mandivsman-blog

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So, this is Tiziano. He was born in Rome and moved to the states when he was 8. Tiz and I met last January. We’ve been on and off for about a year. I straight up told him that I cannot commit him unless he gets some things together and that I’ll be dating others. He loves to see pictures of ppl I’ve date and calls them ugly, which pisses me off bc, looks wise, my exes are 10/10. *When you date other people bc you hope their looks will raise your own value*

Not to toot my own horn but I have dated some of most handsome, beautiful, fit, thicc men ever. Except for this year which I spent a lot of time single and dated a couple people that weren’t necessarily very attractive or fit in the usually way but who were just out of loneliness and bordom.

Now, I’m back to having like, 7 people on the roster, no phone numbers saved, not caring about any, but also not saying or pretending to care. That’s the key. I don’t boo love, sell dreams, or lie to these men. And honestly, they’re just happy to be on the team. I’m not sleeping with them anymore other.

I felt this exact same way before the quarantine and I was enjoying myself.

Then, quarantine happened. I was alone for months in my apartment. I went through an paradigm shift. I kept thinking that if anything happened to me, I was on my own. I thought about my other friends, home with their families and partners, and they were annoyed, but they were loved and they were loving and here I was with a freezer full of Halo top and a drawer full of vibrators and watching the weirdest fucking porn (even for me) with not a single person who has my back. That thought terrified me.

If my ship was sinking, I don’t know who I would have no one to rescue me.

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That good shit

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My life is so complicated. I just want, so badly, to move forward but I’m fucked up. I have like 15,000 guys who want to be with me but I prefer to forsake them all and cry about people in my past. Like, my ex from 4 1/2 years ago I still think about daily.

Most of me thinks I will never be able to love able. I know it sounds cliche and corny but I just don’t trust men, I witness my girlfriends suffer tremendously, and I also dare men who are unethically, lying, scoundrels but luckily, I’m able to end it before the true devastion begins. All the other men are just, filler. I want security and safety. Men are barely capable of that anymore. They are commitment phobic, sex addicted, and brainwashed into believing they deserve the perfect relationship. My ex did everything right, they can’t do a single fucking thing right except lie. The lies sound good but the lies come to the surface.

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I don’t think I’ll ever be the perfect partner. I don’t think I’ll ever find the perfect partner. I think in the past, I thought I could. I thought he was out there and he would find me, choose me, and we would have lots of babies. The older I get the less men I’m interested in. I just don’t find many men attractive and that’s what you do on dating apps.

It’s the story as old as time..I’m not interested in him, then I start to be as soon as he starts pulling away or is fucking someone else and I can feel it. Then, I go completely tf out of character and feel desperate. The complete and utter terror of that abandonment and rejection. My amygdala hyjacks me and starts shooting out adrenaline like I’m being chased by a lion. I can feel it happening in my limbs traveling down through my finger tips.

You know that feeling when you almost get into a car accident and you feel that rush throughout your body? That’s what I feel like with the threat of rejection. But, I don’t feel rejected by just anybody. Only by people who I get close with and am kind of blindsided by.

Happened recently and hasn’t happened in almost 5 years. To be honest, I thought it was something I grew out of.

Realizing that this is simply a brain mechanism does actually help me to process those feelings.

The brain is a complex machine and it’s extremely fascinating to me that, like a machine, there’s specific mechanisms that can be tweaked. And like the mechanic, they’re people (therapists) that help tweak the brain for it to function better.

I don’t think I really understood that. There’s a time when I thought, if I talked enough to my therapist, the pain, fear, flashbacks, and nightmares would go away. Sometimes they did but I’ve also been having the same reoccurring nightmare about my ex for almost 5 years.

The nightmare has the same premise every time. Him and I are hooking up, or hanging out but there’s another woman in the picture. I look at him and say “But I love you. I love you so much.” And he says “Amanda, I don’t love you. I love so and so now.”

Seems pretty simple, I know. But there’s variations of this dream. Sometimes his parents are in it, sometimes there’s sex, sometimes there’s not sex. I wake up in terror and it’s almost like I relive the pain all over again.

So, I switched to a  jungian therapist to take a different approach to my therapy. I’m scared of life. I think there’s too much that’s awesome about me that I don’t wanna waste another day have a reaction due to fear and anxiety.

I am loud, outspoken, charismatic, charming, intelligent, extroverted woman who is terrified of her life.

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I just want to collapse on the ground and not be asked by anybody to get up. I want to lay there and stare at the ceiling.

I wish I could start over as a person, not hypothetically but literally. New brain, new body.

I feel devastated exhausting myself and doing the best I can and just having people demanding all my energy without any return. 

I feel nothing.

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It always has to be some type of power struggle for it to feel passionate. It always has to feel dangerous. We are desensitized. That’s the sickness in us. That’s how you know the relationship won’t last.

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I’ve only ever been in love once. That’s not apparent in the moment but when the initial infatuation fades I realize what I was feeling wasn’t love and the person I supposedly felt love for wasn’t really that person. If that makes sense. I parrot emotions. I feel pressured.

I’ve had for long-term relationships (2+years) and two of them we lived together and the other two I spent most of my time with. Three of them I was not emotionally available for. I know that now.

I wasn’t even attracted to the ex I loved at first, although he was attractive. At 23 I was into tall, buff, with tattoos and he was tall, slim, blonde with like two shitty tattoos and the worst dad jokes ever. We had some friends in common who were trying to convince me to go out with him but at the time I was obsessed with this Bradley Cooper look off (Who I wound up being on and off with for 7 years) and didn’t want to bother. Well, this person kept checking in with me and finally when I split with “Bradley” I agreed to do dinner with some friends and meet him.

He was handsomely dressed (came from work so it was business cas) and had beautiful blue eyes. I was so nervous because I was far more attracted to him in person. We clicked immediately. He took me on an amazing first date in the city the Tuesday after, we kissed and he went home. I didn’t feel this intense animalistic sexual energy towards him, I felt warmth.

He did everything right and he didn’t have to overwork. He did it naturally. He communicated with me daily, called me on the phone a couple times a week. He did nothing sneaky, he didnt say things that contradicted other things he said. He didn’t lie. He came from an easy, loving family. He didn’t use sex as a means to feel masculine or to feel better about himself. He loved spending time with me and my friends and he was serious about moving toward with me.

I was fucking terrified. Omg I was SICK. I had never done this before. My grandparents didn’t like each other, my dad abandoned my Mom and I when I was 4. I had never seen a healthy relationship in action. How did it work? Was it possible? Was a good enough for it?

He took me on vacations, fixed things for me, brought me to family weddings, gave me beautiful gifts, brought me flowers, and we laughed and laughed and laughed. He helped me grow and blossom and be the best human being ever. He loved me and I was so fucking weird.

What a relief it is to feel loved in spite of the things we don’t like about ourselves. Anyway...

It was a bit rocky the first 4 months. We hadn’t told each other we loved each other and in past relationships I was just used to them telling me they loved me way too early and then parroting ILY back because I had thought that’s what people did. I gave him a little bit of a hard time bc of fearsome uncertainty and in turn, he responded to me with love, empathy, and kindness. He told me we were teammates and that, my problems were his problems too. Like, fucking what? You’re listening to me and together we’re coming to a solution?? What is this voodoo??

Because of his words and attitude, it was easy for me to settle down, easy for me to feel safe and full, and easy for me to put my trust in him fully. We could be on the same team, it was possible and we were doing it.

At 5 months dating we told each other we loved each other even though I knew I loved him before that. It was simple, one day I looked at him watching tv. He was watching shark tank at my apartment and had this stupid judgey look on his face because he always that he would’ve invent a better product than those on the show, and I looked at him and thought “How fucking lucky am I.” Up to that point, or ever, I have never thought I was lucky with the person I’ve dated. I always felt so so with my partners. Past partners had no been trustworthy or good people in their hearts. This man, I could brag about 24/7. He spoiled me rotten physically and emotionally, and in turn, I spoiled him back. I was constantly cooking for him. Got up early before work sundays to make pancakes, if I was buying clothes I’d always grab him something, planning special things, buying him groceries for my apartment, getting out of bed to get him water if he needed it, fucking him nasty and often, being there for him fully on his tough days, and, it felt EASY.

Anyway, I felt lucky, and I knew I loved him. With him, I experienced some of the happiest moments of my life and learned the most valuable lessons. And, I still think he’s a good person, just not the person for me.

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