Adventure Girl puts the pieces together
A while back I wrote a post on being THAT girl. Recently, and to my horror, I discovered I can be another kind of girl, too. The girl you see on trains with a black eye, looking defeated, the one who won’t look you in the eye, the one who loses herself, her values, her family and her friends, in trying to be whatever she needs to be to earn her partner’s approval, to keep his attention, to be that special person to him. The girl who lets herself be beaten down and abused and then begs for forgiveness.
‘Of all the girls, I choose you.’
When I heard these words I was on top of the world. Finally. This is what I’d been waiting for. These were the words I craved, what I’d put up with everything to hear. Words that blinded out every lie, every betrayal, every hurt, and the complete disrespect shown to me.
I had become the Battered Woman.
Self-esteem is something both tangible and intangible. It manifests in all kinds of ways. The way we try to earn good grades, or seek praise, the way we grasp for the attentions of prospective mates. It can also make us yearn for things that are bad for us. Self-sabotage, if you like. It can mean we don’t trust when people are good to us, and seek out those who mistreat us instead, because this is all we think we deserve. It is what feels real to us, safe, and familiar.
Over the past year I have let someone close to me hurt me, lie to me and manipulate me, over and over. Every time I was ready to walk away he drew me back in. Somehow the memories of the hurt and the betrayal blurred and I was blinded by hope. This time it will be better. This time it will be fixed. This time I can heal. It never was and I never did.
In fact, each time I went back the situation got worse, because I was a little weaker than before, hating myself that much more for giving in, for being wilfully blind. Shame ate away at me until there was nothing left but a blinding, desperate need turning me into a person I despised.
A wonderful friend described it as like being addicted to playing the pokies. You insert coin after coin, blow hundreds, thousands of dollars, waiting for the rare times you put your money in and get a few dollars back. Even if you hit the jackpot, it doesn’t last, and how much money have you thrown away to get there? The coins come out eventually, just enough to keep you trying, to see each win as so much more significant than it actually is. Then the machine ticks over. No more flashing lights. No more returns. And so you insert more coins, starting over, hoping against hope for another return, another jackpot.
This has been me. Waiting for the rare times when things are good, when I’m getting the attention, the love, the security I crave. Never the respect I deserve.
Each time seems like a breakthrough. ‘He did THIS’, or, ‘He said THAT’, I tell my friends, bursting at the seams.
They look at me, uncertain, sometimes with awful pity. ‘Isn’t that how it should be all the time?’
To me, now beaten down, throwing good time, effort, love, and even money, after bad, I say, ‘But he sees me, knows me, flawed as I am, and still loves me. The others, they never saw me. Not really.’ Those others being any guy who has ever shown me love and respect, who has cherished me, who I have tested and tested and finally pushed away. Because I haven’t trusted that what they were showing me was real. How could it be? It must be cracked and flawed, or else aimed at a false image of me.
This is my trampolining love and also my leaky boat.
Finally I have some perspective. My trip gave me enough distance, enough time, to break the cycle. Working on my underlying needs, I was able to begin to recognise the situation and also see how I got into this mess in the first place.
It has meant that when I came back and it happened again, worse than before, I was able to see the situation for what it was. Recognise in myself the Battered Woman. This time I was able to walk away and stay there.
Still, I know it will take time. To not want to go back, to grieve and to heal. Time and space and reason.
I am very lucky. I have incredible friends to support me, an awesome psych to help me work through my underlying issues, and I’m not afraid to ask for help.
My biggest enemy at this point is myself. I have to stop from weakening and continue to build my self esteem.
Because not going back is only the start of the battle. I have to address the underlying need, the child in me who seeks out a partner who will treat her badly, who in her messed up way equates this to being loved, to re-train my childhood brain to seek love in better ways and to offer her the support and protection she badly needs.
Then one day when I meet someone who treats me with respect, who loves and cherishes me, I won’t cringe away, feeling unworthy. I won’t test their love to breaking point. I will be able to accept that it is real, solid, dependable, and that it is actually intended for me.
-AG
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
26 January 2011
11 October 2010
'Six months in a leaky boat'
Adventure Girl learns how to swim
So you’re in this relationship, and it’s had a bit of a rocky start, travelled some rough seas, but finally you’ve reached calmer waters, and you can see land up ahead.
In real terms, this is the point where you know you love them, and they love you back. They say it and they show it and you feel it. You’re floating, and it’s thrilling, and it’s peaceful. Then BAM.
The storm.
Out of nowhere you’re throwing a 15-year-old tantrum, all the while aching for them to hold you, to reassure you, to carry you to shore.
Of course they don’t. You’re behaving like a child.
It gets worse. You panic. You’re grasping. You don’t just want to be rescued; you’re drowning and feel like you can’t get to the shore without them.
But they pull away. If you’re lucky they offer you a life-raft, but most times they’re reaching for one for themselves.
‘See?’ you tell yourself. They don’t love you, not really.
The storm might come in the form of that nagging thing they once told you that still doesn’t quite add up, or yet another text message from the Ghost of Shaggers’ Past. You ask AGAIN for an explanation, you want to know AGAIN why she is texting him. Not, as he supposes, to find the worst in him, to prove that he’s lying, cheating, but to be reassured that he’s not.
It’s a test not of him, but of his love for you. You’re looking for cracks and testing if the boat is watertight.
Because can he really love you? I mean, REALLY? Love YOU? Doesn’t he know who you are underneath it all? Won’t he run screaming when he finally discovers the truth, when he finally sees who YOU are?
So you push and you squeeze and you test, but it’s not about not trusting him, it’s about not believing in you.
If you think of the relationship as like being on a leaky boat, you see yourself running around trying to plug and test every last hole. But when you test the holes, you put more pressure on them, and most times make them bigger. Do it too often and chances are there will be so many holes the ship will sink.
The other part of you, the secret part, doesn’t just test the holes that are already there. This part wants to be sure that the boat can withstand an attack. This part steers the ship into the storm instead of away from it, to see if you can weather it, and punches new holes to see if together you can plug them up and keep afloat. Eventually, if you punch enough holes, or steer into enough storms, you’ll both be grasping for life rafts.
Deep down, you know where the fear comes from, a history of sunken boats as long as the Shipwreck Coast. Too many people have been in love with you, but not loved you. Because they didn’t know you, didn’t see you. They saw an idea of you. You felt like a fraud and it never worked out. Because the more they tried to love you, the more you were convinced that they didn’t. Or rather, couldn’t. Because they never saw who you really were. Never saw the rocks beneath the surface until you rammed your boat into them.
But now you’ve found someone different. Someone who sees, who knows. Who has seen your flaws, and still loves, just as you have seen his. He can even tease you about them and make you laugh at yourself. This time you want it to be different. You want to BE different.
You’ve learned your lesson.
Instead of trying to plug and test every possible gap, instead of punching new holes, you will try to accept that nothing is watertight, that the ship can have a few cracks in it, and still stay afloat.
Because even if you do manage to seal the boat completely, there’s no guarantee it won’t one day break down. The motor could simply run out of steam.
And if it does? You might be battered by the sea and swallow water until you choke, but you will make it onto shore. You’ve done it before and you can do it again. And again. And again. You have a life raft, and a vest, and you know how to swim.
-AG
So you’re in this relationship, and it’s had a bit of a rocky start, travelled some rough seas, but finally you’ve reached calmer waters, and you can see land up ahead.
In real terms, this is the point where you know you love them, and they love you back. They say it and they show it and you feel it. You’re floating, and it’s thrilling, and it’s peaceful. Then BAM.
The storm.
Out of nowhere you’re throwing a 15-year-old tantrum, all the while aching for them to hold you, to reassure you, to carry you to shore.
Of course they don’t. You’re behaving like a child.
It gets worse. You panic. You’re grasping. You don’t just want to be rescued; you’re drowning and feel like you can’t get to the shore without them.
But they pull away. If you’re lucky they offer you a life-raft, but most times they’re reaching for one for themselves.
‘See?’ you tell yourself. They don’t love you, not really.
The storm might come in the form of that nagging thing they once told you that still doesn’t quite add up, or yet another text message from the Ghost of Shaggers’ Past. You ask AGAIN for an explanation, you want to know AGAIN why she is texting him. Not, as he supposes, to find the worst in him, to prove that he’s lying, cheating, but to be reassured that he’s not.
It’s a test not of him, but of his love for you. You’re looking for cracks and testing if the boat is watertight.
Because can he really love you? I mean, REALLY? Love YOU? Doesn’t he know who you are underneath it all? Won’t he run screaming when he finally discovers the truth, when he finally sees who YOU are?
So you push and you squeeze and you test, but it’s not about not trusting him, it’s about not believing in you.
If you think of the relationship as like being on a leaky boat, you see yourself running around trying to plug and test every last hole. But when you test the holes, you put more pressure on them, and most times make them bigger. Do it too often and chances are there will be so many holes the ship will sink.
The other part of you, the secret part, doesn’t just test the holes that are already there. This part wants to be sure that the boat can withstand an attack. This part steers the ship into the storm instead of away from it, to see if you can weather it, and punches new holes to see if together you can plug them up and keep afloat. Eventually, if you punch enough holes, or steer into enough storms, you’ll both be grasping for life rafts.
Deep down, you know where the fear comes from, a history of sunken boats as long as the Shipwreck Coast. Too many people have been in love with you, but not loved you. Because they didn’t know you, didn’t see you. They saw an idea of you. You felt like a fraud and it never worked out. Because the more they tried to love you, the more you were convinced that they didn’t. Or rather, couldn’t. Because they never saw who you really were. Never saw the rocks beneath the surface until you rammed your boat into them.
But now you’ve found someone different. Someone who sees, who knows. Who has seen your flaws, and still loves, just as you have seen his. He can even tease you about them and make you laugh at yourself. This time you want it to be different. You want to BE different.
You’ve learned your lesson.
Instead of trying to plug and test every possible gap, instead of punching new holes, you will try to accept that nothing is watertight, that the ship can have a few cracks in it, and still stay afloat.
Because even if you do manage to seal the boat completely, there’s no guarantee it won’t one day break down. The motor could simply run out of steam.
And if it does? You might be battered by the sea and swallow water until you choke, but you will make it onto shore. You’ve done it before and you can do it again. And again. And again. You have a life raft, and a vest, and you know how to swim.
-AG
01 October 2010
Trampolining Love
Adventure Girl bounces back
We all know about the rebound effect. Heart torn, ego shattered, we desperately want to feel the upward rush of replacement love, or at least a new almost-crush. Anything to fill that gaping hole of hurt (or according to Dr Helen Fisher, of Rutgers University in New Jersey, to get our next dopamine fix).
Chances are, the first person to fill that void is not the most likely long-term partner, but rather, someone easy, someone gentle, someone safe (or in the case of the Attachment-Avoider or Commitment-Phobe, someone completely unobtainable). Either way, Mr (or Ms) New is ultimately, not for you.
I tend to oscillate between a Mr Bad and a Mr Safe (though one of these days Mr Bad will surely rip me into so many shreds I’ll turn to Mr Unobtainable. I was almost there, once, having an obsessive crush on someone young enough to break the Half-Plus-Seven Rule. At the first sign that something might actually happen between us, I ran away, screaming).
Because I bounce from one extreme to the other, being acted upon, rather than acting on, it ends up feeling like a constant state of inertia. I don't act, I react. Heart torn, I retreat to a Mr Safe. Mr Safe waits for me to recover. He is kind, he is besotted, and though I might grow to love him, I am not in love with him.
From safety I grow restless and long for the excitement and risk of a Mr Bad. I crave the in-love feeling of dopamine. I may even create drama within the stillness, like an artificial stimulant. If I can’t feel in-love, let me feel the imitation cocaine-effect of a make-up... and eventually (always) a break-up.
If I'm lucky, I will find a Mr New who also resembles a Mr Bad, so I can fall in love all over again.
One day I hope the lessons learned from this constant back and forth will even out my cravings, that I will find someone who excites me who is also relatively safe. Like when you decide to stop bouncing on a trampoline. The push-offs get smaller and smaller, until you come to a complete stop, only you are right where you want to be, whether that's on your own, or with Mr Just-Right.
But it isn't only the dopamine-cravings that keep me jumping. According to descriptors of my personality type (Myers Briggs-style, if you believe that stuff), I have a tendency to 'striv[e] for the Ultimate Relationship', and will 'fall into the habit of moving from relationship to relationship, always in search of a more perfect partner'. To make matters worse, I also have 'difficulty leaving a bad relationship'.
It's this combination of perfectionist and idealist (mixed with some attachment-anxiety, according to a psychologist friend) that will keep me reading that 'Use-by' date as a 'Best Before'.
One lesson I have learned that I can share, is that like wine, no matter how good a relationship is when you first get it, once it's past its peak, it will start to taste a whole lot like vinegar. Let's hope I find a Mr Just-Right before I have to taste that again.
-AG
We all know about the rebound effect. Heart torn, ego shattered, we desperately want to feel the upward rush of replacement love, or at least a new almost-crush. Anything to fill that gaping hole of hurt (or according to Dr Helen Fisher, of Rutgers University in New Jersey, to get our next dopamine fix).
Chances are, the first person to fill that void is not the most likely long-term partner, but rather, someone easy, someone gentle, someone safe (or in the case of the Attachment-Avoider or Commitment-Phobe, someone completely unobtainable). Either way, Mr (or Ms) New is ultimately, not for you.
I tend to oscillate between a Mr Bad and a Mr Safe (though one of these days Mr Bad will surely rip me into so many shreds I’ll turn to Mr Unobtainable. I was almost there, once, having an obsessive crush on someone young enough to break the Half-Plus-Seven Rule. At the first sign that something might actually happen between us, I ran away, screaming).
Because I bounce from one extreme to the other, being acted upon, rather than acting on, it ends up feeling like a constant state of inertia. I don't act, I react. Heart torn, I retreat to a Mr Safe. Mr Safe waits for me to recover. He is kind, he is besotted, and though I might grow to love him, I am not in love with him.
From safety I grow restless and long for the excitement and risk of a Mr Bad. I crave the in-love feeling of dopamine. I may even create drama within the stillness, like an artificial stimulant. If I can’t feel in-love, let me feel the imitation cocaine-effect of a make-up... and eventually (always) a break-up.
If I'm lucky, I will find a Mr New who also resembles a Mr Bad, so I can fall in love all over again.
One day I hope the lessons learned from this constant back and forth will even out my cravings, that I will find someone who excites me who is also relatively safe. Like when you decide to stop bouncing on a trampoline. The push-offs get smaller and smaller, until you come to a complete stop, only you are right where you want to be, whether that's on your own, or with Mr Just-Right.
But it isn't only the dopamine-cravings that keep me jumping. According to descriptors of my personality type (Myers Briggs-style, if you believe that stuff), I have a tendency to 'striv[e] for the Ultimate Relationship', and will 'fall into the habit of moving from relationship to relationship, always in search of a more perfect partner'. To make matters worse, I also have 'difficulty leaving a bad relationship'.
It's this combination of perfectionist and idealist (mixed with some attachment-anxiety, according to a psychologist friend) that will keep me reading that 'Use-by' date as a 'Best Before'.
One lesson I have learned that I can share, is that like wine, no matter how good a relationship is when you first get it, once it's past its peak, it will start to taste a whole lot like vinegar. Let's hope I find a Mr Just-Right before I have to taste that again.
-AG
04 July 2010
Married Sex – A fairytale in three parts
***Warning – this post may ruin your best friend threesome fantasy***
Once upon a time, long term couples were encouraged to ‘share everything’, from a strand of spaghetti to the grizzly details of the monthly cycle. The idea was that this constant sharing, this living in each others’ pockets, was supposed to bring you closer together. And it does. You’ll be best-friend close.
The problem is, you don’t tend to want to shag your best mate.
Worse, your living arrangement most closely resembles that of a sibling. Again, not someone you want to shag.
Enter the world of Married Sex.
Not only does sexing your partner start to seem about as appealing as humping a manky dish cloth, you may find you’re not into sex at all.
This is what happened to me.
At the time I blamed the pill, not realising I was living with a constant libido suppressant called a husband. All I knew was that over time sex had stopped being something I couldn’t get enough of, and started becoming a chore - something I did out of a vague sense of obligation that would have to wait until after I’d finished the ironing and scrubbing the floor.
To be fair, my husband had also stopped beating down the door to rip my knickers off. So I decided (with some relief) that he didn’t really want it either.
During this time (which I consider some freakish aberration), not only did I rarely crave sex, not even to DIY, the thought of shagging my partner was a turn-off. In fact I used to dread it.
The most satisfying sex we had during the long drought was on the rare occasions when my sleeping brain decided it had been long enough, thank you very much, and I would wake from a raunchy dream, desperate for a shag. In the dark, still half-asleep, I could jump my husband and not notice I was shagging him.
Experts now realise that the previously advocated ‘closeness’ and total entanglement of each others’ lives is the worst possible thing you can do if you want to avoid this deadening drought I call Married Sex. They concede that by the time your husband has seen you in your pink fluffy slippers with mascara blubbing down your face and once you’ve experienced his regular AGBs (1), when you have no privacy left, no un-mutual friends, and no me-only time, your desire for one another doesn’t just start to wane, it plummets.
Add to this the scientific theory that evolution is working against us, playing out its war on our libidos using the very chemicals that make us want to shag in the first place. Scientists argue that the cycle of romance, sex and love, by its very nature, is geared to lead every long term couple toward parenthood and virtual abstinence.
The cycle goes something like this:
And this is just one of the ‘chemical’ theories of sex and love involving libido enhancers and suppressants.
For me, the contraceptive pill turned my body into one giant sex no-go zone. Like many women my age, I live with the ongoing pain of endometriosis, and so had been prescribed a high-dose pill. The hormones stopped my periods and so stopped the pain, but then stopped me feeling altogether. Without hormonal drivers, I had almost no drive at all. Not just for sex, but for anything. It was like wearing a pair of giant granny pants, the kind that suck in your gut only to have the excess ooze out everywhere else. All the while you’re there struggling to breathe. In the end I decided I could live with the pain in order to feel again, and stopped taking it.
BAM!
Like a teenage boy hitting puberty my hormones went into overdrive. I had energy to burn, and as the first full moon approached, I was climbing the walls. Just about every man who walked past was a potential shag. I lost count of the poor unsuspecting guys I imagined dragging into the loo for some unbridled bouncing-off-the-walls passion. The cruel irony was that my husband was away at the time, and so for the first time in years I locked myself indoors and masturbated like crazy.
Eventually my husband arrived home. But then the weirdest thing happened. I didn’t want to shag him. It was like I’d been given a dose of instant libido suppressant.
It scared the shit out of me.
It was a while before I had a hormonal peak as extreme as the first, but I did notice the ups and downs of my cycle after that, and I was never quite sure who I might be tempted to crack on to. At one point I felt I ought to wear a public safety waning: CAUTION: FULL MOON APPROACHING, just to prevent any embarrassing misadventures while ‘on heat’.
Having rediscovered the joys of DIY, for the next little while, it was all that kept me sane. I certainly got no pleasure from my unshaven, unwashed, bad-breathed husband sprawling himself on the marital bed in his ‘come get it’ pose. And when we did do it, it was a far cry from the lets-do-it-in-every-room passion of the early days.
‘He’d moved into the wrong part of my brain,’ she said.
I could understand this sort of change occurring in couples who have children, who end up taking on the asexual role of parents, but that wasn’t true for either of us. The moment she said it, though, I knew she was right. My husband had slipped into the ‘brother’ part of my brain.
Not twelve months later, we separated. With hindsight I’m not the least bit surprised.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if our relationship had come with a warning: DON'T TAKE YOUR MUTUAL ATTRACTION FOR GRANTED. What steps could we have taken to focus less on the ‘smoochie poochie’ part and more on the 'red hot rampant sex' part? The idea that you might need to work at keeping on wanting sex seemed absurd at the time.
Since then I’ve read theory after theory on the pitfalls of long term relationships and how to counter hormonal inhibitors such as illness and the pill. Advice ranges from the basics of maintaining separate lives, to forcing yourself to shag, even when you’d rather spend the evening repeatedly sticking a fork in your eye. Others advocate watching porn (3) or even having an affair. These theories all come with warnings, of course (4).
After my divorce I managed to sustain a relationship for two years. In that time we maintained very separate lives and shagged ourselves silly. We also weren't particularly close, and never quite made it to the point where our lives became entangled.
Who's to say the two are related? I was in a difficult place, and we were two very different people. As for my husband, we probably just outgrew each other and ultimately liked different things in bed.
What I can be sure of is that I'll never have Married Sex again. I’ll do whatever it takes. Read endless volumes of self-help books, research sex-partiesparties, anything. Because good sex is part of what makes you feel alive. And I’m a long, long way from dead.
---
Once upon a time, long term couples were encouraged to ‘share everything’, from a strand of spaghetti to the grizzly details of the monthly cycle. The idea was that this constant sharing, this living in each others’ pockets, was supposed to bring you closer together. And it does. You’ll be best-friend close.
The problem is, you don’t tend to want to shag your best mate.
Worse, your living arrangement most closely resembles that of a sibling. Again, not someone you want to shag.
Enter the world of Married Sex.
Not only does sexing your partner start to seem about as appealing as humping a manky dish cloth, you may find you’re not into sex at all.
This is what happened to me.
At the time I blamed the pill, not realising I was living with a constant libido suppressant called a husband. All I knew was that over time sex had stopped being something I couldn’t get enough of, and started becoming a chore - something I did out of a vague sense of obligation that would have to wait until after I’d finished the ironing and scrubbing the floor.
To be fair, my husband had also stopped beating down the door to rip my knickers off. So I decided (with some relief) that he didn’t really want it either.
During this time (which I consider some freakish aberration), not only did I rarely crave sex, not even to DIY, the thought of shagging my partner was a turn-off. In fact I used to dread it.
The most satisfying sex we had during the long drought was on the rare occasions when my sleeping brain decided it had been long enough, thank you very much, and I would wake from a raunchy dream, desperate for a shag. In the dark, still half-asleep, I could jump my husband and not notice I was shagging him.
Experts now realise that the previously advocated ‘closeness’ and total entanglement of each others’ lives is the worst possible thing you can do if you want to avoid this deadening drought I call Married Sex. They concede that by the time your husband has seen you in your pink fluffy slippers with mascara blubbing down your face and once you’ve experienced his regular AGBs (1), when you have no privacy left, no un-mutual friends, and no me-only time, your desire for one another doesn’t just start to wane, it plummets.
Add to this the scientific theory that evolution is working against us, playing out its war on our libidos using the very chemicals that make us want to shag in the first place. Scientists argue that the cycle of romance, sex and love, by its very nature, is geared to lead every long term couple toward parenthood and virtual abstinence.
The cycle goes something like this:
- Romance produces the chemicals that lead to sex
- Sex produces the chemicals that lead to love
- Love suppresses the chemicals that lead to romance
And this is just one of the ‘chemical’ theories of sex and love involving libido enhancers and suppressants.
For me, the contraceptive pill turned my body into one giant sex no-go zone. Like many women my age, I live with the ongoing pain of endometriosis, and so had been prescribed a high-dose pill. The hormones stopped my periods and so stopped the pain, but then stopped me feeling altogether. Without hormonal drivers, I had almost no drive at all. Not just for sex, but for anything. It was like wearing a pair of giant granny pants, the kind that suck in your gut only to have the excess ooze out everywhere else. All the while you’re there struggling to breathe. In the end I decided I could live with the pain in order to feel again, and stopped taking it.
BAM!
Like a teenage boy hitting puberty my hormones went into overdrive. I had energy to burn, and as the first full moon approached, I was climbing the walls. Just about every man who walked past was a potential shag. I lost count of the poor unsuspecting guys I imagined dragging into the loo for some unbridled bouncing-off-the-walls passion. The cruel irony was that my husband was away at the time, and so for the first time in years I locked myself indoors and masturbated like crazy.
Eventually my husband arrived home. But then the weirdest thing happened. I didn’t want to shag him. It was like I’d been given a dose of instant libido suppressant.
It scared the shit out of me.
It was a while before I had a hormonal peak as extreme as the first, but I did notice the ups and downs of my cycle after that, and I was never quite sure who I might be tempted to crack on to. At one point I felt I ought to wear a public safety waning: CAUTION: FULL MOON APPROACHING, just to prevent any embarrassing misadventures while ‘on heat’.
Having rediscovered the joys of DIY, for the next little while, it was all that kept me sane. I certainly got no pleasure from my unshaven, unwashed, bad-breathed husband sprawling himself on the marital bed in his ‘come get it’ pose. And when we did do it, it was a far cry from the lets-do-it-in-every-room passion of the early days.
‘He’d moved into the wrong part of my brain,’ she said.
I could understand this sort of change occurring in couples who have children, who end up taking on the asexual role of parents, but that wasn’t true for either of us. The moment she said it, though, I knew she was right. My husband had slipped into the ‘brother’ part of my brain.
Not twelve months later, we separated. With hindsight I’m not the least bit surprised.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if our relationship had come with a warning: DON'T TAKE YOUR MUTUAL ATTRACTION FOR GRANTED. What steps could we have taken to focus less on the ‘smoochie poochie’ part and more on the 'red hot rampant sex' part? The idea that you might need to work at keeping on wanting sex seemed absurd at the time.
Since then I’ve read theory after theory on the pitfalls of long term relationships and how to counter hormonal inhibitors such as illness and the pill. Advice ranges from the basics of maintaining separate lives, to forcing yourself to shag, even when you’d rather spend the evening repeatedly sticking a fork in your eye. Others advocate watching porn (3) or even having an affair. These theories all come with warnings, of course (4).
After my divorce I managed to sustain a relationship for two years. In that time we maintained very separate lives and shagged ourselves silly. We also weren't particularly close, and never quite made it to the point where our lives became entangled.
Who's to say the two are related? I was in a difficult place, and we were two very different people. As for my husband, we probably just outgrew each other and ultimately liked different things in bed.
What I can be sure of is that I'll never have Married Sex again. I’ll do whatever it takes. Read endless volumes of self-help books, research sex-partiesparties, anything. Because good sex is part of what makes you feel alive. And I’m a long, long way from dead.
---
(1) After grog bog
(2) I suspect this is why some people run a mile after sex, as though they know in the moments after orgasm they are most vulnerable to a 'bonding attack'
(3) Or True Blood, if that works better for you
(4) Apparently affairs can also lead to a relationship’s demise...
(2) I suspect this is why some people run a mile after sex, as though they know in the moments after orgasm they are most vulnerable to a 'bonding attack'
(3) Or True Blood, if that works better for you
(4) Apparently affairs can also lead to a relationship’s demise...
10 June 2010
The outsider
Christine Priestly shares her share of another's creativity
Recently I met a fellow writer and was privileged enough to workshop one of her pieces. It was a personal letter about the decay of a creative partnership which was also a relationship. The downfall of one became an emblem for the other. A beautifully melancholy tale, it described her experience sitting outside the creative process of another – a lover, a partner, watching his creation extend and morph beyond them.
What touched me most was her depiction of what it was like to experience the work of a lover and wonder where it came from. Music, art, writing, all comes from a place inside you that no one else can ever know. It is deep and it is raw.
It’s not something I had ever experienced from the other side. I didn’t know the ache of wanting to be inside that part, knowing you never will. Of wondering what your lover felt as they described one character’s love for another, one character’s hate for another. Wondering if they will ever feel a fraction of that for you.
Now I know.
It aches in the worst possible way. As though someone was there, in that part of them, long before you and forever after, someone who stole it for any other.
I’m not jealous like this when I pick a book up off the shelf. Who is that author to me? And with any non-writer, non-artist, I might assume that part simply isn’t there.
But this is different.
Because I know what it’s like to write those words, to create them. I know it’s not creation at all.
And yet because I’m a writer, I know that each piece, each character, is not its own entity, but a part of you. A part that exists both internally and externally. When I write, I write to discover; in a sense I am not a writer, I am a reader. I experience the suspense, the joy, the pain, the emotions, as they fill the page. If someone asks me where a story came from I can’t tell them. Perhaps I write to uncover it myself, as I dig and I dig.
Then I wonder, is it like that for him? Are his words real, or imagined? Perhaps they are cruel manipulation, suckering the reader, with no genuine emotion at all.
And then I realise where the pain comes from. From knowing I will never truly know.
-CP
Recently I met a fellow writer and was privileged enough to workshop one of her pieces. It was a personal letter about the decay of a creative partnership which was also a relationship. The downfall of one became an emblem for the other. A beautifully melancholy tale, it described her experience sitting outside the creative process of another – a lover, a partner, watching his creation extend and morph beyond them.
What touched me most was her depiction of what it was like to experience the work of a lover and wonder where it came from. Music, art, writing, all comes from a place inside you that no one else can ever know. It is deep and it is raw.
It’s not something I had ever experienced from the other side. I didn’t know the ache of wanting to be inside that part, knowing you never will. Of wondering what your lover felt as they described one character’s love for another, one character’s hate for another. Wondering if they will ever feel a fraction of that for you.
Now I know.
It aches in the worst possible way. As though someone was there, in that part of them, long before you and forever after, someone who stole it for any other.
I’m not jealous like this when I pick a book up off the shelf. Who is that author to me? And with any non-writer, non-artist, I might assume that part simply isn’t there.
But this is different.
Because I know what it’s like to write those words, to create them. I know it’s not creation at all.
And yet because I’m a writer, I know that each piece, each character, is not its own entity, but a part of you. A part that exists both internally and externally. When I write, I write to discover; in a sense I am not a writer, I am a reader. I experience the suspense, the joy, the pain, the emotions, as they fill the page. If someone asks me where a story came from I can’t tell them. Perhaps I write to uncover it myself, as I dig and I dig.
Then I wonder, is it like that for him? Are his words real, or imagined? Perhaps they are cruel manipulation, suckering the reader, with no genuine emotion at all.
And then I realise where the pain comes from. From knowing I will never truly know.
-CP
30 May 2010
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