I can’t wrap my head around what happened yesterday.
A couple days ago, I received some pseudo-lesbian next level manipulation and I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. I have been sleeping with a friend, who has always identified as straight. When we, two women, started sleeping together this go-around (we had a several week thing two years ago), she was also sleeping with a guy on separate nights. I had drawn a strong boundary that I did not want to meet him, a boundary that was attempted to get crossed a couple times. When I told her we can backtrack as platonic friends due to this and that he actually raises a lot of red flags for me, and then things got volatile with him, she cut her sexual relationship off with him. We continued sleeping together. I have highly compartmentalized her in a place in my mind where I won’t get feelings for her (even though it seemed we were incredibly drawn to each other from the start years ago when we were in a graduate class together) because I understand ultimately she would prefer to be with a man. This works for me, anyway, because I got my heart terribly broken by someone ten years ago that I never quite got over and never want to feel that again. This friend really seemed to see me, though, on a profound level that others seem to not see so much and I did have a lot of fun with her. She is witty and funny and I at least thought we understood each other in a really deep level. While the sex wasn’t the most satisfying for me, it was the wildest and most fun. She began saying things that insinuated having more feelings than what I had understood in my mind. She’d talk about how she was getting butterflies in anticipation of seeing me and the last time we slept together, she was kissing me and my neck and kind of focusing on me more than in prior times. She even held me and reached over and rubbed my arm in the middle of the night, which was new. I began noticing that we never hung out simply to hang out, to enjoy each other’s company — every single hang out was attached to a favor of some sort. She’d either push me to go buy something for her, or fold her laundry, or do her dishes and so on. When I would say no to things, she’d talk or text around it as if I never said anything at all (even though she claimed I could say “no”). Once, on a day when I had a deadline for school, she had me go pick up her groceries and I did and the people at the store took forever to come out. I texted her and told her that helping each other is fine, but since there is a pattern here of every hang out being attached to favors, and there being no hang outs just to hang out and enjoy each other’s company, I’m feeling used. She threw in my face that friends help each other and good friends know that and that she is a single mother with a full time job and a home and it’s hard to juggle. I told her I gave up my place to help my mother who is poor and ended up with cancer and pulmonary fibrosis and due to inflation I’ve been unable to find a home, am juggling a full time master’s program, taking care of two dogs, trying to find an income and a home and piecing together a very broken life and I don’t ask for help or expect it, but would never make anyone feel bad if they can’t. I told her a friendship goes two ways and if she saw I was overwhelmed and pressed against a tight deadline, she is grown and could have gotten the groceries or had them delivered even though I did anticipate going. But I spent the morning cleaning her kitchen and folding her laundry and I had a tight deadline (that I did ultimately miss). She got vile with her words and said things I could never feel okay saying to anyone and turned incredibly cold. I told her there are ways to argue that could draw people closer and there are ways that will push people away for good and she chose the latter. I told her I could never say such things to people and am surrounded by people who could never dream of saying such things to me. I ended up leaving despite our plans to stay the night together. She texted a few more cutting words through the evening. Over the following days, though, she was sending me songs. She was saying she’s not going to give up on me even though we admittedly need some space. She then went to an event she had invited me to, texting she wished I was there and there were a bunch of witches who wished I was there, too. I told her I prefer to surround myself with people who don’t see me so lowly and asked her why she’d want someone she sees so lowly around anyway… The next morning, she started really piling it on. She told me how I make her the happiest she’s ever been and it’s like being a kid. She said when she was sending me songs, she was crying over me and her friends, including the guy, were consoling her over the heartbreak she felt. She told me she’s incredibly sensitive and so she gets harsh as a defense mechanism and I’m someone who just is completely sensitive and that’s the problem at hand. She told me I’m the one person she can be fully herself around and comfortable with that. She told me we have the best sex she’s ever had in her life. She told me she’s considered herself straight and now she is in love with a woman and it’s a lot to process. She then asked me to breakfast, to which I declined. I told her I have a lot of work due and she told me to just give her an hour. At first I declined still. And then I caved. At breakfast, she spent $80 and continued doling on the lovey sentiments. She made me feel like the funniest person, saying we’re going to get kicked out of the restaurant because I make her laugh so hard. She seemed genuinely happy and caring. She repeated that she feels she is in love with me. After breakfast, we went to the bar next door since I offered her a drink. There, she continued talking about her feelings about me and about us. I read her a text message I had sent my friend so she could get a clear picture of where my mind has been surrounding our fling. I read:
You know it’s weird I’ve had so many walls because I don’t want to get my heartbroken…such as being open to sleep with straight or mostly straight women so I dont get attached but can have fun and a semblance of physical intimacy…but laying next to her and her rubbing my arm in the middle of the night quickly or us waking up and her telling me to play with her nipples and rub her out w no kissing involved…part of me kind of opened to wanting to feel what it’s like to actually be in love again. To be with someone who wholeheartedly wants to be with me and touch me, to feel again what it is to be with someone who wants to listen and read every word I say or write (and vice versa of course), or wake up to someone tracing every detail of my face, or someone who actually wants to kiss me at any minute of any day, not just night time when they’re buzzed and ready to fuck. Like it’s so interesting to me that I compartmentalized her and put her in a spot where I couldn’t grow feelings because she ultimately wants to be with a man and because I’ve been so closed off to getting feelings for someone, and now she’s speaking as if she has feelings and I’ve realized that maybe part of me does really miss the little things that come with being in love with an actual lesbian who could maybe love me. I mean I’m in no position to have that in my life but it’s weird how what lacks with her made me at least somewhat open to maybe wanting that at some point again if ever my circumstances are better.
And as I read this, she was crying and said, “I’ve already wanted to kiss you like three times since I saw you. I wanted to kiss you when I got in the car. I wanted to kiss you in the restaurant…” Of course, for me, seeing anyone cry will soften me up. She said she never cries like this in front of or for anyone. I ended up kissing her in the bar and she kissed me back and said she never did that kind of thing.
As our visit came to an end, she told me that her ex husband had their son until Tuesday and, while she’s no longer taking her son to Arkansas to see the eclipse, she’d still very much like to go with me. This is a trip I had been forthright with her about for weeks, saying I wasn’t going to go. I told her that I have four assignments due and am incredibly stressed. I also told her I have a friend who has kept her door open for me twice through issues between us and I don’t ever want a friend to feel like I’m taking advantage or turning her place into a flop house or what have you. I didn’t tell her on top of that, I was overdue for an oil change being that her car isn’t in good condition and she wanted us to use mine. She told me to bring my work over and she would put chat gpt to work and write my homework so we could go and I could just say I was doing something else. But with my homework load and the kind of work, I knew that wasn’t feasible and I had already missed a deadline due to her lashing out at me the prior Thursday. Plus, the stress of not being able to find a place had been really getting to me and she herself had gotten insulting over that aspect of my life. I told her that I want so much to go on a road trip with her, but I can not make it happen right now. As I was driving away, she texted that she’s booking the hotel and talking around what I was saying. I told her again that of course I’d like to go on road trips with her, but I can not feasibly make it happen at that moment with what’s going on in my life. She told me that if I can’t make it happen, she’s cutting it off for good. To better articulate this, because I wasn’t going to give her a ride somewhere because I had obligations, she cut me off. To even better articulate this, she came around and claimed to be in love with me and to love me, a vulnerability and desire I have but thought I didn’t show, to achieve her own ends of getting someone to take her to Arkansas.
She proceeded to call me vile names and make curse threats and told me I hurt her worse than her dad and said a Taurus holds grudges for lifetimes and it may be a few before she talks to me again. She told me to never talk to her again. She called me a dog and a boring literal minded selfish spoiled child. (Which in my mind, that’s a projection as I’ve never known anyone in my life to go so far because someone would not give them a ride). Then she told me “Go cry all night pussy.” I told her “I’m not crying, I’m relieved.” She continued to say to never talk to her again and that she means it, I am banished forever because I disappointed her.
So. If I wanted to go somewhere really badly and I asked people to come with me, and they told me they couldn’t, I would honor that and honor them and simply take myself.
I feel I’ve come a long way since prior years. I think this experience was to show me how much I’ve come, how much I’ve healed. In prior years, I would fight and try to explain myself and hang on. Now I realize that that’s one mind and one experience trying to shoot me down and that’s okay, I don’t have room for that kind of behavior in my life. But…I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the behavior so I can try and understand. Because I would feel awful saying the things she said to me so I don’t. I could never tell someone I love them and am in love with them to get other things that I want. And I could absolutely never cut someone out because they couldn’t give me a ride someplace. And we know that when people ask, including her son who said I’m his favorite friend of hers, and any one of her friends, why I’m not around, she’s not going to say she used me or claimed to love me simply to achieve her own ends or threw a petulant fit when I could not give her a ride. What does this stem from? What is it???
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