Lots of relationship changes in the past year, and I, Ava, haven’t always been in a good mindset to write anything serious. But I want to get this out.
Vance and I are good, our relationship is healthy and we are happy. Soon we will have our 3rd wedding anniversary. So that’s always excited, we are going away for a short weekend.
Last fall our relationship with Jay ended fairly suddenly. It was also pretty messy. I still get a bit emotional over how it ended, which I will detail shortly. I will try to stick to the facts but also add in how I feel/felt.
In the past two months I ended my romantic/sexual relationship with Lenore. This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made, but it was the best option for me. We are still friends. I feel super awkward about it, I still love her very much, but I’ll delve into those details in a moment too.
Other Relationship Updates
I dated a woman I haven’t written about here! A 6 month relationship started and ended since I last wrote much of the deeper topics. Her name is Bea. I’ll give an overview of our relationship from my perspective, obviously. We are still friends too, which is great.
I went on a few dates with a woman, nickname Coffee Date. We are friends, which is great, I really like her, but I ended the dating aspect because her social anxiety was tripping my anxiety around my attraction to women.
Most recently I started to date a woman, nickname MOD (Mother of Dragon), we’ve gone on two dates, it’s exciting. There’s a lot of potential here.
Jay’s Dramatic Departure
The chain of events that lead to the ending of our triad started last summer. Jay attended a party at our house, it was really great. Vance’s sister (I will refer to her as VS from this point forward) and Jay started talking at the party. They hit it off. I didn’t mind, but Vance was concerned about this friendship. He can totally say “I told you so” at this point.
VS invited Jay to visit (she lives an hour away) for a big party they had scheduled. Jay went, and met VS’s best friend, nickname New Bo who is a gay man as well. They start texting, constantly. Jay starts tagging New Bo in “I wish you were here” statuses on facebook. We talk to Jay, he says there’s nothing between them.
Que our 2 year anniversary together, we go out to dinner. Jay texts New Bo the entire time. We actually ask him to put his phone down (Something Vance and I ask each other to do sometimes), we even asked if something was going on between them, because obviously it’s more than friends. Jay says there’s not, and continues to message during dinner.
Jay Jets
Within 2 weeks, Jay has now known New Bo for a total of 6 weeks, Jay moves in with New Bo, leaving myself, Vance, and his long term partner R, who he is engaged to and owns a house with. It was a few weeks later that he texted just Vance and ended up admitting he’s dating New Bo. Well, yeah, we got that. We never officially broke up because I didn’t want to end a 2 year relationship over text. I was really hoping we would see Jay in person, he was still driving here to work. But he never tried to see us, just said he missed us a few times and that was it.
He’s still with New Bo, it’s been over a year now. They bought a house together. We’ve seen Jay once, it was awkward. I still fucking miss him. Honestly it’s been hard to grieve this relationship because it was entangled with my relationship with Vance, Vance is grieving it too, and I don’t feel like I have closure. I don’t know how to feel that at this point. Really wish I could find it, I do agree with Dan Savage that closure is something we do for ourselves, but I honestly don’t know how to here.
Lenore’s Year on the Relationship Roller-coaster
I still haven’t detailed it here, but at the end of last summer Lenore, Tim, Vance, and I actually went on vacation. We got a cabin, two bedrooms, and stayed for 8 days. It was amazing. But after we parted, Lenore shut down really hard. It was rather devastating. It overlapped with Jay leaving, which was hugely stressful.
But she checked in occasionally, it was strained but she was struggling with all the closeness and then going back to regular life too. It contributed to a spiral, I am not sure of any other way to describe it. In the spring we talked sporadically, it wasn’t much.
Communication picked up in the summer. She actually left Tim, which I am in total support of. Seeing their relationship up close for 8 days, there were several things that made both Vance and myself pause. I wanted to talk to Lenore about it, but I knew she wouldn’t be receptive to me observations. She’s good at isolating herself, and I saw abusive tendencies. I was afraid her situation would be worse if she dug in as a response to my observations.
But she came to the realization on her own, which she needed to do. It’s a large reason why she withdrew so hard from me, she was trying to figure out what didn’t feel right in her life and she was trying to make it work. So She moved in with a platonic friend, and is basically starting her life over.
Losing Lenore
I’m really proud of her and how far she’s come. I was trying to give her space, like I had all year, but it was wearing me down. I started getting anxious when I thought about texting her, knowing she wouldn’t respond for days if she did at all. If I saw a text from her, I panicked a little. I tried to get her on the phone, but the timing was never right. So I decided that for now, while her life is utterly chaos and she barely has time to breathe, let alone have a relationship with me, I needed to end it. I wanted to end it before I started to resent her.
I ended up doing it over text, which I hated, but I didn’t know how else to get a hold of her, and I wasn’t driving 6 hours just to break up. She responded a day later, reassuring me that she hasn’t been trying to avoid me, just in way over her head. I let her know that I’m not throwing away 20 years of friendship, I’m here for her if she needs anything, but for me I can’t keep putting myself through this.
If one day, steady contact is established, then maybe it can be reconsidered. For now we are friends, we’ve exchanged a few texts which has been a relief, I was afraid she would hate me. This is the first time I’ve ended a committed relationship. I’ve ended things with someone after a date or two when it wasn’t clicking for me, but never after labels and commitment. Well now I have.
Introducing the Beautiful Bea
Just about a year ago I got a message on OkCupid, a woman I had a pretty good match score with contacted me. She’s poly, married, lives 30 minutes away. She has a son, and at the time a second one due in a few months.
We went to dinner, it was lovely. We talked for 3 hours straight, no major awkward pauses, much like my first date with Vance. I got to know her son a bit, and her husband. Bea and I would kiss, but typically we were in public so not anything more. Plus being 8-9 months pregnant she wasn’t feeling very sexual. This works fine for me, nice and slow, just the right pace for me.
After her second son was born I would come over, often with food, and hangout. We actually didn’t kiss. I just felt awkward and I guess she did too. There reached a point where we kept trying to schedule a date, but it was never quite working out, and I realized it had kinda fizzled. So I messaged her about it, and she agreed, we weren’t really dating at this point. We are still friends, we don’t talk all the time, but we have good conversations when we do talk.
A factor in the fizzling on my end has been trying to deal with my trauma. During that time I uncovered something, and it was bothering, making me a bit uncomfortable in every situation. I’m still processing what it all means really, therapy has been intermittent lately. I actually ended up switching therapists recently because who I was seeing’s availability changed and it wasn’t enough for me.
Reflection
This past year has been really difficult at times, but overall I’m happy. While politically I’m anxious about so many things, my social life has never been better. I’ve established a community, mostly through my local polyamory network. I also have great friendships, some of which have lasted over 20 years.