Moments and Musings

My partner left for a trip overseas last weekend, and was concerned about me being home by myself all week. One of her boyfriends, who is also a good friend of mine, invited me out to a Halloween get-together with the rest of the polycule. A month ago, I would have said no, and stayed home to play video games or something. At partner's insistence, I went.

It turns out I had a great time. We did a paint-ball zombie hunt (which was a hell of a lot of fun) followed by a haunted house. Then a late dinner, after which myself and three others went out for drinks. This was about 11:30 and again, my first inclination was to say no because I'm old and tired, but the woman that asked was very insistent. I went out and had a great time.

I ended up dancing and talking with one of the other women most of the night, and we all finally went home about 1:30am. She and I have been texting off and on ever since, and we're organizing a date for this week or next. Partner will be thrilled, and I'm really glad I went out.

With a few hiccups today, partner is having a great time. She's taking a lot of photos, and making friends within the group of women she's travelling with. There have been hot springs and waterfall hikes every day, and hopefully whale watching today. I'm so glad she is doing this.

#Poly #Nonmonogamy #ENM

-DeadTOm

It does get tougher as you get older, particularly when you find most people generally annoying, and you like your alone time. Up until a few years ago, I had at least one or two other friends outside my relationship. Currently, I have lots of acquaintances, but no one I would call a friend. No one I'm terribly interested in spending a lot of time with.

My partner and my therapist have been on me for months now to make some friends. I expected this to be difficult, and annoying, and it's turned out to be worse than I thought. For starters, I don't usually get along well with other men. I can't say for sure why this is, but it's been the case my entire life. Most of my friends have been women. While this doesn't bother my partner in the least, society at large generally has problems with it. Usually, I find chit-chat difficult. I'm not interested in the usual stuff people (particularly men) want to talk about while waiting in line at the grocery store, or sitting in a waiting room. Conversation is usually stilted and awkward, and talking about the weather gets old, really old. Once in a while though, for reasons I've never been able to pin down, sometimes I immediately strike up a conversation with someone, and enjoy it. It's very, very rare.

I refuse to do most social media, or at least the big ones. I've checked various places online to look for group activities and events around town, but nothing looks even remotely interesting to me. In fact, most of them look noisy and irritating. There are a few dating-like websites dedicated specifically to finding local friends, but they're all pretty dismal, and something about it just feels desperate.

I've thought about bars, but I know from experience how that's going to go. I'll feel weird because everyone is 20 years younger than me, I'll fight for the bartender's attention to get a few drinks, and then go home and play the Sims.

Sports? Yeah, right.

Games? Have you been to game shops? Kids in their twenties, and younger, that smell like they've been rolling in sweaty gym socks and cow shit. What the fuck is it with this crop of 20-somethings? It's like they're allergic to fucking showers or something.

Classes? Everything I'm interested in runs during the work day.

I have no idea how to go about this, and I feel pretty stupid about it.

-DeadTOm