So I need to tell G that I have dates with other people. The reason I need to talk to him about it - his habits present a scheduling/calendaring challenge for me which I want to resolve. Yesterday, I had a date. G invited me to see "Anna Karenina". I immediately cancelled the date (I felt creepy about the date anyway) and rescheduled it for Thursday. The guy whom I cancelled said "Sure, no problem, but please do not reschedule Thursday" and I promised him not to. But if I am to date these guys, I need to have an advance notice from G about when he wants to see me, and I am happy to prioritize him above everyone else -- all I need from him is advance notice. I think it is a reasonable request. Also, when I was younger, I liked spontaneity, but now I enjoy having everything planned out on the calendar. I guess it is part of aging. Or maybe it is part of my not being manic due to effective drugs - mania comes together with spontaneity, doesn't it?

He has given me absolutely no reason to believe that he would be surprised, hurt, or offended by such a request; quite on the contrary, I believe that he will support me and celebrate with me (if I find anything worthy of a celebration which remains to be seen - the make-up artist took a whole year before she found her guy). He has done nothing but nice things for me and I really should not be concerned but, irrationally perhaps, I am.

Moreover, I think he would be deeply offended if he learned of my posting this. If he learned of my hesitation.

Here is why.

When I told him that I will spend the Christmas break with D. in Europe, he was really happy for me because he sees that I lead a very austere, hard existence and getting a break complete with plays, art exhibitions, friends, and a guy is well deserved. But... this is what gives me a pause. I have known D for 25 years. I did not go out of my way to seek him - I have just maintained the connection. So it is a bit like Julia, the woman who is the mother of G's two youngest sons, with whom he spends a month every other month - they have known each other since college. I have known D since high school. Similar things. Old contacts. Symmetrical, so to speak.

I have not told him about Charles yet, but I will, because I will be gone for a whole weekend. I will explain that during my marriage I alienated most everyone from my past life, and tried to alienated Charles as well by pushing him away, but with him, was unsuccessful, and was able to recover him immediately once I became interested in rebuilding the relationship. I am sure G will be happy that I was able to retrieve at least one person, because it sure feels better when your life is more continuous and less fragmented, and to have that continuity you need to maintain old connections. So I do not a see a problem with Charles. But Charles is another old contact - I met him almost 20 years ago.

Dating is different - it is trying to acquire new contacts. And that is what makes the situation asymmetrical and gives me a pause. G wanted to show me the photos of his present and past ladies. I sat back, prepared to see a long list of pictures. I was shocked - all I saw was three ladies. One a former gf in the Bay Area, one - Julia, and one a stunningly beautiful young woman in the South of France. The French woman is a true beauty, both face and body, simply gorgeous, a rare beauty. At any rate, he is turning 47 in December and for someone who is that old and who made a point out of having multiple partners, that really did not sounds like a lot to me. But he told me that "now you know of everyone". Is he lying to me? He has no reason to because I am clearly accepting of his lifestyle - it is not as if I had an arithmetic limit that said that four women is OK but five is one too many. Moreover, he is flying with a stop in Paris in December and we discussed whether he should ask the French lady to come see him. He will have 6 hours in Paris. I do not know the geography of France and I have never been to the South of France so I inquired how long it takes from there to Paris - 2 hours? He said "No, 6 hours by train at least". I said "Then it would be an undue hardship to ask her to come - 6 hours is a lot." He added "And she will need to "compose a story" for her husband" I said "Even more so, if she needs to create lies AND travel for so long to be with you for just a few hours, it would be creating undue hardship, I think". He agreed with me. Not that I do not want them to see each other, but to me 6 hours by train is way too much, plus she has a young child so there are logistical hurdles. At any rate, if he trusts me enough to seek my advice on whether or not to meet with former gf's, I think he would have felt safe enough to tell me if he had concurrent r/s in the Bay Area now. He sees that I am not judgmental, right? That leads me to conclude that he does not have such r/s. Another small detail - at some point he told me that he was on his last condom. Several days later, he came to my apartment having stopped at the grocery store on the way. He gave me a couple grocery store bags. They contained food and a pack of condoms. I got a little embarrassed (should not have been embarrassed at almost 42, but could not help it) and gave the condoms to him, saying "this goes to the bedroom". But I could not help noticing that he was not with anyone during those couple of days that he did not see me because otherwise he would have come with an opened pack of condoms. This is just one small datapoint, this could very well be a coincidence, but I do notice such little details. So at least let us put it safely he does not create an impression of a guy with too many competing demands on his time from various women, because he sees me often enough and when he does not he has either parents or one of three children to spend time with - they keep him busy. I do understand that he may be saying that he is, say, writing code with his oldest daughter when in fact he is seeing another woman, but what for??

So this creates an asymmetrical situation - I am seeking new men in the Bay Area and he is not seeking new women in the Bay Area, and that makes me uncomfortable.

Yesterday after the movie he mentioned that Anna Karenina first fought jealousy in her husband but then exhibited jealousy in her r/s with Vronsky. I said "yes, true, and moreover, her husband's jealousy was well-founded because Anna was Vronsky's mistress whereas Anna's jealousy was baseless because Vronsky was not attracted to Sorokina". He did not buy my argument. For him, it is all the same - with reason, without reason, all the same. He just disapproves of jealousy in general. All the more reason for me to feel totally comfortable mentioning that I want to date other people, especially given the fact that he is also present in the Bay Area for half the time.

And yet, I do not know how to start this conversation. Thank you for reading and please help me out.