The last few days have been a real eye opener for me, as well as an emotional rollercoaster. I am in a very difficult emotional place right now and I guess I should be glad for anti-depressants.

When I met my partner Aaron around 2 1/2 years ago, I had no intention of getting into a relationship. I had moved from New York City to Philadelphia shortly after "Can't Get a Date" started airing. I had less than $2000 in my pocket, a few boxes full of possessions - but a lot of baggage. I was not proud of the life I was living, and I was burdened down by mistakes of the past. My income was, for all practical points and purposes, as a prostitute.

Aaron and I disagree on how we met: I say on a website, he says at a bar. Regardless, we went on a date, and talked for several hours about ourselves. It was a decent date, but speaking strictly on my end of the date, my primary interest was getting laid. During our date I learned that Aaron was a recovering heroin addict and HIV+. This didn't bother me because A: condoms, and B: I was only interested in getting laid. so his baggage didn't effect me.

The next morning I really just wanted Aaron to go away and to get on with my life, but he really wanted to hang out. I made up several excuses to get away from him, something about a meeting downtown, but he wanted to take the bus up into town with me, hang around and meet afterwards. Ultimately I literally ditched him at the bus stop because he went into a store to get a drink, and then I ignored his cell phone calls.

Great beginning, right?

I honestly don't know how or why Aaron and I saw each other again, but we did, and the relationship became intense and serious very quickly. I was living in a room I had rented in a group house, and he was living in a house that had, for all practical points and purposes, been abandoned by some friends who moved away. He was supposed to be paying them a few hundred dollars to live there, but he wasn't really doing it.

Aaron got a call that one of the two guys wanted to sell the house and have him move out ASAP, so Aaron moved in with me in my tiny room. It was a mutually parasitic arrangement, because he needed somewhere to live, and I was behind on my rent. Aaron probably could have found another place fairly quickly, but (as I would later find out) he was too fucked up to really be that organized.

What would unfold over the next year was the truth of Aaron's situation: that he was not a RECOVERING addict, but in fact an actively using addict who had spent his entire adult life addicted to hard core drugs, and also weed. There would be lying, hiding, cheating and ongoing struggle as our relationship quickly turned into a full-on process of trying to get Aaron off of drugs. This lasted for over a year and a half, until finally in December 2007 Aaron went into rehab.

I am glad to say Aaron has been sober for over a year now.

In the meantime, I completely neglected myself and based all of my emotions and self-worth around making Aaron happy and getting Aaron healthy. That was my choice, but it was also my fuck-up. I think part of me felt like if I could help Aaron get better, I would be absolved for mistakes from my past. Over the last year, as Aaron recovered and got healthy, I got worse. All of my neurosis exploded - depression, anxiety, agoraphobia - I just wanted to sit at home and sleep all day.

One of the things that disappeared very early in our relationship was sex. In point of fact we very rarely had any actual sex, and all the times we had any kind of sex, Aaron was high. I couldn't even tell you at this point if we are sexually compatable. I have been very understanding of this; Aaron has not had sex while sober for a long time, and sex is very scary and confusing for him. But in the meantime, I have not had sex with my boyfriend for over a year and a half.

Somewhere along the way our therapist said that I should be able to have sex with other people as a "band-aid" on the relationship. Generally speaking I found that very hard to do, and to date I have only hooked up with 3 other people (five times total) in that 1 1/2 year long period. Of those 3 people I've only enjoyed 2 of them... But as our relationship has deteriorated, the idea of sleeping with other people has gotten more appealing and easier to consider.

The last six months have been really hard. As Aaron gets healthier, he starts considering the direction he wants his life to take. He thinks about what he hasn't done, what he wants to do, and what he screwed up and wants to fix. He is attending school and making spare income from walking dogs. (Our primary source of income for the last year has been from either diability or unemployment pay coming from Aaron, which makes him the breadwinner...in theory.)

Meanwhile as Aaron gets his life together, he has less time and energy to work on our relationship, which was already struggling. For the past few months I have felt less and less appreciated, to the point where I began feeling like he would rather not have me around. I spent so much time beating myself up, thinking that it was me who is the problem: I'm not doing things right, or I'm doing things in such a way as to make his life more difficult.

A few weeks ago, Aaron and I had a small argument/conversation. Aaron expressed some things to me that he isn't happy with. It's hard to get him to do this because he usually tends to bottle things up and then spew them all out at once, angrily. He said I was constantly complaining, among other things, and for the first time I really listened to him. I felt more objective than I ever had before, like I was really able to sort through what was a real issue for me, and what was his issues disguised as something he thought was my issue. I began to take stock, and for 2 weeks I have worked to improve those areas.

Then, about a week ago, I met a boy. He was a boy from another place, and he was in town. When I met this boy I fell into instant lust, but I put him into that category of "men who are just this incredibly combination of everything I long for but will never find, and if they do happen to cross my path, I could never have." But it turned out the attraction was mututal, and we ended up meeting for drinks.

We talked for hours, and it just felt...great. I felt like he was interested in me, and enjoying my company. I felt appreciated, and I felt desired. It was a feeling I haven't felt in so long, I didn't know what to do with myself. We ended up sleeping together, and I almost spent the night (except he had the most horrible snore!) The next morning he texted me, wanting to know if we could hang out; it was his last day in town, and it really meant a lot to me that he wanted to spend time together. It meant that he actually liked my company.

I texted him back an excuse saying my day was already full. I did this because I didn't want to spend more time with someone who was leaving that night for another place; someone I felt more for than I should considering the circumstances; someone I felt an attachment to that wasn't as real as my feelings made it out to be.

So boy-from-another-land went back home, and I spent 24 hours in euphoria. I fantasized what it would be like if his life wasn't his life, and my life wasn't my life; the alternate universe where we lived together happily ever after. But then I started thinking about how he made me feel, and how Aaron doesn't make me feel GOOD about myself or my life.

See, the way I see it, life is a fucking pain. It isn't always, and it doesn't have to be, but one of the things that makes life better is the people we bring into our lives. There are couples out there with 4 kids living in an efficiency, bringing in $1000 a month, and working 2 jobs each, and they still find a way to be happy with each other.

So I talked to Aaron tonight. I told him how unwanted I have felt, and how unhappy I have been. I needed to know if he really, truly wants to be in this relationship. And unfortunately I feel no better off now than I did before, other than that I've actually orated how I feel. Aaron isn't very good at expressing himself. He doesn't like to talk. He says that's just the way he is, but I think that the truth is talking means he can't avoid what's going on...

He said that school and life in general has been so stressful, and he has often felt for months now that our relationship is sort of the "one thing too many" to have to deal with. That he doesn't want to break up, but sometimes he thinks it would be eaiser on him if we did.

The problem is, with all of our talking, Aaron can't tell me what it is that he thinks will make things better; or what it is that will change the way he feels. I think that *HE* thinks that if the money situation were better...or if he had more free time...or this, or that, or whatever...then everything else would fall into place and get better, too.

That ain't it, kid.

The truth is that if you want something to work, you prioritize it. If you want something to get better, you figure out what isn't great, and you work to make it great. You can't just let the egg rest in the corner; if you want it to hatch, you have to sit on the fucker.

So I don't know where we are now. We both agreed that we don't want to break up, but only one of us seems to be able to vocalize exactly what his specific issues are and what he would like to do to work on them.

I am so sad and feeling so scared and lonely, because I have no idea what to do next. And that, my friends, is where I'm at.