I was talking to my husband this morning; one of those talks when I try to be intimate with him, by way of words. I told him that I had given him a very hard task in life really. He wasn't expected to be just my husband, but also my father, my brother; my dominant lover. I acknowledged that it can't be an easy task.
Of course, I did have a father and I do have a brother, and I'm loved, but neither man loved me in such a way as to want to nurture me, I think. I don't think about it too often because it is simply my reality; a reality I can't change. Still, I wanted to acknowledge to my husband that there hadn't been a male figure in my life in a family sense who could aid my husband to nurture me in any way. This had probably made his role all the more difficult.
I also shared with my husband a situation that had occurred during the week. Lorraine (not her real name) and I were the last two women to leave a group of women having coffee after an exercise session. Lorraine wanted to share with me details about her marriage of 37 years which ended in divorce 6 years ago. She wanted to tell me of her experiences at dating since the divorce and her man of the moment who appears to have no assertiveness. She wanted to know what she should do. She's spent the majority of her life with an assertive/take charge man and was it even possible that she could come to enjoy a much quieter and less assertive man; someone who after four months of weekly dating still hasn't got beyond a kiss goodnight?
"Is it me?" she asked me.
"You want intimacy. You want to be as close with a man as you can. You have a particular nature and it is hard for you to be the instigator of things. I understand that," I replied.
"Yes. I do. I may be 61 but I want intimacy and I am used to a man taking charge of the situation."
It was my pleasure to talk with her. I don't mind at all listening to people express themselves, but it did occur to me that this happens to me quite frequently and it causes me to reflect. Any emotional anguish I experience takes places behind closed doors and here in this web journal. So, to meet me what you see is a well dressed woman who smiles frequently; a woman who appears happy, content, stable, financially secure and happily married. I guess I must also come across as non-judgmental, open and willing to listen, but not smug, or so wrapped up in her own life that I am at all a threat.
For instance, a woman, a stranger to me, did the same thing yesterday afternoon at the afternoon tea after a funeral where she told me, over the course of an hour, about her son's autism, the behavior training methods they had used and so on. I did share a little bit of my own knowledge - I happened to know an autistic boy who snow skis with her son. However, what I shared did not relate to questions she asked me about myself because she didn't ask me any questions about myself.
Rightly or wrongly, my emotional pain takes place with myself fairly exclusively, except on those rare occasions when the distress spills over in my own home, or occasionally over coffee with my mother. Even then, I recover as fast as I can because what alternative is there? What ails me has no solution, it would seem, which is galling because I do love to say to the children, 'Every problem has a solution.'
In a nutshell my problem is that is I need a large helping of intimacy on a regular basis. To be more specific, I need my intimacy in a particular way. To explain that a bit more, I enjoy instruction. I enjoy the discipline of receiving instruction. I don't so much enjoy to initiate myself as I enjoy that someone takes from me. This is the transference of energy from them to me that I crave.
When intimacy is available to me and I can bunker down into that deeply meditative and blissful state of being 'taken', my spirits rise and life becomes easy. The emotional pain I might have been experiencing is washed away. I am able then to offer kindnesses and compassion; to be, in essence, the initiator after that. However, without some dominant display I remain, as my husband likes to say, "the dolly on the shelf." I can't come down until I am brought down. Conversely, I can flirt, but when I feel the dominant energy is present or will be appreciated.
Alas, I'm all too aware of this failing of mine. It might be early morning and I contemplate waking my husband with some advance, but if his dominant energy towards me has been absent, a move in his direction is like asking me to put my hand out and pat a poisonous snake. I am just not going to be able to do that and so I remain 'on the shelf', perpetually in wait. I am hurt really. I feel rejected and abandoned and in that state of mind it's awfully hard for me to ask for intimacy.
Randomly, this week my husband told me he had read of anal stretching being associated with an increase in oxytocin. Of course, we all know that sexual pleasure is a wonderful way of relaxing the body and the mind, but anal intercourse or use of a largish anal plug can create feelings of euphoria that, in my experience, go beyond your everyday orgasm. Whether it is oxytocin or something else entirely I cannot say but my body certainly creates some sort of pleasure drug. I refer to it as being "opened". My body and my mind are opened up in very special ways and these experiences are very happy ones for me wherein any sort of identity is simply unnecessary and unwanted. I'm in a state of objectification, something I do for myself, that makes it possible for me to flourish as a human being. My mind is opened to all sorts of perversions. Gosh, I love that. And, my body is tuned and turned on in a way that makes me feel totally alive.
I'm well aware that with a deeply perverted man I truly would flourish. He could buy me masks that cover my face tightly. He could put me in a latex dolly suit and watch my identity melt away. He could call me his doll, his slut, his fuck toy, it, or 'hol' and I'd not just be okay with this. I'd relish it. I'm so aware of all this potential inside me for delicious debauchery; objectification; the possibility to let go in the deepest way and just enjoy whatever comes. I'd adore him for it. He could do what he will to me, and as a result of that intimacy, that care and trust, I'd hold him in the highest esteem. Truly, I hunger for that outcome every day of my life.
And yet, here I am, faithful to a man whom I love, and with whom I expected to spend my days until death comes to me, who is experiencing a malaise that makes very little of this possible. I struggle. I struggle to accept these limitations and restrictions. I wonder how I can go on, knowing all the infinite possibilities for peace and bliss, for intimacy and care, yet denied them. Where the answer lies, if there is indeed an answer to my dilemma, I just don't know.