- Not The Only One!
- Post #37
- ” The Ladies”
- Hey gang, I want to thank you guys , I got some real positive responses from the last post, and yes there was a little descension , can’t make everybody happy all the time, and just incase you missed it, that is not what I am here for:):):). This post is a little bit of a follow up from the last one, and I’m going to see if I can keep myself out of to much trouble. This is like one of those true crime dramas, where the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Well, that’s not going to happen and there are truly no innocent parties. I will be using initials and pet names in my references to the ladies. First of all, when I met my wife back in 1990,I thought that was the person that I was going to grow old with until my death. Some how that didn’t turn out to be the end of the story. My ex pastor use to say that opposites attract and then they attack . I never really thought of my ex wife and I as opposites, however we did balance one another out, and for the most part, I thought we got along pretty good, but we had some heavy family influences impact our marriage, and the funny part is , she doesn’t even speak to those people in her family , that she thought so highly of, and felt that she had to defend, and most importantly elevate them over the core thing…our marriage and relationship. Another quick piece of advice or a reminder, remember, you don’t just marry that person, but the entire family, so make sure you take a good look at the parents and siblings, so you fully understand what you are getting yourself into.:):):). Ok, well enough said about that. My ex wife was Lady W. ,and I use to refer to her as Suebell. This was derived from her middle name and the process of converting a Midwestern into a southern Bell. Some of these nicknames take me back a ways. Ok, so I said that I thought that we would end up being buried beside one another, but life doesn’t always work out the way you plan. Since the two of us parted ways back in 09 to 2010, I have had four romantic relationships, so the math says one every three years, but I didn’t spend equal amounts of time with them all, and the irony of it is the one that I ended up spending the most time with, is actually the one that I should have spent the least amount of time with or not at all, and as I just said, life doesn’t always work out the way that you think it will, or wish that it had. ☺️. I’m going to give a little brief synopsis on each one, and maybe you will be able to draw an opinion as to why I’m still by my lonesome. ☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️. Ok, first up after the wife and I split was Lady T. aka ” Butterball. This is the one that I probably have the most regret over because, this relationship was all on me and my major dysfunctionality. Again a blonde, but this time the eyes were brown, and yes, if you are thinking that I have a type, then you would be correct, but its not about the blonde hair, its about their strength, remember…. I like strong women, with a swagger about them . This was the most hardest working woman that I have ever met in my life, and I have known a few. She was a mid-level manager for a fortune 500 company and extremely good at what she did. If you get a dictionary out and looked up the word(s) “Rockstar ” then you would see a picture of this woman, not Mick Jagger, not Sting, not Bruce Springsteen, not Bon Jovi, but Lady T. I take complete responsibility for this one, because I didn’t realize what a dumpster fire I was after an almost twenty year marriage. This woman was amazing, far from perfect, but a heart so big and tender, that on some level, she would have given Mother Teresa a run for her money. I mentioned earlier about sometimes that you may pay for the sins and transgressions of a previous relationship and that is exactly what happened here. She on no level deserved what she got from me. She was in so many ways all the things that my ex wife was not and extremely generous. In addition to everything else, she had a great family. She had two daughters, both beautiful just like she was, and the oldest a chip off the old block, so a Rockstar like her mother. The younger ones was a little bit more complicated. She struck me as one of those kids, who just really needed her dad in her life, and since she didn’t have that, she was always looking for male approval. I will confess that I was horrible, I was untrusting, because all of the stuff I had been through with the Ex. This woman gave me all of the information that I needed to love her madly and I completely mishandled it. Going in she had told me that she was ” Tender Hearted “, which meant to handle with care, which I horrifically did not do. One of the things that I just couldn’t reconcile was how she could be such a fearless tiger at work, but none of that transferred to her home life. On some level I was expecting a sparing partner, but she refused to even put the gloves on. Like so many other women, she had past hurts in her life, and some sexual abuse, which she had suppressed for years. I was supposed to be a good guy, but instead, I only added to her pain and anguish, for which I will never be able to say I’m sorry enough. . I might be sharing just a little to much here, we spent three years together and I’m sure for her, it probably felt like a lot longer. She was pretty close to perfect for me, she knew how to take care of her guy, the pampering and spoiling done really well. I just wish that we had met at another time, when my head was in a much better place. They talk about being emotionally available, and that’s a thing, and I was the complete opposite of that. Final note, if your wondering about the nickname, “Butterball”, and you guessed that it referred to her butt, then give yourself a gold star ☺️. Ok, moving on, next up was Lady H. aka ” The Ditto Queen “. Another blonde with blue eyes, short in stature, but don’t underestimate her because of her size. This woman was a pistol. She was from Long Island, had come down here for college and never left. She was very direct and she would definitely let you know what was on her mind. The odd part was, when it came to being emotionally vulnerable and expressing what she was feeling romantically, she became the strong silent type and would let me share, and then would echo “Ditto “, thus the nickname. She had reached out to me on a dating app, and initially I was like, nope!! My initial pause was three fold, one she had three big strapping sons, and I know how boys can sometimes be protective of their mothers. The secondly she was Catholic, which I had misgivings with from when I was younger, with another lady, who didn’t make the cut:):):). And lastly her birthday was within a week of mine, more bad news from my youth. I don’t really believe in the whole astrology thing, but there are certain undeniable shared traits from people born around the same time of the year, and you can’t deny that point. I know me and how demanding I can be in certain areas of the relationship and I wasn’t prepared to have that returned to me. When I was in college, I dated a lady from the same astrological sign, and we almost killed each other, so I spent the rest of my adulthood avoiding that. :):):) . In some ways we were like teenagers, having a difficult time keeping our hands off of one another. Anyway back to the “Ditto Queen”, she had been married to a non-functioning alcoholic, whom eventually drank himself to death, so he wasn’t in the picture for her son’s to compare me with. However this was another form of abuse, because for many years she had been living the life of a single parent, and been responsible for everything. It’s one thing to have to do that, but its something completely different, when you have a partner, but offers no support in any shape form or fashion, it can make you a little resentful. She did a phenomenal job raising her young men. I got to be her plus one for her oldest wedding, and I was honored to be there for her. So, what happened here? Well, Lady H. , wanted it to be her time to be taken care of, she was tiered of always having to be the responsible one, everything squarely on her shoulders, and I got that!. She wanted someone to man up , and I didn’t have a problem with that, but her lack of being taken care of and lack of attention, had made her a little impatient. I don’t believe I ever had her full trust. She was just worn out from always having to carry the load by herself. I ask her for a little patience, so that I wouldn’t be repeating history and jumping into something to soon. I think she wanted to give me the time, but there was third party interference. She lived in a condo and had a long time girlfriend who lived a couple door down, who was feeding her a time table, again which was fine, but I wasn’t dating her girlfriend and in fact she was already married to a great guy. This dude gave me the most amazing recipe for a bean dip, ok, that should have been a sidebar ☺️. The point here is you have to put your big girl pants on and make your own choices and decisions. This is a creepy factor, but she had her condo decorated exactly as her girlfriend’s., and when I say the same , I mean the same. Anyway her impatience , accompanied with her girlfriend’s fingers in where they shouldn’t have been drove us apart. Basically she ended up issuing an ultimatum, which I didn’t bite on. She has reached out several times over the years, trying to mend fences, but this isn’t the one I would go back for, mostly out of fear, we had some real good times together, but from beginning to end, we just tipped over the two year mark , another gorgeous woman in a small package. Ok, up next we have Lady M…aka “Hodgee”. This is my big brain fart. Sometimes you think to yourself, let’s try something different, and that may like me, leave you thinking, what the hell was I thinking? OK, this is the one that I spent the most time with, and it probably should have never been. Most of the women I have dated could have been the “ONE “, except this one. It became very clear to me in a relatively short amount of time, that different doesn’t mean better, it just means different!. This one is super smart, or supposedly! Had a graduate degree and spoke Chinese, that’s not an everyday people skill , unless of course you live in China. This is also a testament as to how some of the most intelligent and educated people are the wackiest and you wonder if all of that additional learning made them mad. I’m not going to spend a lot of time here, other than to say an extreme amount of mental and psychological baggage. She had a minor child, which really made me feel old, because raising teenagers this day and age looks a lot different,, from when my kids were there. Social media has so changed the world forever and not all for the better. I think the most fun part for me was , that you never had to guess as to what she was thinking, because if it popped into her head, she was compelled to say it and verbalize it regardless as to how crazy it may be or sound, very little to no filter. If you go back to earlier post, you can pick this one out of the crowd pretty quickly. I know some of you are wondering if it was so bad?, then why so long?. It got complicated with her kid, we ended up living together as roommates. She lost her job twice, while we were together and I had a knee replacement that went horribly wrong, so basically life happened, as I said you can pick this one out from earlier post . Oh, and the nickname stood for hodge podge, because she was just all over the place, into everyone’s business, regardless of the relationship or not. Usually very opinionated, and for the most part , significantly off base. She felt as if she had to always be the smartest one in the room. She was always to busy to get to know people or situations, because she always busy telling you what she knew and again Usually incorrect. If you remember the old TV sitcom ” Bewitched “, and you remember the nosey neighbor, Mrs. Kravtis, then you get the picture. I talked about everybody having baggage, and this one came with a steamer trunk…look it up !☺️ . She was the byproduct of a rape, not anything she was responsible for there, but she had and older sister, and her adopted parents use to tell her that her sister was the pretty one and that she was the smart one, and she has devoted her life to trying to live that out. I’m not a victim here, and I’m not seeking sympathy as I said, it’s a journey and you need to learn something and take a lesson away with you. None of us get to skate through life without hurts, pains, and sorrows, but in my heart of hearts, I feel the most for her kid whom may have this same imprint on her life, from having it modeled for her. I know that it may sound as if I’m being heavy handed and perhaps a little unkind, but I can promise you that I’m just skimming the surface here. The lesson here is don’t doubt yourself, if you have a type, stay to your true north, because ” different ” is often just” different ” , and not better. Ok, so up next we have Lady S, aka, Chuckles, aka, Ms. Annomuis, aka, The Chameleon. This one is not done yet, at least not for me, and it’s not that I’m hanging on, but God has said somethings to me about this one, some of it difficult for me to swallow and yes, some of it of my own making. Again if you have read earlier post, then you are extremely familiar with Ms. Annomuis. The chuckles, part is exactly what it sounds like, she had the cutest little chuckle and I joked about making it a ring tone, but in hindsight, may have just been another painful reminder. The Chameleon part has been a little bit of a hindsight thing. When people exhibit vastly different personalities, it makes you question which is the real one, and then you wonder if they even know. Probably the worst part is it makes you reexamine everything that they have shared with you about themselves and severely question the time that you spent with them. Another eye opener, is it has you questioning yourself about your judgment about who you allow in your inner circle, and that is a big one for me, because I think of myself as a good judge of character, its another form of feeling dooped. I don’t know this to be the case or not, but I know that there truly are people who don’t know who they are because they have so many different personas that they present and they are different for each and every setting that they find themselves in. So, they want to be seen as a hardworking, and they may be, but there is an under current of dissatisfaction of always trying to measure up and be who they think they are supposed to be opposed to who they really are. This goes beyond wearing the hat of being a mother, an aunt, a lifelong friend, and anything else you can name, it’s like old school social media. They only let people see what they want them to see, because being vulnerable is scary and I get that !. For this to not have had its final chapter written, I have probably said to much, but she has definitely given me much to rethink with contradictory words, behaviors ,and actions. It’s kind of like getting fresh water and salty water from the same spring, it just doesn’t add up. At the end of the day, I know that it comes down to two things, fear, and control. And I’ve said numerous times, control is an illusion, sure, you can get hair dye and make the gray another color, but you can’t keep it from being gray, it is what it is. A bit long again, and just a little further insight into my journey. I know we will revisit Chuckles, I can’t tell you what the outcome will be, but it is in God’s hands and as I have said, He has said certain things to me about the situation, and like everything else in life ,He gets the final say, whether you realize it or not.
- Ok, until next time ✌️
- Sandy The Southerner
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