Her sexual personality

I have been thinking about why sex fascinates me so much, why I re-live sexual memories so often and so much. It is not just the visual. Sure, we males are visual creatures and I am strongly affected by even subtle sights of female beauty. But I think that what is amazing about intimate relationships, even rocky ones, even bad ones, is the chance to get to know her sexual personality.

I think about Music, for example. She had this mischievious energy. She liked to be coaxed, a little bit. Even when she was eager to make love, she would suggest it very gently, like a question. We'd be in bed in the morning, and she'd sit up, and ask: "Do you want to get up? Do you want to get down?" Leading question. Predictable outcome. Or she would be on her laptop, pretending to ignore me, while I came up behind her and started massaging her. She would purr, but keep her attention away from me as long as she could. She was adventurous with blowing me, too, always trying to see how far back she could take me, and then reporting it back to me proudly. "You were all the way back here," she would tell me after.

But when she was really hot, she would become much more serious, and much more submissive. She would still want me to take her, but she would be very quick to move to whatever position I moved her to, quick to do whatever I wanted her to, and vocally very responsive. When I miss making love to her, when I fantasize, I miss these things about her. As much as the way she looked, and smelled, and tasted, and felt, I miss these things about her personality, things that I only learned after we'd made love dozens of times.

Voice was different. She was always hungry. Our sex life was limited only by my endurance. If I was ready, she was ready. If anything, she was more flamboyantly submissive than Music. It was a wild, loud surrender, lots of screams, lots of "please take me".

Music and Voice were such intense experiences, and so different from Soulmate, when I was younger, or Princess, today. Soulmate was finding herself, back then; Princess is finding herself, now. I realized, Princess is the last woman I will be with, and neither of us know her sexual personality yet. Shakira sang about a she-wolf being in there, and I think there's a she-wolf inside Princess too. I've caught glimpses of her, but I am looking forward to when she comes out and we can spend a whole afternoon together.

Secret relationship, secret breakup

I'm babysitting and watching 'Dreamgirls', falling in love with Beyonce again. Eddie Murphy's character is about to go on stage. His girlfriend, played by Anika Noni Rose, gives him a kiss for each year that's gone by with her as a mistress and him still married and promising to leave his wife. 8 kisses. I would have given 4.

An interrupted 4. A 4 with several periods, including one a year long, where I saw a lot of other women. But in those years, even when we weren't talking, we both knew that we loved each other. We both knew that we were friends.

So this time, when I tell her I've fallen for someone else, and she goes in for hostility and defamation, it's a surprise. It's painful. A surprise for her, since every time I left over the past four years, it was not real. And this time it is.

"I can't wrap my head around it," I tell Roommate. "We're supposed to be enemies now? After everything?"

He shrugs.

I'm the kind of guy that would want to be able to get a coffee with her, or a dinner, and hear about her latest relationship adventures. I don't put borders around relationships. I've suffered for my inability to do so, certainly with her, probably in general. But I can't do it any other way. So the realization that my dream of friendship isn't going to happen is slow, and painful.

And I miss her. I watch videos of her songs. I check her twitter site, which she's been using to send coded messages of hostility my way. She tells our friends to tell me she's over it and doesn't care, now she sees I'm really pathetic.

The scandal protects me. She can't defame too much without revealing her dirty secret - me. So we both have to suffer in silence while we pretend indifference.

She tells me to never email or call or contact her again. She recently bought me an elaborate gift from five different stores in the mall. She tells me she wasted money she didn't have on it in our last conversation.

I go to each store, return each gift (the DVDs, the electronics, the clothes...), get a receipt, create an itemized ledger for the full amount, get cash out of the bank machine, bundle the receipts and ledger into an envelope, and leave it for her with the last of her stuff that I had. Money you didn't have, I write. You have it now. Thanks for the tweets, I don't write. That would be to tell her that it affected me.

Four years of friendship, four more of love, and it really comes to this? Could I not have hoped for better? Or should I, as everyone warned me, have known all along that this was all it was ever going to come to, because this was all it was? My body can't believe it. But my body came to fear her rejection and her contempt and her lies more than it longed for her. I really did hope for better.

An extended metaphor

I've been steadily replacing old clothes with new ones, getting a tailor to adjust some of the clothes that I do have, and working on posture - basically standing up straight, where I normally slouch - as well as intensifying my gym routines (trying crossfit workouts with a friend who is a personal trainer).

I had a conversation with another friend who just broke up an 8-year relationship. We were talking about the types of women we attract. Longer conversations work in our favour, superficial impressions don't. I believe the pickup slogan is if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always have gotten. If that were true, I wouldn't be changing my behaviour. Because there's a world of difference between doing what you've always done when you're in school - which can end up pretty well - and doing what you've always done when you're a young professional who's never talked to strange women in bars or anywhere else. In school, there are constant contacts with lots of girls who can get to know you and your value organically. Not the case any more. I was trying to think about what I liked and wanted, what I wished I could have, but I had this moment when I realized that my life would be shaped not by what I want but by what I attract.

My personal trainer friend hectored me the other day, he said that I am handsome, successful, kind, even confident - why wasn't I with someone? Or was I? I alluded to the Voice situation and he said I should get out of it and look seriously for something real. I took it to heart, though my feelings for Voice are not so easily dismissed, but I am trying to take a long and more permanent route to it, or so I like to think.

The extended metaphor (which I can thank one of Voice's relatives, who said he'd never consider setting me up because he always sees me "with the fishing rod" and is sure I can "fish for myself") is of fishing. Let's say you want to catch, not a fish to eat, but a rare fish that you want for your one and only fish in your aquarium. There's trying to build the most glorious aquarium possible and ensure your "catch" will be happy (that's trying to be a good person, a good partner, deal with your own issues and insecurities, be positive, be ethical, and get your professional, physical, and financial life in order). Then there's the matter of the fishing rod (pickup skills), the bait (working out, improving your voice and stance and fashion), and discernment (trying to match, as much as possible, what you are catching with what you are seeking). But there's also the pools you're fishing in, which might be the most important question of all (although so might taking the wrong bait to the right pool, or any other number of mismatches that could happen).

One concern I have, having organically met women all my life, made friends of them, and having had some of these friends become lovers, now that I'm not organically meeting very many women, is that going "fishing" on public transit, in malls, or bars, is going to lead to a whole lot of catches that aren't what I want. Maybe these are the wrong pools. I know my first, year-long foray into Lavalife during which I sent out several hundred messages that led to about a dozen dates, five of which led to multiple dates, two of which led to nights together, none of which led to multiple nights together (hopefully more on these adventures later), felt like the wrong pool. But maybe I had the wrong bait. Or maybe the wrong fishing rod. Or maybe I'm not as good in bed as I think I am, having gotten wrong feedback from the women I have been with, even though I never seemed to be able to get to that point with this kind of dating. I do know that I didn't leave these girls wanting more, and so I didn't get the chance to think about whether I wanted them. Neither of which are feelings I'm used to. What I'm used to is comfort, and love, and romance, and depth, and the lavalife months felt like scraps from that table.

It all feels so uncertain sometimes. In the movie Hitch, Will Smith tells one of his clients who is trying to refuse a pair of shoes on the grounds that they don't fit "him", Hitch says: '"You' is a very fluid concept right now. You bought the shoes. You look great in the shoes." On a deep level I know what kind of person I want to be. But on a superficial level, because I want to catch the right person, I am open to being fluid about virtually everything - how I stand, what I wear, my verbal behaviour, the kind of confidence I project. But will changing all these things help me towards my goals, or divert me from them?

cry for the potential...

How to summarize it? A rollercoaster that ends in a train wreck? Maybe not that bad.

My job involves traveling to the worst places on earth, war zones. There's some risk. Less than you would think, definitely less than my parents think, but some. Enough that when I go I give Roommate and Soulmate each a half of one of the passwords to my computer. Enough that when I go I make sure I've said everything I want to say.

Last year, before I went on mission, I had a conversation with Soulmate. I told her that through everything with Music, through everything with Voice, there was always a part of me that never got over her. She said she understood, but that wasn't the place she was in. When I was away, I thought of Music, and although I missed her intensely, I realized I didn't really want her in my life. When I came back, I saw Voice, and told her I did want her in my life, no matter what. And a little after that, we were in bed again.

This summer I went away again. I moved my stuff out of Voice's place. Management was coming back for a week and living with her. She was going to break up with him, she said, and would do it in person. I said okay, but if she didn't, we were not going to be together any more. Something she could no doubt take as an empty promise. I've been weak before.

One day, in a little villa where the foreigners live, I sent a text message halfway across the world, telling Voice I was thinking of her. She said, texts are not a good idea. She was sharing the phone with her real boyfriend.

It hit me then. I would never get what I wanted from her. It would always be like this. Secret. I would always wonder who else she was sleeping with. I would never be her man, for real.

When I got back, sure enough, she hadn't broken up with him, and when I followed through on what I said, she was shocked. She hadn't really believed me. We saw each other for lunch a few times, and then she went across the world to visit with him for a while.

These months without her, on mission and with her gone, have been clean. Lower highs, higher lows. Like an addict in recovery. Lucid. I make decisions, take actions, do things without everything making reference to her. Without fear of her disapproval or anger. This is how I want to live.

She came back. She's broken up with Management, she says. I don't believe her. It's not public. I don't want to go back to her. I saw her today, in a group of friends. We're all together, we're all friends, we're talking about projects and things we will be working on this year. The work that brought us together. And keeps us apart. Or maybe it's our choices that do that.

I miss her. But more than that I realize I miss things that I never had. Being able to hold her hand in public. Bring her home to meet my mom. Travel somewhere with her. Not too much to ask, I don't think. But things that I could spend my life waiting for. The memory of that, of these various indignities over these months, now years, may be enough to protect me from going back to her for another round. There's no reason I should live as a fugitive any more. But can we actually forge a friendship?

When you get what you wish for...

It's been two months, and the world has changed.

I let the thing with the Gymnast fade. It's now been pretty much a year since I have heard from Music.

But my world is upside down because Voice is back in the picture. Her boyfriend, Management, moved to a different continent. Her orbiter, Auto, still lurks in the background, but she had an explicit breakup conversation with him. She moved to her own place, and I've been spending my nights there.

It's been a rocky road. One night she spent at Auto's house, and began to half-move in there before turning back from that. She still thinks about his car when she needs to get something done, getting angry at me for denying her the convenience. "If this is not something you're doing for your life, if this is something you think I'm making you do", I say, "then you shouldn't do it."

The first two weeks the sex was like making up for all the years we missed, but for the past four days we've been fighting. When she fights, she makes no provision for my dignity or her own. She yells, she walks away, she hangs up on me, she swears. I don't want to be abused. But it's too simple to say I should leave. Because she escalates fights so much, I don't want to say what's on my mind. But if I don't say what's on my mind, then we're not really in a relationship any more. I wanted her in my life and here she is. Still halfway though. I still have to hide it from my friends and loved ones. I am still a secret, which I hate.

I have traded loneliness for drama. This is love, but I want to be treated better. I deserve better.

A mostly freed mind

The author of the book about online dating "Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You", writes at one point that he has only felt free, or sated, of sexual desire for a few moments in his life. I am going through one such moment. Not that I'm getting all that much - in fact, I haven't gotten any in 2009. But there seem to be other things that matter more, these days. I've been working hard, really hard, at something that is sure to fail. I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to change a horrifically lopsided situation. And people I love, Voice included, are in it with me. Well, I suppose it makes more sense to say I am in it with her. She's on stage in front of thousands of people screaming her lungs out. I struggle my way through the crowd to get to the front so that she can see my face. "I think it will boost her morale," I tell Guitar.

"What would you do right now, if you were me?" she asks me on the phone. Our phone time is down to about 5 minutes a day, she calls from work and we talk until she or I get a media phone call.

"I'd like to think," I say, "that I'd do exactly what you were doing, if I had the strength."

"I don't know what to focus on - oh, wait, that was a complement," she says.

"It was."

"Your complements are always so indirect."

I haven't spent a moment alone with her in almost a month.

The Gymnast is making her way into my life now. I saw her once since I came home from the US, just for an hour. I was distracted, wanted to get home to work. She wanted to cuddle. We cuddled for a while and I began to protest that I had to leave. She kept contriving conversation topics and not releasing me from the cuddling. It was cute. But I left. I'll see her tonight, but tonight, too, I'd rather be working. So I'll go to her place late, I suppose, maybe spend the night with her.

From the time Music left my life until now I have not felt so focused or strong. I haven't felt like I could take it or leave it the way I feel now. And if I could keep this feeling forever I would. I think when I met Music I was much closer to this mental state than I was after I lost her. Loneliness and neediness are not sexy. And maybe it is true what they say, that it is better to want what you have than to get what you want. What I want to do in the world is so much more powerful than what I want from women or sexual life right now, and I feel a lot more balanced as a consequence. And perhaps it doesn't need saying, but my attractiveness hasn't suffered at all. The only problem this feels like something that happened to me, not something that I did or changed. Maybe if I can remember this feeling well enough I can call on it when I need it.

Without (much) pretense

"Do you want to meet for lunch somewhere? We could do the Chinese place or the Thai place..." I have Voice on the phone. We haven't seen each other in months. At that time we (well, I) had decided to discontinue the relationship and I'd avoided her and her entire social group (which meant spending more time alone and more time with people I don't like as much). But I went away for a few months, came back, and missed her. Not like an emptiness I wanted to fill with anything that came along. Like a Voice-shaped hole in my heart that I could stand to leave empty, but that would also never be filled by someone else.

She hesitates.

"You could just come here. Why don't you just come here first and we'll decide."

"Okay, I'll just come over."

I have a day's growth of stubble. I shave. I change out of the clothes I wear around the house and into a good pair of jeans and a well-fitted long-sleeve t-shirt.

The doorbell rings and she's on my porch, facing the street. She's been to my house a million times. When I get to the door her back is always to me. I open the door and she turns around slowly, like she's dancing. She never smiles when she sees me. The smile is always a reward for something I say or do. She walks into my arms though, I hold her for a little longer than I would a friend.

She walks in like it's her home. I watch her take her shoes off. Which she's done many times here. She leaves her jacket and bag in my room. Like she's done many times.

"Tea?"

We go to the kitchen and I remember having her here. How I like having her here. How since we were estranged four girls have come through my place and my bed and how none of them meant as much to me as a single smile, or shit, even text message, from her did.

She's chatting about the million things she's doing, all the projects, what she's writing, what I missed when I was away. We take our tea to the living room, where she's always hated the furniture. I sit apart from her. I don't think I'm testing her, but maybe I am.

"You're far. Why are you so far?"

I sit next to her on the couch. I tell her stories from my travels. She complains about the couch. "Let's just go to my room." At each step, with each failure to find a new routine, we slip back to our old habits.

I close my door behind me. We put our teas down and she crawls into my bed. She puts a pillow on the wall and props herself up. I sit next to her. Our voices have changed. We are talking softly, sitting close, I can feel her warmth. I've been thinking about her body since I saw her. She says something, leans into me, puts her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her and our cheeks are touching. I turn my head a little. She does. And her mouth is on mine.

She has a beautiful mouth. When she talks, I'm torn between her mouth and her huge eyes and her big boobs. She's always complained that I pay more attention to her ass than her boobs. She doesn't kiss so much as invite kisses, and take them from me like she was waiting for them.

Now that she's in my bed and our mouths are together, we both know the rest of the choreography too well. My hands wander up and down her back, to her ass, under her shirt, to her breast, down to her knees, in her hair. We move down the bed. I undo her bra with one hand, while her shirt is still on. As I unbutton her jeans, she pauses, as she always does.

"What what what what what what are you doing?"

"Taking your jeans off."

"Oh."

She wears tight ones that don't come off easily. So she takes them off, while I pull her shirt off behind her.

"I'm naked," she says.

"I know," I say, kissing her again, my hands wandering, my finger finding her pussy. She moans.

"But you're not."

That has always been her way of undressing me. To blandly call attention to the fact that I am clothed. I've told her she could feel free to undress me herself, but there is still a shy side to her. I remove my clothes quickly and while I do, she pulls the covers over her. Shy. She sighs when she looks at me. She laughs like a little girl. "Yay, Verbal is naked!" She likes my body. She doesn't hide that, even in public. Certainly not in bed.

I crawl in next to her and she is soon on her back, I'm on top. I move my mouth on her, down her neck, to her boobs, back up. I suck one nipple, then another. I start to move my fingers inside her. She's wet. She's always very wet, very fast. She moans and gasps, "Verbal, baby. My baby. My baby I missed you."

I move down to her belly, and lower. She panics again, moving her hands under my arms to try to pull me back to her face.

"Baby baby what are you doing?"

"I'm going to lick your pussy."

"Oh."

And I'm on her. Now I remember the smell of her pussy. It is clean and bright and the strongest of any woman I've been with. And that's like her. She's a fire that burns brighter than anyone else. This part of the dance is easy for us, too. But she doesn't like to come with my mouth on her pussy. She wants to be held not just after, but while she comes. So as she's coming she starts to yell, "Verbal verbal baby come here get here please..." and I have to stop what I'm doing to hold her. She puts her hand on the wall and looks at me, and to the sides, gasping, shuddering. "I'm still coming" she says, writhing. I grab her hair and kiss her hard.

"Baby why aren't you inside me?"

I'm hard now, so I answer by entering her. She cries out. Then she's crying. "I'm home. Baby I'm home."

"I am," I whisper.

Voice can lose herself easily but when we're fucking she becomes very concerned with my pleasure. "Please take me," she says. She means she wants me to come. I have to stop (which she hates) to put the condom on, but she forgets quickly when I'm back inside her. "Verbal baby take me, please take me."

"I'm going to come now."

"Yes baby please come now please please..."

I keep my eyes on her when I come. She says there's a moment when I'm coming when I smile and she can see that I love myself as well as her.

She hates when I have to get out of her and remove the condom. "Where where where where are you going baby?" I remove it quickly, wrap it in a tissue, come back to lying next to her. "That was beautiful," she says, drawing it out. "My baby my baby my verbal I love you." She's like this, after. Always. "I missed you soooo much."

Our tea gets cold. I have her sweat on me and I can smell her on me. Eventually, like always, her phone rings. She dresses in a hurry. She uses the hairbrush I bought for her. She checks herself out in the mirror for signs of sex. I walk her to the door. She turns away, then turns around to kiss me. Does that a few times, before she finally goes out into the street.

I go back to my room. Take the tea cups and pour out the tea into the sink. Take the tea bags and throw them into the composter. She calls from the street.

"I really love you," she says.

"I know, babe. I love you." I just wish...

It's all in the frame

The frame, the frame. I think it's probably a metaphor from physics. Theories of motion have speed always relative to a frame of reference. Then in rhetoric and NLP, there's framing the discussion. Perception is more important than reality. Or rather, in social matters, perception creates reality.

For the past couple of days I've been thinking about a different frame for me and Voice. Her choices are her choices. Mine, mine. That's not the give and take of a partnership, but I guess that means we're not partners. Which stands to reason, since she's with someone else. So can I reframe it? Can I think of her some way other than as a girlfriend? It's easier when she's gone, when she's busy or on the road, for weeks at a time. I remember that I'm actually a busy person myself, with not just more interesting work and accomplishments ahead and behind than I could ask for, but also someone surrounded by friends and by love and, actually, by romantic opportunity too.

So why do I find myself watching my phone, hoping she'll find two minutes to call me, for one of these monumentally unsatisfying conversations? When she unloads her stresses, tells me she's miserable, and then "has to" go?

I don't *have to* do that. But nor do I have to cut her off, I don't think. I think both of those are not taking the power that I do have in this situation. I can relate to her on my terms. I can seek what I want, from her and from life, and if I don't get it, make changes.

Framing helped me today. She was on stage for an event. Ferried to it by Auto. Management running around in the crowd. I had to go to it in any case, and have my own friends there. So I spent time with them, didn't seek anything from her, and didn't get anything. I had to go to the thing in any case, I reminded myself. If I frame it as, this is my lover and she won't even acknowledge me in public, I could let it ruin my day. If I frame it as, I went to an event, saw some friends, and left to get on with the rest of my day, it's better.

Her power

Because they inspired the blog, I went straight to Bad Man and ozarque to let them know I'd started it up. As you might expect, both were wise. Bad Man with the kind of wisdom that I sometimes have myself, that of a thirtysomething dude who's been around the block a few times, and Ozarque with a great deal more than that. Bad Man said he wouldn't judge my relationship with Voice, but I had to ask myself whether I was getting what I wanted or needed. Ozarque said good for me for trying to fix what's broken.

I realized that it would be more unfair to her if I only resort to this blog when things are bad with us.

As a writer I'm supposed to show and not tell. So...

Six years ago... I am the curator at a panel of authors. The room is full. Stuffy, even. The energy is high. The topic is controversial and intense. The audience is engaged. Voice is supposed to open the event. I've met her a few times (I'll write a blog about the first meeting another time), but I know her only casually, by reputation and as a part of an admired couple (her and Management). She is late. I start the show without her, juggling the panelists. One after another, they tank. All are good readers. All have good writing. They just don't hit the right note for the night and don't hit the right note for the audience. The audience is looking for hope, for possibilities, for a connection. The writers give some mix of self-promotion and despair. As the third author steps up, Voice comes in. In jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt. Most people don't know her yet. But I find myself watching her, not just because everyone is sitting and she's coming in. She slips in and sits next to me in the front row.

"You're late," I say, smiling. I've always been smiling around her, it seems.

"How's it going?"

"Not good, so far. You're going to have to save it."

The third reader might be the worst. Voice, silent in the chair next to me, radiates frustration. Is that body language alone? Why are some people able to make us feel their feelings?

I get up to introduce her. Middling applause. People are frustrated by now, and she's another unknown quantity. But where the other speakers sat on a stool, she stands in front of the mic. She plants her feet, and sings a few bars of a song, acapella, and brings everybody back. From that second on I can reproduce the tune from memory.

She introduces herself, and talks for three minutes, and in three minutes says all of the things the audience needed to hear, that they hadn't heard for the previous hour.

She sings another two songs, and the night is saved. You can just feel it. Everybody can. Even the authors who she was supposed to introduce and, instead, upstaged. They feel more rescued than resentful.

"Well, you did it. You saved it."

"It did need saving."

Where does it come from, this power? It's partly skill or talent, to be sure. But in her case, it's just real. Her words come from a place deeper than most people can go, but when they come out that rawness and realness has been worked up by a master of the craft. She feels it, and makes you feel it too. And even when we fight, I don't believe she's being manipulative. I get dragged into the dumps because those around her just feel whatever she's feeling.

Maybe that night is where it started, for me. Not for her, so she tells me. For her it was earlier.

And is that it, am I just impaled on her power (I thank Colleen McCullough for the phrase)? No. There's more. I'll tell you.

Nice guys, or, orbiters

Before my second post of the day, I want to say a word acknowledging the two blogs I have linked to so far. The Bad Man is a recent find of mine. I can thank him for putting me on to the world of 'pickup', where I have found more than meets the eye. His three points, especially (talk to women, treat them like they are people, and be sexual) are so sensible that it's amazing that I had to read them to realize them. The other thing I can thank him for is the idea that I could pseudonymously blog my own life. I had wondered how I might put these thoughts out into the world. I had thought about novelizing them, but under my own name it wouldn't quite fit. I could just bury them in a journal, but then I wouldn't be able to have the give and take of being part of a community. The Bad Man gave me the solution. I also like the names he gives to people.

The Bad Man also emphasized something that I've come to agree with: that social skills are skills that can be learned. And in that, he agrees with Suzette Elgin, whose blog I also have linked to. Suzette created the Verbal Self-Defense system to teach people how to "clean up" the language around them. She also analyzes language and power, especially in relationships between women and men. Like 'pickup' as taught by Mystery and Style, the GAVSD (Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense) cries out for field-testing, and further analysis. I'd like to try to bring some dialogues from the field here to take them apart and see what I can learn.

The Bad Man describes pickup as a kind of response to feminism. Style calls it the beginnings of a men's self-improvement movement. I think Suzette is a feminist, and I am influenced by both.

Now to the post.

Let's call my current girlfriend Voice. She would insist on that title. I'd be happy to give it to her. We talk that way. We certainly have sex that way. But the world doesn't know. That's because Voice is a pretty well-known singer and media personality and has a well-known boyfriend. People cheat all the time, I know. There was a time when it would have grated my conscience. It doesn't, so much, these days, though I don't know how long I can keep it up.

Here's something I have long observed about ladies like Voice: they don't just have one man, they have a team. Voice has her public boyfriend, she's got me, and she's got other men as well. In PUA language, these guys are called orbiters. For nonspecialists, they're sometimes called "nice guys". When she decided she wanted me, these men all seemed to disappear into the background. For all I know, they might know about us. What's interesting is that, while I think Voice likes having them around, and they do things for her, they are also a drain on her.

Take Auto, for example, the most frequent of her men. Auto's advantage is his car. He drives her places, and is all over her life because of that. Voice needs to get around, and doesn't drive. Neither does her man. Neither do I. But Auto does. For driving her around, Auto feels he has rights to her time and to her loyalties. He confronts her about the time she spends with others. He tells her it hurts his feelings that she has fun with others. He has made his life to be available to her at all hours. And when we're not in bed, I don't think I've seen her without him.

I wonder what it all has to do with me. My strategy is to treat him like the backdrop that he is. Her thing with him is her business. Her thing with me is mine. I think she gives him signals she shouldn't. I think he disrespects her boundaries. But I can't control any of that, and telling her will only create more fights between us.

If I were to embrace the pickup community I would immediately be accused of serial 'one-itis'. So be it. I want these tools to better live in the situation I'm in, not to do some other guy's thing. I have it bad for Voice, and I think she loves me, in some way. Someone clearer minded might tell me what I need to do is let go. But I don't want to do that. So help me to do what I do want to, which is love this girl who is surrounded by stage props.