Vol. 1, Post #29 Thems Fightin' Words

A first disagreement with The BF. My ongoing sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A modern dating odyssey for Young Olds, AKA, people with readers.

Hello from my annual end of August vacation here in Provincetown, MA, which, for the uninitiated, is the tip of Cape Cod, so let’s start with that.

Provincetown has been one of my touchstone locales for over 20 years. I was introduced to the community by my now ex-wife, and after we split, I assumed she would “keep” Ptown, since she grew up close by and after all, it wasn’t really “communal property;” my ex was a Massachusetts-born lesbian and had her people here. I was a later-to-the-scene addition. When it became obvious that she wasn’t coming back to the stretch of East End beach that we called home, and where we got married, I took over the house and made it MY Ptown, one that I have shared with friends and lovers ever since. This week, JJ, AKA, The Boyfriend, arrives for his first foray here with me. A PERFECT opportunity for me to tell you about our first fight last week.

Before I begin, let me (most importantly) write that I asked JJ if I had permission to share this, and he said yes. Secondly, let me pay him a compliment, which is that he’s coming up for four nights. Four nights is THE PERFECT amount of time for a new partner to join you on a beach holiday where there are lots of other people in the mix — he’ll meet some new people, see some people he already knows, get a taste of Ptown (and me — insert devil face emoji), and then head back home while I carry on with my Ptown posse through Labor Day. These are still Early Days in our relationship and we’re having a really nice time together, so I’m excited to see him here and I’m also looking forward to my recharge, alone, when he leaves. THIS is PRECISELY one of the reasons that he’s a great boyfriend: he understands that, and he understands me. One of the Super Nice Guy boyfriends that I wrote about in this post, who I had also been dating for two months, like JJ, insisted on coming to Ptown with me for a week and while he was here, completely smothered me. It was palpable to my housemates that I was counting the hours till he left. JJ can read me, and the proverbial room. We are chatting about a fall or winter trip, just the two of us, but Ptown is not that place.

Sooo….last week we had a disagreement. It wasn’t really a fight, but I got extremely frustrated with him and while it was happening, I was watching and listening to my emotions and my responses, because getting into a tussle early on in a relationship is incredibly illuminating, don’t you agree? Here’s what happened.

When I met JJ at that restaurant in late June with my pals C and K, and we were immediately chatting up a storm as he literally sat down at our table, I remarked to him that he can talk a blue streak; I said something like, “OK, settle down, Cocaine Cowboy” in response to some ebullient remark he made in our first few texts after that. Lest you think that’s a dig, it’s not. I LOVE that he was so forthright and present from the moment we met and as we’ve gotten to know each other some more, I’ve also noticed that sometimes, stylistically, we have different approaches to communication, one of which led to last week’s bump.

We had been out to dinner and when we both arrived at my house, JJ said to me in my driveway (we were in separate cars), “Which way did you go when you left the parking lot?” to which I sort of looked and him and half-rolled my eye and said “Right” because I could just feel that this was the beginning of a conversation we’d had before, or rather, a kind of conversation that we’d had before which ended with me querying him this: “You’re asking me a lot of questions and if I didn’t know differently, I’d think you didn’t trust me. Why so many questions?” We had talked about this a few times and I THOUGHT I had conveyed to him that I don’t entirely love to be peppered with questions. This was starting to feel like one of those times.

As we chatted a bit more, and he explained that he was merely wondering which route home to my house in the mountains was the more direct route, when coming from the neighboring city where we ate, I certainly wasn’t ANGRY at him. But I was getting annoyed, and I decided to tell him more about that.

“I think we have a basic difference in how we communicate about sort of mundane things,” I said to JJ. “I know you’re just making conversation and asking questions because you’re curious, but for me, it comes across as too much. I don’t love it.”

The conversation went back and forth, with neither one of us entirely understanding each other. At one point, he interrupted me, and I erupted, “Goddammit, JJ, don’t fucking interrupt me!” to which he sort of shushed me (I also hate that) although, again, I KNEW it was just his way of quieting me and letting me know he wanted to have a talk, not a fight.

We had been lying on my bed, on our way to sex and then to sleep, and I got up and walked into my bathroom. I needed a breather from the conversation and stared at myself in the mirror. I looked pissed and I took a few deep breaths, rolled my eyes (so obnoxious of me — I try to do that as little as possible, but I am guilty of it more than I’d like) and went back into the bedroom. This is what was going through my mind.

1. First, I was annoyed. Was this fucking guy gonna be one of those overly “on top” of me with regard to where I was, what was I doing, etc.? Because I HATE THAT.

2. Second, I felt not heard. We had discussed this a few times and since I pride myself on TRYING to communicate as clearly as possible, I felt like we had been down the road before.

3. Related to both, I was having some immediate PTSD about this because my ex DID NOT HEAR me with regard to some basic communication issues. For him, it was a lack of communication that was a problem. He was not great at staying in touch during his workday in the restaurant and sometimes that being out of touch extended 24 hours or so — he could be getting home after I was asleep, or, more often than not, he could be getting home and feeling so depleted that he wouldn’t want to text or talk after closing the restaurant. While I was understanding about that to an extent, I didn’t love the pockets of time when he was too quiet. This was the opposite of that — and I didn’t like this either.

   1. BUT RELATED TO THAT was the fact that this was seeming to be the beginning of a “first fight” with JJ and I was slightly on edge about it. What would our disagreement style be like? Would we move in and out of disagreement easily? Would he be, like me, OK to take a few minutes to reset and then come back together easily, or would he need more time to cool down? My ex-partner B. needed hours to reset after an argument and both I and his other partner often told him that his “radio silence” felt punishing to us. I asked him, on many occasions, “Can we agree on a length of time that you need to retreat in silence? Is it 5 hours? Is it 12 hours? Longer than that feels bad.” I had read more than a few therapists’ advice on this; agreeing on a “time out” length of time spent in silence after a fight seemed to be a general consensus. B. would never adhere to that, and it was anxiety-provoking for me.

   2. AND — gotta be honest here. There was part of me, while I was in the bathroom, rolling my eyes and taking a few deep breaths, that was thinking, “OK, I like this guy, but I can’t do this sort of ‘up close in your face’ questioning. I should break it off now.” THAT, my Dear Readers, was my hurt talking, and even in that moment, I knew that. I knew that JJ wasn’t doing anything to deserve me tossing this thing aside, but in that moment, I was also feeling like it would be so much easier on my own, doing things my way, in my peaceful, quiet house alone with the dog where no one was asking me which motherfucking way I turned when I left the parking lot at the sushi place.

And then JJ and I had a really good talk about this, our communication style blockage, which wasn’t even really an impasse, but rather, learned behaviors on both of our parts. For my part, I have always been fiercely independent, since I was a child, the result of someone who was never parented. It’s only gotten more pronounced over the years — the result of someone who has had partners who often needed me to take care of more than my share of life’s situations (booking the trip, making the dinner reservation, etc.). I was thorough and not at all bothered to take the reins and in fact, was probably too rigid about it. I’m still learning to relax into someone else doing things for me and this was probably an offshoot of that lesson.

JJ, on the other hand, at one point, had a partner who needed and wanted a little bit more handholding and interaction with regard to circumstances like this. We spoke about it, and I could feel myself relaxing into the conversation, regarding what he shared with me not only with love and happiness but also LEARNING something, nodding along as he told me a few stories about this partner, who also liked to FaceTime (I kinda HATE THAT unless we’re truly separated by distance, or having phone sex), who liked a “Good morning” or “Good night” text as a default “rule” — again, not my thing. I once replied to one of the Super Nice Guy boyfriends, when he asked me to call him after I came back from a girls’ night dinner, “Why? We’ll talk tomorrow.” He asked, “Don’t you want to say good night later on?” And I said, “But…we’re saying goodnight now.” I shared that with JJ and could see that he not only heard me, but he paid me a compliment, telling me that he had shared with some friends that he liked how I wasn’t attached to this kind of boyfriend-girlfriend back and forth.

It was a really good conversation, in which we both felt heard and understood. And I realized what a gem of a boyfriend I have — proven here, again, because I asked him, “I want to write about our disagreement, is that OK?” and got an immediate “Sure!” Since then, I’ve thought more about the ways I need to bend and adjust my own style in this relationship and while I can’t speak for JJ, I can say that I see a modification in how he asks me questions.

Dating as a Young Old continues to amaze me, in what I constantly learn, what I strive to do better, what I attempt to UNDO, and how expansive the heart can be. Lots of love to y’all from Ptown. With that in mind, next week I’m going to spend a little time with my pal Adam Singer, who owns one my favorite shops in town, Adam’s Nest, a retail ode to social justice served up with a naughty wink of the eye — just my style. Ahead of the election, Adam and I are gonna talk about what orgs and philanthropies he’s supporting that are sex-positive and inclusive, as well as his take on being a Hot Boy in a Hot Boy town. Here I am in my favorite Adam’s Nest hat. xoxoxoxoxoAbbe