The Lt. Commander

I keep saying in my posts that we have great conversation, and we do. John is very intelligent, and extremely observant. What I like about him is that he asks thought provoking questions, and pays attention to the details. He notices when I breeze past something communication wise, or try to deflect and asks if I am avoiding something. He seems interested in getting to know me and importantly, his communication has been consistent since the jump. 

In person, he is communicative, open, he shares stories, the conversation is not forced or stilted, which is so refreshing. He is putting the same amount of effort into this as I am, which is such a relief. I feel like I'm always the one pushing conversation forward. Slowly I have been learning to let people dig their own holes, but it's not something I am great at. 

He is handsome, and a bit taller than me. Has a good career with the DoD, and is retired Navy. He was an NCO I think they call it, where they do navigation for the pilots. So, through a couple degrees of separation, my best friends husband probably knows of him. Which I already tried to find out, but he didn't give me his last name, and although he had an iPhone, his contact card wasn't shared. Annoying. I don't like when that happens, and I'm really starting to take it as a red flag to be honest. 

John is good at adhering to my boundaries, we have discussed my distaste for public displays of affection, and he has expressed concerns on wanting to be respectful, but also not too respectful that I get the sense he is not interested/attracted to me, as he stated that is not the case. He also knows that consistency is very important to me and has made efforts to ensure that I know when he won't be available and let me know ahead of time. 

I don't mind that he has two kids, they are teenage age, a girl and boy. It is very rare to find someone without kids my age, and lets be real, they are generally a fuckboy by this point if that's the case. I have already made peace with the fact that I will likely end up dating a guy with children, and all I can hope is that they have an emotionally mature relationship with the mother (if she is still in the picture), and things are on the up and up. I'm not going to date a guy that isn't there and making his kids a priority. 

There's also something else. He is the oldest in a large family, no real father present. We seem to have similar childhood experiences (for good and bad), and we are both seemingly assessing and trying to figure each other out. On our first date I made a comment like "the way you observe and communicate, I feel that you would be one of the few people that could really understand my thought process". Maybe that was a lot, but it felt right in the moment, but I'm also an idiot. He didn't seem put off by the comment, and we were talking about why we felt the way we did about certain things anyway. I don't care. 

I am not a chill person, I don't know how to be. This is my biggest obstacle when dating. I need to be aloof, not so serious, not so honest. I need to hold back information. And look, things would be so much better if I didn't have to do this, I understand and feel the same way. If someone just liked you and you liked them and you could be your whole self and not play a game, but that's not the world we are in, and that is certainly not the dating world we are in. It is a fiery dumpster hellscape out there. 

You have to hold back information, not share too much of yourself, and keep a guard up. Or men use their own trauma and share their stories to make you believe they are opening up to establish intimacy and trust faster so they can use you. Case in point: Adam. What is sick is that I think it was a game for him, a challenge. I don't think that all guys do this intentionally, and maybe they just want to find someone they can be real with as well, but at the end of the day, I want to be loved and they want to fuck, so you move accordingly. We have different priorities. 

All of this to say is that he can relate to some of my life experiences and understand me, which isn't that one of the most frequent asks in a partner? John is also kind, generous, honest, and respectful. He is not as quick witted as I am, nor as playful, but he is fun to talk to and be around. I would say he is a more serious person, and I am not sure he ever lets his guard down. He told me that he basically wouldn't be able to due to his PTSD from the military and other things that happened, which is something I understand due to my own issues. 

After our Friday breakfast he said he would have asked me out to dinner that night if he didn't have a work networking event that he had to go to. I told him that it was fine, and I would like to move things slow and really get to know each other. I still hadn't asked what happened with his ex-wife, as there is some trauma there, even though he had offered to tell me. I told him that it was too soon to know the details, but he told me that who she was is basically deceased, and she is incapable of making her own decisions. 

Well, later on Friday he wanted to discuss more compatibility and compare each others "baggage" to see if we wanted to continue with dating. He told me that he usually does this in person so he can gauge whether or not to pull back on things and get a pulse check on the person he is telling. I just told him to give me a high level overview and if we needed to, we could discuss further in person. I told him about Miles, in a very high level overview. I didn't talk negatively about him, just that it didn't work out, we were incompatible, we broke up in 2017, never backslided or had any physical connection with him after, I leveled up my life as we lived together, I wanted to sell the house and move on he didn't, covid happened, and that I still get sad about not having a house I loved anymore, but I needed to sell my portion and move on. 

He was receptive to this and said that besides losing a house I loved, I made positive changes from the breakup. I agreed, and he told me his story. Essentially his wife had a unique type of bipolar disorder that she denied treatment for, she had a psychotic break which caused brain damage, which was not known at the time. He took time off work to care for her. When he went back to work, he started the path to retirement (still military at this point), what was unknown was that when he was at work, she was emotionally abusing their children. The kids and himself have PTSD from her treatment of them. He told her to leave, and her parents came to take care of her. Since then she has been living inpatient behavioral health, had 3 more psychotic breaks, which have resulted in rapid deterioration, and the impression I got was that she is likely going to pass soon. 

I asked Miles about this, as he works inpatient psych, and he said that it is totally possible, especially if someone was having issue and denied getting treated. 

So, John is still married to her, legally. They have been separated for 4 years, and this all happened 5 years before separation. He doesn't speak to her, which I don't think she can anyway, but he covers her health insurance in "respect to the ghost of her", is what he told me. I understand that, healthcare is my forte after all. I told him when we started talking that if marriage is not on the table, this would be a dealbreaker and we shouldn't continue communication. He told me that he is looking into nullifying the marriage because he cannot ask her for a divorce due to her not being mentally able to make her own decisions. He said he didn't see why marriage wouldn't be on the table if we were to hit it off. So we continued. 

Sometimes I don't know if I want to be married. The idea of being able to just leave a situation is appealing. Also, I don't want to entangle my finances with another person. I got lucky with Miles that we could amicably live together (even if I was slowly dying inside) for the investment into the house. However, marriage is the ultimate commitment and with the way this country is going, what if I actually need to be married? I make this joke sometimes with guys and that's, "I need to hurry up and find a man to own me before I'm shuffled around like chattel". I get that it's extreme, but I live in Texas (for now). The state is literally like "we will pay you $10k if you tattle tell on a woman that gets an abortion" and women found to have an abortion can serve jail time! Like are you fucking kidding me!! And you know this is just the beginning. 

Anyway, John and I discussed things a bit more, and he told me that he has a habit of making decisions for other people and decides that his situation is too much for others, but he didn't want to do that with me, so instead he asked: 

"So that's a brief overview. I feel that I have a lot to offer, and with all that being said, has your position changed?"
Moi: "No. I think you have a lot to offer as well honestly. I will say now, that making decisions for me is not the way to go. I understand the inclination, I think I’m too much sometimes, and it’s easier to be single. We all have baggage, and we certainly have more things to sort through or discuss as we learn about each other."
"Well, then I will breathe a sigh of relief and take the win"

The conversation was needed, and I'm giving the briefest of overviews in this post for multiple reasons. I wanted to know what had happened with his wife, but I also thought it was early. I also didn't like that my internal richter meter on us was smooth, constant, and now an earthquake had jostled my nervous system. The amount of trauma that he unearthed onto me was a lot, almost to the point where I felt I needed comfort for something that didn't happen to me. I really hate being such an empathetic person sometimes. 

After the conversation, he kept consistent contact, and really wanted to see me, but had that work function. He told me that he would keep me updated if he was able to leave early, which didn't end up happening. I think that was good, I was feeling needy and would have made a poor decision if he was able to leave early.