Anyone Else but Him

The good news is that La Dispute Guy doesn't read my blog, so I don't have to worry about what I write.

The bad news is that La Dispute Guy doesn't read my blog, so I don't have to worry about write.

                                                                          

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Many times throughout my life I've come across a quote by Johnny Depp about love in which he says that if you fall in love with a second person when you're in love with a first that you should always choose the second person because if you loved the first person, you never would have fallen in love with the second. Having leaned heavily towards polyamory most of my life, I always took issue with that quote. When talking about why he was wrong, I'd use myself as an example and refer to the words of North Star that I latched onto when she talked to me about her open relationship exactly ten years ago: 

There's no limit to love

There's no limit to love, North Star said, and it made perfect sense. Just because you love one person, it doesn't mean you love another person less. Think about people who have more than one child. Do they stop loving the first one when the second comes along? Or the third? Not love the second because they already love the first? Clearly not. There's room in our hearts to love all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, so logically why does this not apply to the romantic relationships in our lives?

At least that's what I always said.

I said it, if not in those words, when at 19 years old I convinced my ex-Glenn that he should let me kiss his then drummer Keith.

I said it again, although still not with the mantra I'd eventually cling to, at 29 when I had such a big crush on Jean I thought that if I didn't kiss him I would die.

I practically screamed it at 34 and again at 35 and then at 36 and 37 and 38 when I loved C more than any other person I'd ever loved in my life.

But now? At almost 44? I'm kind of thinking Johnny Depp may actually have been right. 

Because here's the thing.

I think I'm not really polyamorous. I think I just wasn't ever really in love. 

I'm not saying I didn't love my ex-Glenn ever because that would be a lie, but in love?

Yeah. Not so much.

Another thing I'm not saying is that I love La Dispute Guy because not only is it way, way, way too soon for a statement like that but, well, I'll actually maybe save this info for another post, but I am saying that the thought of being with anyone else right now is the opposite of what I want; that the thought of kissing someone else right now is totally gross; that the thought of someone else touching me is just eww. I can say with absolute total conviction that the only person I currently want on me or in me or anywhere near me is La Dispute Guy and never in my life was there a time I could have said that about my ex-Glenn, not even at our start (because clearly the argument could be that this is a beginning, of course La Dispute Guy's lips and tongue and hands and eyes and voice are the only thing I ever think about but I know that's not it because not only was that not the case with my ex-Glenn but it also wasn't the case with A in March or with BTJ in May and a little bit of June. The right person is just...right). 

Was there a time when I didn't think about other people all the time, wasn't actively in the throes of one of my crushes, wasn't diabolically trying to convince my ex-Glenn that being with other people would be good for our relationship? Sure, especially near our totally-abrupt-came-out-of-completely-nowhere demise, but even then if C were to have come knocking on my door, I don't think I would have had it in me to say no, and that's whether the question was Do you want to get in my car and fuck?; Will you run away with me so we can live passionately and madly forever, eschewing societal ideals, caring about nothing but sex and love and us?; or Even though I know G and K are practically adults and you're dead set against having more kids, will you have a little partially Japanese baby with me that we'll call Kiko if she's a girl and work on names if it's a boy? (I didn't think about this in the past. Not once.) 

I don't know. Maybe this newfound monogamishness--okay, I'm in a different place, but I'm not a different person--is a sign of growth and maturity more than it's indicative of my relationship with my ex-Glenn, but I think that's wrong. I think for the vast majority of my life I was just lonely and sad and unfulfilled in so many ways that I was always falling in love with different boys--it just so happens, my ex-husband wasn't one.