Two Great Loves Is a LOT! And Relationship OCD

 

Irving on the train, knowing he's been loved.

I haven't wanted to post for a while, mostly I just don't want to keep repeating the same story--I continue to be amazed at how many people are out there not being the right one.

One thing that's new is OCD therapy! I've been getting treated since November, when I realized it's not superhealthy to think that my dating life is CURSED. (I still kinda think it is!)

The way they treat OCD sometimes is exposure therapy--just leaning in to whatever awful thing that compulsions are helping me avoid/make worse. The other day, I was telling the therapist all my deepest, darkest fears of what happens if I never find love again.

I could be alive another 40 or 50 years, and I have a hard time imagining those years without this quest, this longing. I can keep looking, but I also want to make sure I'm not missing my life while I'm focused on what's missing, who's missing. I want to keep living a full and lush and vivid life, no matter who comes along.

The other day, the 22nd, it was the three year anniversary of my first date with The Shy One. I decided to do my exposure therapy by writing him a letter in my journal, not one to send. I searched up a picture of him on that night. His face was the absolute pinnacle of post-quarantine cute: soft of face and fuzzy of hair. A peaceful and satisfied smile. Beatific! And of course there were the ropes pictures, the ropes that liked him so much and went on so easily.

OF COURSE it's hard to move past the magic of that night and the subsequent messy-beautiful of my ten months with The Shy One. I hold out hope that I will some day, but it's truly taking FOREVER.

But when I started the journaling, I found myself writing about my OTHER favorite first date, with BFF-Formerly-Sweetie. I'd given her an invitation (Sesame Street themed, with glitter inside) to come to the poetry reading I hosted. She'd told me she had something to tell me after the reading, so the whole day was anticipation. It was a two- reading day, and I stopped in between poetries to have some spicy blackbean soup at a neighborhood cafe. My tummy was so nervous that I couldn't eat much. After the reading, she told me she hadn't really dated anyone before, and she wanted to try dating me. It was a dream come true.

A decade of months and a decade of years. A messy love affair and a marriage/lifelong friendship. Some people are out there searching for their best friend, and here am I calling mine 2-3 times a day.

Unlike Irving, who could only sense deep within himself that he had been loved, I was present for every moment. Yes, I was a mess, and yes it's over, but it WAS. Relationship OCD makes me doubt everything, makes me think it couldn't possibly be real, but it was nice to visit that knowing for a few journal paragraphs, and it stuck with me.

Dating is boring and vexing and not the good kind of tedious. I'm lonely and pining and frustrated a lot of the time. My hormones are changing too, making the urgency less in a way I both welcome and fear.

What I'm practicing in OCD therapy is learning to live with uncertainty, and that certainly helps. But so does the knowing that I was and am thoroughly loved.

Southern Charmer Postscript

 

My oldest cat is sixteen and she's been sick. The first time I turned on the heater this fall, she abruptly left her perpetual spot next to me on the couch and fled for more hide-y places upstairs. She sleeps on the vent under the vanity or on a big suitcase I took out when I changed the clothes over for winter.

This plus the coming (impending) election was giving all of life a way-too-urgent feeling. It's a feeling I had all the time when I was younger and unmedicated and would contemplate the shortness of the lilac season. I knew they'd be gone soon and I worried I wasn't enjoying them enough while they were here.

The one thing that WASN'T making me feel that way was The Southern Charmer. After our lovely night together, he told me that, considering his recent breakup, he felt like he'd gone too fast into sex with me. I took that to mean that he wanted to slow down, not stop. We chatted every few days and I hoped we'd eventually make it back to smoochtown.

I was lying on the floor next to Oldest Cat's ersatz suitcase bed, holding her paw, when I decided to check in with SC. His update was that he had made a new friend, a platonic one, and they'd hung out a couple times lately.

I thought he'd been laying low because of his breakup grief, but here he was making a lovely new confidante. I started to cry, realizing he'd left me behind a few weeks ago without me realizing. People will say literally anything when they mean "We're not a match" and no matter how many times it happens or how many paragraphs I've paragraphed, I still miss getting it sometimes. It's a thing that makes me feel every one of the seventeen points of my Autism Spectrum Quotient. https://embrace-autism.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/

I asked him why he hadn't spent some of that time with me. He said again the thing about having gone too fast, how he couldn't handle the emotional intimacy right now. I didn't even know we were DOING emotional intimacy! A true first. I heard it now, a break-off, not a slowdown. 

Making Out In Front of a Romcom (ala) and Other Perfect Things: Part Four

 This series is taking forever to write, what with the whole triumph-of-evil thing un-hottening life most of the time. (Not last night though, I had a really nice date! But that's a story for another day.) Whatever stage of grief today finds you in, I'm with you. I love you. And I'm here to provide cuteness whenever I can bear it.

Back to being splayed out on the beach-day of my bed, with my beautiful sweet Southern Charmer smiling down at me.

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

His finger slipped down into my absolute sopping wetness and he said:

"I'd like to be inside you."

*****Welcome***** is the emotion I felt as he slid inside me. I felt so filled and fulfilled, happy and free, He was SO PRETTY and so good at kissing and so beautifully and easily part of me.

After what seemed like a good long time, he started apologizing and I didn't really know why. 

"It's been a hard time, I've been going through a breakup, I'll have to owe you."

I think he felt like he was coming too fast, but even if he had been, I wouldn't have seen it as a problem. I always feel gratified by a quick come, like, oh good, this guy is willing to give me what he has.

"I need it," I said, as I always say, when he came. (Or fake-came? Maybe he just needed to stop? Maybe this is the moment when the breakup grief washed back in for him? Oh I wish I could have known and soothed him, that I could have taken care of whatever had brought out all those sorries.

I switched the Donald Glover to lofi as we cuddled up. He asked if it was okay to fall asleep and I said sure, I just have to get up and have my night cereal. After Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I climbed over him to the inside spot and (Just like that, says the part of my brain that thinks only of Sex and the City) I was falling asleep (trying to) with a guy for the first time since The Shy One.

I haven't gotten any better at it in the intervening years. Though we cuddled up sweetly, I felt so alert. I thought about what had just happened. I thought about whether he would stay for breakfast, if he would drink coffee on my couch.

But he woke me up at six AM, same cursed hour whenTSO always left, and seemed a little distant, like he was already out the door. His voice had the cadence of a Barack Obama, if Barack Obama was late for a school presentation.

At least I was able to fully sleep then, warm and content but already a little lonesome for him. And I kind of still am, all these weeks later.

Knotty Thursday: Ribcage Harness

 Well, it's supposed to look like a ribcage, but every harness just looks like fancy boobs on me. I remember doing this one on The Good Boy way back when, it was nice having that memory for company!

Happy Halloween dears! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADN90FVYty0

Making Out in Front of a Romcom and Other Perfect Things: Part Three

 

It took so much thinking about this night to realize that it's a classic body adventure, like way back at the beginning of this blog! I've never had sex all the way high before! Mostly it just gave me an excuse to be more lovey-dovey, more free, more ridiculously myself. And to have way too much fun listening to my two favorite albums.

Before I take us there though, this story will always be incomplete because I don't know ANYTHING about what it was like to be inside The Southern Charmer's head. He told me a few days afterwards that he felt like he'd moved too fast into sex after his breakup, but I don't have any more insight than that. I really really hope that, even though it was emotionally complicated, he had an equal amount of fun. Otherwise it's just not fair!

"Could we go cuddle upstairs?" I asked breathlessly after so SO many kisses. Finding out what happens to Adam Brody and Kristin Bell would have to wait until another day. I asked if it was okay to put on Frank Ocean's Blonde and SC said of course.

I became a puddle of warmth with him. It was the first time in SO LONG that I'd been allowed to take my time, to savor the before-sex things. As we kissed and cuddled and petted and our feet tickled and our legs intertwined, I thought "Wow, Frank Ocean uses the word "love" a lot. While love might not have been the story of this encounter, it was certainly the right name for this state of being.

I don't think love has to look like star-crossed romance. I think it can also be the exquisite joy of holding onto a friend's meticulously sculpted back, tangled up in his pretty arms. Loving the sensations. Loving him in a right now way, and loving myself for letting go of The Quest long enough to enjoy him, and let him enjoy me.

I was alert enough to skip the track where Frank Ocean's mom tells us not to do drugs. I didn't fully lose myself to the lovey-dovey atmosphere. I knew it was brain chemicals being magical and kind and benevolent and giving me a break for like five fucking seconds. This was my version of becoming human lofi, except hungrier for him.

Frank became a little too much and I switched to another favorite album, Childish Gambino's Atavista, which starts out sounding like the Stranger Things theme song but does eventually get dreamy. "Is this Donald Glover?" scoffed The Southern Charmer, but he let not-favorite-of-his record play, a sacrifice I could never make.

I was so happy when it was time to be naked! I'd never met The Southern Charmer's dick the first time around, wasn't even sure he was a penis-having person, until I was. When he stood up to get a condom from my drawer ("I LOVE my drawer so much!" is a thing I said aloud in front of this very cute human being.) his dick stuck straight forward, pointing out from his black briefs like a dowsing rod.

SC and I kept chatting about music, the eternal question of whether Childish Gambino was a bit or not. There were moments when I found him surprisingly like boyfriend material, like before when he'd told me he was reading How the Word is Passed, or when he told me his workout regimen was because he usually dates bigger girls and he wants to be able to help if there's an emergency. (Maybe this was bullshit or MAYBE some of these fit guys who match with me AREN'T trying to take me on a weight-loss journey?!)

Anyway, back to his dolphin/compass of a dick. He was sitting up while I lay back splayed out for him, warm as a day at the beach.

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

Made Out In Front of a Romcom, and Other Perfect Things: Part Two

Definitely watch Nobody Wants This, it's so cute!!!

 I never wrote about my second date with The Southern Charmer, way back in 2022, because it spooked me all to heck. There was a thing that happened sometimes post-quarantine where a date would just get here and get immediately so relaxed that they were like human lofi, so calm and self-contained as to be unreachable. 

The Southern Charmer had tried a new kind of gummy and it had just zapped him entirely! Now that I've spent a few Friday nights in a woozy D8 haze listen-dozing to the 99% Invisible breakdown of The Power Broker, I understand a little better, but that night, it was startling!

I lay with him chastely as he rode it out, scared and ashamed of how actually helpless this person in my bed was! Once he was alert enough, he went home. I thought he had taken an Uber, but it turned out that he drove.

So the next day, once I knew he was alright, I let him go with a few (I hope) gentle texts. His tuned-outness really freaked me out, and I felt ashamed and worried that I'd let him drive home in that state.

Since then, I've remembered him as beautiful and sweet and just not in the right place for me. Good job me, I guess? The eyes-on-the-prize recognition that he wasn't the one for me, amazing! Stars all around.

But a thing he said to me in his hazy time really stuck in my mind, probably unfairly. "This is all too much" he said, and he could have just meant *gestures widely* but it hit my heart as meaning that I was too much. I worried about that, not being too much physically but just being too intense or whatever to really be in relationships. I still worry about that all the time.

I wrote some blog posts about being part Kaiju, a regular refrain. "Too much" stuck with me like a splinter.

But when The Southern Charmer popped up again this year around my birthday, I had a different perspective--I'm a stoner now too! It was so appealing to bond over the 15-25 milligrams of peace I've been enjoying every night, and a nice fantasy to think about sharing that feeling with somebody pretty and kind.

And here we were! Making out on the couch without one single care in the world. My body, heart, mind, and soul were all aligned and ungrasping (except literally I mean), all together an open gate. I felt one wholehearted emotion and that was...welcome!

I felt so far outside the everyday concerns of dating, like all the baggage of these last thirteen years just clocked out for al little bit. I was innocent and free. I felt filled up with trust and happiness and ***friendship***. The Southern Charmer made me feel so safe and seen and embraced. It was a profound relief to rest in him. In us.

The kissing on the couch lasted so beautifully long. Kissing like nothing bad had ever happened to us. Kissing like we had all the time in the world, and we did.

Knotty Thursday: Spider Web Weave!

 Friends! The kitten hung out peacefully in her crate and I finished a whole rope tutorial! It's a joyful new start for our household. Once I decided it was a rope day yesterday, I lifted out of my post-Southern-Charmer gloom and got a little giddy.

It was so much fun getting the whole ritual ready--putting on a little makeup, lighting a rose incense, slathering on rose-scented lotion while I fired up Rory's Brainworks. The real version is so much prettier than mine, but I don't mind! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVN1iRcdJfI

It was supposed to be the same knot the whole way round, but I had a hard time being consistent. So it ended up alternating between a half-hitch, a Munter hitch, and a just-sort-of-figure-it-out hitch. But I'm so proud!

Also, I think it's time for some new rope colors, definitely need a light blue. A bright new palette would be lovely to try before too long!