Citygrrrl

The boy said the three magic words last night.  No preamble or dissembling.  He just woke up from a post-sex snooze and said it.  Technically, he may have said it to my breasts, but I’m not going to quibble.  They are, after all, attached to me.  I’ve always felt very loved by him but it was still nice to hear the words.  It was especially nice to hear because sometimes I fart in my sleep.  I know this because I occasionally wake myself up, completely mortified and hoping he’s still asleep.  What I don’t know is how often this happens without waking me up.  In any case, he most assuredly has to have noticed it at least once or twice by now.  And he loves me anyway.

According to NG, he is “feeling head over heels” for me.  He’s also out of town again, but this time it’s only a four day trip so his promise not to ever leave me for a long trip ever again still stands untarnished.  He has this theory that I should not have any fun while he’s gone so that I’ll be really happy when he comes home.  After the last trip, when my mother-in-law died and I had a stressful job change, I told him that wouldn’t stand.  He’s no longer allowed to wish me misery while he’s gone.  I knew my dad was having heart surgery today and the last thing I needed was someone hoping I was miserable this week!

I tried to explain to him my philosophy that when he’s out of town, I hope he’s having a good time both because I care about him and because otherwise, his being out of town is a complete waste of valuable time that we could otherwise be spending together.  It also works in reverse.  If I go out of town, I’ll hope he’s having a good time at home both because I care about his happiness and because I’ll feel less guilty for having fun while I’m gone.

I like this philosophy because it’s positive and somewhat altruistic while at the same time maintaining a certain selfish core.  I want him to have a good time both for his sake, and for mine.  Life is about finding balance, after all.  By the end, he seemed to appreciate the concept.  Sadly, I am not having much fun this week, with or without his support.  I’ve mostly been working and doing chores around the house.  It’s good stuff to do but I wouldn’t classify it as fun!

I feel like I have a secret.  I haven’t told NG that I love him, even though it seems more true with every day.  A couple of nights ago he declared that he “likes me” and then that he “likes me a lot.”  This was not exactly news to me and it made me chuckle to myself and smile.  I’d been thinking about telling him that I love him and he goes and admits to liking me. A lot.  It still makes me smile to think of it.  Yeah, I like him too–a lot.

Our relationship has been awesome.  We’ve been going on various adventures together, one of which involved a weekend at the coast with a bunch of my friends, including my ex-husband.  It was a great time and everyone liked him.  I haven’t written much about it because there hasn’t been any drama to write about.  I can only write so many “wow, this is so great” posts before I get tired of it.  If I could go into more detail about our activities without giving up my privacy, it would be a little easier.  Even then, I would just be relating how we went snowshoeing, hiking, surfing, or kayaking.  Or how we painted some pictures and watched some movies.  How our sex life is incredible and I don’t know what I’m going to do without him for 2 weeks while he’s away on vacation.  We seem to have done quite a bit of stuff in 10 weeks.

No, my biggest dilemma now is to figure out why I’m being so chicken about telling him I love him. Do I mistrust my feelings for him?  Do I feel like an idiot for loving CB and getting burned so it seems impossible that I could love someone else so quickly?  Am I afraid he doesn’t love me back and that I’m just some cool girl he’s dating for right now?  I think it’s all of those things, but most particularly the last one.

One the one hand, I don’t want to be afraid of telling someone how I feel.  I want my love to be a gift, freely given with no expectations.  On the other hand, I want him to love me back.  I feel loved.  That means more to me than any words he could say.  That’s part of why him telling me he likes me is so funny.  He says he likes me but I feel like he loves me.  I’d much rather have that than the opposite.  So why the fear and reluctance?

In some ways, not allowing myself to say the words forces me to turn love into an action word.  Instead of saying it, I show it.  Oh hell, I’m totally copping out.  I would still show it even if I said it.  Nope, I’m just a big chicken who doesn’t want to rush things.  My comfort is that I also felt oddly reluctant and chicken about kissing him, but once we broke through our mutual silliness, our physical connection was amazing.   I have 2 weeks to contemplate this love business.  I am quite resolved not to do it in a text message, because that would just be way too lame.  I chickened out on telling him before he left, so I’ll just have to wait.

I’ve discovered that there’s a downside to being sprung on someone.  It seems like whenever I get really emotionally invested in someone, the rest of my life suffers for it.  In particular, I find that my creativity is stifled.  I find it almost impossible to write anything longer than a short e-mail.  I don’t do house or craft projects.  All of my passion seems to direct itself towards the person I’m into.  This doesn’t happen when I’m casually dating someone.  It’s only when I’ve committed to being in a relationship.

This phenomenon makes me feel extra leery about falling in love again because I don’t like it.  At least I’m writing again.  That’s a very good sign.  There’s a Snow Patrol song with the refrain, “I never want to fall in love again, never want to fall in love again…”  It’s been stuck in my head for a couple of days.  Wow, I am definitely still in recovery mode.

The guy does tend to come and go. But, I’m finding I rather like that about him. R- called me up yesterday afternoon, completely out of the blue, to see if I wanted to hang out last night. He even apologized for being out of touch for so long. Considering I wasn’t in touch with him either, it wasn’t exactly hard to forgive him. As with FWB, it was a really nice evening.

I had a happy hour gig with some friends so we met up after that at his place. I got the biggest hug from him. I don’t remember getting big hugs from him before. He was always sort of my anti-touchy-feelie lover. We went out for sushi to our mutually favorite spot and caught up on what we’ve been doing. He falls into the Cancer Musician with Cats category of guy so we talked a lot about his various music projects without cracking into anything deeper. It turns out that he thinks I’m incredibly well adjusted. Apparently my +1 Shield of Pleasant Affability was firmly in place last night!

I had some people coming to my house for late night drinks and since R- knew them, I invited him along. We had some time to kill between dinner and drinks so we went back to his place. We fixed a couple of drinks in the kitchen, chatted about the holidays, probably chatted about something else, and then we were kissing. That was some good kissing, let me tell you.

Kissing R- always has a slow build up to passion because it always starts off so light. I think last night we had some of the best sex we’ve ever had. I like my boys to be a bit bossy in bed, mostly because I prefer not to have to think. One of the things I like about good sex is that it shuts down my mind and lets my body enjoy itself. He was totally on board with being bossy. Good grief, by the time we got all our clothes off, I wanted him so badly I could hardly breathe.

It took him a long time to come. I was getting worried thanks to my recent experiences but it was kind of cool in a way because he never gave up on it. He had kind of a “it’ll happen” attitude and so we just kept playing around until he got there. He likes it when I suck on my own nipples, which I think is hilarious, mostly because of the porn star face he makes when I do it. It was all in good fun. What finally got him off was tit-fucking me! I’ve tried that with people before and thought it was cool and fun but no one has ever come from it. It was awesome. Afterwards he was more touchy-feelie than he used to be too. They were light, stroking touches that felt very soothing and since we were going back to my place, I didn’t have to listen to him snore all night, which rocked.

You may recall that R- had a bit of a snarky streak. I’m sure he still does but it was absent last night. Now that I have him figured out a little bit better, I’ll just good naturedly throw it back at him if it happens. I want to be better about not hiding my reactions to people. I can spar with the best of them when I allow myself free rein to do so. I imagine we’ll hang out again sometime in the next couple of weeks and we’ll see how it goes.

My ex-husband finds this casual dating thing hugely annoying because he thinks I’m preventing myself from “finding someone.” Seeing these guys didn’t prevent me from meeting CB, who was supposedly, or at least potentially, that “someone.” Considering how emotionally fucked I was by the end, you’d think he’d cut me some slack and just be happy that I’m dating nice people I enjoy being around. Besides, R- has a sweet outdoor hot tub.

Last week I decided I’d had enough of feeling like I was going to throw up or get an ulcer over CB, so I texted him to make sure that we were through. I very simply asked him to verify that he didn’t love me and the knot in his stomach was gone. After some “trying to be sensitive” condescension on his part, he verified that the knot in his stomach was indeed gone. That was close enough for my purposes so I e-mailed FWB to see if had any free time to hang out over the weekend.

We hadn’t been in contact much since I started seeing CB but every once in awhile he pinged me to see if I was still seeing him. He was entirely enthusiastic about getting together so we made a plan. We shot some pool, had some dinner, went to a party, had sex, and watched a movie –pretty much in that order. It was a rather long date but it was just what the Love Doctor ordered. We caught up on things a bit, enjoyed each other’s company, both in and out of bed, and curled up in a cuddly ball on the couch for the movie. It all felt great. There was no drama or trying to make sense of his moods. There was no randomly occurring feeling that I’d made some misstep. There was just mutual comfort and fun. Everyone should have such an FWB when they’re rebounding from heartbreak!

It reminded me again that sex can be fun and easy. It also reminded me that there are people in my life that I care about and value in ways other people probably wouldn’t understand. I feel lucky.

Reading back on a few of my CB posts makes me wish I hadn’t stopped writing about my relationship with him. I think it would have helped me to see things more clearly. There were times, especially after CB’s fear reared its unpleasant head, when I wondered if having a boyfriend was really worth all this trouble. I considered breaking up with him several times, but I had promised to be patient. Having that all come to nothing made it harder to take, for sure.

I wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend when this all started. But, when love comes knocking on my door, I’m not one to turn away from it. I knew it was a risk to fall in love with someone who, in his mid-thirties, had never been with someone for longer than a year and a half. Our experiences with relationships were so different. Ah well, sometimes we jump and land on our feet, and sometimes we bash our faces into the cold, hard, concrete. At least if I write about it, I’ll know what happened when I drag myself to my feet again.

On another note, I looked for a good craigslist ad to post yesterday but I didn’t see any that stood out. I’ll check again today.

My goodness, where to start? CB and I broke up a little over two weeks ago. The problem with our sex life never improved and in fact seemed to get worse as time went on. My take on it was to be really positive, and let him know that we could try as often as he wanted. My fear that he would start to lose interest in sex came true. We pretty much only had sex when he felt like he would most likely orgasm. When he didn’t orgasm, his frustration was palpable and made me feel unfulfilled, even if I had orgasmed. I felt like there was some button I needed to push to get him over the edge, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

The course of our relationship went something like this. We met. We fell in love. He’d never felt this way about anyone before. He liked sharing his space with me, unlike other girls he’d dated. He’d finally met the right girl. He loved me. And then, cue the doom music (dum, dum, duuuum). Relationships were hard for him. He was scared and confused. He didn’t want to push me away. He asked me to be patient with him. He pushed me away, then pulled me close, then pushed me away. I kept my shields down, knowing we were doomed if I didn’t. He didn’t know if he wanted to break up or declare his love for me to the world. He opted to break up. I was a great girl whom he liked to hang out with sometimes but that was all there was to it. He just wasn’t as into it as I was. He hoped he hadn’t lead me on. I told him I felt like none of it had been real. He was offended and said he meant everything he’d said. If that’s true, then my only conclusion is that he needs therapy. Now.

During all of this, he would make little comments about proposing or getting married. They were comments like, “Wow, if you did such and such, I would propose on the spot” or “Damn, if you really think that’s funny, I should propose right now” and “If you’ve mastered making lasagna, I’ll marry you.” They were all conditional phrases that were entirely within my power to fulfill. Did I do any of them? No, I did not.

I’m not actually in a hurry to get married and he was having such a hard time being my boyfriend, that making him my husband seemed completely ludicrous. Given how freaked out he was about being in a relationship, I tried hard to make him feel safe, comfortable, not pressured. Maddening. Every time I had to be patient, I invested a little more of myself in our relationship. My pride, my heart. It was all for nothing. By the end, his fear had choked the life out of whatever feelings he had for me in the beginning. I don’t know if the doubts I expressed in the beginning about who exactly he saw when he looked at me were true or not. I don’t feel like that’s the case. His overriding fear is the only thing that feels real to me.

I’ve never dated someone and come out of it wishing we’d never met. There’s always been something of value in my relationships, however long or short they may be. But with this one, I just don’t see it. What’s to be learned? Don’t give my heart to a neurotic dick? Duh.

He sees no connection between his inability to orgasm and his intense fear of relationship intimacy. It seems like a no-brainer to me. As his fear increased so did his difficulty with sex. By the end he was feeling entirely demoralized about sex and I had reached the point where it seemed like maybe we should lay off sex entirely for awhile. This is how willing to work it out I was. Sex is a big deal for me and I was willing to put it on hold if it made him feel better.

The day after I suggested we maybe shouldn’t have sex for awhile, to take the pressure off, he called with the news that he wasn’t sure what to do about us, break up or declare his love for me to the world. Two days after that, he decided I was just someone nice to hang out with, as I mentioned earlier.

It took me almost two weeks to get it through my head that it was actually over and that it all essentially meant nothing. That in the end, I meant nothing to him. It left me reeling and I don’t like it. I don’t like that I love someone who not only doesn’t love me back, but who made me feel like a fool. I feel like I’m in the middle of a stupid 80’s power ballad video! In retrospect, I wish I had fulfilled his little conditions for marriage, just to see how he’d react. There would certainly not have been anything to lose!

Since things with CB were for sure over (I sent him a text to verify it, just in case), I spent a lovely Saturday with FWB last weekend. It was easy and fun and just what the love doctor ordered.

I’ve been with CB for three weeks and it’s going incredibly well. Hence, my lack of blog updating! I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write about it. I also feel a little weird writing about someone I’m falling in love with. He doesn’t know I have this blog and it makes me feel a little guilty. After this post, I may feel a lot guiltier because I’m about to think through some things. You dear reader, get to be my sounding board.

CB and I are having lots of sex. He totally turns me on and I clearly turn him on. Sounds great, yes? Sadly, there’s a “but…” coming. He rarely orgasms. To make it worse, he’s frustrated by it. We have fun, engaging, raucous sex until I’ve climaxed several times and he’s too tired to continue. He’s in extremely good physical condition so it’s not that kind of tired. It’s more that we keep going until he’s frustrated. It’s all fun and games until the boy can’t come.

His take on it is that we’ll figure it out, we’re having a great time having sex anyway, and being with someone he loves is way more important to him (since finding sex is not difficult for either of us). My concern is that his growing frustration will make him stop wanting to have sex with me and that things will go downhill from there.

I can have sex for a rather long time it seems. Sex with someone I like just flat out feels great, whether I orgasm or not. I’m perfectly happy to keep going until my partner gets off. My last boyfriend (not lover) loved that it took him forever to come with me. He seemed to see it as an amazing bonus. The sound of my voice over the phone was enough to make him hard. His body associated me with great sex. It was awesome. He would sort of get lost in fucking me. It was incredibly sensual and he made me feel like a sex goddess. I guess my point is that it took him an unusually long time to orgasm with me, but he loved it.

I mentioned awhile back that M- eventually told me that not orgasming wasn’t normal for him and he didn’t feel connected to me sexually. He’s a little different though because he didn’t keep his erections once he was inside me, which led to lots of finger banging (which is no longer allowed). I could turn him on easily enough but couldn’t keep him there.

R- would pretty much keep going until I told him to let go and come. FWB definitely held out for quite awhile before he came and it seemed like it took an effort of concentration to reach that point. J- for the most part just came whenever and I never had to worry about it. Of course, that was before M- and I didn’t realize there could be a problem.

I don’t know what it is about me that is preventing these guys from climaxing as they’re accustomed to. I’ve never had children and I haven’t heard any feedback that they can’t feel me. I’m tight, and when I’m turned on I’m also damned wet. I’m enthusiastic about sex, meaning I’m an active participant. I’ll do just about anything short of standing on my head, but I definitely take the more passive role of letting the guy call the shots.

M- said the best sex we ever had was the time I totally took control and had my way with him. I’m not sure I’ve really tried that with CB. I sort of did this morning when I rode the hell out of him with no regard for getting myself off, but rather stayed in a position over him that maximized the feeling and rhythm of my pussy sliding up and down his cock. I got him close, but no cigar and then he flipped me onto my back and fucked me until I came.

Arrrggghhh! He decided this morning that we need to try sex in various other spots around the house. I’m totally down with that. I will try anything at this point. Maybe he needs to accept that sex with me is going to be a picnic in the park instead of a burger at the drive-thru and if he stops worrying about it, he’ll get there eventually. Otherwise, I’m open to suggestions…

I met CB-’s family Sunday night. They were really cool. We ate Thai food and watched game 7 of the ALCS (baseball). He hadn’t brought anyone home to meet the family in almost 2 years so it was kind of a big deal. He met my ex and his girlfriend earlier in the day, which is the equivalent to meeting my family. I don’t plan to ever actually introduce him to my parents. Certainly not my mother anyway!

Tonight, I will watch him play the drums, then I will lick the sweat from his ears before he fucks me silly. That’s my general plan. We haven’t actually had sex yet so I don’t know for sure that he’ll fuck me silly. We’ve messed around enough for me to know that it’s likely though. It’s pretty much all I’ve been thinking about all day.

It’s weird to be this into someone. I keep finding myself wanting to say long-term things but then I stop myself. He doesn’t seem to stop himself much though so, I suppose I shouldn’t either. There’s a part of me that doesn’t quite believe he really wants to be with me. That once he gets to know me better he’ll think, “Oh. She’s not who I thought she was” and he’ll leave. It’s not that I don’t know what he sees in me, it’s more that I don’t know who he sees when he looks at me. There’s a difference. I’m trying to make sure my shields are down so he doesn’t see a blank slate. People project onto my blank slate shields the person they want me to be. It’s pretty handy sometimes, like in a job interview, but it’s not so great when I want a genuine relationship with someone.

Fortunately, I feel very comfortable around him and the doubts only plague me when we’re apart. I certainly feel more relaxed and at home with him than with anyone in a long time. Trust built over time will ease the doubts and in the meantime, this will certainly be an adventure!