Update from the Brimstone Castle of Little Action.
Mr Printer
Despite the abruptly ended 45min coffee date zero, he has been in touch daily since. Quite entertaining, but very superficial really. Feeling I'm going to have to have a kind of ultimatumy chat with him because although it's admirable that he is so committed to being involved with his children on a daily basis around his shifts, it leaves zero time to develop anything with me, and he's not articulating any effort to make that time.
Mr Sexty
I had deleted / archived him after he was due to call me but didn't. My view at the time was that this had 'smoked him out' to prove that all he really wanted was someone to share sex gifs with (🙄). To cut a long story short, 3 weeks later he's back on the scene and there may have been a bit of a joint misunderstanding. We had a first call earlier this week in which he was quite open, honest and ticked a few of my boxes. I may rename him... although the gif chat is still ongoing 🤷♀️
Still limited to only a couple of apps due to ongoing issues with STBXH.
Nowt much else doing apart from a brief but very eye opening encounter with someone over a few days this week when the possibility of a FWB arrangement was being explored. A couple of evenings of the kind of sexting and videos (his) that makes Mr Sexty's efforts pale into insignificance... And then a message two days later to say he'd found someone else to FWB with 😆.
I know there's been lots of chat here previously about the whole sexting thing but it is definitely still new to me and this week's encounter prompted me to have to make loads of new decisions about my boundaries and also body confidence (increasing, as I've now lost 1.5st and am not that far away now from my weight loss goal ). So in a way it was very empowering.
I'm also increasingly coming round to fact that FWB is really what would work for me rather than anything with higher expectations or demands right now, which is also liberating in a way.
Another outcome of this particular encounter is that I've actually started writing erotic literature, so definitely some unexpected extra Benefits!
Finally, had an interesting chat with DC1 last night who discovered their Dad is on Tinder. They were surprisingly pragmatic (although it didn't appear to be on their mind that I might be on the apps too... and I didn't mention ofc). This is a significant step in terms of one child accepting the separation (which happened a year ago) and the inevitable next steps. A little win, though I know DC2 isn't ready for that and I'm in no rush or need to push it.