Recent events in my life--and when I say recent, I'm talking since around January, but really some of these events go back to last summer--have forced me to be even more introspective than I usually am, and I think I've finally figured something out, or at least if I didn't figure something out, I'm on my way to figuring it out, and, well, what better place is there to explore something deeply personal than right here in a public forum?
It's about sex (I know, you guys are utterly shocked).
Well, maybe it's not about sex. Maybe it's about love.
Okay, actually it's about both sex and love and what the intersection of the two means to me. Wait, no, that's wrong--you know what? Since I need practice with this, let's not label it. Let's just see what happens and let it play out.
I'm trying to decide where to start. Despite the fact that I could probably make this a multivolume series, I'm pretty sure that's not what you want. I'm just going to write under the assumption everyone here has been reading my blog for years and knows absolutely everything about me but, fine, in case you don't, here's a super quick cheat sheet because I'm considerate like that.
(Okay, so that cheat sheet actually wasn't super quick. I hope you can read it. I recommend zooming in.)
The first thing I'm going to tell you is that despite my professions in the past, I did not, in fact, love La Dispute Guy, and I swear that's not sour grapes. It turns out now that I've had actual distance from him instead of just pretend distance during which we still messaged and talked about super hot things like desecration and pain, I'm realizing what I really was in love with was our sex. La Dispute Guy? Not so much.
The second thing I'm going to tell you is that absolutely, positively, unequivocally, the best sex I've had in my life was with three of the four last people I slept with which is bringing us back to when La Dispute Guy and I met in July (and not that it matters or to be overly exact, especially since I don't owe an explanation about the people I've slept with to anyone, but one of those four people is someone I've been sleeping with for a few years, so really it's like I've slept with three people in the last 10 months because old people don't count*). I know that's kind of--maybe?--too much information, but it's what brought me to the realization(s) I'm writing about now.
And what is that realization? Well, we have to go back way further than July. Not long after C and I started having sex, one of the trillion times that we stopped seeing each other, I mentioned something about it to a coworker, something about how good our sex was and how I didn't know how he could just so easily stop having sex with someone he liked having it with so much. She basically told me that was ridiculous, that people can have good sex with anyone, an assertion at which I balked. I also, in my now-defunct secret blog that I've been kicking around the idea of starting again now that I have secret things I want to write, wrote about how I didn't understand how someone could just throw the kind of sex we had away. In my experience up until that point, which you know if you've studied my cheat sheet, good sex was pretty rare. Louie and I had it, so I knew it existed, but up until C, I never really had it again.
I'm not blaming the people I slept with. I want to make that clear. I dated Louie for two years in high school, from fifteen to seventeen, and started dating Glenn when I was nineteen. The majority of other people I had sex with up to the point of C when I was 34 were people I'd slept with mostly once, maybe twice, and first and second time sex usually isn't the best. Also, I, myself wasn't entirely comfortable, something that, especially for a girl, is pretty important. And regarding Glenn, well, a couple things: one, it's not like we never had good sex (he did get a combination of two and three hearts!). It's just that having good sex--and sex at all--was pretty infrequent. Also, that thing about not being comfortable with the people pre-Glenn? That includes Glenn, actually. Some people just don't mesh. I'm not blaming him (not for everything anyway). It's just the way it was.
So going back to the original point--I think? To be honest, I've been writing this post for a while, and I don't even remember the original point--until a few years after I was divorced, I labored under the belief that good sex was an anomaly, and it was because of that "anomalous" good sex that I held onto C for so long. After I got divorced, I had lovers here and there, but none of them was anything special--yet C still was. He could make me feel things that besides Louie in high school, nobody else could until La Dispute Guy came along, and it made me look at him--at both hims, actually--with dopamine eyes. Now, I won't purport that I was never in love with C and it was all because of sex like with La Dispute Guy because that's obviously ludicrous, but I will say sex was a big part in my not wanting to let my feelings go even though they had so obviously surpassed their expiration date, and the fact that it had devolved to nothing but sex is a big part of why once I did start having the kind of sex I recently started having, I was finally able to let go of whatever lingered. I hate to say it like this, but he was replaced. And, well, I guess La Dispute Guy was, too, because omg, don't even get me started with the sex I've had post-La Dispute Guy (even though I really want to start. Or better yet, can you say sing from the rooftops? Because that's what I really want to do), sex that's totally made me all like, La Dispute Guy who? but that totally didn't make me all like, omg, I'm so in love because lessons!
Lessons, people, lessons! Realizations! Epiphanies!
I'm learning!
And what have I learned? Well, I hate to be heavy handed here, but I learned that good sex, amazing sex, even fuck-me-every-second-for-the-rest-of-my-life sex comes along more than I thought, and I also learned that I don't have to get all starry eyed when it does. I've always been aware that sex doesn't equal love, and for the most part that's never been a problem for me, but fuck-me-every-second-for-the-rest-of-my-life sex? That's harder for me to differentiate if for no other reason than that I want that person to be around all the time for reasons that should be obvious, but in case it's not obvious, it's because when you want someone to fuck you every second, that person being around is kind of a necessity.
I also learned I need to listen to myself more and let go of things when it's time even though in actuality I totally already knew that, but you know, knowing and doing are way different things and plus the listen to myself more part of it is really is new. Real Friends has this lyric, you're still in my mind but not in my chest, and I have to tell you, if ever something encapsulates my feelings for C over the past year and a half or so, it's that line. Despite not feeling the feelings, longing the longings, experiencing the pangs, despite knowing what I felt was over, I convinced myself he was still relevant, but that was only in my head, a vestige of a love I didn't want to leave. To a much lesser extent, that happened with La Dispute Guy, too. Even after I knew I didn't feel what I (misguidedly thought I) felt anymore, I convinced myself I felt it.
I just had a conversation with this girl I work with at the axe bar I work at on Saturday nights--didn't know I work at an axe bar on Saturday nights? Now you do! Come have a beer with the cutest blogger you know--and it fit so perfectly into this post and my life, it was kind of eerie. Pain is inevitable, she said, but suffering isn't.
Classroom-learning-into-real-life-application-mode engage:
I guess we'll see.
*Official Kismetism
It's about sex (I know, you guys are utterly shocked).
Well, maybe it's not about sex. Maybe it's about love.
Okay, actually it's about both sex and love and what the intersection of the two means to me. Wait, no, that's wrong--you know what? Since I need practice with this, let's not label it. Let's just see what happens and let it play out.
I'm trying to decide where to start. Despite the fact that I could probably make this a multivolume series, I'm pretty sure that's not what you want. I'm just going to write under the assumption everyone here has been reading my blog for years and knows absolutely everything about me but, fine, in case you don't, here's a super quick cheat sheet because I'm considerate like that.
(Okay, so that cheat sheet actually wasn't super quick. I hope you can read it. I recommend zooming in.)
The first thing I'm going to tell you is that despite my professions in the past, I did not, in fact, love La Dispute Guy, and I swear that's not sour grapes. It turns out now that I've had actual distance from him instead of just pretend distance during which we still messaged and talked about super hot things like desecration and pain, I'm realizing what I really was in love with was our sex. La Dispute Guy? Not so much.
The second thing I'm going to tell you is that absolutely, positively, unequivocally, the best sex I've had in my life was with three of the four last people I slept with which is bringing us back to when La Dispute Guy and I met in July (and not that it matters or to be overly exact, especially since I don't owe an explanation about the people I've slept with to anyone, but one of those four people is someone I've been sleeping with for a few years, so really it's like I've slept with three people in the last 10 months because old people don't count*). I know that's kind of--maybe?--too much information, but it's what brought me to the realization(s) I'm writing about now.
And what is that realization? Well, we have to go back way further than July. Not long after C and I started having sex, one of the trillion times that we stopped seeing each other, I mentioned something about it to a coworker, something about how good our sex was and how I didn't know how he could just so easily stop having sex with someone he liked having it with so much. She basically told me that was ridiculous, that people can have good sex with anyone, an assertion at which I balked. I also, in my now-defunct secret blog that I've been kicking around the idea of starting again now that I have secret things I want to write, wrote about how I didn't understand how someone could just throw the kind of sex we had away. In my experience up until that point, which you know if you've studied my cheat sheet, good sex was pretty rare. Louie and I had it, so I knew it existed, but up until C, I never really had it again.
I'm not blaming the people I slept with. I want to make that clear. I dated Louie for two years in high school, from fifteen to seventeen, and started dating Glenn when I was nineteen. The majority of other people I had sex with up to the point of C when I was 34 were people I'd slept with mostly once, maybe twice, and first and second time sex usually isn't the best. Also, I, myself wasn't entirely comfortable, something that, especially for a girl, is pretty important. And regarding Glenn, well, a couple things: one, it's not like we never had good sex (he did get a combination of two and three hearts!). It's just that having good sex--and sex at all--was pretty infrequent. Also, that thing about not being comfortable with the people pre-Glenn? That includes Glenn, actually. Some people just don't mesh. I'm not blaming him (not for everything anyway). It's just the way it was.
So going back to the original point--I think? To be honest, I've been writing this post for a while, and I don't even remember the original point--until a few years after I was divorced, I labored under the belief that good sex was an anomaly, and it was because of that "anomalous" good sex that I held onto C for so long. After I got divorced, I had lovers here and there, but none of them was anything special--yet C still was. He could make me feel things that besides Louie in high school, nobody else could until La Dispute Guy came along, and it made me look at him--at both hims, actually--with dopamine eyes. Now, I won't purport that I was never in love with C and it was all because of sex like with La Dispute Guy because that's obviously ludicrous, but I will say sex was a big part in my not wanting to let my feelings go even though they had so obviously surpassed their expiration date, and the fact that it had devolved to nothing but sex is a big part of why once I did start having the kind of sex I recently started having, I was finally able to let go of whatever lingered. I hate to say it like this, but he was replaced. And, well, I guess La Dispute Guy was, too, because omg, don't even get me started with the sex I've had post-La Dispute Guy (even though I really want to start. Or better yet, can you say sing from the rooftops? Because that's what I really want to do), sex that's totally made me all like, La Dispute Guy who? but that totally didn't make me all like, omg, I'm so in love because lessons!
Lessons, people, lessons! Realizations! Epiphanies!
I'm learning!
And what have I learned? Well, I hate to be heavy handed here, but I learned that good sex, amazing sex, even fuck-me-every-second-for-the-rest-of-my-life sex comes along more than I thought, and I also learned that I don't have to get all starry eyed when it does. I've always been aware that sex doesn't equal love, and for the most part that's never been a problem for me, but fuck-me-every-second-for-the-rest-of-my-life sex? That's harder for me to differentiate if for no other reason than that I want that person to be around all the time for reasons that should be obvious, but in case it's not obvious, it's because when you want someone to fuck you every second, that person being around is kind of a necessity.
I also learned I need to listen to myself more and let go of things when it's time even though in actuality I totally already knew that, but you know, knowing and doing are way different things and plus the listen to myself more part of it is really is new. Real Friends has this lyric, you're still in my mind but not in my chest, and I have to tell you, if ever something encapsulates my feelings for C over the past year and a half or so, it's that line. Despite not feeling the feelings, longing the longings, experiencing the pangs, despite knowing what I felt was over, I convinced myself he was still relevant, but that was only in my head, a vestige of a love I didn't want to leave. To a much lesser extent, that happened with La Dispute Guy, too. Even after I knew I didn't feel what I (misguidedly thought I) felt anymore, I convinced myself I felt it.
I just had a conversation with this girl I work with at the axe bar I work at on Saturday nights--didn't know I work at an axe bar on Saturday nights? Now you do! Come have a beer with the cutest blogger you know--and it fit so perfectly into this post and my life, it was kind of eerie. Pain is inevitable, she said, but suffering isn't.
Classroom-learning-into-real-life-application-mode engage:
I guess we'll see.
*Official Kismetism
