hooking up

[Glides]

so i'm hooking up with my ex.

since i try not to use names and be vague about personal info, this is the one before last, we started dating in october of last year and broke up in january of this year. we hooked up a single time after the break-up (without any penetrative sex, due to my own BS). at some point, they had made a comment about preferring people with a set of anatomy i did not possess, and that in my mind ended things for good. we still texted every now and again but in my mind we were just friends now. considering they had once applied for a job at my now former workplace, we both felt fucked over by it for very legitimate reasons and we did enjoy spending time with each other. as far as breakups go, despite how much it hurt at the time, it was in retrospect about as amicable of a breakup as i've ever had.

this abruptly picked back up very suddenly a couple weeks ago when they invited me over to their mom's place to watch a movie, and then things v spontaneously escalated for the first time in my life. there was a bit of awkwardness after as i had to remind them that i had since dated one other person and hooked up once with one additional person (the first and only booty call of my life, though it wasn't supposed to turn out like that), though i was no longer involved with either person. meanwhile, they had tried to set up dates with other people and backed out at the last minute each time, and we also discovered that twice we had a crush on the same person (one of them being a mutual friend and former coworker of mine, though i have since thankfully gotten over that crush and we have remained good friends) and competed for the same job application twice.

like honestly, with retrospect, we have way too much in common. it's the first and (so far) only time that i have been involved in some way with a person who has a lot of the same traits as me. i have usually dated people who are as different from me as it can get. they are also deeply awkward and uncoordinated but in their case it somehow comes off as incredibly charming. they are also the most visibly non-passing person i've ever been with and the most overtly masculine person i've been with. so basically the exact opposite of who i thought i was previously attracted to. that's not a problem now, though at first i felt a lot of confusion that i had had this attraction all along and had never acted on it. all of these are pluses, i have to state that really clearly.

honestly i don't even have like a ranty-ass thing to complain about as far as their flaws, because we both seem to approach whatever is going on now like an equation: we both have needs of some kind, we both have pretty severe trauma from previous cis partners we almost married (though they got WAY closer to it than i did, i never even bought a ring or proposed thank god), we both know that the other won't do anything nonconsensual. they are also, as of right now, the ONLY person i have been able to do ANYTHING with sober without having a severe panic attack after or having to repress a severe panic attack. i am not stupid enough to assume that this is lovey dovey love, because they clearly do not want that and at this rate, i'm not even sure we work as partners. we work as friends, and i do care for them dearly. but it still wigs me the fuck out that they are basically a slightly younger version of me in so many ways. this is also the first time that i feel like i can safely be a proper FWB for someone without a fuckton of baggage behind it (they do have baggage, but they're at least semi-decent about handling it themself).

like, i'm maybe just being overcautious because it's not like that's all we're going to do, but i would personally like to keep fooling around if they do. we're both disabled, we're both trans (even if i pass way more than they do), we both have similar accommodations that we need. i don't know if there's some secret bad thing about whatever this is that i'm just trying to anticipate. at this point, i'm of the mind to not overtly reference it to any IRL friends unless asked about it, especially because we did actually date at one point, though it has helped that we've now been (mostly) platonic friends longer than we dated so if they were going to pull some bullshit, they would've done it by now.

i dunno, i just need to be told if this is unhealthy but for all the things that had us break up, i'm touch-starved and lonely as fuck, they are too, and we're also so standoffish and introverted that we only want to see each other every couple weeks or so anyway and text the rest of the time. so you can tell me if i'm being an idiot. i'm also trying to decide if i have feelings for them still. i prob do but dating sounds deeply exhausting with anyone. idk. i'm overthinking this.

[Datelessman]

DNL would ask whether or not the circumstances for either of have have changed since the breakup. If not, there is the risk that history could be repeated, just with more bitterness since this time it isn't out of ignorance.

There is a place for FWB, few strings attached physical interaction between two people which doesn't get especially deep or exclusive. As you mentioned, the community of "handicapped transgender people" isn't the largest. That said, it is worth thinking about it which you are, so you know you aren't acting out of desperation.

There's nothing wrong with hooking up with an ex or even redefining things into a new kind of relationship with them which is more mutually compatible. A FWB is still a relationship, just with a different kind of one. As DNL says, none of us ever get 100% of what we want in any kind of healthy relationship; we get 80% or so and round up. Just make sure you're not rounding up for the wrong reasons.

[Enail]

It doesn't sound especially unhealthy to me; you sound like you can trust them to treat you with kindness and respect (and vice versa), you're able to feel safe enough to do sexual things you otherwise have a hard time with, and it doesn't seem like either of you is assuming it's going to be what it was when you last dated or have excess expectations that it will or should go any particular direction.

Of course, that doesn't preclude things being messy, people getting feelings or expectations that don't match, getting hurt, etc. but the starting point sounds pretty healthy to me. I hope things go well, however they land up going!

[Hielario]

Short version: No, you're not being an idiot, Go for it! (¿Can I get a Shia LaBeouf gif in here?)

Long version: maybe I'm not the best person to give this advice but I see several reasons:

-Your situation has too many differences from the typical one, so common wisdom about sex with your ex can't be fully applied here.

-You two, from several things you've said, seem to work well in bed in ways that don't happen often, even if you didn't as a whole couple(I've been told it happens sometimes). It's good to want more of that, and to keep having it as long as you're both on the same page and not hurting anybody else. Your reference to an equation is appropiate: Sometimes, people like us have to be practical about fucking and get it outside of the typical frames. And frankly,  I think you need a lot more good experiences with people who aren't terrible. Especially those you know you can mount without a panic attack. 

-I would also like to point that it will help you take better decisions in the future re: dating (including breaks)  if you're getting reliable physical satisfaction once in a while.


Also: as a fellow walking disaster on the autistic spectrum, I am honestly delighted and curious that you describe it as charming in them   . I would ask for details, but I understand you being careful.


I will be a littlle silly now:  dang buddy, puff up that chest a little! (friendly pats in the back) They keep coming back for more, you're allowed to be a little proud!  (I had a genital joke here too but I realized it could have some some weird connotations).

[Glides]

Well this is what I get for opening my big mouth.

Not even an hour ago, they suddenly call and mention the following:

1. I'm meeting someone else but I don't know if it's a date or not or if I want it to be a date.

2. I still have feelings for you but because of us breaking up almost a year ago, I'm scared to try dating again.

3. I would still like to keep fooling around so long as it doesn't become too much for either of us.

So I was completely blindsided by that. And I tried to be as honest as I could, that I'd feel some degree of jealousy if they ended up with someone else but I also did not want to derail their current plans if they like this person (which they're not sure how they feel about). And that I have residual feelings that could regrow but I also wanted to tread cautiously given the fact that we've already broken up once and I want to be careful. They agreed to all of that and asked for us to meet next week to talk shit out further without any decision being made.

I'm obviously really torn. I'm not clear if they're looking for something monogamous or not. I'm not really sure if I am, though there isn't any particular person I would currently be able to pursue something with (that is its own story I gotta put somewhere else). I do care for them a lot like I said. We've been friends significantly longer than we were partners, so we've got a lot of time spent being purely platonic even if I continued repressing any residual attraction I felt for them the whole time.

I don't know what to do. I've got a job interview and I've got to renew my lease and figure out how to get my injection on time and getting new health insurance if I don't get the job and they have a billion things on their plate. I don't know if either of us has the capacity for anything. I don't think they know. I wish this was easier.

[Enail]

That sounds like an extra layer of confusingness and stress, but you sound like you're handling it in a really mature way! Keep communicating, keep paying attention to what you want and looking after yourself, keep being kind, and I think however it goes, it could be good for both of you.

[Hielario]

1. I'm meeting someone else but I don't know if it's a date or not or if I want it to be a date.

Fucking Christ. Why are people like this??

Otherwise, it doesn't look too bad. Good luck!

[Glides]

TW: Discussion of suicidal ideation and (past) domestic abuse

So anyway my jerkbrain had predicted that anything like this was far too good to be true and the problem with jerkbrain is that it's almost always right.

Long story short:

1. Things went fine until I hit the next episode of my major depressive episodes. When this first started, I was in consideration for a really well paying job that the employers were repeatedly hinting I was going to get. This, obviusly, was also too good to be true and I hit a point where I was genuinely afraid that I would either become homeless or beg my parents to live with them again. At the last possible second, I ended up getting a job that paid significantly less but still enough to afford a different apartment in the same complex. So I'm there now. But that period in between October and now was really really really bad, and even after having suddenly moved and suddenly being employed again, my mental health is still absolutely in the shitter.

2. Their response to my behavior cratering the way it did, though never directly talking to them about it, and as a direct response to me posting very sad and depressing things on my Instagram story which they follow, was to go no contact permanently, tell me that the only way we could start talking to each other again was if I checked myself into a mental hospital on the spot, and pretty much victim-blamed me as being too lazy and too stupid to do anything about my mental health. This is doubly ironic.

They didn't know this part, but I have had a long standing overwhelming hatred and disgust towards all mental hospitals and those who work there because, as a kid, my parents would force me to stop having panic attacks by promising to check me into one for the rest of my life, and acted as if it was lifetime imprisonment. I have had many friends be hospitalized and be abused by staff and patients, so I have actual reasons to think these things are the literal spawns of Satan. Earlier this year, my ex was themself hospitalized after experiencing severe suicidal ideation and I was dropping everything to take care of them, take them on errands, spend time with them. So in the reverse situation, upon seeing me in a state of crisis, their first instinct after all that was to drop me and imply that it was my fault that I wanted to kill myself. Regular users here know that I am passively suicidal and that suicidality is the core of my personality and my being. If I did not want to kill myself, I would have no personality or identity at all. My gender is suicide. My religion is suicide. Every molecule in my being wants to die and somehow I remain. None of that is an active threat or anything like that, I'm just trying to convey how it is the entirety of my being and anything else that is there is related to the concept in some way. I am not a human being, but rather a husk that has a near constant fixation on killing myself. Now in all fairness, I did not post once about wanting to kill myself, only that I was depressed and sad and miserable and felt like I'd lost all progress I had ever made since losing my previous job. That was it. I was fully aware they had been hospitalized (in a very fancy schmancy one) and so I made care not to ever reference anything directly knowing this. But even the sheer mention of another person's sadness despite their own filled them with such overwhelming disgust that they immediately kicked me while I was down, and it came so far out of left field and was so deeply cruel that it feels like another person has possessed them. I know how to pick em! So I had spent months doting on them (still platonically at this point) and being their sole source of socialization. Not that they needed to return that favor or even tolerate my bullshit if it really was triggering to them, but like: THIS is how you respond to someone in crisis when that same person dropped everything for months to help you????

I also got fired from a consulting gig for reasons that were entirely my fault roughly around the same time, which hurts cuz I need that money but thankfully is not the job-job. That AND my grandmother was hospitalized AND this AND having to beg my family for money anyway in between the time I started working at this new place and when I receive my first direct deposit from them, so I'll still have to spend a month feeling guilty as shit that my rent is being paid off by family who resent me even more for asking for any help at all.

And I think it needs to be worth mentioning here: they make 74,000 dollars a year with bennies at the moment, and I am barely cracking 35,000 while having to pay for health insurance out of pocket. They could afford to lose upwards of 10,000 a pop at their luxury hospital and I cannot. Even if I was delusional enough to think I could find one that isn't fully of abusive homicidal maniacs as staff, I literally could not safely pay for it without being evicted. I am not claiming I am the most impoverished person in this country, far from it. I had a way more privileged and spoiled childhood than many, and the financial condition I'm in now is way worse than when I was a kid while still being pretty privileged for this country. But I think that's the other part that had me so incensed/betrayed/hurt by how sudden and out of nowhere this all felt, because they KNOW money is tight and they KNOW this has been my barrier to getting any kind of therapy since June. They KNOW I have had really bad experiences in medical settings, and I thought they got it, or at least understood that much. If anything, their luxury hospital has taught them to be a more cruel, selfish and petty person.

Anyway, my friend's comment when asking him for advice and reading out the text (oh yeah, they did this over text after previously implying they wanted to hang out again) was "anyone who uses the term 'mental health journey' is automatically not making any progress on their own mental health, it's just pop psychology bullshit." There I would agree, but in order to enforce the no contact rule, I now can't go to many of the social functions I was previously going to because we were running in the same fucking social circles. And if I tried to go and they happened to be there, they could claim I was violating their boundaries and I genuinely don't want to. So now this makes me even more isolated and alone than it was before (they also seemed to pre-emptively go no contact with our closest mutual friend over this despite her having no idea about any of this, JUST because I met her first! Like this is insane).

So anyway, that's how I'm ending my 2023, by being kicked in the teeth as hard as humanly possible by a person I made a huge mistake in developing feelings for. Is it anywhere near as bad as my worst abuser and longest relationship AND ALSO A PERSON THEY KNEW ABOUT WALKING IN? Realistically, no. My abuser genuinely enjoyed inflicting pain on me, openly admitted to it, admitted to doing the same to others. This ex, even as much as I absolutely despise them right now, is almost certainly not enjoying any of this. What they are is so comically avoidant that any kind of negativity makes them run away. It's why we broke up the first time: they didn't want to put in any effort into actually being partners. So we tried again as just lovers because we liked hanging out as friends and the sex was good, but turns out when you fuck a friend NEGATIVE BULLSHIT comes up. They live in a world of obsessive "no bummers," where anything sad they can get rid of, they'll get rid of without thinking about it. They have not offered me a single thought since sending that text, that I know. They're not crying about it here or anywhere else like I am, they're not going to friends and family absolutely devastated. Their thought process was "ew, that person is sad and only I can be sad, I can't fuck a sad person."

And they offered the caveat that if I really did hospitalize myself at the absurd prices I can't afford, and subject myself to the horrific abuse of the hospital staff, that they would resume the friendship. For the sake of MY mental health, I can't ever talk to them again as long as I live. I am never ever ever ever ever ever speaking to them again or going anywhere they might be at. I'm deliberately meeting that same mutual friend this week just to subtly confirm without saying so if they got to her first (which I don't think they did, because I don't want to lose two friends over the most ridiculous beef possible). I'm willing to lose the rest of those mutual friends because they know the rest way better than me and I have to cut my losses. I would love an apology for them being such an entitled dick, but I'm very unlikely to get that.

But this pattern has to stop. I can't keep doing this to myself. I haven't felt this level of heartbreak in five years and I don't know how people keep inflicting this on themselves.  

[Hielario]

a)What a shithead!
b) Glides, I say this just as a polite warning because you know that it happens to you sometimes: I think your view of how the world works is warping here. Someone not wanting to talk to you does not mean you're forbidden to go to any event they're attending. If they're not happy about seeing you, that's their own, private problem! You just ignore each other's presence. And they have no right to complain: you have as much of a right to be at that function as them.
c) The answer to your final commentary is loneliness sucking a thousand times more and lacking the good parts to compensate for the bad ones.

[Enail]

I'm so sorry they treated you like that! It's absolutely shitty, and those no-bummers type people are honestly kind of the worst.

I agree with Hielario that you don't have to totally avoid any event they might attend just because they don't want you to contact them, just not engage with them at the event. Though I guess if seeing them will be bad for your mental health rn you're not going to want to go to those events anyway for a while. But do it for you, not because you have to to not be harassing them.

Also, you very much have a personality beyond suicidality, even if that personality happens while also being deeply suicidal it doesn't erase the rest.

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