I keep thinking I am going to get 3-4 calls a week, but, as Chad puts it, I am supposed to be making at least 2 of those calls instead of waiting for them.

Chad didn’t hold back with me. He said, “Look, Levan. If you want to go to La bohème and get all your calls incoming, date in your age range. If you want great sex, the intrigue of going on someone’s journey while they are trying to figure out who they are, don’t give up on Watt yet.”

And Chad is right. I asked the universe for come what may Now. Watt is here now. My problem is, I don’t want to wash and dry anymore.

I’m tired.

No matter how much Chad reminds me that a man Watt’s age dating a 40 year old woman, as independent as me, may be intimidated by me, because he hasn’t gotten to where I am in life, to the level of life-lived and bills-payed that I’ve gotten to, I don’t feel Watt being intimidated. I feel Watt just being 26 and not being as into this, into me, as I am into him. (The worse part? I still don’t know if it is more my girl or more my me into Watt.)

When Chad tells me that I need to let myself need Watt, and that I need to be the girl and let Watt be the man, I can’t. Not because of fear. I know how to kick fear’s ass. I’ve done it all my life. Okay, some of this is fear, I’m not an idiot (and I know what part of this is fear) but a lot of it this is not fear.

Watt has not given me a place to fall.

He's amazing. I adore him. The sex is great. But, people only fall for a future when their Now has made them a comfortable bed to lie in. If the dreams in the Now don’t have a safe blanket to wrap themselves up within, a person feels like the place they might fall is not in love, not into a future, but out of f’n bed and onto their ass.

And girls like me, girls who have washed and dried their whole lives, who have had few people in their lives who have helped them with the dishes, helped them make a bed… Okay, forget the analogies. What I am saying is that I’ve done in on my own my whole life.

I have a few friends, best friends, who’ve been there and who would be there if it all shit the bed, so I know how that feels. I have had a few men in my life who felt like the future. They may have turned out not to be, but they felt like it in the Now. So I know how that feels.

Watt doesn’t feel that way.

More truth? I don’t care age/generational differences; I don’t care gender confusion, the stupid saber tooth tiger, or any of it. That saber tooth tiger can choke on it. I care that I only feel wanted by Watt when we are together.

Watt makes me feel more wanted when we are together than even my ex fiancé did, years ago. So, shut up. Right? I can’t. Because there is a difference, because it is only when Watt is physically in the same room with me that I can feel him wanting me (needing me), it is that difference, when he is not in the room, that I do not like. That difference is the same canyon I felt with my ex fiancé. I had never felt so lonely as when I was laying right next to him. With Watt, I don’t feel that loneliness (how could I? Watt is such a beautiful man), but I do feel a divide.

I have never dated a man who has left me so hot and cold. I’m with him, and I know. I want. I am content. I am ready to fall. And then when I am not, I am not, any of it.

No matter how much I say that Watt is not supposed to be my white dress man, he’s just my little black dress guy Now, I’m a girl. I’m more than that. I know what I want. I know what I am ready for. It’s more.

These ways I feel with Watt, they are not red flags to me. Not yet. They are simply flags. The color comes later. If the flags keep flying and more flags get planted, then a girl has had time tell her. That’s why only time can tell.

Another way I can say this is that when we are apart, there is so much of him I can feel being held back. The part Watt holds back, the part he may not even have to give right now, forget that it’s me, that’s all I need to fall. That’s all any girl needs. That’s what I’m not getting.

And that’s how it might happen (and this might be what I’ve felt from the beginning), even though I don’t want anyone else having my heart but Watt right Now, this is how some other man might steal my heart away from him. This other man will want me more. He will want a woman in his life more. He will want what I can give more.

This other man will want me. He will, like me, be ready.

I’d say more, and go into how I’ve had a weird feeling in my belly for three days, but why? I can chalk the weird feeling up to Watt being on a camping trip and me just feeling him further away, in physical distance and in connection. Get over it, girly.

Still, I want to be wanted more. I want to be where I am on that camping trip with him, where he wants me there. I want to be wanted even when I am not in the room. I want someone else to wash while I dry.

I don’t want to do it all on my own any more. I’ve gotten too good at doing it alone. I want to get good at doing it with someone.

Watt is a gift. But I’m ready for more…

I’m ready for FABULOUS! (Do you hear me, universe?!)