Zen and Steph I can relate in ways and Zen I'm sorry this is so stressful.

I'm dealing with some issues of things not going the way I expected. When Will and I only saw each other a couple of days 2x a year things were different - absence and all that. But now that we're together our sex drives are different, not to mention it takes me a long time to get warmed up and into things. The best way to describe it (I guess) is if we were both on a track trying to go from 1 to 10 I'd be starting on 0 and he'd be starting on 7 and it's made me feel frustrated. When we were long distance and we'd see each other I'd maybe be start at 7 so it would work out. And then a lot of times recently we've had time constraints and my apartment's walls are rather thin..especially in the bedroom...which makes it hard to relax.

But also I've had to deal with the fact that what I thought was my sex drive was probably just hyper sexuality brought on by hypomania. Which I didn't even know could happen but it does. And then there's the fact for the past -- well since January I keep saying I feel "low energy" and "blah" and it comes and goes but it's been more that than feeling good (like when I first moved up to VT) so I don't know if I'm depressed and that's effecting my sex drive or what.

I feel like I was giving Will some false advertising about what things would be like and I wish it were just easy, instead of feeling like we keep having the same discussions about things.

Oh, askye, that's so hard.

The best way to describe it (I guess) is if we were both on a track trying to go from 1 to 10 I'd be starting on 0 and he'd be starting on 7 and it's made me feel frustrated.

Oh, I know that feeling.

So, remember when I said "Sex is weird?" I just had a wacky text convo with Z. He thought I was brushing him off on Tuesday when we were snuggling on my bed, but really I was just shifting position because my hip was killing me, and apparently his friend M I met the other week thought I was flirting with her? IDEK. And then his phone died, but not before I suggested talking it all out tomorrow and then hopefully making out. I think he's reading my nervousness and bouts of insecurity as a lack of interest.

zen - good luck , just go for it. not sex , just the date.

Sex is weird.

Even married and knowing each other- sex drives are constantly changing and so it get weird again

there are men out there who can deal with your issues.

This is what I would have said if I hadn't been driving home and then buying ties.

But it's been said, so I'm going to skip ahead...

Are you the sort of person that needs it all to be the same guy?

Can you start explicitly no sex dating to get back into the game, and once you've gotten your feet wet, decided if, when, and with who you want to deeper into the pool with?

I mean, you're not boyfriending right now. You're just at the dating place. Can you handle that sort of explicit not-intimacy yet?

smonster I hope you two can talk and work out some of the misunderstandings.

It helps that we can talk about it.

Today I've also realized exactly how much place played a role in my mental health. I've been really low energy and today I got sad for "no reason" and felt I like I was going to cry at work. But I keep feeling like I'm still crocheting and knitting and going to those related things so I'm not that depressed.

I keep comparing the way I feel now versus the way I would feel in Tallahassee and I realized that Tallahassee was just really really toxic for me and was taking up a lot of spoons (to use the spoon theory) and I moved to VT and found them and I was all YAY this is how I am now! Only now I'm not like that and it's frustrating.

I keep comparing the way I feel now versus the way I would feel in Tallahassee and I realized that Tallahassee was just really really toxic for me and was taking up a lot of spoons (to use the spoon theory) and I moved to VT and found them and I was all YAY this is how I am now! Only now I'm not like that and it's frustrating.

I definitely have been going through this on and off after the first 6-12 months of living here went by. I have to always remember my cousin's words of wisdom, "no matter where you go, you're still you." It's so frustrating though.

Even married and knowing each other- sex drives are constantly changing and so it get weird again

Oh, god, yes. I adore Hubby to the bottom of his feet and would rain ruin onto anyone who did him harm, but lust kind of faded with the millennium. It's terribly flattering that he still desires me, but I so don't want to start responding to him with "Oh, all right, then."

Yeah I know I'm not going to magically change just because I moved (although I wish I could) but I almost started crying today at work for no reason and a few other things that are indicators of mild depressive episode vs just feeling blah. I see my shrink again next month and I think my meds need tweaking. I've felt what it was like to feel good and be mostly productive and not hypo manic and I want that back.

"no matter where you go, you're still you."

Dammit, it's true. askye, something similar happened to me when I moved here (to Virginia). New Jersey was so toxic for me; I was so unhappy there, that when I moved to a place better suited to me, I was giddily happy for a few months. It was as if I'd been carrying a heavy weight for a long time, and when I took it off, I felt so much lighter in comparison. But it normalized. Work got crazy and I gained weight and I didn't make new friends, and I kinda just... went back to being me. Prone to melancholy and depression, me. But I'm still happier, and healthier, now than I was then. The move was one thing I needed to do for myself, just not the only thing. If my anecdata supports you at all.

I mean, you're not boyfriending right now. You're just at the dating place.

Ah-ha. You're thinking dating =/ boyfriend. I was thinking dating = boyfriend.

I don't think that I've ever dated someone for any length of time before we became a couple. It's always, hanging out with a group or a mutual friend for a while, then we have sex, and then we're a couple. Maybe that's part of my anxiety here, that I don't really know how to do dating-but-not-a-couple. I've never had to have The Talk About Our Relationship before. Human mating rituals are weird.