This is breaking me.

I can really use some support. From similarly-situated women.

Not suggestions or advice. Simply listen as long as you can and, if you understand and share the experience, say that.

This has been building up inside me. It’s long. I need to express it. Hopefully it may help other women here know someone understands.

I know I’m a good woman. I care about people. I walk my talk. Babies love me. Dogs love me. Seniors have always loved me, even though I’m practically one myself now. I’m still friends with my oldest friends in the world. I’ve always gone for quality over quantity.

I am really smart. I’ve accomplished some frickin’ amazing things that were not expected of me at all. Because I decided what I wanted for myself.

I cared for my husband of 15 years for almost a decade before he succumbed to cancer. Made him happy and made him laugh (as he did me), before and all throughout that experience. When it got so hard and so horrible — and it did, a lot — I’d sometimes remind myself that I could, if I chose, leave him and cancer behind. And I always decided that I loved him more than my need for relief. I was there when he took his last breath.

Don’t want a medal. Just saying that I can do and have done difficult things. And being single and being open to a long and loving relationship is, I fear, breaking me.

After my husband, I loved another guy a long time. My love for him was so strong, I thought it would inspire him to be a better man, as my husband often told me I did for him. That love seems to have blinded me to how I wasn’t his first priority and would never be. Maybe 6th or 7th, after his mother, friends, property, and martial arts teacher. I still feel love for him, but we’re not together because he can never give me what I now know I need and deserve and even inspire. Things I refuse to live without.

If I don’t know I deserve that, who the fuck will? I’ve tried getting my affirmation from others, like society tells women they should. It didn’t work.

Speaking of which, I also fucked both their brains out, and they were happy (and voiced their high gratitude).

I’m told I’m beautiful. Not everyone’s cup of tea, and far from flawless. But it does make some things easier. Some days I see beauty in the mirror.

In other words, I’m a good catch.

All I want is the man I’ll spend the rest of my life with. Laughing, adoring each other’s company, and being each other’s person, their first line of defense

I refuse to settle like I did with the last guy. My Creator told me He’ll give me everything I need, and I am holding Him to that. He’s come through amazingly before.

I’m doing my best to stay true to this, I keep saying No to the things I don’t want. Like men who lie right out of the gate and tell me they’re the best that’s out there or the best I could hope for.

In some ways I’m grateful it’s so easy to disqualify so many men. Less wasted time, less misspent heartache. Marianne Williamson said, “Honey. It’s not that the bad ones keep finding you. It’s that you keep giving them your number.” I love that.

But I do get excited when I meet a guy who seems to have a clue. Who doesn’t abdicate conversation duties and emotional labor to me. That says things like, “What do I need to do to keep your attention?” or “How soon can we talk?”

It maddens and saddens and frustrates me when these potential contenders manage to hide their relationship-averse dealbreaker behavior and attitudes from me long enough for me to get to the point of hurt.

Like when we meet and he chivalrously pulls out his card to pay for coffee — and it shows a name different than the one he gave me.

Or he stands me up.

Or we set up a Zoom date for later. This guy showed promise. But he’s currently three time zones away. I ask if the time is too late for him. “No, I’m always up, I don’t sleep much.”

And it IS a date. We’ve set a time and agreed to meet to take things to the next level.

I’m kinda excited. I’ve been hard at work all day, so I decompress, finally shower, put my normal face on, my hair looks good, I feel pretty.

Then…crickets.

I’m pissed. And bewildered.

The next morning: “I fell asleep on the couch.” No apology, for not keeping his word, for wasting my time, for disappointing me. For essentially saying that while he can’t fall asleep for himself, he’ll fall asleep for me.

I ignored him. A few hours later, “I hope I haven’t upset you.”

Tell me you need to tell me how unimportant I am without telling me that.

Today, two weeks later: “Hi, how are you?!”

I’m a curious sucker. I hadn’t blocked him; I’d actually all but forgotten him by now.

I know it’s not my job to teach people how to act and be. But — someone did just that for me at a job interview when I was 16. I and my attitude fucked up bad. The interviewer read me the riot act, and it was all true, and it changed my point of view and that allowed me to avoid many, many mistakes in my future.

So I occasionally ask questions when guys do things that reveal how much they’re not suitable for any decent human. I mulled over it and responded something like, Dude, WHY are you contacting me after you stood me up?

“I didn’t stand you up. I fell asleep.” And then, “You are bat shit crazy.” Then his part of the conversation was gone.

I’m crazy for expecting that a grown adult (who purports to be interested in me) will show up when he says he will?

Call me bat shit crazy then. Ordering the t-shirt now.

I intend to go on until I’m in a world where people do what they say they’ll do, regardless of whether not doing it will affect them or not. That’s called character. I like it. I do my best to practice it in all I do.

Even so, right now I feel like putting my fist through a wall, because men were so much better in 2006 and even more better in 1990, when my other relationships began.

I’ll probably remove this soon, because I don’t know if I’ll feel so brave later about this being “out there.” But I need to take a chance that someone is feeling the same fatigue and anguish as me. I’d like MORE of the men I meet to, even if they’re not right for me, be good enough for me to introduce to another “looking” woman I care about.

Thank you for listening, esp. if you’ve gotten this far. xx