it makes me wonder what i've learned from all my lovers

february 28, 2024

i feel foolish for being pulled back into a man's nonsense. like just as i was starting to just feel like i was moving past it, he reaches out. and not because he wanted to know how i was doing, not because he was worried that i was struggling, but because he was concerned whether i was angry with him--that's what caused him to call me. i keep remembering that he is young, and am torn between giving him space to make mistakes like a human, and holding him to a higher standard because he is a young man in this world, and it's important for him to know how to better treat women. because i wasn't treated well by enough men that it further impacted my ability to recognize healthy love and to love myself.

the thing i am angry about is my own conduct. like once my grief hit, but the responsibility of caring for my dying cat was gone, my hormones went nuts. grief is an aphrodisiac. i am susceptible--i knew this. but how could i walk away from an opportunity to be adored by someone i also found intriguing and fucking hot? it was difficult for me to pass that up. and maybe that is because part of me still wants the validation of being adored. even if i can't have the partnership i imagine for myself. at least i can still experience some kind of connection, however brief.

if sexuality is fluid, then it is valid that i identified as asexual for the period of time when i had no desire to engage with another person. the way i described it at that time was that i was not interested in connecting that way with someone. i was also aromantic for a period of time. and i think perhaps i am transitioning out of that stage. that's what all this is about. trying to understand what word to use to describe myself. mostly so that i can better understand myself. but also so that i understand how to communicate my needs to another person, so that i don't end up in another situation. but i think that really happens because of the other person not being fully honest, and not me. so then...it's the value of knowing myself that still remains...

according to the trevor project, asexuality is not repression or change in libido due to age, for example. but with the recent increase again in my libido, it doesn't seem i was just on a path toward lower sex drive. now, it's possible that with an increase in my daily vitamins and my improved diet i am experiencing desires that were perhaps dormant. after my last relationship, i did feel very unimpressed with men. while the men i dated were fine specimens, somehow i rushed right into a domestic partnership with a man who was nothing at all like the partner i thought ge would be, and i overlooked our imperfect sexual compatibility because i thought all sexual relationships take time to get a bit better, and i am pretty rusty, so after we learn more about each other's bodies, things will be even more interesting. nit that i needed much more! but it was just an example of another assumption i made. a story i told myself without talking more about it with him.

i need someone way comfortable talking about sex. and not someone who is going to get turned on and like blame me for it. because i like talking about it and laying things out and discussing boundaries and just learning more about a person and how they understand their own desires.

i have always had a difficult time, though, framing sex as a need. i'm getting better at it. but needs to me are things that we absolutely require for survival. i guess if we are expanding that definition a bit more to include things that help us to feel loved and fulfilled, then sexual needs are in there.

but my needs...well they keep shifting.

after my last boyfriend and i had officially broken up (end of june 2020, about 3 months into the lockdowns) and agreed to remain living together, there was a pandemic to get through. things were uncertain. it was scary, especially before the vaccines were available, i had worked my ass off to get us into the nicest apartment where i had ever lived, was not in a rush to find new housing, and i felt safe in the little bubble of life i had established with noah, even though i knew there would be challenges living together (i had lived alone for most of my adult life). and i was doing what i could to protect myself and my loved ones, especially those at higher risk, even though some people in my immediate family didn't have the luxury of being more careful (sis is a single mom with 3 kids and no childcare at the time--when schools opened back up, her kids fucking went).

all that to say: i was not trying to get close to anyone. after noah i had zero desire to connect with another person sexually or emotionally at all. i was heartbroken, but i was also just tired of men not having their shit together, and men who couldn't take fucking accountability for being an adult human. it was like noah turned me off, and that switch just stayed in the off position. i still masturbated, but i was totally content with that. and my libido had decreased such that i really only wanted an orgasm once a month, when my body was doing its biological dance to try and get me pregnant and make use of my uterus.

because this was such a drastic departure from what i was used to, i went back into therapy to explore whether i was, in fact, asexual. and the term does make a lot of sense to help explain many of my experiences.

for example, i have often imagined the perfect night with someone i'm into as being full of good conversation, good food (love language), some wine and weed (still enjoy loosening up; i get anxious), and sharing stories (intimacy) and then hardcore making out (physical intimacy).

but my experience had basically taught me that this was not a thing. kissing was foreplay. and once touching began, there seemed to be no turning back. i had found myself plenty of times getting so aroused i did want penetration, and i usually got it without any argument once i expressed the desire.

i remember when i dated one guy--who did become a very good friend for a time--i told him that i didn't want to hook up our first night together, because in my experience, hooking up sooner in the relationship meant i lost interest sooner. i thought maybe if i took my time, things could last longer. i waited about two months to start having sex with free. and that relationship lasted nearly a year. but this guy said something along the lines of not putting limitations on the evening. he was not hearing me because he had already decided he did want to have sex, and so our dating began with yet another moment of disappointment, that he had not understood or respected my position enough to keep his dick out of things that evening. i enjoyed myself, but i never forgot that. and we didn't date for more than a few months before my feelings did change and i lost my attraction to him.

now it is also worth mentioning that when i described this losing interest in people thing to my therapist just this past year, she used it as an opportunity to observe that i had probably grown up with undiagnosed ADHD. this was revolutionary for my understanding of myself. but i don't think it's the only reason i struggled to have longer relationships. the attraction piece, for me, seems to make me lean toward polyamory making more sense for me. if i were to decide to be committed to someone, it would have to be with the understanding that my attraction to them may fade, but that they would still have needs (unless they are like me, and experience periods of time when they don't have any desire to connect that way, or only want to masturbate instead), and it makes sense to let a partner in that situation explore sexual connection outside of the primary relationship to esnure that their sexual needs and curiosities can be met. partnership is not ownership. i do agree that just because someone commits to another person, it doesn't mean their bodies belong to each other. that idea never sat right with me. the same way the idea of always having sex even when you don't want to never sat right with me.

when i saw other asexuals over 30 describing that ideal night--the making out and cuddling only datenight--i was like ohhhh, hmm, well what would it even be like to find someone who would be okay with those things? because, you know, i never have!

and that seemed evidence i had been conditioned to expect sex. to perform sex. which i could find enjoyable. but when in my deeper heart i found in many cases i would have been just as content to do without.

but then there is the fingering thing lol.

i love being fingered. not gone down on. though some people are very talented at that too. but specifically being stimulated clitorally and vaginally with one's hands. the other person is in control. i can't get pregnant. it's the time i get to shine and i can enjoy myself without any background anxiety. (so yes, there is a big fear about getting pregnant for me, which isn't really worth exploring because it seems obvious why that's there, but also it does interfere from time to time with my ability to remain present)

i do also love the feeling of when a penis first penetrates me. and that fucking squeezing around a hard cock. hot as fuck. and i like to squeeze as hard as i can for as long as i can. it's probably one of the stronger muscles in my body...but i haven't even been able to explore some of the things i am curious about with sex, because i just haven't had many partners who i was comfortable enough with over a period of time to suggest things. and in many cases, as soon as i began having sex with someone it was the beginning of the end of things anyway. free was one of the exceptions. but i did eventually have to admit to him too that my feelings had changed.

so anyway...

the other part of the puzzle was why i so actively pursued sex...when i was young. and i have a narrative of this too. that i have used for years to understand myself:

when i was young, i realized from society that sex was not implicit of love. so contrary to the whole "when two people love each other very much..." story, my early experiences surrounding sex were...well statutory rape. those men did not love my friends.

so if sex could exist without love. and if sex was the cause of so much pain, then in order to cope with my friends assault and perpetual objectification under the male gaze that sexualized my body long before i was interested in even touching another person (which i do think was delayed compared to my peers)...my sexual liberation came in the form of me choosing partners again and again to be in control of who i fucked. who got to fuck me. and i got to try to and prove to myself that despite messages from media, my mother, and other members of my family, i was desirable.

but i wasn't wife material. but i didn't want or need to be a wife.

so from my 20s into my 30s i was fucking every chance i got. it was the purpose of going out. it was the reason for getting dressed up. for looking hot. it was me taking control of my sexuality and doing everything i could to avoid being raped. or coerced. or worn down. or manipulated.

simultaneously i was hoping that in my sexcapades i would actually meet someone who wanted to be with me. i felt like the girl who a lot of men desired, but didn't want to bring home to meet their parents. i had a hard time understanding how so many people could want me but not want more from me. but then i did the same thing--there were plenty of men i slept with just to experience the sensations of sex. nothing more. i wanted nothing more from them. still, it seemed so difficult, so rare to find someone with whom there was something deeper because it seemed rare to meet someone who wanted that from me to begin with. i did feel like a lot of men ruled me out because i was either too fat or too smart. i had men admit to me that they found me intimidating. but i wasn't going to be something else. i did like who i was, even though i knew i had a lot of baggage to unpack. and once i was older i didn't believe anymore that it could be that i wasn't allowed to receive love until i learned to fully love myself. but i did feel that it was nearly impossible to experience healthy love without a degree of healing and self-awareness.

anyway, back in my twenties, in my mind, i had divorced sex and emotion successfully. this was only a defense mechanism designed after repeated disappointment surrounding unrequited love. i had one relationship through all of high school, and it ended because i lost my attraction to him pretty suddenly. after a long time convincing him to date me to begin with because he had his heart broken too many times, and i went right on ahead and broke it again. (not that there is anything wrong with that, but when you are young you tend to exaggerate how significant things are, because you can't really grasp how many more years you have ahead of you to try out relationships. then again, you don't have any guarantee that you'll try many out--like me...this was another social pressure that led me to using sex as a way to validate my existence. while other people were having strings of relationships, i just had strings of lovers and went about the work of figuring life out around that). i do also remember very clearly how i thought "i'm only 14; do i want to be with this same person for the rest of my life? NO." i wanted to experience more. i didn't want to get married to my high school sweetheart. that seemed insane to me. (and that doesn't mean it was invalid, some people pulled it off. i didn't want to)

i didn't need an emotional connection to fuck someone. at all.

over time, i did find it more interesting, more fulfilling to have real intimacy. but it took me a while to understand that about myself.

still there was that nagging feeling that not much from the heteronormative path would apply to me.

i never experienced sustained sexual desire for someone. there was always a point even in the few longer relationships i had when i lost interest.

looking back...i don't know how i would have approached those relationships any differently.

i did at some point start sharing my perspective on romantic relationships...and people thought i was negative or cynical or something. it was just facts that most relationships, romantic ones, end. people break up. feelings change. it was just...what happened. and happy marriages seemed to be few and far between. i didn't see many examples of people who were still in love after many years. i certainly didn't see much representation of old queer couples either. i just couldn't imagine the possibility of finding that, of putting so much stock in that, when i saw evidence all around me that most of what we had been taught about love was absolutely wrong. or super rare.

but there was that period of time when being desired and loved by someone seemed the ultimate prize. later i would come to criticize my culture's matrimania and the emphasis on romantic love, when all forms of love are significant and necessary. how many people did i see who were unhappy in part because they let one person become the center of their world, and stopped nurturing relationships outside that one? how many people did i know who were getting divorces of their own by the time we were in our 30s and 40s?

so there was this rejection of conventional romance. this rejection of marriage, based on seeing my own parent's marriage crumble. this rejection of losing your virginity as being this magical moment, because my friends didn't get that. i had been disillusioned about love even before my friends were raped. and i had already been conditioned to dismiss my queerness. ie, it took me like ten years to start acknowledging in conversation that the first person i had sex with was a woman. i always referred originally to when i was 19 and hooked up with a dude for the first time as the first time i had sex. but i had a full on body-shaking orgasm with a young lady i did care about when i was 15. it was not in the context of a romantic relationship. but it was valid. and it was actually much closer to what the romantic fairytales describe.

as i got older, there were other women i wanted to fuck, but rarely any i wanted to be in a relationship with. part of that may have been some internalized homophobia, and the difficulty imagining being in a relationship that, again, i had seen no representation of that applied to my own desires. lesbians were highly sexualized. bisexual women were for threesomes with men. so aspects of my queerness were invalidated by the larger context of the heteronormative, misogyinistic, and male-centered sex narrative.

there was a lot of narrative i had rejected, and was actively creating my own story for. and there was also a lot of pain still that i couldn't participate in what so many of my peers seemed to be participating in. but we internalize things from a young age, and i didn't actively start unlearning them until i was already an adult. i knew disney was fake--i couldn't stand disney. i didn't want any princess story. i knew half of marriages ended in divorce now that women had the power to leave unhappy unions. i knew my peers (the girls who were close to me and shared about their first experiences with sex) didn't seem to like sex much, and described it as waiting for their boyfriends to finish so that it could end. none of that sounded very appealing, but i still wanted this mythological love-sex combination that i imagined being able to fulfill all my desires. one person to be the person i could move through life's obstacles with. one person who understood me completely. so i also felt a kind of rejection. i felt rejected by society as a lovable person, and then rejected more of the narratives related to that on my own, i think because of my queerness and trying to understand how that fit into anything since there wasn't much representation at the time, and there was still a lot of misunderstanding and stigma of the lgbt+ community when i was growing up.

so when i did finally have sex with a man for the first time, i made him break up with his girlfriend so that i wouldn't be the person he was cheating with, and he did. and then we had meaningless sex until i moved away to college. i had hoped he would come to see me. but there was no emotional connection. he had zero interest in trying to establish a long-distance relationship, even though i was only an hour away lol. i recovered quickly since i had a weak connection to him, and then i started enjoying sex with whoever i could.

i was not being reckless. i used protection most of the time. but i also used alcohol. pretty much all of the time, to have sex. because it was so difficult for me to get out of my head. i think if someone is introduced to sex through violence, that isn't so uncommon. i just wanted to loosen up and let my body enjoy itself. and i was so hung up on people thinking my fatness was ugly, believing it was, that i wanted to have a little help relaxing.

so then we get to my early twenties. i am in greece helping my grandparents because my yiayia has the start of dementia and my papou needed some help making sure she is okay while he takes care of things. every day, i sit out on the roof of the outhouse facing the Mediterranean sea from our mountain property on ikaria. one day i am thinking about all the people i have fucked, reflecting on my experiences and how i feel about myself and where i'm at in my life. i make a list of all the people i have slept with. kind of to make sure i can remember all of them. but also to take that tally. like is this enough people to know i am beautiful?

there are two other significant stories from greece pertaining to sexuality. one was a minor assault i experienced in the village one night, hanging out with the kids my age. i was seated on a window ledge with two other kids, two boys. they started roughhousing, and one of the boys reached through the tangle of bodies, and grabbed my right breast. hard. it hurt. i was physically and emotionally shaken. god bless this boy's parents, because one of the girls went and told his dad what had happened, and his father made him come up to me and apologize for what he had done. it really was a positive moment, ultimately, because the grown ups made sure the kid took accountability for something wrong he had done, and made sure to make him feel like the jerk rather than me internalizing it. kudos. the kid was young, i think the younger of two brothers who i was hanging out with. a lot of the kids found it intriguing that i wore earrings and the clothing that i wore. i just happened to have breasts because i had started developing into my woman body, and that was one of the first times i realized that people wanted to touch me, and that they might without my consent. and while the boy's father did make him apologize, the action could not be taken back.

at a party with my cousin, i was 11 years old. she was 17. we were there with her peers. she was looking out for me, but we were also in europe. drinking was not seen the same. so i was having some beer at a party with my cousin. a group of boys came over, and were talking to us. i think she enjoyed the attention too. but i remember they were asking questions, flirting, and then she said how old do you think she is? and they started guessing 15, 16...when she said 11 their faces were priceless. but the young men at that party had the sense to know i was way too young. it made me realize the cultural differences, and looking back also how sexualized i already was based on my appearance. the fullness of my body. the fact i had breasts. i looked older than i was.

at a cafe near the port, my yiayia and i had met one of her friends for coffee. i don't remember what they were talking about because the whole time i was sitting there, i was staring at a man who seemed to be staring at me. he was cute. he looked like a greek tom cruise. i don't know what drove me to it, but i walked over to him and said hello. i can't recall what else i told him, and he wasn't paying much attention maybe to me at all, but then i told him how old i was. he remained silent. i went back and sat down, and i remember seeing him and his buddy later on the ship in the port; they were navy guys. i saw the men staring at me. do you know what it's like to learn about your sexual power before you even have any desire to use it? that's what it is to be objectified as a child. to be sexualized from a young age.

so back to the trip to greece when i was 21. i look at this list i've written, where i've successfully remembered the name of everyone i've fucked. it's mostly men, because it's not easy to find many queer women in a rural town where i attended college. and i noted that i didn't really care for any of them. or that if i did, they didn't care for me. not the way i wanted to be cared for. and that bothered me. even though i had been intentional about enjoying sex and exploring sex with different partners. that nagging "something must be wrong with me that i don't care about these people" was there.

i resolved to try and bring back together emotions and sex. i was going to just pursue sex with people i cared about and actually wanted to date.

but oh ho ho, silly me.

this was not...there were not as many opportunities for sex that way. the first person i developed a strong crush on had no interest in dating at the time. years later, after he had moved an hour away, we did start hooking up during the occasional trip to the city. he said at one point that if i lived closer, he would date me. but by that point i didn't have the same desire to date him; i had moved on, and i had no interest in going backwards. it had taken effort to get over him, and then it was satisfying for my ego to be able to fuck him--a pattern that also continued with other people.

the rejection of simply not being "liked" back was rough. it was all ego, right? there was nothing actually wrong with me. it wasn't that i wasn't pretty enough, or that so few people were attracted to me. it was that i felt so bad about myself already, and i was very much seeking external validation to feel better about myself. classic error. rookie mistake. adolescent norm.

but i had struggled with rejection ever since i was little, before i was even interested in sex but after romantic ideas had taken shape. in the third grade, i tried to bribe a guy to be my boyfriend after he expressed he wasn't into me that way. i got into trouble and he didn't take the bribe. it was pretty embarrassing, but also fascinating.

so then my self esteem, which i had been building up by that point through the notches in my bedpost, began to crumble again. because it was still so largely based on how much validation i could get, specifically from men. being with women didn't feel like a notch. it still felt validating. but it was different being with people who had similar bodies to mine. familiar. still someone else, but more comfortable. like being with myself.

while all these friends around me found themselves in long-term relationships, or moved from one to another, while people were starting to get married and do the normal adult things, i struggled to connect with someone who also shared a mutual sexual attraction. i struggled with jobs too--finding something that was stable enough, didn't make me miserable. but i didn't care about that as much as i cared about being able to get in on that long-term relationship action.

i did think something was wrong with me. i did continue to blame my appearance. but i also wanted to love myself. i also wanted to continue processing my trauma. i was working on myself, exploring my spirituality, expanding my mind in the ways i had access to, and enjoying amazing conversations with people who were also exploring the same things.

i also still had very few examples of what real, healthy love looked like. there were some, but i didn't see myself in those examples. they had kids. i knew i didn't want children by the time i was 14. which also meant i thought about what would happen if i got pregnant. and that was simply terrifying. to know i would be demonized for having an abortion, but the alternative was to be forced into parenthood when i could barely fathom caring for myself? nightmare.

then i reached my later 20s and i met free. my only long-term boyfriend. i feel so lucky he was the person i got to experience something longer lasting with. just a gem of a fucking person. so loving. so gentle. smart as fuck. brilliant artist. like checked all my boxes. but eventually my desire for him waned. i was devastated. because it seemed like the kind of thing prior that maybe could lead to like, the long ride together (i still held onto that idea of long-term partnership being the goal). but we were finishing college and going separate ways...p.s. we are still friends, and we still tell each other we love each other. and it's still one of the most beautiful and healthy relationships i have ever had. i am thankful. we get a little farther on, i am in my 30s. i do have more esteem. i don't have sex as often. but i just don't have much luck meeting anyone i wanna date, or who feels the same lots more unrequited experiences. my ego couldn't handle it! so i allow myself to continue just having responsible fun when i can. by this time, there are now younger men who also start coming for me. i am in my 30s meeting men in their 20s who just want me, and i am happy for the attention because again, society. and again, hedonism. and i am already worrying about being older. and i am still fat.

i had my only girlfriend in my 30s. the reason i came out to my mom when i was 30 was because i didn't want to have to lie about my girlfriend coming to hang out. kristen was wonderful. caring and understanding. we had lovely conversations and tender sex. we met on a dating app. had the same birthday. and lived about an hour apart. it was lovely, but long-distance killed my libido. and my feelings seemed to dwindle with it, though admittedly they were weak to begin with. our relationship only lasted a few months, tops. we stayed in touch at first, but our lives took us different places, and we just stopped talking the same way. she had a second child. she was busy, and i understood that not all exes would remain active friends in my life.

within all this i did question if i was capable of actually loving another person. you start to wonder more what love actually is when you don't see many examples of it that you can relate to, and when you don't have many experiences of things lasting. that kind of became less important to me when something in me shifted to wanting to just love myself better, and that has been a journey unto itself, with various barriers. but one of them was letting go of this idea that i was not enough, and that i needed to experience a long-term monogamous relationship in order to be valid as an adult. this is still something that gets pushed against. lots of people do believe that love is the ultimate goal--and not self love. millions of people are looking for the right one to be with, forever and ever until they die.

there are only a few other people i end up getting involved with. most of my sexual encounters are casual. and i fucked a lot of friends. and i've also looked at how so many of the male friendships i did have began because i wanted to fuck them. looking back i think oh maybe--demisexual? i liked having a basic connection, even if it wasn't the level of intimacy i really craved. ya know, love the one you're with lol. and maybe me fucking my friends was my way of having a bit of both worlds.

but it hurt that no one had really fought for me. like no one had shown up for me and recognized what an amazing partner i would make. it was hard not to think there was something wrong with me, and hard to also subscribe to the idea that i was just getting what i was putting out there. were men really so insecure that my sexual prowess would be intimidating enough for them not to see me as dating material? was my queerness a turnoff? threatening to men who were insecure in their own masculinity because the patriarchy hurts all of us?

i am fascinated by my sexual and romantic journey. it is so interesting to me, because i have never seen or heard it characterized elsewhere that it's anything like what i've gone through. obvi i have my own unique collection of experiences and responses and narrative building. but it kind of astounds me how much people take for granted and don't talk about. how can we not be talking about our sexual histories? how can we not be talking about what we have learned from our experiences? what went well in past relationships, and what we learned did not work well for us at all? why is it still so upsetting for people to know that the people they're with have been with other people?

as I've gotten older, the sex talk is absolutely necessary when it comes to getting to know someone i might wanna fuck. so even before i am sure whether i wanna get naked with someone, i need to know where they stand on some things. and i like to have an idea what they like or don't to judge if i am gonna be sexually compatible. it takes me actual time to get to know someone, even though it only takes me a little while to know if i want to fuck them. i did like the term sapiosexual, because i found that i would get turned on having intense and intriguing conversations with other smart people. quantum physics? yeah, talk nerdy to me. philosophy? i'm already wet.

now that i'm in my forties, i find that different things do turn me on. there are the fantasy men and women i use to climax alone, but i don't find anything resembling them in my actual life. i am drawn to people who have energy to care for me. who show up. who put forth the effort to be a part of my life. who contribute to my stability through acts of service, words of affirmation, and quality time together. but i'm also a sucker for aesthetic. it doesn't take a whole lot to spark my hormones. but it takes more to keep me interested.

now it is interesting to think about there being periods of dormancy with sex while i'm in a relationship. i have never been with someone who i recognized i would be interested in staying with through that period. i had never considered polyamory before. but i also had such a hard time just meeting someone who wanted me period, so the idea of finding someone actually more compatible...we are talking a needle in a haystack in a sea of fish. at this stage, i do not have the desire to go looking. i fully feel like if it's meant to happen for me, that person will find me. i don't care enough about finding a single partner anymore. i care about my existing relationships. my friendships. my family. all those relationships take effort. they take energy. and they provide a fulfilling kind of love that i feel fortunate to experience daily.

haha, i didn't even talk about the lack of orgasms. i did lose count eventually of how many partners i had. somewhere above 70, but less than a hundred i think. and out of all those partners, only a few were able to make me come. and i always reasoned that it was a mental block for me. i was very much in my head, even with the alcohol, and i was also very much about pleasing the person i was with. few people took the time to make sure i was pleased. most men just assumed that penetration was the end of things. once they got off, the sex was over. i am thankful for the unselfish lovers i had who really took the time to make sure i had an orgasm too. the first person who made me come worked for like 45 minutes it seemed. i remember having to work so hard to remain present, because i was feeling bad about how long it was taking. it was difficult to just enjoy myself because of how much i had been conditioned as a woman to put other's needs before my own! but when i was alone i could come in under five minutes, and so i think the other reason i accepted it was because it was more about the connecting with someone that way that was fun. feeling them. the experience as a whole--not just the orgasm. but i don't know many men who view sex that way lol.

i am pretty vanilla. even a guy asking me to put my pinky in his butt was out of my comfort zone, but i wanted to give him pleasure in the moment, and just went with it. i have definitely found i am more comfortable with people who are more comfortable with themselves. and that a lot of people are not. which is totally alright. but remember i am the in my head person. so i kinda need someone who can help keep me present. this is also easier if there is a more significant emotional connection with someone, for me. hence why i have not had many orgasms--since most of the people i've been with have not been people i cared for deeply.

the other day i told someone that relationships are just about learning. they're about learning more about ourselves and about other people. love is just learning. sex is just learning. i do have a difficult time believing that things can last until i die, because nothing has except for the relationship i have with myself. everything else takes a lot of work to make it stick. to make it substantial. not everyone has the energy or desire to work on those platonic connections. but i do, because i made decisions in my life that supported my desire to nurture those relationships. to make them my priority rather than my job. they are what give my life meaning and what help me to feel connected, not just to humanity but to the whole of the earth and life on it. and beyond!

so part of why i have been thinking about this is because i want to hear more stories from queer people about their own sexual journeys. and i think sexplorers is a great name for the podcast. i want to hear from other people about the experiences that shaped their perception of love and romance in a time when we do distinguish between our sexual and romantic or asexual attraction to people. i want these stories to replace the stories that did nothing to help me understand myself. to help others feel valid in their own fluid or static identities. to help dispel myths and to further saturate the culture with examples that provide a more realistic spectrum of experiences to match the spectrum of people who we form connections with over the course of our lives.

ow to let my ego lead less