~Language~

Special Man Friend asked me to prepare for a “relationship maintenance” talk a few days ago.

I said I would think about it. And then I tried to get out of it.

I’m conflict averse, which gets kind of dicey for someone like me, who is also a verbal processor. If given the chance to work through things out loud, in a thoughtful and engaged manner with someone I feel safe being vulnerable to, I usually do okay, with a little patience. SMF knows this about me, and I think he tries to nurture me through hard conversations. He lets me talk, and ramble, as I try, desperately to avoid talking about the hard things he wants to discuss. He gently called me on it last night, as I was lightheartedly talking for about twenty minutes about anything and anyone besides myself and our issues.

I just want things to be fine. I just want things to not bother me, to not worry me. Sometimes I just think that if I’m quiet and good, and I smile a lot, the part of me that is unhappy or dissatisfied about this or that aspect of our relationship, will be lulled into complacency, and leave me to my ninety-two percent satisfaction rate with everything else that makes up the Two Of Us and our dynamic. After all, things can’t be perfect, right?

During this conversation, which hit on a few different issues, he used the word “disingenuous” with me, referring to the fact that I am not completely out to my family and my children. The kids know that we are not exclusive, and that SMF has another “significant relationship”. They do not know that he is married. I have used the phrase “not exclusive” with my father is well, when he asked me last fall about what the course of my relationship with SMF was taking. I stopped short of using the words married, wife, or polyamory.

I don’t think this in itself, makes me disingenuous. Google lists synonyms for disingenuous as dishonest, insincere, untruthful, false, duplicitous, lying, and mendacious. And hours after the conversation was over, it really started to bother me that he had used that particular word. After all, he himself is not completely “out”, and neither is CC.

Mendacious is a cool word. Could we all be mendacious, maybe, instead of disingenuous?

Of course it’s now almost three in the morning, he is asleep across town, in bed next to his wife, and I’m here, tucked into my bed alone, thinking. Sometimes I think that THINKING is the bane of my existence. If only I could soothe my little analytical brain into being quiet.

“There, there,” I would say, “Everything is alright. You don’t have to work so hard figuring stuff out. Just let things be, and go to sleep. There’s plenty of time tomorrow to do all the thinking you want. Good night now, little brain.”

But no. Instead, I lie here. Thinking. I suppose it’s time to have a sit down with my Dad.

Good night, little brain.