Ooof.

TA had wanted to meet up in a neutral place to negotiate what we’d each want a friendship between us to look like going forward. We ended up being on the same page about that: she really likes when I introduce her to movies and tv shows I like and she snuggles up and pets my head or back while watching (she hasn’t always had the attention span to watch things when she was over, but I guess she does enjoy it when it works) and that’s a ritual from our relationship that I wanted to keep, too. Just, no more nudity.

But. But. Fucking listen to this: during this negotiation she said that she couldn’t come over every week anymore like she used to because “I don’t get a lot of free time, and when I do I want to devote as much of it as possible to my hobby, which is being a whore.” Out loud she fucking tells me this, that seeking out dick is her first priority and I fall somewhere below that. I don’t actually mind seeing her less often – I need to see partners on a regular basis in order to feel like I’m in a relationship, but I’m more lax with how I maintain my friendships – but damn. I think my instincts are absolutely correct that if I’d tried to keep on dating her she would have canceled our weekly visits sooner or later in order to seek out more dick, and it would have hurt like hell. At least now she’s doing this when we’re not supposedly in a loving romantic relationship.

Another notable-to-me part of our exchange is that she asked me how comfortable I was talking with her about sex and kink now (I assume she meant “As my ex, will it make you feel jealous or weird to hear about all the guys I’m doing stuff with?” though she didn’t put it that way). I said let’s maybe scale back on that a bit, at least for now. And I made a point of saying that when we were first going out, it felt like we talked about all kinds of cool shit: cat genetics, the new language she was trying to teach herself, lots of stuff. But eventually it felt like just about the only topic of conversation she brought up was “the other day a guy gave me access to his dick and here’s what happened!” And it’s honestly getting kind of one-note and boring.

I was hoping (I know it was a long shot) that my saying this would make her go “Oh shit, I’m so obsessive in my pursuit of getting laid that it’s become my entire personality. That’s…probably not great.” But nah, she missed the implication of my statement entirely and replied, without irony, “Yeah, when we were first going out I was spending a lot of time depressed at home reading about different interesting things and now I spend most of my time pursuing sex.*”

That’s the closest I’m willing to come – at the moment, anyway – to saying “your behaviour gives me big time addiction vibes and it’s unsettling and I think you should rethink your life.” I was pretty sure she’s not ready to face this idea and nothing good will come of things if I say it outright. My tiny little foray into hinting at it makes this clearer than ever.

But yeah…my reasons why I’d like her to scale back on telling me all about her big ol’ slutty life are like…10% boredom because most of these stories don’t have any point except “I banged a dude,” 20% jealousy because she’s so clearly a sexual person but not with me, and 70% being deeply creeped out because her laser focus on this one narrow aspect of life is giving some eerie echoes of my alcoholic ex-husband. I bet it would surprise her to realize that.

*It occurs to me, though, that some of our talks back in the day were also her sharing cool facts with me that she already knew, not only new things she was in the process of learning. If she only ever brings up sex anymore it’s because she chooses to.