End of Days
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I was talking to Moxie the other day about relationships and I raised the issue of why I’m not yet married. She mentioned an interesting point that I’m having difficulty even framing, but it’s so obvious that it blows me away that nobody talks about it. And this dovetails with what Captain Jack asked me about why I’m not sleeping with the 20 year old that’s been dogging me lately.
I’ve said for some time that I think that these adult blogs that we write are narcissistic pursuits of feel-good echo-chamber goodness. And I’m as guilty as everyone else in enjoying writing out my life here online and hearing your responses to it. But when I realized that it wasn’t getting me what I wanted, that I was envying my parents life, and my friends lives, I started to wonder what the fuck.
A college classmate of mine, married for three years, read this blog and emailed me - “You’re living the dream, don’t give it up!” I think there may have been an errant “bro” in there somewhere, but we’re men in our 30s, so “bro” sounds a little weird.
What’s funny is that I think that he is.
I’m living the adolescent’s dream, the pickup artists dream, and the dream of every nerd worth his salt. I sleep with the sexiest women, nice girls at heart, the envy of the other men in the room or the city, and so what?
But I’m living my own. And frankly? It has it moments. But on balance, it’s not a great way to be. I wake up alone more often than not. I don’t have someone to share my successes with. I have friends to lean on during failure, but really, who wants to burden one’s friends?
As you can probably tell, I’m in a transition here.
What am I talking about? The lack of a partner. Not a wife or a girlfriend or anything with a label, but a partner. Someone who’s in it with me.
Sure, there are fights, and there is bad feeling and it’s hard and sometimes you look around and wish that you were in a position to chase down the new pussy. But it’s not about that. It’s about waking up next to the same person. Working on it together. And being together at the end of our lives.
I’m thinking of a specific West Wing reference here - the President, having an MS attack before an important event, can’t tie his own tie. His wife stops him before he hurts himself and says “this is why we take vows.” That got me thinking about why to get married. It’s about the other end of life, and it’s a bet you’re taking with yourself and your partner that on balance this is a better idea in the long run than not.
On the other side, of course, is Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black II:
“You know what they say. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. “
“You try it.”
I don’t know. All I know is that as I look around at most of the adult blogs that I’ve seen have been about celebrating the sexual, which is great, but we all know how to fuck. We know the 71 positions, that a man’s g-spot is as sensitive as a woman’s, how to make a woman squirt, how to have multiple orgasms, and how to make a woman feel instantly attracted to you and think it was her idea. But so what? I’ve had a rotating set of partners since The New Yorker. I tried to settle down with The Writer and I wasn’t ready to settle down, and I tried to slow down, at least, with the Sous Chef, and it wasn’t the right fit at the time.
The questions that I’ve been asking lately when I meet women are threefold:
1) Would I like to wake up next to her for the next several decades?
2) Would I consider what life would be like to be with her and then lose her?
3) How do I think she would be as a mother?
Because those are the important questions. I got the steroid monkey sex “out” in my 20s. The BDSM, the threesomes, the make-out parties, the rotating cast of women, and you read along here.
Not that I’m necessarily stopping those things, but those that follow my Twitter know that I’ve been struggling with a 20 year old who has been throwing herself at me lately. I’m currently 33. I finally decided not to pursue the 20 year old. She’d be fun, but as the good book says, with great power comes great responsibility (the good book being the Fantastic Four). She’d have a good time, I’d have another story and probably a good time, and I know she’s into the crazy hang-from-the-chandeliers sex that I’m used to having and enjoying.
Can I see waking up next to her for the next several decades? When I’m 46, she’ll be as old as I am now? I’ll be the envy of those people that envy men with younger wives, but is it good for -me- and/or -us-? No.
The other two questions don’t even get raised, therefore.
I have a lot more thoughts on the issue and shared them with Moxie. Mostly, it has to do with marrying someone not just for the wedding, not just for the good sexy first year or seven, but for the commitment to share a life together and to be there when things get bad. The sex is one axis, but only one axis, along which the relationship should be built. Maybe that’s why I’m not a jealous person when it comes to physical cheating so long as there’s an agreement between the parties. I’d rather we stay a strong couple and she fuck someone else than she spend her time daydreaming about what it would be like and get lost in the daydream while neglecting us. I don’t know if that’s the “working” equation. I don’t think there is one. It’s a partnership and whatever works for the two of us, how do we know what works for us unless we talk about it?
That’s where it stands, though. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this, and thus don’t have any scandalous behavior to titillate you with because I’ve been actively avoiding it. I guess that means I’m growing up?
It’s been suggested that I try online dating. JDate or something. As a sort of end-of-line pool of women who are looking, actively, for a husband. It’s worth considering, I suppose. I’d rather meet someone at a benefit or a coffee shop, but at this point, I’m willing to try new things.
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Hey Bad. I really respect that you’re having this conversation with yourself. It’s almost, but not quite, the opposite of the conversation I’ve been having. I have gone from serious relationship to serious relationship throughout my life. Some of these have been screwed up and involved infidelity, which may have been avoided if I’d been more open about sex and what I wanted, less ashamed to be sexual. Maybe. But I also don’t regret the intensity of my past loves. I had a couple of miserable and lonely years, when I actually tried to have more casual sexual relationships, but I discovered that I don’t want that. I like having sex with girls that I am deeply attached to, and who feel that way about me. When I’ve had sex with girls I’m not attached to, I’ve just felt like some parts of me were thrown way out of balance with the others.
You gave me good advice when I first wrote you. I would say to you that it’s a good thing that you’re not going for something that you don’t really want (ie., the 20 year old). In my own very short journey into pickup, I discovered that I have been living in a world of abundance, that the difficulty isn’t talking to girls, or being interesting or attractive to girls, or even finding a girl that I think I can love (it’s happened several times now). The difficulty is in actually relating, what I want and what she wants, day to day, over and over. For our generation, just doing what our parents did isn’t going to work. Your three questions are good, but ideally you will change and she will change and you will still make sense. But then, maybe that’s still the right question…
verbals last blog post..Beyonce’s ‘If I Were a Boy’ video
Ironically, I’m on an opposite phase to you. Me and my wife met at 20, were married by 23, and are now both 28. It’s been a rough road, but we stuck it through and we’re better for it (bla bla bla cliche etc).
Anyway, we were both virgins and had hardly dated when we met. So now that we’re secure in our relationship, we’re exploring the physical side outside the relationship with other people. We come home to each other, we still have great sex, but we’re catching up on all that we missed out on.
We love each other immensely, and have both gone through rough times and supported each other. Even if we never did anything with anyone else, I’d happily stay in the relationship, because having that other person there is so worth it. Nothing is perfect, but I always say, when it’s bad, it’s real bad, but when it’s good, you can’t even remember the bad if you try. The longer we’re together the more good there is, and less bad.
Whatever you do, be yourself, not that you’ll have a problem with that, and if you find yourself obsessing over what ifs, go find out.
Just my take, but it’s worked for me.
I would think that any sort of behaviour, good, bad, boring, fantastic would get old after a while.
You’ve done this sort of thing for a while- maybe it’s time to look at something else? I.e. the possibility that there might be someone out there worth settling down with…
And who’s to say that it’s impossible to find a girl who’s kinky and independent too?
The Duchesss last blog post..And Next I’ll Be Writing Exit to Eden II
Jack and I have been together three years. No, that’s not all that long in the grand scheme… but for me it is. I’m 24. I’ve been married and divorced, and this is the longest relationship of my life.
We met and it was supposed to be a booty call. A fuck-and-run, maybe at most friends-with-benefits.
That was almost three years ago. Oops.
Of course, I suck at casual sex. I’ve tried it twice with people who weren’t already friends- both times, I ended up dating them and loving them deeply.
You can end up with more from something that starts out casually. Jack got me by talking to me one night, asking about my past and when some of it made me start shaking, he wrapped me in my arms and told me I was safe.
I fell in love with him that night.
Today, we are talking about getting married once undergrad is done. We’ve opened our relationship, and Sunday night he got his first blowjob from someone else (or the beginnings of one, anyway). Because like you said, it’s not about the sex, about where his dick goes. It’s about waking up next to one another, making tea together in the morning. It’s about going to the gym together, and knowing that he’ll take over the cooking while I’m taking care of my godson this week (yay dumb emergencies). It’s about knowing that when my mother was in the hospital he dropped everything to be there for me, and when his mother was, I did the same.
I think you’re right in what you’re looking for, but wrong to assume that it can’t be found through ostensibly casual sex. To become intimate, as opposed to sexual, a connection has to be created… but it’s possible for sex to be what makes the connection.
That’s not to say that you should fuck the 20 year old… but just don’t rule out a style of meeting women that’s worked for you. The style of meeting works, so why not just change its focus?
Good luck.
Bellafortes last blog post..Things that don’t suck
This is exactly the thing that frustrates me about teaching seduction (to both men and women) and that spurred me to eventually leave the community.
Most people — or at least people who aren’t getting laid regularly — fail to recognize that there comes a point when more sex isn’t the answer. Most people don’t know what they want either and rely on community values to tell them what to do. “I want threesomes every night” or so I’ve heard many guys say…but the truth is, more often than not, all they want is to feel complete. And feeling complete? It starts right now, with you, in your body.
Peters last blog post..Resistance Is Right
I’m far from a poly/non-monogamy evangelist but do you think you might be setting up a false dilemma here? Perhaps you can find a partner and still have the excitement and fun of kinky, dirty, and new.
Ellies last blog post..Speechless
Hey Bad…
I’ve been following your blog for a while but haven’t been spurred on to make a comment.
I think that all the cliches are true - it’ll hit you when you least expect it, when you’re not looking for it, especially when you don’t know what ‘it’ is. I think that ‘it’ can change over time as well. I met my husband 8 years ago, and was a bit annoyed by his clingyness - a short time later, there was a stretch of time where i didn’t get the text messages during the day, didn’t get an email or a phone call checking up to see how I was doing. And I realised at this point that - shock horror - I missed the attention. This was very unlike me!
We’ve had our rough patches, and one thing that’s really come out of it is that sometimes its the environment that you’re in, as much as the person you’re with. We moved abroad together for work, and I can quite honestly say things haven’t been better, but I think its as much to do with the fact that we’re more relaxed in this new place, and we get along better.
You’ll find your Ms. Right, and by ‘Right’ I mean right for you, and not right for network television. Being with someone long term is the great stuff about learning new things about eachother!
sorry for the bore…. I won’t do it again.. :)
Emm is exactly right. It’s a cliche, but it’s true. I wasn’t even looking for it when it happened, didn’t even want it, in fact, and boom, there he was.
It is so refreshing to hear you explore the other side. And Alfred Lord Tennyson got it all right when he said,” Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
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