May10
I don’t think today’s TMI post will offend or bother anyone at all. I will be sharing my thoughts and revelations on my own past relationships and dating experiences. Nothing racy. But if you’d rather not know/read, then by all means, do come back tomorrow. Thanks!
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I think we all get to a point in our lives where we look back on every romantic (or not) relationship we’ve ever had and begin to wonder about patterns and failures and such. While one could easily deem any relationship that ended a failure, I choose to see them all as learning experiences and happenstance (one of my favorite words). I became boy crazy at a young age. I think around pre-school! Ha-ha! But it’s true! I got “married” to my friend Kelly R. and made wedding cakes in the sand with him, we must have been 3 or 4 years old?! Yep, that early! In kindergarten the girls would chase the boys in the playground singing “Going to the chapel” to freak them out. I think that set a theme for me a bit after that.
While shy at first, I soon became the one to ask the boys out. Or at the very least hand them the opportunity to ask me out on a silver fucking platter! I rarely if ever played hard to get (but damn, that is so fun!). Oh sure, I’d get rejected occasionally. I’d get dumped, brutally, too. I would wallow in misery as a result, but would always find a way to get back out there and there always seemed to be a new boy to give me the attention I desired and wanted to give back as well. My first official boyfriend was in 7th grade. I met him at the first school dance I ever attended. He was such a dork! He danced, well, not great. My friends were merciless. But I saw something in him and when he asked me to dance and later to be his girlfriend, I said yes. I had my first real French kiss on Halloween night a few weeks later. It was swoon-worthy, I can assure you. Though I later dumped him for telling me I looked like shit when I was sick with the flu and he insisted on coming to see me even though I begged him not to come over. Also, he said he wanted to remain friends. That didn’t happen.
After that first one? Well, it was like someone had thrown the checkered flags and I was suddenly in overdrive. Every boy in school was a possible mate! But there were always the ones I wanted so badly that I obsessed over them. Preppies, mostly. Unattainable dudes. I was the awkward-poor girl constantly trying too hard to fit in or just not be noticed. I longed to wear sweaters and pegged Guess? jeans like the preppy girls, but they were so mean to me that I soon gave that notion up entirely. I always had guy friends, but there was a line I wouldn’t cross in that and I later found out many of them were gay. It was never an issue.
But then I met an older boy that would change my life forever. It was the summer before 8th grade. His name was Steve and I met him and my future BFF Marc at the same time that fateful day at the rec center pool. I was hanging out with my friend Jenny when we started talking to them. I didn’t know it at the time, but Steve would later become a fixation in my mind during my darkest times. It’s unfortunate that though we tried (we dated four times) we never did end up together. I have no regrets, but there was always electricity between us. While he disappointed me time and again over the next four years, I will never forget him.
My first serious boyfriend was the cutest boy in school. I was in 8th grade, he in 7th. I wore his Giants jacket and felt like the queen of love! He had these blue eyes that would do me in every time! *sigh* We dated for four whole months, an eternity in teenage time. I dreamt of having sex with him. I wanted him to be my first. But then he broke up with me and broke my heart and gave no reason why (I later found out that his mom had grounded him for over a month and just thought it best this way). That was my first true heartbreak. I bounced back easily enough though. I hadn’t begun the pattern of drowning in my own misery and self-harming thoughts.
I dated a lot of boys between the ages of 11 and 14. I lost my virginity at 14. It was nothing special. I wasn’t even dating the guy. But I was in love/lust with him for sure. He had already broken my heart once by that point, so the disappointment of the night wasn’t so much of a surprise as another in a string of disappointments. Then I met my abuser and for the next five years lived in a near-hostage situation. Few people know or can understand what that was like, I have no doubt that that relationship shaped me and made me the fearful and un-trusting gal I am today, but I wouldn’t go back and change it, either. I wouldn’t be with my husband if I did. Ya know?
When I finally escaped the abuser and started my life again, I went right back into boy-overdrive! I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted and was still pretty shaken (though in denial) from my recent past. So you can imagine the kinds of guys I was attracting: assholes, losers, etc. It wasn’t until I had had the worst breakup ever, was at wit’s end and not looking for love at all, that I met my husband. I’d just been promoted and had to do the interviews for x-mas help at a music store. B was my very first interview. I hired him, we became good friends and later (Doy!) we started dating and eventually got married and junk. He was the first friend I’d ever had feelings for or dated. So glad I broke that stupid rule! Ha-ha!
So now I’m at that point where I’m looking back and I see that what I had wanted all along and only ever once received (from my husband) was to be loved for me, as I am, without a desire to change me (from the guy). All I ever wanted was love, affection, poetry, to be desired like nothing else. No boy ever wrote me poetry or songs. Every boy I’d ever dated played guitar! Every single one of them. It’s freaky to consider. But none wrote me a song (that I know of). None surprised me with romantic proclamations or silly spontaneous acts of love. Romance? I’ve barely touched her waters. My husband used to try at least. He wrote me a poem once, I have it on a wall. Though I shared many things and too much of myself with many boys, I don’t think I was ever seen as something to cherish or hold onto or of serious value. There could be many reasons for this and perhaps they did and I was unaware. Never the less, I am happy with the boy I chose to keep.
After talking with an old friend a couple of weeks ago though, I realized that I missed out on a lot of things. I missed out on a mature dating environment. I missed out on being chased and wanted and desired in a mature-sexual way, rather than the immature kind which is all I’d ever known. None of those boys/guys wanted to make a woman out of me. None really even bothered with trying to give me an orgasm. At some point I stopped caring about myself entirely and became the pleaser in ways I’d rather not recount at the mo. I know these things happen due to my own conduct and choices as well as those involved at the time, but one cannot help but wonder, ya know? Not what ifs in the sense of any certain person or time. Just, well…
I want to be wanted like nothing else around. I want someone to want me like a fish wants water to swim in. I want someone to want me sexually as though they cannot go on until they have me. I want silly displays of love and romance! I want deep conversations and lost time! I want to laugh and love and give the same in return. I miss all of those ridiculous crushes and the ride of emotions that went along with them. I want spontaneity and lust! I want surprises again! It’s been so long!
And when I get glimpses of these things in my marriage I glow a glow that no one’s glowed before! I float upon feathery clouds. I smile all day the next day and no one knows why. Last Tuesday my husband made me feel so wanted and loved and just amazing! He knew what I wanted/needed before I did or could form the thought. No words were spoken. There was a moment where I felt drunk with fulfillment and pleasure. That moment was like no other I’d ever felt before. I felt both lost and perfectly in my place. Swoon-y would be how I might describe it. It only touches the surface, but it’ll do. Ha! But then it was over and the next day we went back to our weekday routines. The previous night a fantasy or a dream. A ray of lucidity in an otherwise manic world.
And so I long for that feeling again. I long for getting lost in a moment in time with the man I love like no other. I can’t look back on the past and wonder what went wrong when some things are so right in my life right now. I just don’t know if it will come again. But at least I had it, right? I just wish the routine wouldn’t define our lives so. I wish he could see or know or feel what he does to me. I fear he’s fallen out of love with me, but then on that night I had no doubt we were one. Since then (it’s been a week) it’s been different. And yesterday he said something to me that cut so deep I told him, “I don’t think you realize how hurtful that was” and burst into tears though I tried my best to keep ’em in. He’s never done that before. And when I said, “Why are you even with me then? I don’t think you know anymore.” he said nothing in response. It’s always one step forward, two steps back. I try not to get down about it. Life is what it is and all. But what he said really hurt and how could he not know it? He was very remorseful, but I can’t get passed it. I still can’t forget the last time he lashed out at me. He’s so serious and quiet lately and I am in so much need of attention and companionship that it is painful.
I am so grateful to have him in my life. I am so madly in love with him that sometimes it freaks me out. Mostly because I don’t think he is in love with me anymore. He loves me, maybe even likes me, but it feels like we’re just roommates sometimes. And that hurts more than anything else. We’ll be okay, I know. But I’m a fool for love and boy crazy for sure. I’ll be the funky old lady with the brightly colored outfits no one can understand telling the young folk to live it up while they still can. They’ll think I’m drunk or senile and by then who knows, that may just be true. Ha-ha!
Thanks for reading and feel free to share your worries, TMI or otherwise, questions, etc…in comments.
<3
S