My lover keeps giving me an ultimatum. Give her a ring or she will have to move on. She doesn’t know who she’s fucking with. I’m not Billy Badass, but in all reality, I understand where she’s coming from. We’ve been talking for a while now and I never would have thought in a million years that 6 years later, we’d be still talking. We’ve been talking for about as long as things were actually good between me and STBXW.

Time flies quickly. Unfortunately for her, I am really not any closer to wanting to marry her than I was back then. To be honest, I am really surprised that she held on for this long and throughout our entire duration, I figured that any day would be the last. I kind of always figured that eventually, she’d move on.

I do love her don’t get me wrong. But i cannot figure out how to make it work between us. I have baggage. Kiddo is a packaged deal. It’s a non negotiable for me. She isn’t asking me to forsake him, but I haven’t figured out a way to integrate her into our lives. It doesn’t help that STBXW still hasn’t signed the papers for the noncontested divorce yet. I’m on my third try with this and she isn’t being cooperative. I think it has less to do with her wanting to ‘hold on’ to me and more to do with it’s just not convenient for her to do so. She just hasn’t found anyone else to put pressure on her to do so. Her ‘relationships’ so far appear to have been casual (for the guys anyway) at best. Given her tendency to procrastinate and put things off to the last minute, I just don’t think she sees it as a big deal.

I’ve been somewhat beaten into submission by accepting the fact that even though she technically is my wife on paper, I have to deal with the fact the she’s just out there being a 304. The truth is I cannot really afford a divorce attorney at this point. I could go broke trying to hire one, but shit it’s either go broke or deal with the bullshit. I guess i chose to deal with the bullshit.

I think that with some convincing and an actual plan, I might be able to get my lover to pay for it…..but that doesn’t even sound right. Plus, even though she is a lovely person in many ways, I don’t know if I can keep her happy. Even though she makes a shit ton of money, she says that money isn’t the most important thing to her and doesn’t expect me to ‘catch up’ to her.

I don’t mind the fact that she’d be the primary breadwinner, but her expensive taste is what sort of gives me pause. I think that because I don’t bring the money like that, I’d have to always work even harder to figure out how to keep her happy. This would trigger a level of codependency in me that wouldn’t be attractive to her. Plus right now, I feel that being effectively a ‘single’ father leaves me with very little emotional bandwidth to want to feel obligated to deal with handling an emotional woman.

It’s just not the right timing. Perhaps if I had more money, could buy her a house I think she’d be happy with and afford the wedding and ring she wants, then I’d feel better about asking her to sacrifice so much. But as of right now, I think that we’d be setting ourselves up for failure in the future if we decided to take things to the ‘next level’. I think she’d end up resenting me after a few years when the ‘newness’ of being a wife finally set in for her.

But am i just not being honest with myself? I met this woman at the airport this weekend and while waiting on our delayed flight, we went to a bar and started talking. She was the feminine tomboy type that I find myself having the most interpersonal chemistry with. For some reason, even though they ‘claim to not like men’…. I’ve always been attracted to them. They just seem so much more easy going and practical than typical women. For some reason they are just easier (for me anyway) to talk to. It was one of those situations where we never really ran out of anything to say and when there was nothing left to be said, there was comfortable silence. Conversation just flowed effortlessly and naturally. Jokes just happened like hiccups. I’ve met a few in my life and I can’t lie, I always dug their personalities and what they were able to bring out of me. Like I can just shut my brain off and just be me and be entertained by whatever I say.

She didn’t make a ton of money, but seemed pretty content where she was in life. However, she also seemed to be interested in ways to make more money if the opportunity arose. What’s dope was that she said that she didn’t go out much because she wasn’t familiar with the area and didn’t have a lot friends. Unfortunately, due us talking so much, and the fact that I somehow ended up missing my flight (long story)….I forgot to get her number despite her telling me to put it in my phone.

That being said. I don’t know about marrying her either, but if i were to ever get married again, I think I’d like to try one of them. I don’t like the ones who actually look like guys, but I think the term soft studs apply to ones I like. They actually look like women, but tend to wear pants instead of dresses and skirts. I’ve seen a few that were cute in the face and you could tell that they had decent bodies underneath their clothes. It looks like she’d actually look pretty decent if she decided to dress provocatively.

Idealistically, she’d just want to try a guy. Maybe have a kid. I understand that her attraction to women might kick in every now and again, but shit….i’d be cool with that as long as she was honest with me. For some reason, even though people say they are ‘masculine’, I find that they tend to be more cooperative than most women. They dress more modestly. They are more logical/reasonable. And are probably more aligned with things that I like to do. Old girl at the airport wansn’t exactly a 10 in looks, but she was a solid 6 in the face….and that’s without even trying. And i could tell that she had an ass on her. Maybe if she fixed that walk, but I might be able to work with it.

I don’t know if they’d even want to be married for real for real, but if were to have another child, I’d want one with one of them. It would be (as superficial as it is) part of my original goal as a youth to have 2 or 3 cool baby mamas. Maybe it’s the idea that they’d be low maintenance and it seems that a genuine friendship would be more important than the formalities required in a traditional relationship.

Either way, meeting her got me to wondering if my lover was like her type and wanted to get married, would I have as much problem with asking her to sacrifice for me. Would I ask her to move from her where she was to here for me? The honest answer is, I don’t think so. I think that I’d at least ask her if she really wanted to try the ‘family’ thing. Even if i was unsure of whether or not it would work out in the long run.

But maybe this is because I wouldn’t think that she’d require or would be disappointed if she didn’t have big wedding, fancy dress, nice ring, and luxury house. I think she’d be content with a regular life. Not that my lover is huge consumer of luxury goods, but she really does enjoy the nicer things in life. She wouldn’t be caught dead in say a Ramada Inn if we decided to take an impromptu trip or something and wanted to save a little money.

In short, she’d be supporting her ‘luxury’ tastes and would have to either foot the bill for ‘us’ to do so or I’d go broke trying to go in at least 50/50 on it. Those things don’t matter to me as the experience of just being with my person. If it came down to an either/or I wouldn’t hesitate to go the local Applebees with a person I enjoy over going to 5 star michelin resturaunt in Paris with someone who I was just ‘meh’ about. I’d do with no regrets, even if me and my person didn’t work out in the end.

Maybe it’s me being classist or something. Maybe I’m looking down on her because of her luxury tastes. But at the same time, I just don’t’ want to be under the pressure doing shit like that to keep her happy. Maybe it’s based in fear. Maybe she is telling the truth in that it doesn’t matter to her. But in my gut, I think she is sincere, but I don’t think it’s the truth. I think she would harbor resentment and it would manifest someway or another, even if she doesn’t say it with her words. I do realize that i could actively creating a self fulfilling prophecy with this kind of thinking. Maybe that’s something to consider a bit more as well.

Despite all of our differences, I really do love her. She is very dear to my heart. I adore her. But I do have a fear of disappointing her. Maybe that’s my issue or maybe I’m just being practical about our situation. I just don’t know if Love is enough.