Month: October 2021

I don’t even like the toxic kind of masculinity. I don’t like degrading people, least of all my partner(s). I do not find making love to be an angry thing, nor raising a family to be a matter of dominating those closest to you.

I long for love.

I long for the act and acts of loving. I want to make eye contact and bring my beloved a cup of their favorite tea and a warm blanket. I want to be there to listen to how their day went and make plans for our future time together. I long to understand absolutely everything about them and know them more and more throughout our time together. I want to participate in their hopes and dreams, assuage their fears, go on adventures, and make life worth living for all of us.

I want to hold hands in private and in public – in bed and in a theater and in the streets. I want to run my fingers through their hair and kiss passionately in celebration of every little win we have. I want to be with them and gently kiss their tears in times of sorrow. I want to nurse them back to health when they are sick and shout encouragements when they are pushing to their max at the gym.

I want to be with them.

I want to love.

I want a partner for all these things.

No one likes to be around someone when they are sad and lonely. This causes a vicious feedback loop.

Most days I work VERY hard t put on a show that I’m OK. I don’t like it, but I have to. If I don’t, things will only get worse. Sometimes I am successful. Sometimes it is all I can do to hold it together.

If I hug you a little too long or a little too tight, please be gentle.

Among my friends, I have now heard of four weddings and two anniversaries this weekend. I hope for nothing be great happiness and prosperity for all those involved while I sit home alone knowing that with every day passing I have less of a chance of ever celebrating a wedding anniversary.

I am told that I’m lovable, even loved, but the big lie seems to be that I’ll find someone. Experience tells me otherwise, but I’d be happily proven wrong on this.

Who will prove me wrong here?

A recurring frustration is all the incredible women I love, but for many reasons, cannot woo. So many are not interested, not available. Of note is one, so wonderful and beautiful, but who has no romantic interest in men. She is brilliant and skilled and passionate in what she does.

With all that, she has no interest in men. The best I can do is be a good friend and turn my respect and admiration into something even a Puritan minister might approve.

Anniversaries are another thing that hits me as a micro aggression. This late in life, I envy those who celebrate their big number anniversaries as happy occasions.

These may be happy times for them, and I hope they enjoy them to the greatest extent possible.

To me they are reminders of my failure.

I’m sorry.