500 Posts Later…

This is officially my 500th post here at Between My Sheets. And 500 posts later, I’m a very different girl. Different good and different bad.

Different good because I have a more clear understanding of exactly what I want in a man. Different bad because the thought of that in my life scares the crap out of me.

The truth is, over the last several years, I sometimes feel like I’ve been beaten down by life again and again. One by one I’ve watched my friends get into serious, successful relationship with wonderful people, while I’ve always been denied that special thing that everyone wants – someone who loves you back.

Someone who says, “I love you too” and really means it. Someone who doesn’t “fall out of love” with you when things get tough. Someone who you can trust.

500 posts later, I don’t know if I can trust people anymore, at least in the context of love.

This past weekend proved that I can trust someone to dom me…but that kind of trust isn’t hard for me. I mean, I like to think the best of people. I’ve certainly been dommed by several guys since starting this blog. I like to think that any guy I’m with will not hurt me on purpose. It’s the “not on purpose” kind of hurt that worries me. Since my 2006 disaster with the asshole who really was trying to hurt me:

• I dated a very nice man who loved me, but we grew to find out that we don’t want the same things in life.
• I dated D, who choose his ex over me.
• I dated V, who paid more attention to his video games than to me.
• I put trust in (though never dated) The Cowboy who ran away as soon as shit got real, after promising he never would.
• I started casually seeing D again, and after much pushing to get me to love and trust him, he chose another girl over me.
• I “dated” MM, who promised to work through his marriage problems, but in the end, just wasn’t strong enough to leave.

And though this all, I casually dated other guys as well – all guys who hurt me, even though none of them meant to.

I’m bitter. I’m sad. I’m fucked up.

The trust of the matter, is that I still blame these men. I don’t like it, because I don’t know that it’s fair to blame people for things that they didn’t necessarily control…but I do. And I’m not without fault. No way. I’m far from the perfect person. But here we stand, 500 posts later, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be in love again. At least, not that wonderful, innocent happy love I used to feel, back when I was in high school or college.

I used to feel that love when I was with someone else. Now I only feel it when they hurt me. When another guy breaks another promise, that’s when I feel it in my belly and know that my love is being rejected again.

I can’t remember the last time someone told me they loved me and honestly, truly did. I think maybe…spring 2008? Four years? It’s a long time to go without being loved.

And this may be kind of weird, but we also don’t say I love you in my family. My dad said it to me when he had his heart attack and we weren’t sure he was going to make it – that was maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I can’t remember my mom ever saying it. She might have said it when I had a little breakdown on the phone with her a few years ago after all sorts of bad things happened in my life. I can’t remember. Is that horrible? We just never said it growing up and now it feels weird to start. There’s not a single doubt in my mind that my parents love me, we just don’t say it.

No matter thought, because that’s different from romantic love anyway. And I do think the last time someone romantically loved me was D in early 2008.

I want to feel that feeling again, but the only way I know how is through pain. Fitting for a submissive I guess. I think, whenever I get close to feeling love, even puppy love at the beginning of a relationship, I don’t let myself believe it’s real or that it could be real. The only way I believe it is after I’m in pain because it’s over. At that point, the love hurts too much to deny.

And as much as I miss love…I also don’t know if I even want it anymore. I have a wonderful life without it. In general, I’m a happy girl. That’s more than I can say of myself when I was ever in a relationship in the past. So maybe love just isn’t for me. Maybe I need to readjust my dreams of that perfect life with the picket fence and the husband and the kids and the dog and just admit that this is my life and I’m already living my dream.

This life stuff is hard. Most of all, though, I worry about hurting other people while I figure it out. There’s a very nice new dom in my life, and even though I’ve told him that I want to move slow, things have been moving really quickly. It’s fun right now, but part of me worries that some day, he’ll look at me and say I love you and I’ll look at him and not be able to say it back. And not just because I’m not there yet, but because I’ll never be there. I don’t want to break his heart, because I don’t want to make him what the broken hearts in my life have made me.

As usual when I ramble on about life, I don’t have a good way to wrap up this post other than to say that we can maybe write this one up to lack of sleep. But I hope you’ll stick around for another 500 posts, and in any case, thanks for being here with me right now.

About Rori

Rori is the founder of Between My Sheets. She works full time as a writer, reviewer, and online educator and can be reached at rori-at-betweenmysheets.com

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