OK, let's start

First off, read the disclaimer.

Second, realize that this is just part of a one really long narrative I wrote by hand today instead of paying attention at work.  I'll break the thing up into multiple posts so as not to drown anyone.  But it will be a set of artificial breaks.

So, all I've been able to think about lately is meeting someone new.  I'm obsessed with it.  I think about it all the time.  Where to meet women.  What to say when I do.  What I have to offer.  Why a girl would want me.  I think about how much I miss things like kissing and especially sex.  Whenever I even see a pretty girl - even a marginally pretty one - my brain lights up.  I stare.  I look at her left hand to see if she has a wedding ring (they always do).  My brain starts thinking up scenarios of how I can meet her and what I would say.  I think about posting a profile on dating sits (which I can't, yet, because I'm technically still married).  I look through Craigslist ads.

This is completely unhealthy.  On so many levels.

First, I'm not near psychologically ready at all for someone new.  My emotional state is completely fragile.  And I HAVE to be OK by myself.  I can NEVER have a healthy relationship with ANYONE if I don't.

I mean, let's look at this.  If I go into a relationship because I need it, then it can never work.  That's rebounding.  That's co-dependency.  That's pathological.  That's the 16-year old me, who was REALLY screwed up.

A healthy relationship is one you are in because you WANT it, not because you need it.  If you need it, it takes you from not OK to being OK.  With a healthy relationship, you start out OK, and it makes you better - which means it is enjoyable.  You enjoy it.  It makes you happy as opposed to keeping you from being unhappy, which is really your own responsibility not someone else's.

Second, look at what it is I am thinking about and wanting/needing: mainly sex.  Not the actual relationship, not the person, not the companionship and conversation.  Just sex.  The pathology here is profound.  We are talking about real people, not sex toys.  And, from a Christian perspective, sex is about consummating a relationship, a joining of hearts and minds, forming one flesh, one out of two; and having this joining form a family that then gives birth to new life out of love.

And when it comes to actually meeting women, it doesn't matter how successful and wealthy and attractive I am if I am like this: nothing is more unattractive than desperation and neediness.

Noticing a pretty girl is one thing - that's normal.  Notice, let it make you happy, and then move on.  But looking purposefully everywhere you go to find pretty girls and then drinking it all in like a man dying of thirst is not. Creating all these scenarios in my head about how I could meet them means I'm not living in the now, but in some fantasy future.

A lot of the problems in my marriage were that I never really and truly loved her - I was never happy/satisfied with how things were.   My feelings were all based on fantasy - I love the her I thought she might be some day.  I was happy because of how I thought things might be later on, not how they actually were.

That's almost a bit of derealization going on.  I was living a paradigm where my emotional well-being was built on a vision of the future and not on the real here-and-now.  What would it mean to actually live for real in real life, in the now not in some potential future?

Well, right now I probably would be crushed by despair.

Yet I have to learn to not be.  I have to learn to be happy.  Happy with how things are NOW.  With hom my life is for REAL.

And with me being alone and celibate.

But that's all easy to say.  But just saying, "I need to be OK being alone and celibate," oversimplifies everything.  I still have needs.  I am seriously missing human touch and human contact.  I find myself fascinated by women's hair because I miss touching it.

I miss the feelings of passion - of wanting and being wanted.  I miss that oh-so human pair-bonding.  Love, passion, eros.