after losing my virginity at 17 i had the libido of a teenage boy. ok, truth is i had the libido even before i lost my virginity. i was super lustful, not considering consequences, curiosities running wild- i even had to try women, there was just too much fun to be had, and every scintillating fantasy had to be played out.
it was such a high to be wanted, to have control, to be in demand, to play the game, to be bad, to break rules, and to be talked about. there was a side of me that liked that no man could own me, that there were men who cried when i said i wouldn't date them. but that side of me was masculine, competitive, challenging, demeaning, demanding, and certainly not datable.
i remember a few times with my fuck-buddy steve where we were just so into each other that we would lose ourselves for hours in sweaty, tantric, contorted, passion. we were not awkward clumsy stereotypes at 17 and 21. we were masters at this game in the most generous yet self serving way possible.
one night after we were finished steve laid there kind of fidgety. he was clearly anxious and being that mentally i was such a guy myself i knew exactly what was bothering him. he wanted to leave.
"steve"
"yeah?"
"its ok..."
(blank stare)
"i know why you're here. you don't have to stay"
"really??"
"yeah"
"ok. awesome" (sigh of relief)
and within a minute he fell asleep with his arm around me.
i mention that story to prove that mentally i was in tune with people, especially with the men i slept with. i had no expectations other than sex, and when that was over they were more than welcome to leave.
its because of this that i had plenty of opportunities for friends with benefits, fuck-buddies, and other experiences that most girls my age would have steered clear of. i was a strong empowered young woman who made choices to go after men sexually and enjoy myself thoroughly.
i didn't have a boyfriend during most of my teenage years. i had crushes, and i wanted certain guys to have an interest in me, but i was so content with sexual attention that i had no idea how to even communicate with a guy i liked that way.
i had fantasies about having a boyfriend and what that might look like, but my day to day activities were more focused on being a badass sexy chick.
i finally had a boyfriend at the age of 19 and that lasted about 3 months. he was a total hick but hot as hell and we were nothing alike. it ended because i was critical of him and pretty vocal about it. i thought he should be more open, compassionate, mature and responsible (what 18 year old boy wants to hear that shit?), lol.
i remember thinking after that "dammit, now my streak has been broken, my allure is gone. someone has had me and its going to take years to build up this kind of unattainable reputation again. what a mistake and a waste."
but after that i went back to my old ways of friends with benefits and fuck buddies.
i remember a time when i slept with a friend of mine while he was broken up with his girlfriend, and a few months later she shows up at my door screaming, demanding to know if i ever slept with her man. i calmed her down, told her "no" and explained to her how much he loves and cares about her. how every time we hang out he's talking about her and trying to make things work. i wasn't lying about the second part, and that's why i lied about the first part.
20min after she leaves my guy friend shows up at my front door. he's panting and freaking out and asked if his girl had been there. "she was just at my work and threw her engagement ring at me! did you tell her anything!?"
"no!!! are you kidding me!? i know what she means to you. you think i'd fuck things up for you like that man!? heck no, i didn't tell her a thing! besides you guys were broken up then, it doesn't even matter! i told her how much you love and care about her! i've got your back man, relax."
he was stunned but grateful.
yeah, i was that chick. the chick that was more of a temptress than anything else. but i wasn't a home wrecker. i never wanted another woman's man, i just wanted to flex my muscles and have fun. but i bonded with these guys, because they could talk to me and open up to me and use me, but that's where it ended. I wasn't openly friendly with any of them in public, i never dated any of them when they were single and i never went after any of them romantically.
i was that cool chick. i even talked to them like a bro, laughed at their crude jokes and was absolutely one of the guys.
but...that's all satisfying for the masculine wild child side. and at the end of the day i was still a girl and growing into a woman. i was too sexy and pretty to be a tomboy, yet too crude and lustfully driven to be a girlie girl. i loved sex and the idea of being loved romantically was so outside my realm of understanding that it was embarrassing for me at 20 years old to admit to my mother that i did actually, someday, want to get married. it was like admitting the shield was made of jello. i felt totally unworthy of such a feminine dream.
i wasn't sure if i had been hiding all my girliness or if maybe i was just evolving, but it took me time to adjust and embrace things like skirts and dresses. pretty was not a word i liked, and pink was still the color of weakness.
i remember trying to get to know this one cute guy during a phone call. i regaled him with wild sexual stories to the point where he lost interest. i was clueless what happened till i later spoke to his brother who told me "he's looking for a relationship", and although i was too, i was learning that i was going about it all wrong.
i still had no idea how to get these guys that i liked. these sexy, masculine, sophisticated guys. i mean surely they must know how much i have to offer, how loving i am and how accepting and nurturing i can be? i mean, my guy friends knew me that way. you know, all the guys who'd vent to me about their girlfriends and cry to me when things went wrong...all those guys knew the kind of woman i can be. how sensitive i am, i mean really!
over the next couple years of trials and errors i dated my friends uncle during his divorce (i'd had a crush on him forever), the fedex guy/personal trainer who picked up packages at my job, and a con artist who ended up taking money from me, stealing and hawking my jewelry, and leaving my car wrecked and dead deep in the Bronx.
but during that time i had a male best friend, ryan, who listened to me talk for hours every night and would say "i love you" before we hung up.
he would always make a point of saying how much he liked me and that when we met he'd told his family that i was the type of woman he wanted to marry someday. so it was i guess inevitable that we ended up dating after awhile.
ryan chose me, loved me, and stuck with me, but we were never the right match. we never had passion or chemistry the way most couples come together. we were never attracted to each other that way and i considered him more of a brother than a guy friend. i could sleep in the same bed with him and poo in his bathroom and all those things you do around someone you're close with but don't have romantic feelings for.
without trying to recap our 5 year marriage and decline, i'll just say that we divorced, and stayed friends. and that it happened during the same time as my fathers sudden and unexpected death.
one thing i will highlight is that towards the end of our marriage, during my most difficult time, i asked for an open relationship, and during that time i saw steve. yes, the same fuck buddy that i had 10 years earlier. some old habits die hard i suppose.
only this time with steve was different. i had a lot less patience for his stories, i listened more to what he said in an effort to judge his character, and i was a lot less satisfied with who he was as a person, which ultimately took away from the experience of sleeping with him.
however, he remembered my sexual preferences, what buttons to push and all of that was appreciated. it wasn't a totally bad liaison, but it surprised me that i was that dissatisfied.
now is when things really started to change for me.
i was single. i was ready to look for love and romance and the whole package. i was "pretty" and content with that. i started reading books and looking for advice on many things, business and relationships being the two hot topics on my mind. i viewed dating like a horse i was ready to get back on instantly.
one man i met was a teacher, and he was tall, handsome, ripped and had a young daughter. she was so cute and he was so hot and sweet, that in my mind i was totally ready to do this whole girlie dating thing right. i was looking for my chivalrous man who was going to treat me right and do everything that i'd read that a man should do if he likes you. i was looking for the signs and the interest, and i was ready to kick him to the curb if he wasn't that man.
I remember one night we ordered sushi and i paid for it. it wasn't cheap and he didn't even offer.. i was so turned off that i mentioned it and he had to defend himself for the next 3 days. i was absolutely without compassion when it came to the rules that i'd read.
here i was being the masculine sexy challenger again. only this time instead of sleeping with him i used sex like bait, and tried to get him to do tricks for treats so to speak. i was a total tease and i talked about other men i was dating in an effort to make him try to win me. it made sense to me at the time given everything i read.
this stuff about treating yourself well and being the prize really rang true with me. and my rule at that time was "i treat myself really well, so any man to date me has to treat me better than i treat myself". but there was some missing compassion in that equation for sure.
needless to say this great man wasn't having it and he ended us dating. but because i was so self righteous and flippant i was "more than fine with that". but thankfully we liked each other enough to stay friends.
one night i was so exhausted emotionally and mentally and needing a break that i called him. i vented to him about my situation and he invited me over to spend the day with him and his daughter to take my mind off things. i arrived, we went pumpkin picking, got apple cider donuts, took a hayride on a farm and then went back to his place for dinner and pumpkin carving. we ordered sushi and wouldn't you know it... that entire day he paid for everything. after dinner i read bedtime stories to his daughter and he watched as she nearly fell asleep in my arms. the next day he called me to thank me for being so real and generous with them and in my mind he was really the generous and real person that day. but i realized then that i needed to stop being so hard on men, that being a ball buster wasn't getting me anywhere. that men weren't really seeing the gentle loving softer side of me, and that's what i really wanted to be loved for.
during this time i started reading books about masculine and feminine ways of being and started listening to lectures about the same topics. I put away the books about rules and how to get what you wanted from men. not that i didn't learn valuable lessons from those books- those books taught me early lessons in boundaries and confidence- but they fell short on compassion and embracing ones femininity. i really wanted a man who liked me for me. but i was definitely still looking, still hunting and also hoping to be hunted.
i was on dating sites, dating apps, and pretty much still consumed with dating. i was constantly updating my profiles, and trying desperately to be more attractive, honest, clear, clever and yet genuine. i had a number of good dates and even more bad ones. my girl friends and i shared so many odd stories, it became meme worthy.
then i met a man randomly who took to me and liked me and wanted me but lived very far away, like a whole other country away. he was chivalrous and charming and romantic. stable, professional and driven, but very much a late bloomer to relationships. he'd been focused on work and on himself, and never considered a relationship to be of benefit to him more than it was a burden. but we talked, visited each other a few times and soon became bf/gf.
the description of me dubbed by this man was that i offered him a "queen" and as much as he "cowered in rejecting the gift" (he was quite the poetic and eloquent man) the timing wasn't right for us and so he ended things. we stayed friends however and during one visit he asked for a second chance. my ball buster side popped up and told him to "go fix your issues with someone else and come back to me when you're really ready for a real relationship". (the next woman he met he moved in with and then bought a house together and have been in a "real" relationship since).
besides the humor and irony of what happens when my inner ball buster comes out to play, i learned something about myself during this breakup- that during every relationship i plan on forever. i adjust to that persons lifestyle and ways. i adopt a mutually beneficial future and i envision its possibilities all the way through till retirement. sometimes i even envision which one of us will die first, can you believe that? yes, i genuinely imagine hospital goodbyes and hand holding and tears.
so for me to let go of a whole future at a relationship's end is crazy hard. i certainly cried more tears during my years of post marital dating than i ever did during my many years as a libido driven teen.
i'll spare you the details of every relationship I've had and make my point.
i know so much now. i'm so proud of myself. I've tried and forced myself to learn uncomfortable lessons, and i'm sure i will learn more. i'm sure my resolve today will be something i laugh at in 20 years, when i really know my stuff. when i've really figured it out and then i can make the same comment 20 years after that.
i dont regret my teenage libido. i don't regret my experiences. i don't regret any of the mistakes i made in getting to this point. i value every book i've read and the order in which I've read them. even the ones that gave me bad advice. (did you know under the right circumstances it takes 7 hours for a woman to trust you enough to sleep with her?)
i'm grateful for the men i've slept with, i'm grateful for the men who've loved me, i'm grateful for every male friend who's ever given me advice or consoled me when i was so intensely heart broken that i couldn't even walk.
i'm hoping that my awesome candidness is of value to someone, because i don't think this story does much for my ego. i have pride, forgiveness and compassion for myself, and for anyone who can relate to the journey of self love, understanding love, and striving constantly for that happy long lasting experience of love in a romantic relationship.
with divorce rates so high, and our life spans getting longer, and our careers shifting more often, its hard to know whats what. as in, are we being too masculine, or feminine? too rigid or too forgiving? too sexually empowered or too prude? are we supposed to look for someone who shows us interest by trying to sleep with us, or do we look for the man who avoids contact out of respect? speaking of which...
one man i dated was a total boy scout. a total church going, family man with a good job, stable family and no drama whatsoever. the thing he liked about this wacky artist from a broken home? that i was 100% the opposite of his ex-wife. point is, do you know how long it took me to realize that his lack of physical affection was because he liked me, and respected me and actually wanted to be with me?? my mind was blown. but when i learned that, it made me love him and respect him and appreciate him.
i have to constantly keep myself in check. meaning i have to look at myself and ask myself hard questions and give myself honest answers. but once i have those honest answers, i have to remind myself that the next step is to forget that answer, because its not law, its not necessarily even the ultimate truth, and if i can just be in the moment and be grateful and open to learning more from masters, i'll get there.
there's not a lot of desire or desperation around having a romantic relationship right now. i'm not even 35 years old, and if it takes me 5 years to build a strong enough foundation with someone that we can have a life long relationship, then i'm willing to put in that time, and build that house one brick at a time.
i'm willing to try my hand at relationships that have a few red flags, because as long as i proceed with caution with eyes wide open, its possible i'll be surprised. and maybe i'll see over time that wasn't the best idea, but for now, it is.
so what this guy reminds me of my ex-husband, so what my last guy is still hanging around, so what i have a totally unstable career financially, so what this guys obsessed with his car. the point of a relationship is to love and support each other, to accept each others good and bad. to forgive flaws and mistakes, to teach each other how to love you just right. and in my opinion there's some good to be done for the rest of the world while you're at it, but that's my vision of a relationship.
there are 5 values or reasons for a relationship according to a book my friend read. each person has 1 or two of these 5.
1) childhood sweethearts- you want your love to be one for the records books.
2) family legacy- being good parents is your number one priority.
3) adventure- your lives are all about exploration and excitement
4) faith- your religion is your bidding factor
5) service of others- you want your relationship to make a difference in the world.
i finally know because of this, that i am a 3 and 5. and its not to say i can't have a relationship with someone who's a 2 and 3, but we have to know what will trump all else when push comes to shove.
and to pair knowledge with experience some more i'll share the 5 languages of love.
1) touch
2) time
3) favors
4) gifts
5) words
each one of us connects to one of these most strongly. its the way we speak and feel love easiest. and i have finally learned that i am a 1 primarily. when i've been in long distance relationships the biggest thing i need is to see the person and touch them when we are finally together. some people are fine with words, hearing "i love you" or talking daily is enough for them. but for my when my well of physical touch runs dry i need a re-up. which is also probably related to why it was so easy for me to be such a sexual person all my life. its just my biggest communication conduit. i've always been a touchy feely person, and i get along best with those who are like me.
want to drive me crazy? have a beautiful conversation with me where we feel deep, connected and in love, and then say goodbye without a touch of any kind. you could tell me 'i love you" 30 times and give me a blank check and blow me kisses and tell me you want to marry me, but until i get to touch your skin, your hair, your lips, and feel your hands on me somehow, i'm incomplete with the conversation.
its just how i'm wired, and thanks to everything i've heard and read i can be responsible for that now. like i learned a long time ago at landmark...the more you know about yourself the more you can run your "it" instead of your "it" running you.
and i think that's the biggest misfortune of being a young person looking for love without experience or knowledge, is they're completely run by their feelings, thoughts, and hormones.
i was guilty of it, or victim to it, however you prefer.
but again, i hope my experience has shed one light for some.
here's my awesome and embarrassing list of resources throughout the years.
not everything was read or studied entirely, but i've gotten value from them in some way, shape or form none-the-less.
the way of the superior man
momma gene's owners and operators guide to men
alison armstrong interviews and lectures on youtube
david deide lectures on youtube
the game (about pickup artists)
the rules
modern dating
the 5 love languages
dave rudbarg love coach
matt boggs on youtube
matthew hussey on youtube
why men love bitches
the truth about love
the amazing development of men audio
in sync with the opposite sex audio