Okay, I have a long confusing ramble but I feel like I really desperately need some outside advice. I've talked to a few of my closer friends about it but a lot of them are pretty isolated outside of me and it's hard to not impart a bias in that context. I'm also aware that this is almost entirely my fault. I just feel super lost and alone rn
I dated a girl for four years. I was homeschooled for almost my entire life, but my parents still wanted me to go to a traditional university (thank god). I was a socially anxious disaster for a long time after that (I still am, albeit to a much lesser extent), and kind of went on a few dates during my first year but not really. I met four year girl, and that went really well for a long time. I wasn't super prepared for the demands of a long term relationship though, or maybe even a relationship at all tbh. So things started to fall apart. It wasn't entirely on me; she eventually became kind of verbally abusive to a point that really temporarily damaged me. All of our fights were small, about why I hadn't done the dishes or whether or not we would go to a mutual friend's party, but they always ended with her screaming at me and trying to find the most hurtful things to say, which she was disturbingly good at. Eventually in the last six months we got to a point where she would tell me we were done, throw all of my stuff out of her room and ignore me for a few hours. This always ended with her coming back and being like "I'll give you another chance but you're on thin ice". I got caught up in wondering what my life would look like if we did actually break up, as we had so much intertwined from our dog to all of the mutual friends we had made in the past 4 years.
Eventually even this faded, and I was so numb to that pain and the constant struggle of everything else in my life that I just kind of gave up. Eventually I found the confidence to end it, and we broke up about two months ago. Surprisingly it didn't hurt that much in the moment. She was seemingly mostly okay with it, maybe a bit less so than I, but still over it as well.
Anyway, so that happens early on and I come to terms with the reality that I'm going to be single for my last semester of school and maybe should explore that. I also have a bunch of controversial ideas about the idea of monogamy knocking around uncomfortably, and I'm trying to figure that out. I can't really see being with a singular person forever. Forever is an unimaginably long time. And as I've been putting myself out there, it's been really had not to continually seek the insane, electric tension of feelings developing. Even just sexual tension. It's so crazy for the first few weeks, even months, and I want to keep doing that. It would be wonderful to have a long term, committed partner that things had simmered down with, but you get all of the benefits of that long term comfortability with, but also explore things with other people in a more short term context. So post-breakup, I just want to feel things out and figure out what I want, and maybe need?
A week later I was hanging out with one of our mutual friends, and she kind of just jumped on me while watching Bladerunner. I stopped for a moment to clarify where I was at, which is to say that I'm not going to be dating any time soon and if she was fine with like, a casual version of casual and still being friends in that context then we could keep going. So we did. And then we hooked up again after a concert a week or two later. Right when that happened, the last two weeks of school started and I essentially disappeared. I didn't deliberately hang out with anyone outside of one chill bar night, that I snapchatted her. I was still texting her and others, reasonably consistently (like once a day), but she was reaaaally upset about it. A few nights ago she started snapchatting me videos of her and her roommate using Tinder, and a bit later messaged me to be like "I was only doing that to get a reaction out of you". Then I got a bunch of drunk texts about how shitty I am and how unfair it was of me to not make time for her. Which, to a certain extent, I do feel really bad about. I had a really difficult final two weeks of school, the last week of which I was sleeping less than two hours a day to make time for everything. So in the moment, I apologized and said I would be there more consistently, and we've just had casual text convos since (it's only been like two days).
As this was happening, I was also kind of exploring being single and what that looks like. Maybe too soon, as everyone keeps telling me. I had some tinder hookups, a few boring dates, but mostly good stuff? Tinder stuff just going really well for a while, and then it became a lot of work to be consistently messaging/texting multiple people that I was seeing in that context. So I kind of took a step back, which led to the next few things.
One of my coworkers and I went out together and unexpectedly made out for a bit at the end of the night. She has a girlfriend, which I wasn't aware of at the time. After that, they worked through things and coworker (let's call them Lars) was trying to figure out poly. So we went on a few dates that were almost surprisingly amazing, and that was feeling great. But Lars's girlfriend wasn't super happy, despite them explicitly communicating about that. So my relationship with Lars has been a bit up in the air and fluctuates a lot. That said, I'm still single and still enjoying human connection so I was still seeing other people. Lars knew this and we talked about about where we were at, and it was fine. I especially thought we were on the same page given that she had a committed long term significant other, and I was very clearly pretty low on her priorities list. Girlfriend first, personal time second, friends and I hard third. I was fine with that. I really enjoyed what we were doing and she was the only person I had genuine feelings for, so I was okay with taking it slow with the understanding that this was an open thing. Outside of us making out the first time, we've never done anything more than that because of her working through her relationship.
So then one of our other coworkers wanted to go out, and I thought that was just a friend thing. So I went out with her (let's call her Bartholomew because I'm dumb and trying to make the sadness better). Early on I explained to her the Lars situation, which was a bad move. Like a really bad move. She talks to everyone about everything, and I should have known that explicitly asking her not to share wouldn't change that. Later in the night, we're both pretty drunk at a club, and she starts making out with me. I just went with it again, because I'm impulsive and selfish but also don't put physicality on a pedestal and thought it was something we could just do. I paused to go through the same "hey not looking to date anyone but if you'd like to casually be like FWB that's cool" disclaimer, and she kept saying that she felt the same, so we went back to her place.
The next morning Bartholomew goes to work and tells Lars. Like multiple times, apparently. Lars is upset, talks to me about it, we seem to work through things as I validate that it was unfair to do without a heads up and that I don't have feelings for Bartholomew, and that it was just a casual thing. It wasn't great, but everything seemed okay for a bit.
Bartholomew hits me up a week later wanting to go to a party with her friends. At first I try to be rational and not make things worse with the singular relationship I actually care about right now, but then I did it anyway. Definitely shitty, and I feel pretty bad the next day but I'm trying to collect myself internally and figure out what I should have done, and what I can do. I still feel this weird sense of unfairness in the context of Lars actively dating someone seriously, yet being upset with me for hooking up with someone, especially when we're not able to do anything physical on her end because of inevitably complicated poly stuff. I recognize that the context is definitely different, and I'm not that caught up on it. But some part of me irrationally thought it would be okay.
Bartholomew and Lars go out together, I don't talk to them until this morning at work. They're both upset about different things? Lars and I talk outside for a bit and she's mostly good, just upset that I didn't tell her and also on a firm "we're just friends" note. So that's wrapped up in a way that's been really hard to deal with.
Now I have to go talk to Bartholomew in an hour, and I have no idea what that looks like. I shouldn't keep hooking up with her, apparently, as that's creating really intense feelings and I'm hurting people. But I'm also really torn on the Lars part, as that made me genuinely happy, and now I feel like it's just forever gone.
Oh and in the interim a girl tried to hook up at a party the day before that, I made plans with her for last night, she wanted to smoke and I'm a pathetic mess when high, so it was very quiet and awkward and she hasn't texted me since. She was really cool last night and I feel like I just irrevocably fucked that up as well. Now I'm about to be back at zero with a bunch of people hating me and I don't know what to do. I thought I was explicit enough about what was happening with each person, but apparently not, and I feel like a horrible person now.
