Think We're Alone Now...

James started his new job today.
So, now we have time to ourselves for the first time in about a year.
Daytime alone time is good, it will be better when we get the house though, and move out of here (The Mother's house). We've written about our desire to be alone recently, this is, like, the extended version, the LP, if you will.


We're a little nervous about the format of our day, or rather, what it will be, now.

Sounds strange to you, probably; but we like a bit of a format, a framework, for our week. So we know what's expected of us; and since James would prefer we spend all of (or most of) our time with him during the day, and now when he gets home from work...this (potentially) means a loss of time with our online friends at night.

Yes, we are one of those anti-social social freaks who has "friends" online. You conform to the narrow paradigm of what you think is normal, we'll just do what makes us happy.

Not sure how other people are, but we don't like using the computer (or reading) much, or attempting tasks (like painting, and sometimes cooking), with someone hovering around. Doesn't matter what we may be doing on the computer, working on designs in Photoshop, writing Tweets, blog posts, letters, doing research, reading. The feeling that we may be "being watched", and therefore make ourselves open to quick criticism; for example, if we were writing this now, and someone was sitting next to us, we'd feel a level of uncertainty - what if we wrote this, and between the time we wrote it and published it, there was something we decided to omit, and then erase it, but someone glanced over and read it already, and felt hurt by what we wrote.

It's hard to take words back. (so very hard, sometimes - we'll probably want to erase this blog entry later. Don't let us.)

Also, people being near us, or "in our space", tends to suck our focus out. Unless they are dead silent. On many occasions even a small interruption can derail what we are attempting to do; and if we can manage to tune them out, we run the risk of "not paying enough attention" or "ignoring". Which is "rude".

Anyway, it's all a lot of whining. It's hard to explain, especially to James, how much his relationship expectations are so much different than what we are used to. We've dated plenty of different types of men, and we've lived with many different types of men, and there was never an issue of any of them feeling neglected.

In one relationship a boyfriend even had his own room, with a bed. There were no doors on it, and it was across the hall from the bedroom we shared, but it was still his space to meditate, create art, read, take naps.

Many boyfriends had friends, and a social life, outside of our relationship. One played board games with his buddies in the basement of the house we lived in, we were encouraged to join whenever we wanted, and was part of a Frisbee-golf team. (He was older, like 37, so it's not like he was a teenager, which is probably how that sounds). Another went to jam sessions, and had gigs out of town on occasion (the drummer).

We could go on and on, obviously; this is merely to illustrate how our expectations of time spent together was moulded.

The point is...how will we agree on a compromise when many of our relationships expectations are so vastly different form his. How will our day be structured. Why are we freaking out.

Actually, we know why we're freaking out.

The sad truth? Some of us are desperately afraid of losing ourselves, and by that we mean our sense of independence, our individuality (as much of that as we can have when we can have it), our creativity, our sense of knowing what makes many of us happy. We've made it THIS far...and we've finally been able to be us comfortably, love ourselves (not always, but still, enough).

That was a mini breakthrough, we suppose. Congratulations if you slogged your way to this sentence.

On another note, the offer on the house was rejected, so we'll be going back in with another offer, because we're getting that fucking house.