So, after taking a year off dating, sex and all things
romantic, I was super excited to get back in the game! I had all this new knowledge and
understanding that I couldn’t wait to put to work. Little did I know that there was so much
learning yet to be done. I equate it to studying
statistics in school, then getting a job and having to apply that learning in
the real world. There is still so far to
go! Mainly, I think you learn all the
things you don’t know.
Since August, I have been dating. It has been interesting. I had a little bit of a relapse into Girl
Brain while pursuing things with the first gentleman, the Russian. He and I had been working together and he
showed interest and was pretty insistent about chasing me, until I reciprocated
and then he disappeared and I dropped back into my normal patterns of obsessing
and chasing. That is, until The Blue
Fairy came up and talked me down. It was
a bad scene, but I got over quite quickly, faster than ever before and most
importantly, I could see it happening and knew it had to change. Nothing came of it. We were from different parts of the country
and we parted amicably. It wasn’t the
right relationship for me, but I was just so excited to be a participant in the
dating world instead of an observer, I lost all sense of myself (that, and I
was super horny, let’s face it!).
After that, I tried online dating. It was okay.
I was seeing one guy for a while, but we discovered that we were looking
for different things. I also learned a
bunch about how I need to go about forming a relationship with someone. I still have a lot of work to do on trust and
acceptance of kindness. When it comes to
forming a romantic relationship, I need to move at a pace slightly slower than
molasses on a cold winter’s day. I still
have training wheels on and was trying to ride a big-girl bike.
Also, my therapist suggested long ago that when I start
dating, I should institute the “90-day cookie” rule. This means that you refrain from getting
intimate with a partner until 90 days (or so) into the relationship. This gives time to develop the intimacy between
the couple before adding the physical.
Well, I was still in the middle of my year off when she suggested it and
the thought of adding 3 more months was like increasing a prison term for good behaviour. Like always, she proved to be right. I felt myself physically drawing away from a
relationship because I couldn’t balance both physical and emotional intimacy
all at once. Being emotionally
vulnerable while physically naked was overwhelming.
I have always found it easy to be physically intimate
when there is no emotional investment, but as soon as feelings get involved, I
freak out. Not surprisingly, it was
about 3 months before The Ex and I first had intercourse and we ended up
staying together for many years. We
waited because I was a virgin and I wanted to be sure that I lost it with
someone who I really cared about. And
isn’t that really the same thing I want from a relationship today?
Coming out of this year, three months seemed like
torture. I had already waited twelve…
actually thirteen months. I wanted it to
be done with. Also, it felt like a new
type of “virginity”. I had made such a
big deal out of the year and now that it was at an end, it felt momentous! Who would the lucky gent be to end the
year?! In my mind, I had made it into
something bigger than it was and abandoned some of the things I had learned in
order to get it over with. Obviously, I
didn’t totally rush out and bang the first guy out there. Even with the Russian, we courted for a bit
first. Well, now that all that fuss is
done with, I’m back on track. Three
months doesn’t seem like such a hurdle.
With our busy lives these days, it goes by in a blink of an eye.
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