waving HI!

So I'm posting now.  I'm so sorry that I left some of you wondering whether I was okay.  I said I was going to post once a month, and I have definitely not done that.

That said -- I am okay.  I am more than okay.  The reason that you haven't heard from me is that I entered a doctoral program.  My business held steady with its part-time obligations, and I took on a second part-time job.  So... if I'm not working, or doing business stuff, I'm reading or writing papers or attending classes.  And if I'm not doing any of those things, I'm trying to get some quality time with Gerard or even one of my friends.

Gerard and I are doing really well.  I can't say that we *never* fight anymore, but we have really made major strides.  Fighting is not an issue for us anymore.  Commitment is also not an issue for us anymore.  We are both here, we know we love each other, and we know we want to spend the rest of our lives together and have a baby and all that mushy stuff.  I'm thrilled, actually, that we went through so many hard times together.  I think we needed to learn what it would look like between us if it got bad.  So we know that we could go there again, if life gets really stressful or something -- as it surely will at some points.  So anyway, the point is that we couldn't be happier with each other.

I am still occasionally dating women, which Gerard still heartily encourages.  I hooked up with my best friend a few months ago, while Gerard watched, which was pretty awesome.  If I wasn't so busy I would totally have written about it here.  Maybe she will write about it on her blog some day (some of you know where that is).  I also have a date tomorrow night with a woman who came across my online dating-women profile.  I am quite excited for that.

The last thing that I wanted to mention, since I have so often written about it here, is my health.  I seem to have turned a corner with my GI troubles.  Gerard has started making me green smoothies every morning, and they have pretty much obliterated my typical digestion disturbance pattern.  I'm also starting to go off the anti-depressants that I started taking around this time last year, though I'm keeping some meds on hand for insomnia.  And I still have that stupid eczema (how does that thing just start one day all of a sudden when I never had it for the first 30 years of my life?), but that's more of an annoyance than a health concern.

So in other words, all is well.  I'm really happy to be busy, and I'm loving school.  I'm loving my business, and I'm loving the security that the part-time job gives me.  I'm madly in love with Gerard, and I'm madly in love with life.

xx

a reality

Gerard and I think that what we're going through is probably not uncommon.  Probably lots of couples go through this, but probably most of them don't try to write sex blogs!

I used to write about us fighting a lot.  Well, we don't do that anymore.  We got over the strain of learning to live together, of being scared of committing to each other.  We still have arguments, but they are much less frequent and much less escalated.  Considering the amount of stress that we're under and the close quarters in which we're both living and working, I think we're doing awesome.

Yeah, we're not having any problem in the companionship area.  We love each other.  We're talking more often about our plan to eventually get married and have a baby, and we're both getting a little bit less freaked out by that every time we discuss it.  We support each other, we work together, we nurture each other... we spend more time together than probably either of us would prefer, but we're making the most of that (in most ways, anyway).  I can say this unequivocally: We're happy.

We're also affectionate.  We hug a lot.  We snuggle.  We touch each other.  Gerard likes to spank me a little bit every day.  We say that we love each other.  He sings me songs; I tell him why I think he's special.  We have no shortage of affection.

But what we do have a shortage of is SEX.  Sometimes I can't believe that we once had the most amazing sex I'd ever had in my entire life.  Yesterday my best friend told me this story about the mind-bending sex she had with her lover, and I couldn't even imagine what that might feel like.  It's been more than three weeks since the last time that I had Gerard inside of me, and sometimes I feel like I'm going to go crazy.

Turns out that he's sexually frustrated too.  He wants to have sex too.  But somehow we're not doing it.  I feel like I initiate with some regularity... but it doesn't work that well when I do.  We both like it when he's the aggressor.  We have better sex when he's the one doing the pursuing, and I'm capitulating to his desires (at least, that's the story we tell ourselves-- and it works!).  But he's not feeling it.  He says he just doesn't feel turned on.

I think some of the problem is intimacy.  Intimacy is scary.  Before he moved in, we always had the distance between our apartments to keep things from getting more intimate than we were ready for.  Then he moved in, and we had fighting to keep us from getting too intimate. But now... now we're here together all the time and we're not fighting.  We're more intimate than we've ever been.  Maybe regular sex would just be more closeness than either of us can handle right now.

But, presumably, we could both work on our intimacy issues and eventually it wouldn't feel so scary anymore, and we'd start having that crazy-perfect sex that was once one of our defining features.  That's the theory that I'm trying to believe in.

In the meanwhile, we have to come up with strategies to help us improve.  Gerard likes it when I explore with girls, so I hit Craig's List last night.  He also asked me to touch him in certain ways more frequently.  I gave him some feedback about the way that he touches me too.  And we're just going to try to be more open to each other.

Because, I'd like to say... having a little intrigue with other people occasionally is fun and titillating, but what I really want-- what I want more than anything else-- is Gerard.  It all starts and ends with him.

Anyway, when I started this blog I said I was going to write about the reality of a long-term relationship between two people who know they're sensitive and damaged.  You readers saw us overcome our fighting and my depression... so now we've got a new problem.  And here I am being embarrassingly honest about it.

I hope you see us get through this one as well.

postponed

Well, I have been postponed by my would-be part-time casual mistress, perhaps forever.

I have to respect her for being honest with me, and for her reasons for backing away.  She said that even though she enjoys playing around, she's realized that her real goal is to have a long-term partner.  So because of that she's not sure how she feels about casual play anymore.  She's also in graduate school, and she has a lot on her plate right now.  She asked me if we could talk about it again in a month, giving her some time to figure out what she feels and wants.

So I totally get where she's coming from.  Don't we all want that kind of connection in our lives?  It's true that casual playing around can distract a person from the quest for an actual partner, and I would never want to deny her that.  But wow, am I disappointed.

She emailed me after that last meeting, you know, and said that there were a lot of things she was interested in doing with me.  Oral sex, she mentioned, and fucking me with her strap-on, and discipline-related stuff.  Being with her was so exhilarating; I was imagining what I would wear when next I saw her, and fantasizing about what she might want me to wear.  I didn't even try to imagine what it would be like to be fucked by her-- I was saving that until the moment when I could actually experience it and know.  I loved our age difference-- she's nine years older than me, just like Gerard-- and I loved our complementarity and the electric attraction between us.  I wanted to be with that a little bit longer.

In her most recent email, the one where she explained her need to table me for now, she asked me to go to her blog to read something she'd shared, and tell her what I thought of it.  The topic was something intellectual that we have in common, but it was all written on the blog that she uses for her professional dominatrix persona.  In other words, this intellectual, academic piece was surrounded by dominant fantasies and words and the general presence of her extremely attractive dominance.  Oh, and photos of her.  So even though I knew she was appealing to our intellectual connection rather than our D/s connection when she asked me to read and share my thoughts on her piece, I couldn't get through it.  It was too distracting, and maybe even a little bit painful, to be in that virtual environment.

I had this yearning, you see... I wanted to go to this part of my sexual self.  The bisexual part, and the submissive part.  I wanted to try it out again.  Gerard used to play the dominant role in my life a lot more, before he moved in and "us" got more complex and messy and emotional.  I thought if I experienced it with her for a little while, it would help me figure out just what I wanted with that kind of sex within my relationship.  My main relationship.

But anyway, I can't blame her for her choice.  I want her to be happy.  I don't know her that well, but I know that finding a long-term partner is more important than getting off with someone that you know will never be serious about you.  I'm crossing my fingers, though, that she wants a little bit of casual playtime now and then while she's on the road to finding her love.  And I told her that I want to stay in touch even if we never end up in her bed together again.  Sigh.

histories

It's weird for me to think that Gerard and I have been together for almost two and a half years now.  We've definitely passed the point of "significant life investment."  In fact, I feel us moving to more and more official, grounded commitment.  It's scary for both of us, but it's feeling less scary lately.  And I've finally realized that, for Gerard and I, this is a pretty fucking big deal.

We both have big histories, relationship-wise.  In a way, it's kind of odd that neither of us has already been married, because we're both romantics, and we both place a high value on love relationships and falling in love.  We've both had passionate love affairs in our past... long relationships and big commitments... major life steps taken while holding the hand of another (at-the-time) treasured person.

We've both lived with other partners in the past.  I've lived with two other men, Gerard has shared an address with three other women, plus several who traveled around with him for various periods of time while he was living in a camper van in Australia.  We've both thought, in the past, that we had met the person we were going to make the lifetime go with.  I've been engaged twice, and Gerard bought a condo with his most recent ex before me.

That's our respective relationship histories, of course.  We also each have pretty extensive sexual histories.  My history includes several threesomes with married couples and male friends of boyfriends, plus a couple encounters with girls.  Most significantly, I spent a year and a half living as the submissive pet of a dominant couple, which led me to all kinds of crazy sexual adventures.  Gerard's history isn't so kinky, but he eclipses me with his sheer quantity of past escapades.  It seems that his sweet, unassuming charm has never failed him with getting a woman into bed, whether that meant a quickie in the restroom at a wedding reception or a week in the back of his camper van.  In a way, Gerard feels to me like a mythical kind of man, the kind that I never thought I'd actually know personally-- like a character in a Hugh Grant film or something.  But then again, maybe I too have some kind of crazy archetype that could be assigned to me based on my sexual history.

When we first got together, I think we were both taken aback by the other.  Gerard didn't imagine that a girl like me would be satisfied being with one man... I didn't imagine that life with me could ever measure up to the romantic globe-skipping he'd done with all those flings of the past.  But we still each respected what the other brought to the table, and saw the ways that our pasts molded us into a person that the other could fall in love with.  And gradually we realized that we were looking for the same thing: a stable, passionate love relationship with one permanent partner.  Our histories didn't change that-- it just showed how much we were both willing, throughout our pasts, to explore and forage for new experiences on our paths of self- and other-discovery.

And now, after two and a half years together and nine months living together, the histories aren't so important anymore.  Maybe some of that is feeling the weight of our history, and what we have created together.  I mean, it's not all that much in terms of time... but the amount of investment we've made in each other in these two and a half years makes it feel like more.  The histories are still important... we each keep those volumes on our shelf, and we revere them-- but now we're fully invested in the the life's work that we're going to write together.  We're writing it every day, and every day the words flow with more ease and sincerity and promise.

blowing away the dust

Well, it's been hard to write for the last couple of weeks.  I really hit a dark spot, and didn't quite know what to do with myself.  Ranting here helped me, of course... and I also made a decision to try going on anti-anxiety medication.  My work has picked up enough to give me motivation to keep pushing forward, and I'm considering going back to school for another degree.  That would at least keep me busy, right?

Going on the meds was a much less difficult decision than I was expecting.  I've always been kind of an anxious person, but I wanted to push my way through with psychotherapy rather than using a chemical fix.  Still, despite my resistance in the past, it was very easy for me to just go for it this time.  I was down so low, I knew it was time.  And, weirdly enough, it seems to have made an impact.  I don't really feel any differently... but Gerard says that he has noticed a change.  Things that would have upset me two weeks ago are rolling right by, he says, and I'm smiling more.  Also, I've stopped struggling with insomnia.  So I'm grateful for the change.  Although I still feel anxious, physically, I'm apparently much less reactive and irritable than I have been.  And that has the potential to make a big difference in multiple areas of my life.

February is almost over, and Gerard and I have only had two fights.  This is a record for us since he moved in last summer.  And, the fights were less escalated than they have been in the past.  I'm embarrassed to say that, often in the past, we've gotten so freaked out about how upset we are that one or both of us starts talking about what it would mean to break up.  But we stayed calm this month, and focused on our commitment to each other, even when we were both scared.  That's big.

So, I'm continuing to work on life, trying to keep my head up.  It makes a difference when there are little things giving me validation along the way.  My dog is doing much better, at last.  I've even found a less expensive option for medicating her, which is a relief.  I've also recently made some new friends.

We're already getting reminders of the upcoming windiness of March.  Though I hate the bitterness of wind chill, I'm trying to think of it symbolically: Let the wind blow away the bad stuff, and blow in the new opportunities and elevated moods.  I'm ready.

space and reassurance

Gerard and I are apparently like most couples in that we have different/opposing needs when it comes to feeling safe and loved.  There are people out there in this world who feel safest when they have space-- who want to have space if they get upset, and generally, if you pressed them, would tell you that they sometimes worry about not getting enough space in their intimate relationship.  Gerard is like this.  Then there are other people in the world who feel safest when they have togetherness and plenty of reassurance.  These people are like me, and they want to "talk it out" right away if they get upset.  If you pressed them, they might tell you that they sometimes worry about not getting enough togetherness in their intimate relationship.

I've found this difference between Gerard and I to be challenging right from the first few months of our relationship.  Though apparently we are not unusual-- most couples usually have one of each type.  And of course, the source of these feelings and behaviors go back to early, early childhood.  People who are like me generally didn't get enough snuggling and doting from their parents, and people like Gerard didn't get enough space to grow and be separate from their parents.  (I'm not suggesting that Gerard or I or anyone, necessarily, was abused or has terrible pathology because of such parental missteps-- it's fairly easy for parents to mess this up in at least some way.)  And, like everything that happens when we're under 5 years old, it has a pretty strong effect on who we become and what happens in our intimate relationships as adults.

Lately, Gerard and I have been looking more closely at our disparate needs and tendencies in the context of arguments.  Every time that we have an argument, even a ridiculous one-- and we have a lot of the ridiculous ones, being on top of each other almost 24/7 in this teeny apartment-- we both immediately feel a strong pull to our respective sides of this issue.  Gerard says, "I'm mad, you have to give me space," and I say, "I'm upset, you have to talk with me to work this out."

I don't mind telling you that Gerard tends to get a little bit self-righteous in these situations.  "Anyone will tell you that my way is healthier," he said once.  Of course, I did my best to correct him.  But it was hard to get it through his head that it's just as difficult for me to give him an hour of space (overcoming my anxiety and need to have things feel okay again) as it is for him to give me any reasonable discussion when he feels unable to overcome his anger and desire to be alone.  And I guess it was his lack of understanding (combined with some defensiveness) that kept him from seeing my side, and how we were both asking each other for something very difficult and contrary to our natural ways of being.

I worried, as I am wont to do, that we'd end up at an impasse.  Gerard was being really stubborn, insisting that he wasn't capable of adjusting his behavior, and I told him I wasn't willing to always do it his way.  When he needs space and I'm really upset, I often spend the entire duration of "space" crying-- and I can't sign up for having to do that every time we have a little tiff.  I held my ground insistently, and I didn't see how it could be resolved.  We went to bed and didn't touch each other all night.  

But then in the morning Gerard made me waffles.  And he said, "We've never talked about the problem in this way before.  This is a new insight, and I think just knowing it will help us to do better.  Everything's going to be fine.  I would do anything-- anything I can-- for you, and I know we'll work this out."

considering open relationships

Over the holidays, Gerard and I had a chance to spend a lot of time with his sister and brother-in-law.  They've been married for five years, and they have a ten-month-old baby.  I really like both of them-- they are smart and thoughtful people, although certainly much more conservative than me.  They live in the suburbs, drive an SUV, shop at Walmart, and mainly socialize with the people in their culdesac.  They live in a bubble and they like it that way.

One day the four of us were driving together somewhere, and we were talking about marriage and relationships, and what it's like having a baby.  Then suddenly, out of nowhere, Gerard's brother-in-law commented, "Those people out there who think that they can have an 'open relationship' are completely fooling themselves.  That's just not the way that human beings are wired, and those types of relationships never work out."

He went on for a little while, and I was a bit shocked, listening to him.  I thought I let a decent amount of time pass before countering, "That's certainly not true. Lots of people have successful open relationships, and there's lots of evidence indicating that monogamy is not the 'natural state' for human beings."

"Like what?" he demanded, his voice gaining momentum and energy bordering on aggression.  "What specific research studies can you cite that have proven that monogamy isn't the natural state for humans?"

And so began a very interesting conversation.  Gerard's sister and brother-in-law were hell-bent on believing that monogamy is the only way to have a loving partnership.  I tried telling them about several couples that I know who have successful open marriages, and they reacted first with disbelief ("yeah, but how long have they been together?") and then with dismissal ("okay, maybe they've been married way longer than us, but that's still not that long and anyway that's not that many examples").  

An interesting element to their disbelief was that they imagined non-monogamous relationships as across-the-board betrayals.  I explained that, in healthy polyamorous relationships, the couple agrees to the terms, and that the primary relationship gets first priority.  This was very difficult for them to wrap their heads around.  Gerard's sister countered, "So if the wife didn't like one of the husband's other partners, she could say 'I want you to stop seeing her' and he would?"  I could tell that she was taken aback when I answered, "Yes, exactly."

They were also applying odd reasoning to the whole idea.  "By sleeping with other people, you're putting your family at risk because you could catch STD's."  It seemed like it was difficult for them to imagine that a person might apply the same principles that kept them safe during conventional dating (such as honest conversations, regular testing, and condoms) to their "piece on the side" relationships.

We went round and round for a while, and the discussion sort of ended at a draw.  Gerard's sister seemed to have a slightly wider perspective after hearing us out, but her husband was stubbornly holding his position.  He insisted that my experience is skewed because I live in a big city and that the rest of the world is much more conservative and similar to him than my "sample."  We let the topic go-- although later I did email them both a number of links to articles describing the research about monogamy (he did ask for it).  Neither of them replied.

It was sort of funny for Gerard and I to be championing open relationships together.  I would say that we don't have an open relationship, though I suppose that's somewhat debatable.  Gerard isn't allowed to pursue sexual relationships with other women, and I'm not allowed to pursue sexual relationships with other men.  However, I am allowed to pursue sexual relationships with women.  Twice since we met I have had encounters with women-- once with my best friend, and once with a girl I met on Craigslist for that express purpose.  

It's interesting to note that, in both cases, Gerard had some feelings of jealousy in addition to his arousal, even though the whole thing was his idea.  The sister and brother-in-law were using jealousy as evidence that human beings were intended for monogamy.  "Relationships are complex," I told them.  "I'm not saying that there is never jealousy.  The people who choose these types of relationships have to make the choice to address those feelings when they come up-- they don't ignore them or pretend not to have them.  These sorts of things can be fine when they're talked about and worked through."  I think that Gerard would say that his jealousy was not as strong as his arousal and motivation to see me sleep with women.  And though I don't have a secondary partner in my life right now, we both have positive associations with our experiences in the past, and Gerard would be thrilled if I were to find someone new to get involved with.

We've always talked about someday opening our relationship more.  I admit that I do like the idea that Gerard won't be the only man that I sleep with for the rest of my life, even if he becomes my husband and the father of my hypothetical baby.  And I like the idea of being secure enough in our bond that I'd be willing to let him have an encounter with another woman at some point.  Right now, I don't think we're being pulled in that direction-- but we're in agreement that we're open to going there one day.

I was disappointed by that conversation with Gerard's family.  It's hard to be reminded that there are such judgmental and closed-minded people in the world, and to realize that some of those judgmental and closed-minded people are actually lovely to be around most of the time!  Dan Savage often points out that it's our preoccupation with monogamy that contributes to many couples' struggles, and suggests that monogamy would actually be easier if we were willing to give ourselves credit for the hard work that it involves, to realize that it's okay and natural to be attracted to people besides our partners and to want to have sex with those people.  To empower ourselves in our choice: to pursue the ups and downs of polyamory or to work our way through monogamy, and to actively address the joys and pitfalls of whichever one we choose.

Here are some of the sources about non-monogamy research that I sent to the sister and brother-in-law:

Sex at Dawn

Seed Magazine's Sexy Beasts article

The Double Life of Woman (has some passing references to evolutionary theory)

Salon's interview with the author of Lust in Translation

The Guardian's interview with the author of Mating in Captivity

vulnerability

The researcher and storyteller Brene Brown says that living wholeheartedly means fully investing yourself in life (in endeavors, in relationships, etc.) and allowing yourself to be vulnerable, even while knowing, and acknowledging, that you have no guarantee of success.  And I feel that vulnerability today, as I create a space for (anonymous) public exposure of my relationship and my oh-so-vulnerable investment in Gerard, the man that I love.

Imagine us, if you will.  We are young enough to still call ourselves young, but old enough to know that that won't be the case for too much longer.  We cohabit in a tiny, rundown cave of an apartment in a vibrant neighborhood of an amazing American city.  We have a dog, a piano, and matching laptops.  We've painted our kitchen yellow.

When we first met and started dating, it was our sexual chemistry that seemed the most promising element of our burgeoning love affair.  I had a kinky past, and Gerard was experienced in sexual adventure and seduction.  We came together like magnets, and we each had the kinds of sexual behaviors and proclivities that the other craved.  As we continued to date, we would sometimes find that socializing with other couples was difficult because the sexual energy between us was so powerful that it overwhelmed or embarrassed our friends.

These days... well, we both laugh and shake our heads with amazement when we acknowledge that we seem to have hit a point where sex isn't one of the most important elements of our relationship anymore.  It's strange, and sometimes challenging.  We both want to keep having amazing sex, and our days are full of meaningful, affectionate and often sexual touches and caresses.  But I know when we moved in together six months ago we both thought we'd be having sex more often than we are.  It's not disgraceful, but we could definitely be taking advantage of each other a lot more often.

I think that closeness, intimacy, and vulnerability have challenged us.  When I think back to our early relationship, I remember that, once we'd been seeing each other long enough to realize we had something sustainably special, Gerard completely pulled away.  He kept me at arm's length emotionally for months before he was ready to give in and fall in love.  After that, we ebbed and flowed with our closeness and fear.  We talked about living together for over a year before I finally said, "Move in or I'm moving on."  With that push, Gerard was reluctantly willing to go ahead-- but then we both reeled emotionally from the change and the resulting feelings in each of us.  Six months later, I think we're just finally getting used to it.  And we're both glad that we did it-- we're closer and less scared of our love now that we share a space and a life.

Big questions loom ahead, of course-- the biggest and most vulnerable ones of all.  From many directions, Gerard and I are both receiving information that suggests big commitments for our future.  Our careers are in flux... there's some indication that we might do well to relocate to a completely different part of the country... our siblings are settling down and family life feels more appealing... and I've decided I want a baby.

But just because the signs point us this way doesn't mean that we're ready!  I want us to be ready to get married and go off birth control and buy a property with a baby room... but we're not, not on any level.  Though... perhaps we are ready to start working on being ready.  And that is where this blog begins-- right in that place where we acknowledge our vulnerability, prepare to confront it, and wait to see what happens.