I've been having conversations with a friend lately. Tonight was our second one. They begin by talking about sexual issues & consent and end up a little further from the center of the map. Honestly, I whine a lot about my problems with the human condition and she tries to give me some perspective. It's less authoritative than going to my therapist, and far more helpful. In fact, I'm thinking about quitting therapy, at least temporarily; if it's taught me anything it's that I usually have most of the answers, and the ones I don't have can generally be summed up in the word "patience." Life is a journey; slow down & enjoy the scenery. Tonight I got that.
At our conversation tonight I focused on being real, honest, in the moment, and relaxed. It didn't happen the whole time, but just often enough to make a difference. We were talking about that painful & precarious situation when you have "feelings" for someone and they don't exactly return them. In fact, they're not interested. But say you still have a relationship of some sort: friends, housemates, workmates, neighbors, student/teacher, etc.? You can't simply avoid the person and, let's face it, you don't really want to. In fact, you can't help staring dreamily at the other person as they scrape the encrusted eggs off the plate they've had sitting in their room for the last three weeks; you begin to imagine them scraping the eggs off a plate in your dream cabin in the woods, the kids playing outside and, of course, having wild passionate sex right there in the kitchen. You know the way they smell, the mole on the back of their thigh, and you can practically feel them nibbling on your ear.
Snap back to reality, though, and suddenly you realize the chasm separating the relationship you're having with this person in your head and the actual relationship you have with this person in real life. And it's conspicuously lacking in passionate sexual encounters in the kitchen. The thing is, while it's perfectly okay to have fantasies about whatever floats your boat & gets you off, you're only making the present situation worse by feeding a romance that simply is not happening. It isn't. Say it to yourself. I am not having sex with this person. I am not snuggling up against them in the middle of the night and feeling the coldness of my nose in that warm area around the back of their neck. I've never even actually felt that area of their neck and, for all I know, it could not even exist. We did not just escape to Paris last weekend, and it is terribly unlikely that I will ever carry their child. I will never have to worry about introducing them to my parents or meeting theirs. Chances are good we will never, ever, ever kiss. Our relationship isn't within 700 miles of being anything like this.
But it's not all bad. While you've been dwelling on all the things you're not doing (and turning them into wet dreams), you're entirely missing what part you do play in each other's lives. You're taking them for granted. And that's a shame because someone to split the bills with or say "hi" to when you pass in the park or to teach you valuable information and answer questions about something you're interested in is not chopped liver. That has value too, not just hot kitchen sex (which isn't happening, by the way).
So this is the long drawn out version of just a short part of our conversation, but it obviously stuck with me and packed a hard punch. And to tell you the truth, to see all that fantasy fly out the door was a huge relief. Talk about a one-sided relationship! Reality's a hard thing to get used to living in all the time especially when so much of my life has been lived and nurtured in a complete fantasy (I'm not just talking about the sexual kind here). Tonight I made a point of being here, there, wherever I was at that point and just taking it for what it was and, though it was sometimes hard or fleeting, I kept coming back to it & finding it easier every time. I bumped into my biology lab instructor who I have a decent-sized crush on, so tonight had it's challenges. But a few (hundred) more times to practice, and I think I might have this down.
Anyway, things felt a good bit clearer tonight on & off and that's well worth reporting for me.
