Naked Honesty

I've been pretty quiet online for the past few weeks, for personal reasons.

My eight year relationship with my wonderful man is not working. We've tried to communicate better and be more sensitive to each other's needs over the past few weeks. The bf has even made the effort to play in rubber with me a few times in order to better understand where I'm coming from, but I think everything is summing up as too little, too late.

As much as I love him and have been completely devastated over making a final decision to stay or go, I honestly don't think I'm going to be able to commit to a relationship with him (or anyone) further until I get a stark view of what my options are and figure out what I am in fact all about. I've been having something of an existential crisis over the past month coinciding with relationship and work problems, and I think I need some time to myself to figure a lot of stuff out, as does the bf...we, as everyone else, both have a lot of issues we need to work through. It would be my hope of hopes that in a year or two, we'd both know that being together is what we want and fully commit to living the rest of our lives together. Or not.

All I know is that I need to get more perspective on my life, and I don't think I'm going to accomplish that by staying in a safe, comfortable, unchallenging relationship that is only partially fulfilling me. I incessantly ask myself what is not fulfilling about the relationship, and the reason that I can't fully answer that question is what is driving me to look at other possibilities -- that somehow getting into new situations with new people will open my eyes up to these possibilities, not only as a rubberman, but also as an intelligent gay man and human being.

The fetish scene for me is only a fraction of what I am and I always have tried to keep that in perspective. It is indicative of a larger change in my sexual proclivities -- I mean, I've always considered myself pretty kinky, but I've never acted on it to any large degree other than playing with myself in rubber and occasionally with the bf. I'm not going to say that this evolution over the past few years has not impacted our relationship but it is only a small part of all the issues we are contending with and trying to make sense of as we try to figure out how best to proceed with our relationship and with ourselves.

So, I'm scared shitless, yet excited about what the future might bring. I'm not looking forward to separating with the bf after eight years of living together and building a life together, but I think it is something I really need to do in order to get a better understanding of who I am now that I have been in a truly loving long term relationship and gotten a better vision of what I want/need in a relationship versus what I don't want/need.

In the immediate future, I think I'll just be glad to be on my own again. I've come to a realization over the past year that I am very independent and selfish, my bf is very emotional and sensitive, therefore due to my own behavior and actions there are some reasons why our relationship has gotten into the situation we now find ourselves in. It takes two to make or break a relationship. We've both been enablers to the other's bad behaviors and feelings and I feel that in order to break that pattern we need to separate in order to allow both of us to evolve.

What is really bugging me though is exactly that...I know deep down that if we both became a lot more sensitive to each other's needs and communicated much more effectively than we have in the past that there would be a good chance we could succeed. However, and as I've told him too, I still have doubts. I have fears that we will both fall back into the same patterns and behaviors that cause us problems, and that we'd simply find ourselves in the same situation again six months or a year or two years or five years down the road.

Even though right now I'm not sure why or what the answer to those doubts might be, I need to liberate myself to at least try and find some of the answers to my questions and figure out who I am.

I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing, maybe I never will. But if I don't make the move now, my window of opportunity will (and should) close forever. It's time to make up my mind.