I’m engaged in a battle of the wills with Shawty.

The relationship with Shawty took a turn for the weird and annoying early on. Although he enthusiastically pursued me in the beginning and still won’t let me go now, he is adamant about the fact that this is NOT a relationship. Despite the fact that he often acts like it is. The boy has issues. Anyway, our non-relationship has been going on for nigh on six months now and it’s characterized by the fact that everything is a battle and that he can be a gigantic asshole with a shitty character. I may have mentioned this before.

I’ve generally always given in with him at the end, seeing him when he wants, doing what he wants and only occasionally busting his chops. I did this for three reasons, he’s more hard-headed than I am, I was afraid of losing him, and I just couldn’t be bothered honestly.

But now, well, it would seem I’m slowly starting to regrow a back bone.

We haven’t seen each other in a while now, almost two weeks. He’s been gone for an event and ever since he returned, a few days ago, he’s been asking to see me, often and consistently, but always at random, inconvenient times that do not include dinner. I, on the other hand, want a date. An actual, planned, date, where I can organize a blow dry and possibly a wax and a pedicure, and decide on an outfit, send pictures of it to friends for opinions and then change my mind eighteen times.

I don’t always want to see him this way, sometimes I prefer to see him in the morning for a coffee and croissant, or in the evening for a quick drink and some hanky panky, but right now I want a goddamn date.

I get that he works in the restaurant business, and going to restaurants is something he does several times a week for work, but once every couple of weeks…. is not unreasonable of me.

Unfortunately, for both of us, he is stubborn as a mule and I’m extremely result oriented, if I want something I will move mountains, rivers, and oceans to get what I want.

So we’re at an impasse. We are very sweet to each other on the phone and via messages, we want to see each other, but neither one is letting go of his line. He keeps offering to see me… for coffee, for drinks, middle of the afternoon… and I’m busy, I’m free for lunch though, or dinner, I’ve got kids and work and grocery shopping…. Oh, gosh darnit I guess we can’t get together today then. This has been going on for a few days, no one is relenting, it doesn’t look like either one of us will. At this point I’m just curious to see who’s going to win, who’s going to give in, I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty positive it won’t be me. Yet, knowing him… it’s unlikely that it’ll be him. So the likelihood here, folks, is that we’ll still be here, a few weeks from now, dying to see each other, talking on the phone, texting every two minutes, but gradually starting to forget what the other looks like as we both slowly and steadily go crazy from longing. I’ve always said I was willing to lose the battle with him to win the war, but not this one, this battle I will win even if it kills me. Because honestly, I can compromise on a lot of things but you’ve at least got to feed me occasionally.

The irony here though, is that he’s digging his heels in not because he’s stingy or hates restaurants or doesn’t want to seem to datish but because he knows that this is what I want and he’d rather set fire to himself than do something that I’m demanding.

And through all this, battling of the wills and whatnot, I wonder if maybe in this case we won’t both lose in the end.

There are challenges in a separation that aren’t easily foreseeable when you start the process. The Ex and I managed to do things rather rationally considering the difficulty of breaking up after sixteen years together. We tried to be mature, to help each other out and to put the kids and the family first. We have had some failures in our plan, however. One of the things we would have liked to do was try and dedicate some family time to the children, doing activities or taking short trips together, so that they wouldn’t lose that sense of family which we feel is important for their stability.

It’s been mostly my fault. I’ve had a hard time deciding to spend time with them and the Ex, I wasn’t ready, I still am not really ready for it. I’m beginning to worry that I never will be, but as the Ex says, they’re growing and in a few years they won’t want to spend time with us. He’s right, I have to get over it and make an effort. I have to learn to be with him, in a family setting, without all the negative feelings I still have towards our break up. Towards the break up of our family, for which, honestly I still blame him. Although, rationally, I am aware that it’s not actually solely his fault. Or rather, blame shouldn’t be coming into it anymore.

The other difficult aspect of all this is that I rarely get them for the weekend. I usually let the Ex decide because, honestly, considering all his health issues, if he wants them he should get to spend time with them. I don’t want to have a rigid schedule of every other weekend because I don’t want to take away their time together, and I get them all week.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy having free time and being able to manage my weekends as I want, but I miss them too. They don’t have an awful lot of free time during the week so I don’t get to just have them around the house playing and being bored and doing random things together. It’s always a difficult sort of balance that we keep.

I don’t really have a solution, we can only do the best we can, so we’ll see how things evolve cause everything is always evolving. I just wish sometimes things could be a bit easier, if only in my own head. Cause at the end of the day, that’s the problem. I worry myself into a wormhole and can’t get myself out of it, even though the solution may be simple, or right in front of me, or both. But I can’t see it for the chaos of all the possibilities and variables and conflicting feelings in my head. Maybe I should try some meditation or something to teach myself to be more zen. Or zen-like, zenish, possibly, or even just something in the vicinity of zen would be nice. Zen-adjacent, that’s my goal for the end of the year.