Update from H-Town (Southern Belle)

So I may be having a dating hiatus at the moment, but that’s the whole reason I brought in the Experimental Daters!  And I know this one in particular has you hanging on every detail of her love life!

If you’ve missed any of Southern Belle’s hilarious H-Town Tales, then I highly recommend searching ‘Southern Belle’ in the search bar on the right-hand side of the blog.  Her dating tales are compulsive, and convoluted.  As real life tends to be!

Enjoy!

Miss Twenty-Nine xxx

As I touched on last time, I had a fantastic 23 hour date with The Client recently. Lots of flirting, touching and conversation, to the point where I knew I’d both a) sleep with him and b) see him again.

I’ve known this guy casually for just under a year now. I barely go a day without seeing him at work (walking past my office or sharing an elevator) and that’s what made me so cautious about the whole Breakfast Booty Call incident (BBC).

That was until I realized I really liked him, of course.

After the (fully-clothed!) 23 hour-long date, we spent the next week calling each other and chatting, which was great and really refreshing!

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a date call me to chat for an hour just to see how my day was. When did that stop being a thing? I can remember it clearly in the UK, but here in the States, calls are purely transactional, and plans tend to be set via text.

The one exception to this was a long distance relationship where I spent hours of my life in front of Skype, sometimes just reading a book at the same time as my boyfriend in Afghanistan.

Anyway, back to the Client.

 

Over the past 2-3 weeks, we’ve “hung out” a lot.

I use that term pretty specifically because nothing was planned particularly in advance and each time it’s ended up being a long time, with lots of talking AND ABSOLUTELY NO KISSING.

He has now stayed over 4 times (he lives 45 minutes away and well, I make drinks for my guests..) and I’ve stayed at his once. 3 out of 5 times, he’s spooned me or cuddled in some way.. but no kissing apart from a quick kiss on the mouth that dear God, was the most frustrating thing in the world.

I started to make jokes about how he was coming over just so he could sleep in my bed!

He reassured me that he was not.

I was confused, to say the least.

One of the things I have resisted writing about to a certain extent (out of respect) was the physical side of dating someone with depression, but it is so relevant to how I’ve been feeling over the past couple of weeks, I can’t really avoid it.

When my ex started to get ill, his body confidence and sex drive were destroyed.  Instantly.

So while he suffered and struggled through his depression, I suffered from a lack of intimacy on any level.

He would kiss me and cuddle me as always, stroke my hair and hold my hand as we slept but (and I still can’t believe it was this long) by the time we ended, I had not had sex with my beautiful, sexy boyfriend for eight months.

I’ve talked about body confidence previously and not finding validation from being in a relationship or from my partner, but this is the one time where it didn’t matter what anyone said.

After a while I thought it was due to me not being attractive enough, not being sexy enough, and not doing the right thing.

This vicious voice tormented me on my bad days, convincing me that it couldn’t possibly be the depression. It didn’t matter how many times my therapist (yes, I saw/see one) told me it was all about him, late at night when I cried because of the constant feeling of overwhelming rejection, I identified me as the problem.

Back to The Client again …

Five nights sleeping in my bed without making a move was stirring up some serious demons.

After another impromptu visit/ sleepover on Thursday night, I texted him on Friday to say that we couldn’t drink together anymore (my alcohol consumption has tripled with this socializing) and that I was now positive he was staying over because of my bed being better than his.

He promptly responded otherwise and invited me out to lunch after we finished work, which was awesome.

I took him to Houston’s Chinatown, which has phenomenal food and we had a great afternoon. I’d warned him that I was duty-bound to bake 40 cupcakes for my friend’s daughter’s birthday the next day, so we went to the store, picked up some snacks and he came to my house and hung out while I baked.

I am amazing at cupcakes by the way. Chocolate heaven!

Baking that amount takes some time so we drank some wine, listened to music, played with the dogs and sat on the couch with me in no make-up and work out gear … seriously, I’d just given up at this point!

He pulled my legs across his lap and was stroking them as he said “You know why I haven’t kissed you again right?”

Well no, Numnuts. I have no idea.

Turns out after the BBC, he’d come into work on that Monday and spoken to his boss about me. He’d openly asked his opinion on dating in the workplace, because he was really worried about it being awkward.

His Boss (who is my big boss) basically vetoed us dating until I am no longer on this project.

My contract just extended for another 6 months.

Pretty irritated doesn’t begin to cover my initial feelings because had he said “I can’t date you because of work but I think you’re awesome and want to be friends” then we could have done that.

What we’ve been doing instead is dating without sex, WHICH IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS IN THE WORLD.

I scolded him none too gently along those lines. He told me he loved hanging out with me and thinks I’m amazing … wants to keep doing it … mentions he’s never been so surprised by somebody.

So I decided, because I like him, that I would be the mature version of myself for a change!

I told him that I love hanging out with him too, even if he is an idiot who could have told me that from the start.

I agreed that we’d kind of crossed that work/personal boundary and  underlined that I’d been nothing BUT professional about it. He agreed but .. nothing until I’m off this project.

We have tentative plans to have dinner together this week or next, he still calls and texts.

So …

The naughty side of me wants to break his completely admirable resolution down.

The sensible side realizes that I actually quite like this guy and see potential for long term dating… which honestly? I’m not ready for.

An encounter with my depressed ex this weekend reduced me to a quivering wreck for the rest of the day, so that’s probably not the time to be embarking on the possibility of something new, particularly when I feel very vulnerable.

I recently saw the movie ‘Her’ and something Samantha says (the AI system) is that the past is a story that you tell yourself. I loved that and am working on telling myself a different story.

Until then..  I’m going to stay in my safe place, which involves a lot of sex with a friend who I adore, whilst continuing to date each week!

Happy Dating guys!

Belle xx