The Beginning

Ok, so here it goes.

Probably the first question that needs to get answered is why am I doing this? Well, it's one of my attempts at "doing the work" that will allow myself to heal from a recent heartbreak that knocked me on my ass and if I believe all the other things I have read in the last couple of months, get me ready to have the relationship I really want. Stop making the same mistakes in the future, in other words.  I plan to be really honest with what I feel, the things I have said and the absolutely dumb things that I have already done and maybe if I am really lucky prevent some more in the future because being in denial about it isn't going to do me any good. And if nothing else, for anyone who might come across this they can see that there is someone else out there going through the same things and most likely getting through it better.

So what is my story?

I am 45 years old. I just turned 45 a couple of months ago, about 2 months after the breakup. Which sucks. There is nothing like feeling older right on the heels of rejection. I am not ugly and I have been told that I look younger than my actual age. I think I could pass anywhere between 35 and 38 out in public. Home, without makeup and tired, I'm sure I look my age or older.  Statistics for finding a happy relationship now are against me, but I still hope.

I was in a relationship with a man (boy?) who is 15 years younger than me. I know, it kind of makes me shudder now too. But in my defense (slightly), I did some research on the "acceptability" of these relationships (also referred to as May-December romances) and we just made it to supposedly be accepted by society. You take the older person's age and divide by 2 then add 7. If the younger person's age is greater than that number, then it is an acceptable age gap relationship. So, 45/2 = 22.5 + 7 = 29.5. He is 30. Got a whole 6 months to spare. We were together for 3 years and 9 months. I thought I was going to start this blog about 6 weeks ago, but then I actually was feeling better, thinking that I was over the hard part and on the way to truly getting past this. But then I suffered a set back about 3 weeks ago. I'm not exactly sure what caused the regression, but a couple of popular theories are that I wasn't really doing as well as I thought and was living in denial and it was just a matter of time or that I thought I was so far past it that I could just be a little curious about what was going on his life so I peeked in and once again got a nice suckerpunch to the gut.

How in the world did this happen?

I was in a good place back then - emotionally, physically, financially. I had been on my own for several months since any sort of dating or male romantic interests. I was about 3 months into a new job which was exciting and challenging. My new job was pretty much like my old job - just a switch of companies. Hard to explain really, but let's just say that I was working in the same place for about a year before I got the new job with all the same people, then just a quick change over to a new company, slightly different job, quite a bit more money. I had just bought a house and was all moved in. My ex-husband and I (was married for 11 years from 1995 to 2006, separated in 2005) were sharing the custody of our 2 kids and were getting along OK. I was working a lot when I didn't have the kids and I can say that I was pretty happy with my life. Sometimes lonely but I was finding things to keep me busy.

I worked in a warehouse in a role of management, which basically means that I was so crazy busy all the time that I pretty much never left the office area and my computer. This is only important because my future guy, Sam, worked there too but I never knew who he was for the first year before I got the new job. Later on I pretended that I knew who he was when he asked me (some sort of romantic notion that we were crushing on each other from afar), but the honest answer was that I had no clue who he was and really didn't care. Sam worked out on the warehouse floor. He was 26 at the time we met. He had gone to college for maybe a year or so before dropping out. 

Then one day my role was expanded and all of a sudden I had a team of people from the warehouse floor to manage. That team included Sam and there he was in my life. He started to come in to talk to me a lot. Finding work related things to discuss but he also started to tell me things about his life. Sam was living with a girlfriend and they just had a baby. I mean just had a baby, like within days. They had been together for the nine months it took to cook the baby. He seemed miserable. He talked about how bad the relationship was for him and how he wanted out.  I remember thinking to myself so many terrible things as he would talk about his life. I felt sorry for him, I felt sorry for his girlfriend and my heart broke for the baby. I sat there and listened to him, all while I judged him for being young, stupid, irresponsible, and basically acting typical of an uneducated and poor person. Each day he came to talk to me and each day there seemed to be more of his awful life that unfolded. The next bombshell was another child (this one about 3) whose mother (ex-wife: this one he had married) wanted to relocate to another state where her mother lived and he had just signed the papers to allow her to go. He broke down, he cried, he ranted, he complained. And yet there was something interesting about this big pile of tragic drama, pain and anger that kept me listening and even offering advise or maybe just saying that I was sorry a lot. At the same time, through all this awfulness, there was also a young, super vulnerable and cute guy who was becoming interested in me. I remember very clearly the day that I made a bad decision and flirted back with him through an instant message he sent me. I don't know why. To see if I could? Because I hadn't had sex in 8 months? Because I could tell he liked me and I wanted some attention? A quick little fling?  Or even more awful, because I was being selfish and thought I could have some fun without getting involved or hurt and I didn't give any consideration to the message I was sending out.

One day he told me he had left baby momma #2 and moved back in with his parents. I was shocked actually. It was one thing to talk about how unhappy you were, quite another to leave. I was unhappy in my marriage for years and stayed well beyond the expiration date for that relationship for the sake of our kids. I can say that even now, 4 years later, I don't know what happened between them with 100% certainty. He wouldn't talk about it in any more detail other than they fought all the time, they didn't have any money, the stress of the baby, her parents were a nightmare and it was overall a bad situation. I imagine that getting together because the woman got pregnant is not a strong foundation for a relationship and the reality hit them both.

When a work situation presented itself where everyone was going to have to work long hours over weekend, I decided to get a hotel room closer to work so I would not have to make the long drive home in the middle of the night or when really tired. You know what? I wrote that and it doesn't feel right. I cannot remember how it happened, who's idea it was - but here is the truth - by the time this weekend came about, we knew that we were going to be sharing a hotel room. I think I told him that was my plan but I wanted him to stay with me, I know that. I think I gave him an opening to see what he would do, and he took it as I suspected he would. We talked about it and said that this was just going to be an opportunity for us to get to know each other better outside of work. I wanted a fling. I wanted sex. I did not want a relationship with this man. He was a mess. We were not from the same walk of life. We were so very different and I couldn't relate to his life or his experiences or his decisions. I don't know what he wanted. I didn't ask. I assumed that he had enough trouble already in his life and was there to have fun too. I remember leaving work during the day and going to the hotel to check in and get 2 keys. I remember walking out onto the floor to find him and slip him his key. I remember being excited. I wanted the day to end, I wanted to be with him. He went first and I showed up maybe an hour later. I was very nervous - the truth was that we barely knew each other and I hadn't been with someone for awhile. We talked for a very long time and he told me that he wanted to take it slow, to really be friends with me before anything physical happened. He didn't want to mess things up with me. That he really liked me. That scared me because it was so different than where I was. It also wasn't what I wanted right then and I pushed until I got my way. We kissed, we were sleeping in the same bed. I kept going and we had sex. It wasn't that great.  And that was how it began.