Hello Anita,

Thanks for your concern regarding my health. My appendix is still inside me,  I was advised to see a gynecologist if the pain persits. They said they had ruled out a lot of serious causes – lets hope they meant cancer as a part of that. It isn’t an ovarian cyst. If the pain persists I need to go back to the doctor but I will go back to the doctor anyway. 🙁 It is scary.

Regarding non-monogamy.

I have a few motivations for my position. Sexual novelty is exciting, I don’t equate sex with love, it is unrealistic (and felt disingenuous) to pretend that you’re not attracted to other people. Or be afraid to voice that attraction for fear of making your partner insecure. I was with someone in an open relationship once and it was very liberating to talk openly of these things with my partner. I would like the freedom to pursue sexual novelty from time to time. It is true that this can arouse feelings of jealousy but these needed to be treated with care, discussion and honesty too.

Regarding Mr:

We didn’t have any sex while we were ‘just friends’ after we broke up.

One time, he did not respond to my message for 2-3 days. He claimed he hadn’t seen it and was frustrated that he had missed it. I took him at his word (but due to my issues it planted a seed of anxiety and doubt.) I didn’t really know how to address the issue any further at that time: It was taking his word for it or leaving, basically. I did tell him it had made me anxious, he asked me to explain that more but I dodged answering.

Other than that, he did not give me the silent treatment. He claims the one time he did was not because he was seeing someone else but because of a passive-aggressive comment I had made that made him uncomfortable.

“By his own admission he’s a mess in relationships and has frequently ambiguous platonic/ romantic ties with women”-

* What were his words on the matter, what did he say?

Those were his words, pretty much. He said he has a lot of female friends and sometimes struggled in his head to distinguish what was a platonic friendship from a romantic or sexual relationship.

That oftentimes his romantic relationships just fizzled out into friendships (but an ambiguity remained and occasionally would break out into a briefly sexual phase before fizzling out again.) He was in a turbulent on/off relationship with a woman for 7 years in which they both dated other people – although I think they had a monogamous phase to begin with. He obviously thought a lot of this woman and cared for her but they argued a lot and he dumped her a number of times.

Indeed he dumped me saying “I need friendship right now.” From the outside it looked to me as if his long-term relationship was on the brink of ending- he was under a lot of pressure and seemed quite stressed. He told her also that he “just wanted to be friends.” when he ended the relationship. He told me after, “That’s what I do.”

He claims to want a committed partner and relationship and that he is lonely.

-Feathering