In Bed

I have wondered for a long time whether anyone can really love their significant other for the “rest of their lives”.  If we are lucky, our families are a constant, and we can depend on them and offer and receive unconditional love with them throughout the lifespan.  If we are not as fortunate, they may slip in and out of our lives like everyone else.  Even childhood friends do not, under normal circumstances, remain friends for life.  We may love them, but as we grow we take different paths.  People change.  Lives change.  Love changes.  So how can it be that we are expected to commit to and to love one person forever, to always remain amicable with them, to spend time with that person every day, and to share their bed at night…until death do us part?

Vows are an interesting phenomenon.  Loving, honoring, and cherishing a significant other for the rest of one’s life is likely the most profound promise a person can make.  You are promising to keep that person in your life, as a constant, forever.

Sure, you like him right now.  After all, he makes you feel happy and he wants you to be his forever.  You could not ask for more.  He is your perfect dream come true.  But will you feel the same when he loses his job or starts to drink too much?  What if he gets into bed with someone else?  If the worst case scenario should happen, will you love him enough to be by his side for the rest of your life?  Can you get through that?  Would you even want to try?

Yes, she is beautiful and will likely make a good mother to your children.  But will you adore her when her body changes after having those children?  Will you love her when she is too tired or depressed to give you any shred of attention or to even offer a little bit of kindness?  Or how would feel if instead she experiences fertility problems and cannot give you the son you always wanted?  If she takes a job in which she makes more money than you do, and you have to uproot your life, will you follow her across the world?  Will you still love and support her?

What if he or she turns out to be nothing like the person you fell in love with? 

There is no guarantee that we will love the person we have vowed lie next to in bed for the rest of our lives.  So why do we do it?  What makes us promise forever?  We could break those vows, but if we made our bed, we should lie in it.  Right? 

Marriage can protect us, help us, strengthen us and give us a lifetime partner, someone to rock in a chair on the porch next to someday.  Or it can destroy us.  

So many people jump into marriage blindly because they are madly in lust, think that they are doing the “right thing”, or simply because they are co-dependent and just want someone, anyone, to be there.   We get married because of our instilled morals, our idealistic views, and our need to be with another person.  Yet, no matter how much one person loves another, marriage is sometimes difficult.  It will test you, change you, and sometimes even hurt you.  Sometimes, forever will seem like too long to be in one bed. 

Some people lie in the bed that they made.  They make it work.  They love unconditionally.  Others lie in a bed filled with empty promises, unhappiness or even loathing.  Some just get up and move on.   

No one can see the future.  No one can say that happily ever after exists.  All we can do is make sure that the vows we make are vows that we are ready to keep.  If we cannot say that we will love forever, we should not make that commitment. 

Still, sometimes life throws us circumstances that we are not equipped to handle.  When the marital bed no longer offers any happiness, we have to change it.  Yet, when we have tried our best and worked so hard to make it comfortable but we still wake up hurting in the morning, it may be time to leave it behind. 

The thing is...a vow is a vow.  A promise is a promise.  When love fades, it may be possible to give it light, to feed it, and to make it grow again.  A person should leave a marriage only when every viable solution has been tried.  A marriage should end only when love is truly dead, with no chance of revival.

Sometimes it dies, and that is the way it is. 

Life is too short to be unhappy in bed. 

Like Dogs

I often make inappropriate comments, so sometimes my friends like to return the favor.  Occasionally (and granted, this does not happen very often) a friend will say something that startles me a little bit.  My usual reaction to such a rare occurrence is hysterical laughter.  Today, that hysteria was brought on by this comment:

“I wonder if a dog gets turned on if it watches other dogs have sex.” 

My first reaction was to laugh my ass off at the notion of dog porn.  My second thought was that only a man could have come up with that one.  Perhaps I am generalizing a bit here, but I highly doubt that such a thought would have popped into a female mind.

It is not like my mind doesn’t wander constantly.  It does.  Sometimes I will think about something and consider that it is remotely possible that no one has ever, in the history of thinking humans, had that exact thought.  Usually, it is because the thought is bordering on bizarre, but once in a while the random thought is actually something fairly substantial. 

However, when my psyche delves into some imaginative tangent involving sex, it has never, never gone into the realm of dog porn.  Doggy style, maybe.  Dog porn, absolutely not.  Not once.  Ever.  And honestly, I’m really, really happy about that.  Seriously.

The problem is that, when <Said Curious Friend> made the comment, I had to start thinking about it.  When I start thinking about something and do not know the answer, I have to find out.  In my youth I was the Encyclopedia Princess and now I’m the Google Queen.  I look up everything and anything for which I do not have an immediate and accurate answer.  This is something that I cannot stop.  So, as sad as this may be, I just googled “studies of dog sexual behavior”.  I seriously just did that.  I read about one paragraph, skimmed down the page, saw the word “bitch”, and bailed.  And now I am thoroughly embarrassed about my own behavior.  What kind of freak does that?

In this case, I really, really do not want to know the answer to the question.  I imagine that there have been university-funded studies on dog arousal, but seriously, I am pretty damned sure I can go on without knowing the solution to this one. 

Curiosity, they say, killed the cat. 

And maybe the dogs need their privacy. 

Either way, I do not want to know. 

Bad Mood

Sometimes I am just not in the mood.  I am not talking about sex, I’m talking about life.  I am not in the mood to deal with one more problem.  I am not in the mood to handle one more situation.  I am not in the mood to let some jerk’s snide comment slide off.  What I am in the mood for is either a nap or a fight.  When my mood is angry, I will not be sleeping, so look out.

Whenever I get into one of these moods I try to keep it in check by remembering everything that I have to be grateful for, because honestly, I have a pretty great life.  Even so, sometimes I just let the little things build up until they become one big, bad mood.

Some people like to pretend that they are eternally happy.  I call bullshit.  There is no possible way that they can really get through every single day of their lives with a chipper little attitude and never get frustrated at other people, at circumstances, or at themselves.  The only possible ways someone could be constantly happy is if they were to forgo the ability to think or to be heavily medicated.

I prefer to think now and then.  Also, I am generally against overmedicating people for bad moods, so that does not help me much either. 

I usually laugh a lot.  In fact, people tend to point out that I am giggly.  I often find humor where others do not, so I probably laugh more than is actually acceptable.  But I have also been called “oversensitive”, and I admit it, I am.  So what?  Is there really something wrong with having moods?  I don’t think so.  Should people have to feel bad for sometimes feeling bad?  No way.  But sometimes I let my moods control me, and that is what I really don’t like.  It is something I need to work on about myself. 

The thing is, sometimes there is not one specific thing that is making me irritable, so I cannot change any one thing and make it all better.  So, I do the lucky-me-look-at-my-life-list once again, and then I wait for my crabby attitude to pass. 

Lucky for me, the bad moods never last incredibly long.  Soon I will be laughing again. 

For the moment, I’ll just be a grouch.  Sue me. 

 

In Love

Being in love is the most astonishing feeling in the world.  Nothing compares to that emotion, that sense that your heart is finally beating for the first time, that intensely tremendous need to be with another human being.  Love makes you see things clearly while blinding you into oblivion.  The urgency of its passion makes you feel as if anything is possible and that no one and nothing else in the universe means more than your love right now, at this moment.  It enlightens and inspires and makes you feel alive.  It is beautiful and amazing, and it is worth every single painful moment that follows. 

Falling in love is a temporary emotion, one aptly named for the uncontrollable feeling of tumbling toward something, an influence of which you have no power to stop.  It is unbelievably exciting as you are falling, extraordinarily pleasurable to float through the air for a moment.  Then one day, when you least expect it, you hit the ground.  

Romantic love, Eros, is one of the most exquisite things we get to experience, but it cannot last forever.  Reality eventually crashes down, and when it does, the intensity of the crash often equals that of the fall. 

When the crash happens, we have two choices to make.  We can get up, check the damage, and make repairs, or we can get up and walk away.  Pragmatic love requires more than just emotion.  In order to experience love in the long-term, it takes patience and kindness and an ability to let your self go and to accept someone else fully.  Sometimes the decision is easy.  Perhaps the crash was not as injurious as first believed, and the couple will both want to put forth the effort required to continue a mutually beneficial and loving relationship.  Sometimes, no matter how badly you want it and how many repairs you try to make, it just does not work.

That quote about how it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all was clearly brought to life by someone who basked in the reflective afterglow of its meaning, but only following the suffering of that loss.  If you have ever loved and lost, you know all too well that sensation of literal heartbreak;  that incredibly, heavy, painful, destroying feeling in your chest that happens only when you know it is truly over. 

While the sensation can feel as if you will actually die, you know that you will not.  You know that you will somehow pick yourself up.  You know that you will move on. 

You know that one day, you will be in love again, and that the next time it will become something more than just a superficial emotion. 

Real Sex

No one got real until the sex show started.  Before that, we were all pretending.  We were all pretending to be perfectly upstanding women.  We were perfect-little-mommies.  And every single one of us was pretending to be the perfect-little-wife.  Then, the other kind of toys came out, and we all got real.

For a year, we had gotten together for play dates…for our children.  We gathered together every week at someone’s perfectly clean home with our perfectly good intentions and our perfectly matriarchal dialogues.  It was sweet, absolutely lovely for our children, and exactly what was expected of us.

We were all faking it.  I hate when women fake it. 

Then one night, a very well-behaved but secretly improper member of our group threw a sex toy party.  Admittedly, I had to drink some wine before I got there, but I was definitely intrigued.  Lucky for me, one of the other mommies got a little more real to me the second she offered me a plastic cup with boxed wine and ice cubes inside.  At least with her I had a sudden and unexpected partner in crime.  If it had not been for that glimpse of realness, I am not sure I would have even made it to the party.  I had no idea how it was going to play out, and I really, truly expected it to be as awkward as hell. 

We arrived fashionably late, but only because I have a seeming inability to get anywhere on time.  Enter a room of presumably uptight women listening to a very brave mom with a bag full of tricks.  The wine flowed like beer, and the nervous giggles soon became full-blown laughter.  I must say, the “try before you buy” option loosened everyone up even more. 

The talk ranged from first times to whether or not size really does matter.  And then…the climax happened. 

Without notice, a group of prim and proper acquaintances became real friends for the first time.  After all, it is pretty difficult to talk about ben wa balls with a stranger. 

Gone were the perfect mommy facades.  We could finally be ourselves.  We finally stopped faking it. 

We eventually put away the sex toys, but from that point on, we were real.  

On Men

So the guy blew the game.  He just completely ruined it for everyone.  Who cares if he was hurt?  He signed up for it, and he should have just played through the pain like everyone else out there.  How could he let the team down like that?  Why is he such a useless wimp?  Why can’t he perform?  He should have just played through it. 

Why does no one else see how ridiculous and stupid it would be for him to play when he is so obviously hurt? 

Men are trained from boyhood to just suck it up and keep going, no matter how badly they are hurt.  It starts so young.  If a six-year-old boy falls and skins his knee, his dad will pick him up, say “its ok”, and expect him to get over it.  And if that boy gets his heart broken, he hears the same thing.  It doesn’t matter whether he hurts because the cute girl called him names, because his parents just got divorced, or because his favorite uncle died suddenly.  He should just play through it.

These boys turn into men who think that they should never let the pain come through.  They should never show any sign of weakness.  They should never be human beings.  They are not allowed to feel completely, so they do not.  These men just strangle the pain until it cannot be heard by anyone.  They perform.

What no one bothered to tell them is that there is nothing wrong with hurting, nothing wrong with crying, and nothing wrong with letting someone know how badly it hurts.  So many relationships could be saved if the men were allowed to admit defeat and ask for help.  So many men would be happier.

Instead, they cover up the pain and feel inferior that it even exists at all.  They perform. 

The only thing that they do allow themselves to feel is that they should just play through the pain. 

Some Ass

I’m kicking my own ass.  Not in a Jim Carrey sort of way, but still very definitely kicking my own ass. 

I have been playing this incessantly looping and hateful inner dialogue in my head for as long as I can remember.  I tell myself I am stupid because I forgot something, even if all I forgot was where I left my keys.  I tell myself that I am failing my children.  I tell myself that I am unattractive.  I tell myself that everything is my fault.  And I should have said less.  I could have done better.  I could have done more.  I could have tried harder.  I could have been better.  I tell myself that because I am not perfect, I do not deserve love. 

I’m an idiot.  I can’t believe I did that.  God, I’m a moron.  The self-deprecating phrases are so ingrained in my thoughts that I have become a passive victim to their abuse.  By allowing my mind to wander into loathing, I am ruining myself from the inside out. 

I never even realize that my mind is attacking me until, without warning, the words are spoken aloud to my friends.  My friends feign shock that I should feel that way about myself, even though they do it too.  They never realize it either.  We say that we’re ugly and fat and stupid and not worthy of anything good.  When the words are out there, it sounds like a pity party so we all make a concerted effort to remind each other how great we all are and how silly it is for us to be so down on ourselves.  It becomes this big Semi-Annual Love Fest of the Mutual Admiration Society.  Then we thank one another and feel better for a minute.  And as soon as we are alone again we go back to berating ourselves. 

I have kicked myself for being a dumb ass, having a big ass, and loving a jackass.  I kick myself for not getting any ass.  I kick myself for being a pain in the ass.  Yes, all of that may be true on some level, but why the hell do I do that to myself?  Why don’t I love and value myself the way that I love and value the people in my life?  I can overlook their flaws.  I can forgive them, even if they have somehow contributed to the hateful dialogue.  I can love them anyway. 

I want it to change. 

Yet I keep kicking my own ass. 

Push Me

I am still a woman.  The fact that I am a loving, nurturing caretaker does not take away from that.  Yes, I became a mother.  Yes, my responsibilities multiplied beyond even my own expectations.  Yes, I still want to be pushed against a wall and kissed madly.

Adore me.  Make me feel as if it hasn’t been years since we met.  Hold my hand in public.  Look at me across a room and wink when no one else is looking.  Hold my face in your hands when you kiss me.  Lay my head in your lap, stroke my hair, and look into my eyes.

Talk to me about something else.  Sure, we can do the whole Krameresque spiel about our days.  “How was your day?"  That’s fine, but then I’m going to need you to stimulate my…mind.  Talk to me about something beyond a complacent us.  It barely matters what that something is.

I do want to hear what you think about spiritually.  I do want to know what you imagine yourself doing in five years, because it has probably changed since the last time you told me.  I do want to hear your thoughts on that book you just finished.  I do want to know if you have a fantasy, because I may want to bring it to fruition.  I will even listen to you talk about sports, as long as you include a human element of some sort.  So share.  It doesn’t even have to be much.  It just has to be something beyond us, beyond the children, and beyond the baby talk.  

When I talk about what I think, I want you to hear me.  See me, talk to me, hear me.  Remind me that I am not invisible.

I need it.  Giving everything that I have mind, body, and soul to my family can be daunting to say the least.  It is much too easy for a mother to lose herself.  It is much too easy to drift into the realm of mundane every-day-like-the-next life.  Mothers are still women.  We are still desirable.  Adore me, and experience the amazing reciprocation that comes from it.  I’ll make it worth your while.

I suppose that it is possible that some of us moms are content with becoming matronly, invisible, anticlimactic drones. 

The rest of us want to be pushed up against a wall now and then.