#IDK I don't want to flag it as mature and have it get eaten

[finchmarie]

Anatomy practice, figuring out a design I like for the grumpy old man.

[aethernightmare]

Idk, just the fact that my ex used my asexuality as a supposed source for his "relationship trauma" still royally pisses me off nearly a full year later. Especially since I've been seeing a lot more of that exact same "excuse" popping up in social media discourse a lot lately, used by cheaters who really have no ethical standing whatsoever for why they did what they did. ("Dead bedroom" excuse bastards are an instant red flag, and y'all need to do some inner self-reflection and therapy).

If you're incompatible with someone, in any way, you need to talk about it. Otherwise, you really aren't mature enough for a relationship at all. Because all relationships will have some degree of conflict or annoyance. No relationship, romantic or platonic, will ever fulfill 100% of your needs. But if you can't even openly talk about these things with your partner, you're dooming both sides.

If my ex wasn't okay with me being ace, he needed to actually respectfully tell me that, and then accept that we might break up because of it. Had that been the case, I can guarantee our breakup would have been amicable. I still would have been sad, sure. But the sooner he'd told me, the less it would have hurt. And we possibly could have even remained good friends.

Instead, he strung me along for over a decade, even teasing at proposals for marriage, all while he cheated with multiple people behind my back (even getting one of them pregnant). When we broke up, he told me his cheating and abandonment was justified because me being ace was "destroying him". (Okay, drama queen). Ignoring that it was him over the decade, that repeatedly reassured me he was fine with our relationship the way it was, and that he accepted us wholly the way we were. So blasting me with this at the end felt like either some cheap shot, a last-ditch darvo attempt to avoid any accountability, or pent-up but nonetheless undeserved aggression.

The fact that I'm okay with poly relationships too only makes this worse. Dude really could have had his cake and eaten it too, but just had to go out in the most dramatic and painful way possible to get his digs in. His mission wasn't so much to break up with me, there were a dozen better and more ethical ways to do so. His mission at the end was specifically to hurt me. Funnily enough, he actually left me to be part of a poly relationship, but one with just as many red flags as he was sporting when he left. (Unicorn Hunting, closed triad for him but not the main couple, power/communication imbalances, obvious forms of emotional abuse and codependency, substance addiction, etc.).

Likewise, committing to relationships in full as an adult, as a means of "figuring yourself out", rather than just dating or hooking up for that, is actually extremely cruel and fucked up. Because you're lying to another person and giving them false expectations, all so you, once again, don't have to communicate. It's okay to just date. It's okay to just hookup. It's okay to even admit you don't know what you want yet. But it's NOT okay to string someone along with the promise of a long-term relationship or marriage, only to discard them later, because you think telling them otherwise will cause them to leave. And yeah, they might. But that's their right to do so. Just as much as it is yours.

Dating and relationships are two very different things, and need to be taken into consideration when discussing terms and conditions. And it's okay to just want to try something out, or stick to being casual, but all of this needs to be discussed with the other person first. Otherwise you will hurt people, and you will make yourself the villain in other people's lives.

But telling someone else that their gender, their orientation, or their own boundaries in a relationship is the cause for your bad actions, abuse, or cheating? Is never okay. Because cheating or abuse is never about the other person, it's about the cheater/abuser, and whatever insecurities they're harboring. Insecurities they either need to talk about with a therapist, or spend some time self-reflecting to get sorted.

I didn't get cheated on or abandoned because of my gender, my orientation, my asexuality, or anything else. I got cheated on because my ex refused to communicate with me, and ultimately didn't respect me as a person. That's it. And the same is true for everyone else who went through what I did too.