Welcome to My Diary

WHAT HAVE I DONE!? I have been writing this blog since 2011. I have poured life lessons and huge mistakes into this thing. I have changed the url twice when it has accidentally been found. I have screenshot stories in the past and sent them to people. I have read them to men I was dating when I felt my written insight would best explain, well ME. But I have never NEVER given access of this to a man. 

In fact I know which girlfriends can read this. I am specific. I am intentional. This is the most vulnerable part of me. My writing. I tell you my patterns of behavior here. The way I love. The way I hurt. The way I have ended things or began things of royally fucked things up. This blog has anxiety and fear and life lessons. 

So why in the HELL did I send the website to the Handyman? Instant fear. Instant regret. 

So he’ll read this. Hi boo! But not just this, all of it. The pattern of older men in my twenties that has only been tweaked slightly in my 30s. The way I have loved and lost and been broken and rebuilt on the heels of one night stands, feeding my shattered ego, broken hearted. How Mr Toilet was the love of my life and the standard I held every man too until a year ago when I finally got the closure I’d been desperately seeking since I was 26.  There are high school stories. My first kiss and sexual assault. There are mean girl moments and friendships over in this blog. There are whole years I skip writing because I can’t even face the stories. I didn’t write a single post about my kardashian marriage or the sex addict until it was over. Years I skipped investing in my mental health by processing trauma this way. And now he can read it. 

When I said do you want to see my journal, laying in bed last night? The offer came because he was sharing his. He had screenshot some hand written pages about the end of his first marriage and the beginning of dating Chuck’s Mistress. The pain in parts and the excitement of new opportunities to fall in love and find your person. The desire for the partner to build his passions with, it was there. I love the vulnerability he shows me when he shares things like this and I feel the pain when I know he’s facing it. 

It only seemed fair to reciprocate. To open up my past and my heart and say here I am. You pretty much know all this but now you can see it in real time. Go back to 2011 and start this journey and see how my type hasn’t really changed. I still date extremely driven, mostly entrepreneurial minded men, older but not by like a decade. I keep it closer to my age. I have the same love language of acts of service and words of affirmation. I recently learned never married and no kids is a lack of life experience I would just prefer not to deal with; so still dads. I also don’t worry about crazy exes any more. I don’t like the drama. If an ex is crazy, I am more likely to ask what did YOU do than to believe she is just off her rocker. I’m someone’s “crazy ex” I’m sure. 

See my pattern of men falling in love with me, or at least thinking they do. Explore my fear of not trusting that because I hear it so often. All the things I tell him; he can now read for himself and I somehow will remain this open book mentally processing my fear and experiences for him to see. 

I need to wrap my head around some stuff and I truly don’t want to blog about it. I don’t want to write about how disappointing our weekend trip to ski was, or how the tagged posts of him on my page caused drama. It’s easy to explain the part that it gives him anxiety “being in a relationship” in public while still navigating a divorce. I understand that his attorney’s instructions were only posts about work, family, kids. But truly it’s the other woman/or maybe it’s women that he engages in conversation and most recently more with - that he doesn’t want me to find out. He doesn’t want them to know there is a girl he calls his girlfriend. And this weekend - she found me and she did what all women do when they feel wronged. She told me about them in hopes of hurting him back and driving us a part. 

The flash back of Facebook and Instagram requests and messages was a hard one. It was a consistent part of my relationship with the sex addict. I can’t tell you how many confessions of wrong doings I had to navigate. How many times i would ask, did you sleep with her? To listen to the “no” and know it was a yes. I can’t count the number of those times I was complicit in being lied to... and here I am again. 

The Handyman fell hard and fast. Classic. He fell too soon. Before he has journeyed through healing and processed his pain. He isn’t divorced. He still has his wife’s initial tattooed on his ring finger in a truly white trash way. He is deeply mourning the loss of his forever. The person he thought was his partner for the rest of his life. He’s facing the lies of her infidelity. He’s navigating the pain and trying to understand how someone he loves so much could do so much damage. He’s broken and there are just glimpses of his former self in there and a tiny indication of the way he will emerge from this trauma. 

He’s a good one. I know he is. I see it. He loves me well in a lot of ways I really don’t want to lose. We match in passion and language. We communicate calmly and effectively. When facing the hard conversations there is very little fight and mostly a back and forth battle of wits. It’s all I see you, I hear you, I understand how you feel, here is my take on that. Here is my desired outcome of this disagreement. We don’t say hurtful things. We don’t storm away in anger but sometimes take space so that hurtful words aren’t the reaction. 

But this trip. This trip broke my heart. It was dramatic and ugly. When he’s asked how was it, the lies just flow out. It was great skiing. Weather was good. House is nice. Blah blah blah. 

No I got literally dumped on a mountain when he had to face the lies he was telling me and some recently divorced client he finds “interesting”. He hurt me. He lied to me. Then he skied away from the half way point bar where we were having cocktails. Then he said I don’t want to do this, I can’t be in a relationship when I caught up to him. Then he left me on the mountain as he raced away saying - this is over. I’m done. I want out. Only to text a little later and say I need an hour to calm down. I’ll find you at 4. 

He didn’t care that I spent $200 of my single mom salary to be on that mountain. That I didn’t let him pay for my ticket of my skis because he already had paid for my meals and my gas to be there. He didn’t care it wasn’t me that didn’t do anything to him. That I wasn’t yelling, I wasn’t hateful. I was hurt. This man tells me he loves me. Then sometimes he doesn’t - he texts women who feed his ego and then this cougar comes along and god only knows. But she’s convinced he owes her a conversation to save their relationship. She’s convinced he is racing home to see her. And I am fucking devastated. 

See the man I fell for and reciprocated the love has a very similar past to mine. He’s been shattered by infidelity. He’s had trust irreparably damages. He’s been the significant other that had his world shaken by lies and deceit. He has felt this pain. So why? How? Could he do this to me. AND more importantly how do I let him? 

You see as he tells me I’m going to hurt you. I’m not myself. I love you as best I can and I’m really trying to be who you need and deserve but I’m just not. I miss chucks mistress. I am mad and still love the crazy bitch. I don’t know why I need my ego stroked by these other women. This isn’t me. This shouldn’t be me. 

Then my mind goes back to the pain and the trauma. My mind finds a way to allow him grace and forgiveness because I understand feeding your ego with sex and attention. My mind assured him this isn’t him long term. That these are traumatic responses trying to navigate the story he’s telling himself. It’s how he is needing to understand the pain and deception. He is walking and acting like the thing that hurt him most in the world trying to understand it because he needs closure and he can’t get that from her. She isn’t confessing her sins and explaining her past and pain to him. She isn’t begging for forgiveness and offering changes. Honest looks at who she is and why she hurts the men who love her. She isn’t examining her patterns. So he is becoming them in an effort to repair his broken psyche. His broken heart and his shattered ego. 

I know this well and I keep thinking this is a season. The shame you feel from lying to me and cheating on me. The heartbreak you feel by hurting me the same way you have been hurt - it means you aren’t a monster. The lies are because you can’t even face how bad you are going against every fiber of your being. The lies aren’t to protect me, so I don’t know you fucked this older women in her million dollars mansion you were “bidding”. The lies are because you can’t even face that you woke up at my house made love to me, told me you loved me, kissed me good bye, and went to work - that I spent hours of my day helping you with. Running errands. Running projects. Picking up things. Installing chandeliers. Cleaning up after sink installs. Finding parts and holding fans and keeping you focused and on task. That in the middle of that day - looking at the TRR bid - you fucked some other bitch behind my back. 

I should clarify - I don’t know that he did. He hasn’t admitted it. He’s a horrible liar with a tell. He stays silent when I’m right. He doesn’t defend himself. If forced to answer directly he says no. But it’s not true. Now the when, the how, the how long, it’s speculation based in the massive amount of time we spend together and how long this cougar has been in his life. A week maybe two. It’s gaging her response to finding out about me. It’s more than some flirty texts. It’s more than a kiss or a drink. Women don’t just freak out for no reason. 

So he is lying to me and I’m devastated. This man, although I knew he wasn’t truly ready. I thought he was a really good one. I thought he loved Jesus and loved people. I thought his promise to be careful with my heart as he navigated his own pain was real. I believed him when he cried and wanted all of this to be real. Wanted to believe I was who he thought I was. I read his actions. Buying a new truck for his business and giving his suburban while I was stressed for a car. Going to Napa and treating me like a princess. I believed the raw openness. In working together - I believed the desire for a future and a partnership with a real person that was fun and easy. I believed him and in less than a week he has wrecked us. 

He has stripped me of all security. He has told me he doesn’t trust himself. He isn’t even processing pain at this point; he’s actually creating more. He’s becoming a version of him that he can’t possibly respect. He isn’t in the word. He has some how gotten so far behind in work that he is stressed to the max and I don’t want to leave him hanging. I don’t want to leave him trying to get 6 bids out and working. He let go of his office staff which didn’t help with this much anyway but he kinda needs me and he needs to be able to pay me in hot sex and fancy dinners. While he rebuilds and gets this business back on track. 

But man I don’t know how much I can take. I don’t know how crazy I’ll get wondering where he is or who he’s with and reliving sexual encounters at job sites. I don’t know if I can stomach much more of this and that’s ok. He is pretty aware that I don’t have a lot in me. He knows he’s pushing me away. He says I’m everything he WILL want when he’s ready but right now he’s in survival mode and feeding me and investing in us. That’s not something he is capable of to the degree I want or need right now. 

Why am I in this? 

How did I get here? 

Men suck. He sucks. Women suck. Women who break men suck. Men who then turn around and break me suck. This cycle sucks. Why do I feel whole and healed and deserving and I choose fucking brokenness. I’m going to call my therapist.