Is there anyone on the planet who ISN’T riddled with brain disorders?

One of my amazing commenters noticed my description, a few posts back, of Minx’s aversion to reading – and suggested it might be due to ADD.  Looks like this assessment is bang-on.

I’d considered the idea before that Minx has attention deficit issues, but dismissed it because he doesn’t talk like the one guy I know who’s been officially diagnosed (Officially Diagnosed Guy’s conversation went all the fuck over the place in baffling and hard-to-follow ways; Minx stays on topic and makes sense).  But when the idea was brought up again, I started really thinking about it and it made a lot of sense.  In addition to not being able to read long passages of text, Minx:

-Has specifically told me that he doesn’t retain verbal instructions well, so if I’m telling him something important I need to make sure I’m making eye contact with him and that he’s paying full attention;

-Talks really fast (it takes a while to be able to understand him…I’m used to it now but friends of mine often have to ask him to repeat himself when he speaks);

-Interrupts me a lot*;

-Needs to be flagged down several times, sometimes, before he realizes I’m talking to him (hence my having to say “LIGHTER!” eighty times in a row if he’s massaging me and accidentally uses too much force);

-Gets “bored” when doing physical tasks unless the TV is on in the background;

-He’s said that he thinks he has auditory processing disorder because he can’t talk to someone in a busy place without accidentally focusing on the background noise instead – I’m thinking this is actually an ADD thing, too.

Anyhoo, I asked Minx to take an ADD self-test online.  I expected him to get defensive and hostile (This was shortly after the New Year’s Eve fight when he went ballistic and accused me of being depressive and “constantly negative” and I thought maybe he’d see my request as “You think I suck but I bet you’re fucked up too so nyah nyah!”) but actually he was totally intrigued by my proposition and did it right away.  According to the test he took, it’s 78% likely that he has ADD.

Turns out Minx has suspected this about himself forever – he brought it up to his family doctor when he was a teenager but the doctor dismissed it for some reason so Minx gave up.  So we’re both relieved to realize that there’s an actual reason why Minx does some of the things he does.  We spent a few hours looking up tactics for dealing with ADD (like instructions for teachers with afflicted students, for instance) and reading anecdotes.  Minx is interested in going to a doctor and trying to get some meds, but this will no doubt take forever because his ADD makes him forget things and his anxiety makes him hate making phone calls.  On one hand I’m curious as hell to see if medication would change Minx for the better, and really really want him to experience (even for a few days!) what it’s like to be neurotypical so he at least has some basis for comparison.  On the other hand, I kind of hate the idea of medication because I had horrific experiences with antidepressants**.  So it’s not driving me too crazy that Minx hasn’t contacted a doctor yet.

The important thing is that we know there’s actually something going on with Minx’s brain and he’s not just a jerk.  Hopefully this will help me to be more patient with him when certain issues come up.

Oh, and I have to say, I love that Minx’s reaction to realizing he probably has ADD is “Okay, let’s Google some things and find the best ways of dealing with this” instead of “HA!  This means I’m allowed to ignore and interrupt you!  I have a brain thingy!  I can’t help it!”***

The irony here is that interrupting me (or not noticing that I’ve even spoken) mashes my “frothing rage” buttons like almost nothing else (chalk it up to growing up with a father who, I think, literally believed I was an inferior species completely unworthy of consideration)…and I’ve ended up with a boy who’s predisposed toward doing those things whether he means to or not.

Ah well.  I’m in too deep to walk away now.

 

*Not so much finishing my sentences (a classic ADD trait) but having something to say and just blurting it out even though I’m already talking.  Sometimes it gets kind of ridiculous, like I repeatedly try to say something and he cuts me off five times in a row with different additions to a thought he’s having.

**They always had horrible side effects (every single fucking SSRI they ever gave me cut off my ability to orgasm, and there were sometimes other side effects as well) and they always eventually stopped working.  For five years, either my brain or my crotch was functional, but never at the same time…

***My dad would almost certainly do the second thing, which is why my mom hasn’t told him he fits all the symptoms of Asperger’s.

Hawtness.

A while back, I shared a pic here of Minx’s hot ass because I’m a shameless braggart selfless and want you guys to have nice things.

But recently I thought: what about people who love legs/feet/hosiery?  They deserve eye candy, too.

So here’s a pic I took a while back of some fancy lace-up fishnet pantyhose Minx bought.  In order for them to fit properly, he needed them laced up around his legs…so he lay on the bed and I did the lacing (and took a picture when I was halfway through).  The lacing probably took around 45 minutes overall; thank heaven it only has to be done once!  I never knew anything could be so sexy and yet so tedious at the same time.

 

 

Legs like a fuckin’ supermodel, amirite?  And surprisingly sexy feet (I say this as someone who doesn’t generally find feet attractive, especially a man’s), although this particular picture doesn’t display them to full advantage.

Exploration

Minx has continued giving me orgasms (instead of me having to do it myself every time), and it’s helped my state of sexual “meh”-ness a lot…although not entirely.

I used to have a pretty huge sex drive.  It’s been way lower than what I think of as “usual” for the last year or more, and I’ve tentatively made my peace with that; I’m starting to think this is just a natural decline due to me getting older.  No, the thing that’s bugging me lately is that these orgasms Minx gives me take longer than I feel they should because I can’t settle on a fantasy that gets my motor running.

This never used to be a problem for me.  Used to be I’d have sexy thoughts all the time, whether I was actually in the middle of a sex act or not.  And while wanking, I even still used some of the same fantasies I did back in high school…they only started losing their novelty for me a few years ago.  In fairness, this might be tied in with my lower sex drive; Minx’s ministrations often begin out of the blue, without me being especially horny and without a lot of foreplay, and maybe that’s why I have to “channel surf” inside my head for like ten minutes in order to find something that’ll ultimately get me there.

I’m almost 39 years old; I’ve been having orgasms since I was 8 (during my high school years I probably averaged one or two per day…); maybe I’ve used up most of my allotted sex drive for this lifetime and it’s time for things to settle down now.  It makes a kind of sense to me.  And yet…I can’t help wondering whether everything would come surging back again if I had a different partner.  One with a lovely average-sized penis that didn’t tend to chafe me after ten minutes.  One with “on buttons” that stay constant from day to day so I’d know exactly where to push to reduce him to a quivering puddle at my feet.  One who’s more of a submissive and a masochist than Minx.

I’m increasingly interested in going further with BDSM.  I want to know what it feels like to hit someone as hard as I can – and they love it.  I want to experience a partner who longs to be a total object and satisfy my desires with no thought for their own.  Okay, I’ll admit it, I want someone like Rogue Bambi…except probably with a penis.

Setting aside the fact that Minx may not let me play with others to that extent, there’s also the issue that I’m not sure I could dominate a guy I didn’t like but I’m not sure I could hit a guy I did like.  Actually, fuck that, I could totally hit a guy I liked.  I just couldn’t do it if it upset him.  But someone who gasped and got turned on – like how Minx occasionally gets hard from a vigorous spanking – yeah.  Yes, please.  Yup.

The other day Minx was stimulating me with our new Hitachi Magic Wand and I was flipping through various mental images, trying to find something that would work for me.  Nothing vanilla had much effect…imagining myself dominating Minx in any hardcore way was an immediate cold shower because I know he wouldn’t let me in real life so it felt, I dunno, manipulative or something…imagining myself dominating any of my more submissive exes was another cold shower because I felt guilty about mentally “cheating”…what I finally settled on was me as a cis-male, jerking off onto a (literally!) faceless, chained-down guy in a black PVC zentai suit with face-hood thingy*.  Alongside a group of guys who were also jerking off onto/humping/slapping our victim (who was terrified but also enjoying it, of course…what would sexual fantasies be without someone going “Oh my, I shouldn’t let you do this to me, it’s so naughty…*MOAN*”?).

I could feel my lifelong female “niceness training” kick in a few times during the fantasy** and I kept having to repress it, but the fact remains: picturing a guy being hardcore objectified (and liking it) is what got the job done.

Now, if only I could feel the arousal without it being inhibited by all this fucking emotional baggage.  ’Cause right now, I can’t tell whether I kinda liked this fantasy, or whether I liked it a lot but my enjoyment was being suppressed by my feelings of guilt and fear and whatnot.  On an intellectual level, I understand that fantasies are all in my head and I shouldn’t feel weird or bad about them, but I can’t make myself feel it.  I don’t know how to let go and just think about whatever I want.

 

 

*Black because it shows the semen better.  PVC because it’s impermeable and therefore lowers the risk of the sub contracting STDs.  Safety first!  p.s. the link is un-gross and should be safe for work.

** “But whyyyyyy would you want to doooooo that to someone?!?!  It’s so meeeeean!!!” also, undertones of “How can you be thinking of someone other than your boyfriend?  Especially when he’s the one giving you this orgasm?  That’s so rude!” and “If you let yourself fantasize about these sorts of things, you’ll get hooked on the idea and regular sex will lose all of its appeal and your relationship will be ruined!!!”

More thoughts on openness

(This stuff all happened before the big New Year’s Eve fight, so I didn’t get a chance to write about it, but I’m going to now.  I like keeping these conversations for posterity.)

So a little while ago, I asked Minx whether he’d changed his mind re: Ingenue makeouts.  Minx said no.  I asked why not (making it clear that I meant it in a “help me understand your headspace” way and not in a whiny “Awwww, come on, why notttt?” way) and Minx was like “Well, I met him and I don’t think he’s attractive.”

“Does that mean you’re attracted to The Pedant?” I asked, giggling.  ”When I showed him to you on Facebook were you like ‘ooooh, he’s dreamy!  Cowgirl should make out with him so I can live vicariously through her!’” (I knew that wasn’t the case, but the idea still kinda turned me on).

“No, of course not,” Minx said.  ”But The Ingenue…I just don’t see the point.  He’s average-looking, he doesn’t seem that bright…I don’t get it.”

“I guess I can see how you’d think that, but once you get to know him, his sweetness and sense of humour come through and he starts being hot.  And also he and I were reeeeeally compatible in bed.  Just sayin’.”  This conversational direction was strange to me.  Why does Minx feel that he should find my partners attractive or appealing?  Shouldn’t it be enough that I do?

Minx said that he could understand me being interested in The Pedant because The Pedant was new; I was satisfying my curiosity.  But revisiting someone I’d already had seemed weird to him.  I reiterated that I wanted to revisit The Ingenue because the sex/makeouts were so excellent; it’s fun to satisfy curiosity about someone new, but it would be disappointing to go through the whole process of meeting someone and vetting them for appropriateness and asking Minx’s permission and explaining the situation to the other guy, only to find that he kisses like a toilet plunger.  I have fairly stringent makeout standards and all the usual girl-issues of “Will this guy treat me like a human being and not an object?  Will he back off if I tell him to?  Will he take direction well?” so when I find someone good, I like to keep him.  In all honesty, I think Minx may not fully understand this because his male privilege means that he has likely never thought “OMG what if I want to stop making out but this person doesn’t listen and I end up getting raped” in his entire life.  Safety is a factor for me that it isn’t for him, is what I’m saying.  Although I can’t remember whether I explained this to Minx at the time.  I do remember telling him (again; I’ve said it before) that revisiting an old FWB is less threatening because I’ve already assessed their dating potential and found it lacking.  With a new person, who knows?  Maybe I’d end up falling for them.

Minx ended up summing up his feelings as “I kind of only want you having makeouts you could take or leave.  I feel like you’re not attached to The Pedant and could easily drop him.  With The Ingenue, I’m not so sure.”

“Yeah, but Minx…I can take or leave The Ingenue.  I’m ‘leaving’ him right now, in fact; you told me you didn’t want me making out with him, so we just hang out as friends.  However, I do see what you’re saying.  If I made out with The Ingenue, I think I would be visibly thrilled about it and have to restrain myself from gushing about how much fun it was and how sweet he is.  I really can’t see him eclipsing what I have with you – not by a long shot – but it is possible that I would like him enough to make you uncomfortable.  And I cannot stress enough that our relationship is my highest priority and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it or make you feel yucky.  I’m happy to shelve the idea of Ingenue makeouts and stick within whatever parameters make you feel safe.”

I think this paraphrased conversation is missing some bits (like when I pointed out the irony of Minx only approving of makeouts if I don’t enjoy them too much – I know I mentioned the hilarity of it, and that he acknowledged it too, but I can’t remember at what point this happened); it also sounds a lot more argumentative than it really was.  In actuality, our discussion was relaxed and mostly philosophical in tone, and I was asking a lot of hypothetical and “devil’s advocate” questions to try understand Minx’s point of view better, and there was a lot of snuggling and kissing and we felt really close to each other.  Ultimately, the question of whether I could make out with The Ingenue made an amazing jumping-off point for Minx and I to talk openly about our feelings and increase our level of intimacy with each other – which more than makes up for the fact that Minx said no.

But!  Here’s a fascinating thing (to me, anyway): not long after that discussion, a girl responded to Minx’s profile on OKCupid (looking strictly for friends).  Her first message simply said “You are a divine creature!” but she quickly followed up with a second message apologizing for coming off like a horndog and initiating some real conversation.  I love that she called Minx a “divine creature” – this seems to me like the best possible compliment a crossdresser could ask for.  And this girl is gorgeous – gorgeous!  (Minx agrees that she’s really pretty, although he doesn’t gush about it like I do…she might be more my physical type than his.)  And her messages are articulate and she and Minx have a lot of things in common.  And she’s in an open relationship, so clearly she’s on board with nonmonogamy and would almost certainly make out with Minx if he asked.  And I find myself being totally fine with the idea – because she seems awesome and gives Minx’s beauty the reverence it deserves.

I’m not sure whether Minx’s initial assertion – that he needs to see the appeal in another dude in order to approve my makeouts with him – is really how he feels, or just an idea he threw out there until we got the real heart of the matter (him being afraid that I’ll get too attached to The Ingenue).  But I totally get the concept now.  I mean, I think I’d let Minx make out with just about anyone he wanted (provided zie understood and respected the terms of our relationship) but apparently it makes me super-extra-excited when the possible third party seems really cool and interesting.  It seems I’ve reached a level of trust and compersion I never thought possible, and unreservedly want Minx to have someone awesome.

Wanna hear something amazing, though?  I was so gung ho for Minx to finally make out with someone* that I actually said out loud to him, “I’m not sure whether to ask you to establish a friendship with this girl first, or to give you carte blanche on makeouts right from the getgo.”  And Minx emphatically said, “Nooooo, I wouldn’t make out with her on our first meeting even if you said okay.  My first priority is to make new friends.  I just want to focus on that for now, without complicating things.”

And he’s right; he has almost nobody to hang out with anymore, and he needs that way more than he needs “extracurricular activity”.  This, folks, is why I trust Minx with every molecule of my body, mind, and heart.  He’s self-aware (usually ), he knows what’s best for him, he has iron-clad self-control and he always thinks with his brain and not his cock.

Another tidbit of news: I hung out with The Latent Heterosexual recently.  I had a fantastic time, and our hug goodbye was genuine and warm and lasted several minutes.  And…he’s recently opened up his relationship with his girlfriend.  I decided that I would like to make out with him – not exactly out of sexual attraction per se, but as a continuation of the affection expressed in our talks and our hugs.  It’s not something I need, you understand, but it would be nice.  Also, if it happened, I would (as far as I know) be the first other person on his side of the open relationship – and I like the idea of doing that for him.  I won’t go further than clothed making out, so TLH’s girlfriend won’t have too much new stuff to deal with, and if she does end up freaking out I know my friendship with TLH will survive it; we’ll just go back to not making out.

When I asked Minx’s permission for Latent Heterosexual makeouts…he said okay pretty much immediately!  Which frankly I didn’t expect at all because not only is TLH probably not attractive enough for Minx’s standards, he’s also the guy I was seeing before and slightly during my relationship with Minx.  You’d think the fact that I want to “revisit” would be threatening to Minx…but somehow, it is not.

That boy just keeps on amazing me every day.

 

 

 

*Admittedly, not so much for his benefit as so the proverbial other shoe would drop…I want to get the first time over with so I can know for sure how it makes me feel!

More discussion.

I thought this latest fight with Minx was over but some other stuff ended up coming to the surface.  Minx triggered it when he edited his OKCupid profile to invite potential new friends to share their art and writing with him.

Minx, you see, doesn’t really read.  He thinks it might be some form of dyslexia: short online passages are okay (although he has to highlight each sentence he’s reading in turn to help him focus) but he finds big blocks of text kind of overwhelming.  His brain keeps wanting to skip words or add them in (I can confirm this; it happens when he tries to read out loud) and his eyeballs have a hard time tracking the lines of text and will either skip lines or loop back to the beginning of the line he just read (which is why he highlights things).

And so, the first time his all-or-nothing thinking exploded into a fight between us and I asked him to read a certain passage from my cognitive behavioural therapy book to help him understand his thought processes, he was like “Yeah, no.  I don’t read.  Sorry.”  Ditto when we had another, similar fight and I sent him a link to The Usual Error, a really helpful online book about fostering good communication in relationships, in hopes that he could learn how to express himself without lashing out.  The other day I sent him a link to a smoking hot blog entry that perfectly expresses how I have sometimes felt and behaved as a domme – and what I feel is missing from our own relationship.  I thought that if Minx read it, he could understand me better and work at giving me more of the dynamic I crave.  But when he saw how long the entry was, he flat-out refused to read it.  I’ve also just generally wanted him to read stories and things that I’ve written (I’m an aspiring writer as well as an artist) and he wouldn’t.

(By the way…Minx spends hours on the internet every day, mostly looking at densely-packed Wikipedia pages about comic books or ancient mythology.  When I asked him about that, he said that he’s not really reading that stuff, just kind of half-assedly skimming it.  I have no reason to disbelieve this.)

So, here’s this thing I wish Minx would do but he just…won’t.  The way I see it, I’m left with two choices: either accept the no-reading thing as one of his foibles, or – if I realize it just bothers me too damn much – break up with him* and find someone who does read.  And I don’t want to break up with him, so I’ve been working at accepting his no-reading thing, just like he’s probably worked at accepting my messy habits and inability to have g-spot orgasms.  But seeing him invite total strangers to send him their rambling, inept stories when he wouldn’t read two pages of a book for the sake of his own mental health and of our relationship – that kinda made me snap.

I called him out on it.  I told him that I understand his no-reading thing (as much as I can, anyway, as a person who loves to read and has no problems with it) and have tried to accept it because it’s just how his brain works…but anxiety and depression are part of how my brain works and in the past he’s basically told me to just snap myself out of it using willpower.  That double-standard** has always frustrated me.  It also frustrates me that he’ll read (however half-assedly) about mythical animal/human hybrids on Wikipedia for six hours straight but wouldn’t even look at the things I’ve tried to share with him for the good of our relationship.

I also pointed out that I’ve repeatedly asked him which of the five love languages he speaks most fluently (i.e., which behaviours of mine make him feel most loved, so that I can concentrate my efforts where they make the most impact) and he always brushes me off with, “I dunno.  All of them.”  And that I’ve proposed that we write out a “relationship contract” where we both spell out the things that are most important to us in a partnership (rereading and amending them periodically to keep it relevant) so that we each have an actual physical document we can consult to make sure we’re still “on track” – and he flat-out refused to do it.  All of which – combined with the way I’ve coddled him through his occasional temper tantrums – makes me feel that I’m the only one proactively trying to work on the relationship.

Minx, predictably, did his whole catatonia thing.  I’m sick to death of sitting around trying to cajole him into talking to me while he stays silent for literally an hour or more, so I left him to it.  Not in an angry way; I didn’t say anything or slam any doors or anything.  I just decided to cut my losses, give up on waiting for him, and live my life as though he wasn’t there.  I started dinner cooking and puttered around in the bedroom for a bit, tidying.

After tidying, I thought I’d work on my latest painting for a while…but when I cut through the living room to get to my kitchen artspace, Minx started talking to me.  His fog had lifted and he was behaving like an alert, responsive human being again – and, thankfully, not an angry or resentful one.  He said he was sorry for not reading the stuff I referred him to, and that from now on he’ll at least try – but he’d like it if I read along with him, to help keep him focused.  I said I’d be happy to do that.  He apologized for going way off inside his head again, and said that he just doesn’t feel like he can “narrate” his thoughts to me as they’re happening; he often has several conflicting thoughts at once, and is afraid that I’ll fixate on whatever he happens to say first and get mad at him and he’ll never have a chance to say the rest of it.  I reminded him of my (repeated!) offer to let him express all his thoughts without judging or interrupting or even saying a single thing until the end.  I’m hoping someday he’ll actually be able to take me up on this, but I don’t guess it’ll happen soon.

Then we finally had that talk about the five love languages!  The languages are: compliments, quality time together, touching, service (i.e. doing things for the other person), gifts, and touch.  For the record, I figured out ages ago that touch and service are huuuuge for me (and indeed are often the same thing, like when Minx caresses me to bring me down from an angry or stressed mood) and have let Minx know.

It was difficult narrowing down Minx’s priorities, but when I asked him to tell me about times he’s felt truly loved, it seemed as though quality time is a pretty big one.  He agreed with this assessment, and said that he wants us to spend more time together actually purposely doing stuff, not just sitting next to each other while we’re each on the internet or whatever.  Apparently the times we’ve gone out for sushi have meant a lot more to him than I’d realized (to me it was mostly “Mmmm, sushi!” to him it was “Yay, Cowgirl and I are on a date…that involves delicious sushi!”).

When I tried to get more information from Minx about times he’s felt loved, and encouraged him to widen his scope by including stuff from his parents in that mix, he got to thinking about his relationship with his parents and said that he knows they love him but that doesn’t really matter because he’s never felt trusted by them.  I think I know what he means by this.  When they first found out he was sexually active, for instance, they freaked right the hell out; they seemed to just assume that he would behave irresponsibly and get his girlfriend pregnant.  In fact, Minx is one of the most responsible lovers I’ve ever had – he knows things about proper condom use that even I didn’t know, and I think I’m better than average with this stuff.  And by the way that freakout with his parents happened when he was twenty-three.

Minx said that his upbringing kind of made him feel that distrust is the default state of all humans, and it’s really hard for him to trust other people – and this is probably why he sometimes clams up when I’m asking him about his feelings.  He did say, though, that he’s more open with me than he’s ever been with anyone else.  And he said that he can feel how much I do trust him and that it means the world to him.  It’s just gonna take a while for him to get used to it and open up completely with me, that’s all.  I said that maybe there should be a sixth love language called trust.  Or actually, make that trust/compersion, because when Minx let me go make out with The Pedant  it made me feel more loved than I ever thought possible.

Oh, and somewhere in this discussion (perhaps when we were talking about actively going on “dates” rather than spending time together by default just ’cause we live together) I explained to Minx that my motivation for wanting to go clubbing on New Year’s Eve was to dance a whole lot and (therefore) feel attractive, and that’s why his alternate suggestions (a club I didn’t like and a get-together at someone’s house) disappointed me so much.  He totally hadn’t realized that – to him I guess a night out was a night out, period, and when I pooh-poohed his suggestions he thought I was just being a wet blanket.  He apologized profusely for making that assumption.

Also, I told him that although the conventional wisdom with anxiety is “Just go out anyway – you’ll probably end up having fun,” I’ve tried this many times and it doesn’t work.  Or rather, if random anxiety bullshit is making me scared to go somewhere I know I love (like a familiar nightclub playing my favourite tunes) I can probably force myself to go and end up loving it, but if I’m scared to go somewhere because it’s unfamiliar and/or crowded then forcing the issue will probably result in me feeling panicky and overwhelmed.  I generally need to wait until I’m on good mental footing in order to try out new things.  I think Minx understands now.

And, I pointed out that there have been a fair number of times in the past where Minx said yes to going clubbing with me and I was looking forward to it but then he bailed at the last minute.  I told him that it was frustrating (I really look forward to going dancing, and kind of save up my energy for it to a point where cancelled plans leave me feeling all jittery and restless), and made me not want to ask him clubbing anymore (so if he feels like we’re trapped in the house all the time, that’s partly why).  He was sympathetic.  I also told him that these situations are a perfect example of analyzing one’s feelings before attacking the other person: I initially felt angry at Minx for bailing on those occasions (“Fuck, I wanted to go out but Minx doesn’t so now my evening is ruined”) but quickly realized that my real anger was with myself (“Wait…if I were neurotypical, Minx could bail on our plans and I’d just go to the club by myself.  The reason I’m sitting at home frustrated is that my anxiety makes it so I won’t leave the house without accompaniment.  It’s really my anxiety that ruined my evening”).  Minx was like “Hey, that sounds like pretty much the opposite of what happened on New Year’s Eve, when I got mad at you for not wanting to come out with me” and I was like “That is why I told you that story.”  And I asked him about those times that he bailed – was it really because he felt too tired, or was he feeling some social anxiety of his own?  He said probably a bit of both.  I think he’s beginning to realize that he’s not blameless in all of this; maybe my anxiety has been a burden on him at times, but it’s gone the other way too.

And there was some general talk about trying to help each other out of our emotional funk by keeping more of a structured schedule and trying to get out more and stuff.  And then we had some fucking awesome kinky sex that gave me exactly the dynamic I’d been missing in our sex life and made us feel incredibly connected to each other.  And Minx wasn’t just humouring me; he felt the electricity, too.  This all happened the day before yesterday and he still gets hard remembering me stuffing my panties into his mouth and calling him a whore.  Meeee-OW.

So yeah.  I think we’re okay now.

 

*There is, of course, a third option: staying with my partner, not accepting his foibles, and rehashing the same fights over and over again.  I’m not ready to turn into a carbon copy of my mother just yet, thank you.

**Triple-standard, when you take into account that Minx has depression and anxiety too – and that they give him a short fuse and make him more likely to yell about my depressive episodes!!!

More thoughts about that fight

In my last entry (and in others, too, I think) I said that Minx and I have a good relationship except that he doesn’t know how to handle conflict.

Upon reflection, I’ve realized this isn’t true.  I’ve had a bunch of times where I had an issue with him and brought it up and he was fucking awesome.  He always thanks me for bringing the problem to his attention and then we have a really good talk about it and figure out how to fix it.  I think he’s brought up some of his minor issues with me calmly and tactfully, as well (though he does seem more prone to storing things up and then exploding later).

No, the problem isn’t actually Minx at all.  The problem is clinical depression.

I’ve known for months now that Minx has depressive tendencies; I figured it out when he started displaying “all-or-nothing” thinking, i.e. accusing me of “always” doing something when in fact I’d only done it once or twice (and had done the opposite many times as well).  It’s not really Minx acting like a shithead to me; it’s the depression taking over.  I’m a depressive, too, and I know firsthand that the disease is not my personality, it’s a separate entity that sometimes skews or suppresses my personality.

My usual approach when Minx (or anyone) brings up issues with me – the approach of taking his feelings seriously and helping him work through them -is perfect for those times when Minx has a complaint about me.  When his depression is in the driver’s seat, though, all bets are off.  His thinking is skewed and he genuinely (albeit temporarily) believes that I’m a bitch who’s fucking up his entire life.  This is not a time for me to try to reason with him; he’s in a fundamentally unreasonable place.  This is not a time for me to take his thoughts seriously, this will only convey to DepressedMinx that his distorted opinions are real and valid.

I’m more convinced than ever that the thing to do next time is tell him his behaviour is inappropriate and then leave him alone for a while.  To do anything else would be rewarding him for treating me like a punching bag.  I can’t believe it took me this long to differentiate between Minx and DepressedMinx…considering I’m a clinical depressive, too.  I know firsthand what it’s like to have crazy, almost conspiracy-theory-type thoughts and totally believe that they are real and valid – until suddenly my brain chemistry shifts and it all vanishes.

Now I just need Minx to get to the point where he can notice the distinctively histrionic tone of his depressive thoughts and go: “Ah-ha!  I bet these aren’t real.”  I know this is possible.  I do it, myself.

 

Crappy New Year!

My social anxiety (and the cold weather) has been making it difficult for me to get out of the house lately, and so I’ve been feeling stir crazy.  Also unsexy, since I’ve been wearing sweatpants indoors and twelve layers of winterwear on those occasions when I’ve ventured outside.

A week or so ago I found out that there was going to be New Year’s Eve ‘do at a club that I like, playing music that I love, that only cost $10 to get in.  And only 50 people RSVP’d “yes” to it on Facebook, so there would probably be room to actually dance.  I asked Minx if he wanted to go, and he said yes.  I was thrilled!  Finally, a chance to dance and feel all adrenaline-rushy and sexy and happy for the first time in months.  Since then I’ve been looking forward to it, like, a lot – I ate painstakingly well and fastidiously took my multivitamin every day this week to make sure I’d have the energy to dance.

Well, yesterday was New Year’s Eve, and in the afternoon Minx got to talking with one of our friends and found out that he was going to this other club that night, and Minx wanted us to go there instead because “it’s more fun when you know the people.”

My anxiety issues had a pretty narrow window; the only reason I even felt able to go to the club I suggested is that the promise of awesome music kind of compensated for the scariness of taking public transit and being around (loud, drunk, celebratory) people.  And the thing Minx was interested in was a theme night I’d been to six or seven times before and never had fun.  The DJ is a complete asshole who plays obscure, mostly undanceable things and mocked me on the two occasions I tried to request a song.   Yeah, fine, a couple of people we know were going to be there, but they weren’t good friends; they weren’t the kind of friends you can have comfortable silences with.  Screaming inane small talk into someone’s ear in a loud club is not fun for me.  I explained all of this to Minx and told him I would really prefer to do my thing.

Well, Minx got all sad, and made it clear that he really really really wanted to go to this thing our friends were going to, and I weighed the pros and cons.  The club with Minx’s thing is a ten minute walk from our house, so that’s cool…and maybe if I was lucky there would be two or three songs that had enough of a beat to dance to even if they weren’t a genre I actually liked, and I know Minx doesn’t have many people to socialize with lately and didn’t want to cut him off from that.  I told him that I’d go with him to his thing if he’d pay my cover, and he said okay.  So I thought it was settled.

But then Minx asked me to text my friend Red and see what she and her girlfriend were up to, and Red said she was going to our other friend’s place and invited Minx and I along.  This other friend, though, is in his early 20s.  And there were going to be a bunch of other people there I didn’t know – most of them in their early 20s, many of them hardcore cooler-than-thou goths, all of them believing that getting wasted should be the main priority of the evening.  DO NOT WANT.

And, of course, Minx decided he really really wanted to go to that get-together.  The only reason I wanted to go out on New Year’s Eve in the first place was to dance a whole bunch and feel sexy…and Minx somehow ended up fixating on an evening of sitting around in someone’s living room watching people drink instead.  Fucking figures.

But then I realized that I didn’t have to do what Minx wanted to do.  I’d let myself get roped into this sense of urgency – like Minx and I had to spend New Year’s together – but that pressure was coming from society; it’s just assumed that if you have a partner, you’re supposed to be with them and kiss them at midnight.  I personally didn’t care if we celebrated together or not, though.  Really, I haven’t given much of a shit about New Year’s in a long time.  Once I realized this, I knew what I wanted to do that night: I wanted to stay home and work on my latest painting while Minx partied it up at the locale of his choice.

I tried to tell Minx my decision; unfortunately, I came at it the wrong way.  Perhaps if I’d started with “y’know what?  There’s no reason we have to be together tonight.  You go to that party and have fun!” things would’ve gone differently…but I chose to start with a recap of why I didn’t want to go to the things he was interested in.  And in the middle of me telling him that I wasn’t up to hanging out with Red and her posse of 22-year-olds, he started doing that thing where he shuts down.  He wouldn’t even look at me – I tried to gently turn his chin and he twitched irritably away from me.  I asked if he was angry with me; no response.  I gently asked him a few times to tell me what he was thinking; no response.

Finally I told him that I definitely felt an angry vibe from him, and I’d really rather he just blurt out why then sit there silently for an hour trying to figure out exactly how to say stuff.  Amazingly, this worked.  He burst into tears and went on a huge rant that was only marginally grounded in reality.  I held him and stroked his back while he sobbed that he’s tired of my constant negativity and he feels trapped and he just wants a chance to get out of the house and talk to other people for once.  And also something about me “talking shit about my friends all the time” and “saying mean things about them because they aren’t perfect.”

I have quite the temper, and indeed when I was married and my husband snarked at me, I attacked him back twice as hard and it would blow up into a whole huge thing.  Since then I’ve realized that screaming back at people isn’t productive, and now when someone goes into histrionics with me (someone I love and want to keep in my life, that is; I’m not afraid to cut people out when necessary) I immediately go into survival mode: I put my own feelings in a compartment deep under the ground and try to help the other person work through their issues.  When I do this with Minx, though, I feel an ugly edge of panic that I haven’t felt with other people.  Possibly because Minx gets angry so fast - and usually at things that don’t actually exist except inside his head – that it almost feels like mental illness.  Imagine that your neighbour came over to accuse you of drilling holes through hir walls and spying on hir with teeny-tiny cameras.  Imagine that zie says zie knows about the cameras because The Voices told hir.  The creeping dread you’re feeling in your stomach right now?  That’s what I feel when Minx goes on his rants.

Anyway.  I pointed out – as calmly as possible – that “I just want to talk to other people for once!” seems to imply that I’m somehow keeping him isolated from other humans.  I asked him if he feels that I stop him from talking to people – he said nothing.  I pointed out that I actually encourage him to hang out with his friends, and indeed that we are both currently on OKCupid looking for new people to hang out with and I’ve been fully supportive of this.  Minx said nothing.  I said “I’m gonna go out on a limb here: I think the real thing you’re upset about is not having many friends to go hang out with.  We’re both home in this little apartment all day, and you’re going stir-crazy.  So am I. Neither of us really has a lot of people to go places with, and that sucks.  But we’re actively working at meeting new people, so probably the situation will improve soon.”

Minx didn’t say much of anything – most notably, he didn’t apologize for acting like I’m a monster who keeps him in a cage and won’t let him talk to other people – so I moved on to another subject.  ”As for ‘talking shit about my friends all the time’…I do remember telling you that Red and I have drifted apart and I’m sad about it.  And I know I said recently that my friend T. flakes on 99% of our plans together* and that it’s frustrating and I’ve sort of given up on him.  I wouldn’t call either of those things ‘talking shit’, by the way – they’re pretty major issues that are affecting me deeply.  But I’ve also recently hung out with Kaija and The Latent Heterosexual, and came home glowing because I had such a fantastic time – I did not utter one single negative word about either of them.  Do you remember that?”  Minx didn’t say anything.  I tried a different tack.

“Okay.  Well, can you give me examples of times that I’ve trash-talked people?”  Silence.  “See, I really don’t think I’m negative about people ‘all the time.’  But of course it may be that I have these tendencies and I just don’t notice them.  If you tell me about some times that I’ve behaved this way, I’ll be able to recognize that there’s a problem and work on changing it.”  Silence.  ”…Because probably, the truth lies somewhere in-between our two opinions.  It’s not that I never ever do it, but I don’t think I do it ‘all the tiiiiiime’ either…”

At this point, Minx broke in with “Now it sounds like you’re mocking me.”  And, okay, I kind of was.  This is at least the third time that Minx has made sweeping accusations about me that are demonstrably untrue.  I’ve outright told him that he has a habit of generalizing about me; I’ve told him that this kind of “all or nothing thinking” (focusing on the bad stuff and conveniently forgetting all the good stuff) is a symptom of depression; I’ve told him that when he feels like I’m always doing something bad or never doing something good, he needs to remember that his brain is probably skewing his perspective and he needs to investigate the evidence really thoroughly before confronting me.  And yet, here he is again, saying a bunch of whackadoodle bullshit about me.  Crying on my shoulder about what a horrible bitch monster I am and how it’s ruining his life.  So my patience slipped and I let my voice lapse into a bit of a whiny imitation of his.  Which, again – kind of understandable, but not productive.  I immediately went to apologize, but Minx screamed “FUCK YOU” and left the room.

I immediately wrote Minx an email recapping the many times he’s wrongly accused me of always or never doing things (like the time he said I “never clean” the day after I majorly tidied up the living room); I pointed out that although I may make it look easy, it’s not actually fun for me to put my ego aside and comfort him while he sobs about how I’m wrecking our relationship; I told him that he’s said some of the most hurtful things to me that anyone has ever said and I’ve responded by petting his hair and inviting him to talk about his feelings, so I’m hoping he can cut me some fucking slack over this one time that my self-control slipped a tiny bit and I revealed my hurt feelings.

Then Red called, asking me what Minx and I had decided to do for New Year’s, and for the first five or ten minutes of the phone call I was sobbing too hard to form words.  Finally, I managed to give Red a brief recap of our fight.  She told me that she and her gf weren’t leaving for our friend’s get-together for a few hours so I should come over for some girl-time.  As much as Red and I have drifted apart over the years, this still sounded less awkward than hiding in the bedroom while Minx sat around the rest of the apartment in a sulk.  I went.

It was actually really nice hanging out over there, and I’m going to try to initiate plans with Red more often.  She’s not without her issues but she’s got a good heart and we do still have fun together.  The evening was a nice balance of me talking out my issues with Minx, and Red and her gf distracting me with light small talk and delicious chocolate.  I declined to go with them to the party thingy – I still couldn’t face being around strangers and also wanted to get home by midnight in case Minx was ready to apologize – but I hugged the shit out of both of them when we parted company.

On my way home, I texted Minx to ask if he’d gone out after all; he said he hadn’t (ironic that I ended up going out that night and he didn’t…).  I told him I was coming home and would be fine whether he wanted to do the midnight kiss thing or not.  When ten minutes passed with no reply (I learned later that he was trying to type an apology but kept deleting it and starting over) I was like “Okay, well if you don’t feel like hanging out, dibs on the bedroom.”  Shortly afterward I got two texts from him: one that said “I’m sorry for my outburst” and one that said “I want to hang out with you.”

When I got home, Minx was very huggy, very solicitous, and very apologetic.  It was nice and everything, but I couldn’t really forgive him. Minx tends to express his anger in big bursts, and then afterwards it’s like “Whew!  I feel better!  Now things can go back to normal”…but it doesn’t work like that for me.  I don’t express my issues with other people by lashing out, and when someone else lashes out at me it fucking hurts.  Acknowledging that he treated me like shit and knows he shouldn’t have…doesn’t actually excuse the fact that he treated me like shit.  Especially since this is about the fourth time he’s treated me like shit, in the exact same way, and later said that he shouldn’t have.  He’s not learning from his mistakes.

I accepted Minx’s cuddles, and we kissed at midnight, but things were definitely not okay.  What I really wanted to say – it was right on the tip of my tongue – was, “If this keeps happening, I can’t be with you.”  But that sounds like I’m threatening to break up with him, and I find breakup threats kind of cheesy – especially if they’re empty threats.  The truth is, my relationship with Minx is generally good, healthy, and argument-free – the only real issue I have with him is that on those rare occasions that we do argue, he doesn’t conduct himself very gracefully.  I love him and I still hope that he’ll be my lifelong boy; we’re not near enough to the edge that his next blow up would realistically prompt me to say “Move out, we’re done.”

But my repressed anger was giving me a blinding headache and the words I wanted to say to him were filling my mouth so full that no other words could get past…so finally I just said it.  I managed not to yell, and I think I managed not to sound like I was directly threatening him. I basically pointed out that he had accused me of a bunch of stuff that was completely in his head (he agreed) and reiterated that it puts me in a really awkward position to comfort him while he’s saying shitty untrue things about me.  I informed him that I have a temper, too, but I never ever get to express it – I don’t yell and vent, no matter how angry I am - because I know Minx would never be able to handle one of my outbursts the way I handle his.  It makes me feel pretty bitter that he gets coddled like a child when he’s angry yet I feel like I can’t ever slip, even for a second, not even to let on that Minx has hurt my feelings.  I told Minx that I want to be in a relationship with someone who likes me and thinks I’m a good person (who doesn’t?), and I will not live with someone who periodically makes me out to be some kind of monster.  I’d rather be alone.  Essentially, I told Minx to get his fucking shit together because I’m not gonna tolerate it forever.  And suddenly my headache…vanished.

We ended up having a fairly productive (and truly calm, not me-forcing-myself-to-be-calm and him going catatonic) discussion.  Here’s a fun thing: Minx didn’t remember what he’d actually said to me.  He knows that he snapped and started yelling, but that’s it.  I recapped our argument and he seemed kind of horrified.  We both think that he was letting other issues (stir-craziness from being home all day and having few friends, mostly) build up without addressing them and then took them all out on me.  He also agrees with my assessment that he’s probably depressed and has social anxiety of his own, and that’s why he’s extra hard on mine; they’re the traits he hates most in himself.  I gave him still more examples of times that I intercepted my own skewed, depressive thinking and figured things out for myself without ever confronting Minx.  I hope (god, do I hope) that Minx has some idea how to do this now.  He did say that he doesn’t think he can sort through those thoughts by himself, and I said fine, I’m happy to help, but for fuck’s sake don’t come at me screaming that I always do something; mention casually that I seem to have a tendency to do ___, and I’ll talk him through it.  We’ll see.

I have tentatively decided, though, that the next time he has an unjustified outburst at me I’m not going to try to talk it through.  It’s pointless to try to be rational with someone who’s being fundamentally irrational, and when I’m calm and nice during those times I think I’m inadvertently rewarding Minx for being a shithead.  So, the next time he collapses in tears over how unrelentingly horrible I am, I’m gonna be like “Yeah…I’m really not.  And I’m not going to sit here while you accuse me of a bunch of bullshit” and I’ll go take a walk or something.

 

*The club thing Minx wanted to go to – the one where he’d be able to socialize?  T. was supposed to be there.  T.’s presence was the main reason Minx wanted to go.  And T., true to form, did not actually end up attending.

Sex object: not so grate, akshully.

I’ve been meaning to talk about objectification for a while.  Specifically, I’ve been wanting to have a word with all the men who are jealous of the attention some women get; the men who claim they’d love to be on the receiving end of objectification; the men who sigh “must be nice” when I’m complaining about my OKCupid inbox being bombarded by messages.

Guys: you do not want to be objectified the way women are*.  Trust me on this.

What you actually want, I think, is to feel sexually desired.  This is a perfectly normal thing to want, and something women do indeed seem to experience more often than men do**.  But while desire and objectification have some overlap, they are not the same thing.  Objectification means thinking of someone as an object, and here’s the thing about objects:

Objects are interchangeable.

A lot of that attention women get that you’re so jealous of?  It’s not guys saying “I think you’re hot (/smart/funny/interesting) and would like to have sex with you.”  It’s guys saying “I want to stick my penis in something warm and wet.  Can it be you?” or sometimes, I suppose, “I want a girlfriend.  Any girl at all.  How ’bout it?”  Neither of these sentiments is especially flattering.

Guys on personals sites will regularly spam who-knows-how-many women with the same form letter in hopes that someone (anyone!) will write back.  I know it’s spam because these guys aren’t reading my profile (I can see who’s “visited” me) and because they always say really generic things.  In one case, a guy messaged me that I have “eyes he could get lost in” when I didn’t have any photos on my profile.  That’s how impersonal these messages are.

Flipping it around: let’s say a woman beelined toward you in a noisy, crowded bar and said “I crave your cock.”  Pretty hot, right?  That is what I mean when I talk about being sexually desired: this chick wants you***.  Now imagine a parallel universe where this same woman approached you saying “I crave a cock”…after saying the same thing to fifty other guys, in the same tone of voice.  That’s pure objectification.  That’s what women get, pretty much constantly.  It’s really, really nothing you need to be jealous of.

Objects don’t have opinions or desires

Okay, so I’ve talked about the guys who message women without noticing anything about us, including what we look like.  Now let’s examine the next level up: guys who message women solely because of what we look like.

Chances are that you, as a straight guy, have never had someone of the opposite sex message you on a dating site going “You’re hot!  Wanna fuck?” – or even just “You’re hot” – and so when women tell these stories, it sounds enviable to you.  Here’s why it’s not: 99% of the guys who do this to women are interested in us as objects, not people.  I know this because, again, the guys who send these messages to women aren’t reading our profiles.  At all.  I’ve gotten “fuck me” messages from guys on OKCupid who have a ludicrously low match score with me****.  I’ve gotten “fuck me” messages from guys who are dominant (even though my profile stated that I was a domme looking for a sub) and from fat guys old enough to be my father (when my profile specifically stated that I like twinky, skinny 20-year-olds).  These are not messages saying “I know I’m not what you’re looking for, but if you ever wanna branch out…” – I don’t actually mind those, because they acknowledge me as a human being with agency.  I’m talking about messages that just say “UR hott here is my phone number call me.”  These are messages that completely ignore who I am and what I want.

Proof of just how little these guys pay attention to who I am (and proof that this shit happens in the gay community, too, I guess): I currently have an account on OKCupid just looking for friends, and my profile picture is very androgynous.  Twice now I’ve been messaged by attached, ostensibly straight guys looking for gay sex on the downlow: they glanced at my photo, assumed I’m a dude, and sent me a “fuck me” message.  You don’t even have to read my actual profile to see that I’m female and in a relationship: it says “female – straight – seeing someone” right next to my fucking picture.

This erasure of women’s personalities and preferences happens in real-life interactions, too.  I’ve been on dates where the guy asked perfunctory questions about me but zoned out during my answers; I’ve had dates where the guy repeatedly steered the conversation toward sex, no matter how much I tried to talk about other things (usually, these are the same guys who zone out when I talk about my work or family or hobbies); I once had a guy come up to me at work and ask me out (this was when I worked retail in a mall) and when I said I was married he shrugged and replied “I don’t mind”; I’ve had guys in clubs grab my hand, put it on their crotches, and end up in a tug-o-war with me as I tried to yank my hand back and they tried to hold it in place; I’ve had guys in clubs hit on me by coming up behind me on the dance floor – completely sight unseen – and grinding against my ass.  And I would hazard a guess that most women have experienced at least one of these things, as well (probably all of them).

Going back to the scenario with the horny girl hitting on you in the bar: imagine that, instead of saying “I want your cock,” she ogled you with obvious appreciation, said “you’re really hot,” and started making small talk by asking you your name and what you do for a living.  And let’s say you told her that your name is Brian and you’re currently unemployed, and she responded (still ogling you) with “Uh-huh, that’s cool, that’s cool…so hey, Byron, wanna come back to my place?  Or do you have to work in the morning?”  That’s what it’s like for women pretty much all the time (well, that’s the best-case scenario…the worst-case objectification scenario would of course be rape).  There’s a pervasive feeling that the opposite sex just wants to use us to enact their fantasies like a kid playing with action figures, without caring or even realizing that we have fantasies of our own.

Let me be very clear here: I like it when someone thinks I’m hot.  It’s tremendously flattering.  In fact, I insist that any guy I’m seeing be into my body and not just my mind.  But when someone focuses on my appearance to the exclusion of all else – including my opinions and preferences and even my personal space – it’s not a positive kind of attention.  It’s actually kind of soul-crushing.  Please stop telling me it’s this awesome thing that I’m taking for granted.

On a related note:

Objects don’t experience pleasure

We live in a society where hetero sex revolves around the guy having an orgasm.  This is slowly beginning to change, but still: ask a bunch of North Americans to define “sex” and most of them will probably say some variation on “penis goes into vagina until man ejaculates.”  To most guys, sex is synonymous with orgasm.  It’s only natural, then, that when you hear about women being offered sex all the time – even if you know it’s in an objectifying way – it sounds like this awesome thing, like “Oh man…I wish people randomly offered to get me off.  That would be basically paradise on Earth!”  …And yeah, I agree with you, it kind of would – if these offers of sex were about my pleasure and not the other person’s.  But remember: these guys are seeing me as an object that exists for their sexual fulfillment; basically a Fleshlight with legs and boobs.  And nobody tenderly asks a Fleshlight if it enjoyed itself.

So when you guys say you’re jealous of the dozens of “fuck me” messages some women get per week on dating sites or yelled at us by strangers when we’re out running errands – when you sigh “I wish I got objectified like women do” and act like we’re taking this amazing bounty of free sex for granted – you’re coming from a place of male privilege.  Maybe in your world an offer of sex equals an offer to get you off, but if you actually got objectified like women do, that aforementioned bar chick would take you home, fuck you (or just hump your leg) until she came, then roll off your still-unsatisfied erection and go “Thanks!  You can go now.”  Seriously, I’ve had partners where we had sex, the guy came, I was totally turned on from all the nakedness and penetration and kissing and dying to come, and when I was like “OMG MY TURN NOW!” the guy literally said “Nah” and rolled over and went to sleep.  It doesn’t happen with every single guy, of course, but it does happen – and it’s exponentially more likely to happen with someone who sees me as a fuckable object and not a human being.

Do those offers of sex still sound appealing now?

In conclusion…

You are probably a great guy who likes women and wants to make a real connection with them.  Your dating site messages are probably well-thought-out and refer to specific things in the woman’s profile, and if you approach an attractive woman on the street it’s probably with polite small talk and not by screaming “WOOOOO!  Nice cans!”  And because you give women “good attention,” you probably think that women are getting similar “good attention” from every guy who talks to them.  This is patently untrue: there are a handful of crude, gross dudes out there ruining it for everyone, and when a woman complains about getting too much male attention, I can pretty much guarantee that she’s not talking about guys like you shyly coming up to her and going “You seem like a really cool person.  Could I give you my phone number?”  She’s talking about random men telling her they’d like to come all over her face.  Being jealous of women for the attention they get is like being jealous of this ottoman*****.

When you say you wish you were objectified like women are, I believe what you actually wish is that women****** would openly and carnally express interest in fucking your brains out while still appreciating you as a person and caring about your needs.  That’s a perfectly wonderful thing to want, and I sincerely hope you get it!  I also hope you understand now that being appreciated as a person is, by definition, not objectification, and you’ll stop telling women how lucky we are.

Thanks for reading.

*Unless you’re a particular kind of submissive.

**As discussed quite eloquently here - although the author of this article still conflates desire with objectification.

***It’s also objectification, since she approached you strictly because of your looks and not your personality.  But I don’t believe that hitting on someone strictly for teh hotness is problematic in and of itself.

****OKCupid shows how well you’re likely to get along with other users, based on “match questions” that you both answer.  I’ve answered over 1,500 questions (and counting!) because personality compatibility is important to me and I want my match percentages with people to be based on lots and lots of information.  The guys who want to use me as a human fleshlight can’t possibly care about compatibility because they almost always have a match percentage of like 30% with me.

*****Watch the linked video while pretending that you’re the ottoman.  Then tell me: how did all that sexual attention make you feel?  Probably not happy or attractive or valued.

******By which I mean “women you find attractive.”  Incidentally, a lot of guys will claim they’re attracted to all women and would fuck absolutely anyone who asked, but 99.9% of the time, these guys are not in fact attracted to all women; it’s just that they only notice the small subset of women they wanna bone, and forget that the others exist.  This adds a new layer to the whole “I’m jealous of all the sexual attention you get” thing: of course these guys think it’d be awesome if women aggressively hit on them.  In their world, all women are hot.  It doesn’t occur to them that some of these aggressors might end up being, like, dirty toothless meth-heads with mismatched shoes.  It also doesn’t occur to them that most women don’t wanna fuck everyone we see (when you’re brought up to be on guard against rape at all times, you notice all the men – not just the hot ones – because you’re scanning everyone for potential threat).

Merry Sexmas to ME!

You guys may remember me talking before about feeling sexually bored lately…like, even if I feel turned on, I can barely be bothered to wank.  I didn’t know whether my sex drive itself might be wonky or I needed more porn or for Minx to be more submissive or what.

I think I have discovered the problem.

As I’ve mentioned before, Minx’s wrist (and jaw, although my preferred method of orgasm has always been hand jobs) don’t generally have the stamina to get me off…so during the two years we’ve been together, the vast majority of my orgasms have been self-administered.  Self-administered while Minx made hot breathing noises in my ear or did sexy dances for me or told me made-up stories about threesomes, but self-administered nonetheless.  And I think I just got…bored.  Same thing happens when I’m unpartnered for long periods of time – although I always assumed it was due to my fantasies being too predictable, not my hand.

Anyway, when someone else gives me an orgasm it’s always way more physically powerful than the ones I give myself – and getting there is way more fun, too, since I’m not controlling the stimulation.  But unfortunately, when Minx tries to get me there I usually go into a feedback loop of worrying that his hand will tire out at a crucial moment and ruin my orgasm, which makes me unable to even get near the edge for fear that the stimulation will stop and everything will fall flat, which makes me worry even more that Minx’s hand will give out any second because all the worry is making things take longer than usual.  And by then too much time has gone by and Minx does have to stop.

I used to have the same worries with every new partner, actually, but I perfected the art of squishing down those worries and focusing on my destination…and it worked.  But in the beginning of our relationship, Minx had less hand-stamina than any of my previous partners…like, he’d be stimulating me for less than a minute before apologizing and telling me he needed to stop.  I come pretty fast but it damn sure takes longer than 60 seconds most days, so I kind of gave up on Minx doing it for me.

Yesterday, though, Minx was moving my vibrator on me (which is less taxing on his wrist and hand than a regular hand job, I think, and requires a much less manual dexterity) and I remembered how to focus like I used to, and KERPOW.  In two minutes or less he’d melted me into a hysterically giggling, almost-weeping, very relaxed puddle.  And he did it again today.  Fuck yeah.

And?  The sex that happened after those orgasms felt way, way better than usual.  Minx has a stupid-big cock* and I guess the climaxes I give myself have become so boring that they haven’t been relaxing my insides enough to comfortably accommodate him.  So lately, even if I have an orgasm or two beforehand, sex with Minx usually kind of hurts**.  Minx’s attentions with the vibrator, however, opened me up so nicely that all of him slid inside without bashing my cervix.

I made sure Minx realized what a revelatory thing it was for him to make me come, and pointed out that his forearms and hands will become stronger the more he does it.  He seems more than willing to keep on practising so his stamina goes up.  Also, I want to buy a few more vibrators of different shapes and levels of power so we can get me there in different ways.  I’m hoping to find something powerful enough that we barely even have to move it on me, but not so powerful that it hurts me or makes me go numb.  I’m thinking Hitachi Magic Wand with a jelly sleeve (possibly applied through several layers of blankets.  Or just pointed at me from across the room.).

Minx is also making a visible effort to act submissive more often.  His interest in subbing is fickle as hell, so I never feel like I can initiate, but some days he’ll murmur “pin me down” and look up at me with his big Minx eyes and I know he’s giving me tacit permission to bite, slap, spank, and trash-talk.  He’s been wearing my favourite outfit (a collar and nothing else ) more often, and today he did himself up in full girl mode (except for makeup, which I don’t like anyway) for my viewing pleasure.  He kept the top half of the outfit on while we fucked so our boobs would press together.

So yeah.  I’m happy.  And Minx has been a very good boy. <3

 

*It’s lovely, but it’s a lot more penis than I strictly need…I am given to believe that my vagina is quite a bit tighter than average, and I never did enjoy the feeling of being full-to-bursting.  I wanna be able to shove Minx down and fuck him hard and fast, dammit, and instead the sheer size of him forces me to take my time and adjust.  Feh.

**And not just me, either.  One time I flexed my kegel muscles as hard as I could (during sex that was already kind of awkward-fitting) and Minx said I was squeezing his penis to the point of actual pain.  I shouldn’t feel smug about this, but I totally do; I always thought his genitals had the power to hurt mine but not vice-versa.  Plus penises seem pretty impervious to squeezy-pain (I’ve squeezed guys’ dicks with my hand before, as hard as I could, to no visible effect) so I like to imagine that I have a bionic vagina that could crush very small cars.

Sheldon Cooper Takes a Trip

Most of the time, I move through life without incident, and this tricks me into believing that I’m normal and well-adjusted.  Then eventually something forces me outside my comfort zone and I realize all over again that I’m not normal or well-adjusted; I’m riddled with anxiety issues and weird compulsions and have set up many elaborate routines to avoid triggering any of them.  Only when I’m forced to be around a bunch of people who don’t share my compulsions does it become obvious to me how restricted my life really is.

It’s kind of like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory when someone sits in “his” spot on the couch.  Sheldon’s usual group of friends all avoid sitting in that spot, but new people don’t know to do this, and that’s when there are issues.

I’m telling you all of this because Minx and I just spent two nights at his parents’ place and I want you to understand how huge that is for me.

Minx has been inviting me to their house intermittently for at least a year now, but I was always too chicken to go – mostly because of my food issues.  Historically, most people have handled my food issues…badly.* So, as you can imagine, I’m pretty wary of staying at other people’s houses now.  But Minx’s parents were amazing – they made sure their place was stocked with things I could have (we offered to buy all my food ourselves, but they wouldn’t let us) and his mom contrived to have a Cowgirl-compatible dinner ready right when we arrived (which was great because I was starving!).

(I will say that I’ve figured out a clearer way of explaining my needs now, and this surely helped.  Instead of listing what I can’t have, as in the past, I now list what I can have.  And I know how to put it in very, very simple terms.  Still, the fact that Minx’s mom abided by my rules and didn’t seem annoyed by them makes me so happy I could cry.)

So the food thing went fine.

The sleeping arrangements were problematic.  I am very, very set in my ways, and have a hard time sleeping in an unfamiliar bed; in addition to that, Minx’s parents had us sleep in separate rooms because we’re not married (they’re old school!).  So I went from being the middle spoon (Minx cuddled up to the back of me, Bastardcat against my front) to being all alone in a higher, narrower, bouncier bed than the one we have at home.  I didn’t sleep too well during the trip, and hope to pass the fuck out later tonight.

I hasten to add, though, that I don’t mind Minx’s parents separating us.  I don’t share their views on premarital sex, obviously, but I can see how it would be distressing to picture their child gettin’ it on under their roof.  Sleeping separately is a small price to pay to keep the peace, especially when they’ve been so nice to us (they even paid for our bus tickets and bought us dinner at a restaurant while we were over!).  And weirdly enough, their prudishness only extended to the sleeping arrangements; they left us alone (sometimes behind closed doors) for long periods of time and basically treated us as autonomous adults except for that one thing.

So…did Minx and I furtively fuck at his parents’ house?  We had the opportunity.  We had the motive (we both have a huge thing for secret inappropriateness).  But no, we did not.  The parental vibe of the house was like an ice-water bath for my libido, for one thing, and also I’m so grateful to Minx’s parents (for the food accommodations, and for accepting me into their lives even though I’m non-Christian and premaritally fucking their boy and also eleven years older than he is) that I wanted to be on super duper excellent behaviour for them.  Minx agreed that it was only fair to obey the house rules while in their home; I suspect, though, that his libido was still up and running underneath his veneer of civility.

And thus, Minx and I gave each other a hug and a kiss in the hallway every night and then retired to our separate quarters.  Even when Minx’s parents and sister had gone to a church function this morning – leaving us all alone in the house – Minx and I changed from our modest flannel pajamas into our daytime clothes in separate rooms with the doors closed.  It was weirdly hot – in an abstract way – to behave in such a rigorously chaste fashion.  I felt like a little kid playing house…but with an undercurrent of I’m-gonna-fuck-the-shit-outta-you-later.  I felt like I was getting the adolescence I never had**.

In addition to the food-fear and the sleep-weirdness, of course, there was the overall social factor of the visit.  My parents never taught me social skills (they didn’t have any; I literally remember only one time that they had friends over to the house in the nineteen years that I lived with them).  I worry that there are a bunch of big obvious etiquette things involved with guest-hood that I don’t know about.  Like…do I have to be around Minx’s family, “entertaining” them, every second?  (Nope; Minx ushered me away to watch movies in the basement on two different occasions, and that seemed fine).  What if there’s nothing to talk about?  (We got by okay.)  Do they really mean it when they say to help myself to what’s in the fridge, or are they saying it to be polite but if I actually do it they’ll secretly hate me?  (I did forage for food, and they did not appear to hate me for it.***)  I did know to be ridiculously, scrupulously, uncharacteristically tidy during my stay – I probably came off pretty well in that regard.

Another thing that almost made me decline Minx’s invitation to his parents’: we were bringing over our Christmas gifts to them, and we knew there would be stuff for us, and opening gifts in front of people always makes me feel like I’m in the spotlight and stresses me right the hell out (especially since I have very peculiar and specific tastes so it’s very rare for someone to give me something I truly love).  Plus, I wrapped up some of my art for his mom (Minx bought gifts for his dad and sister, and we labelled it all as from both of us) and was angsting over whether she’d like it.  Now that I’ve seen the way the house is decorated, I would guess that my gift is not really to his mom’s taste (rotten Minx, telling me “Yeah, give her that one, I think it’ll be good”…) but thankfully Minx’s parents decided that we should open all our presents on Christmas day – in our respective homes.  W00T!!!

And lastly, there are my bathroom fears.  These worked themselves out: a) the house has a bathroom in the basement (I could stealth-poop at night once Minx’s family had gone to bed!) and b) Minx’s parents both apparently have to pee all the time, too (his dad’s on a diuretic to counteract the side effects of his blood pressure meds, and his mom’s bladder is wonky since she had a hysterectomy a bunch of years ago).  So neither of them made a huge deal when I had to pee on the way to the bus terminal to go home, even though I’d gone right before leaving their house.

I’m still worn out just from being in an unfamiliar environment and taking the Greyhound an hour and a half each way and all that stuff…but generally I’d say the trip went well.  And I can tell that it means a lot to Minx that his parents and I get along okay, so yay.

 

*typically, they’ve insisted on cooking for me even when I begged them not to go to the trouble, insisted on keeping the menu a surprise so they could impress me, then presented me with something that turned out to be filled with allergens.  Then they got pissy when I wouldn’t try some.

**I’ve been a teenager, obviously, but my parents were always pretty laissez-faire about me having boys over (even overnight); they said as long as they couldn’t actually tell that sex was taking place (noises, etc.), it was fine.

***For the record, my parents are the most anal-retentive people on the planet when it comes to the contents of their refrigerator; I wasn’t even allowed to eat whatever I wanted when I lived with them.  I once spontaneously brought a school friend home for dinner (I’d seen kids on sitcoms do it…) and my parents acted fine with it in my friend’s presence (so as not to seem weird) but then yelled at me once she’d gone home.  Also, I’ve fully inherited their fastidious habit of keeping track of food; living with Minx is sometimes troubling because he throws off my constant running tally.  I had a hard time helping myself to food at Minx’s parents’ place because I literally cannot imagine a world in which such behaviour is acceptable.