Standards and sexuality: How do I keep myself around once I find her?
My first kiss was full of braces, and, like most firsts, it was anything but elegant. I was ten, and she was my best friend. I’m starting to think that she might have been my first love too. It took ten years after that kiss for me to consider that I might be anything but straight.
My first serious relationship (and only long-term one) started when I was 17, and it lasted for about a year. When I think about it now, it feels like I lived a different life. My ex was respectful, kind, loving, and most importantly, he admired me. He found me interesting and smart and playful. We were partners. He was the first person I had sex with, but our relationship didn’t revolve around the physical. We read each other’s papers because we actually wanted to. We FaceTimed for 4-7 hours every Sunday. We talked about all sorts of silly and serious things that, since starting college, have been labeled lame. They’re the kind of conversations that 18-24 year-olds laugh off as quote-unquote deep, I think because they’re terrified of being vulnerable. I fell out of love with him the summer before college, but it was okay. While I am eternally thankful for that relationship, I do think it gave me a bit too rosy of an idea of what dating guys was like. I didn’t learn how to recognize when someone wasn’t interested in respecting and getting to know all of me.
It’s impossible not to wonder if my more recent crush on a girl was just the product of being tired of men. Even my well-meaning, liberal, and accepting parents talk about the “lesbian phases” their friends went through in college after being duped by guy after guy. It sure felt real, the way we’d sit side-by-side studying late at night, just inches away from each other. My breath would catch from the intensity of her eye contact, my mind swirling with all of the sweet texts she’d sent me the day before. Her voice was warm.
What if I lived in a society where there wasn’t so much pressure to KNOW everything?
To know whether I wanted to date girls. To know what career I’ll pursue. To know whether I’d be willing to put that career aside if the right partner (read: man) comes into the picture.
What do I know? I know I am a survivor of abuse, and that my experience affects me. The first time my therapist said that, I laughed. I told her I didn’t think I was qualified to decide if I had been abused. We live in a society where female-identifying (along with trans, queer, BIPOC, and non-binary) folks are encouraged to listen to others and not to draw their own conclusions. How was I supposed to recognize emotional abuse? It is such a fuzzy category that one can wiggle their way right out of it with a little smooth talking.
He was tall, had an unruly mess of hair, and rarely smiled, only smirked. On our first date, he said that he was only interested in open relationships. Feeling the pressure to be open-minded and “not be too judgmental,” I agreed. He slept with tens of girls. I slept with him. I lost sight of myself and what I actually wanted. When he wanted to be intimate, I acted like I did too. He told me how impressed he was with my sexual confidence. He said he never expected it, given my blonde curls, clean face, modest clothing, and athleticism. That was one of the first times I felt like a novelty. He cried to me about his mom and abandonment.
We were in an open relationship. I kissed our mutual friend. He told me that wasn’t allowed, that it was inconsiderate and cruel of me to do because of his past relationship trauma. I apologized and promised to be better. He relabeled our relationship “emotionally exclusive, sexually open.” I could only be physically intimate with people I had no emotional connection with. So I slept only with him.
We grew distant. A month later, he told me he was over it (“it” being our relationship). I was relieved, but hurt. I kissed our friend again. He found out and texted me, saying I should be “ashamed to look at myself in the mirror.” He told me that as his friend and ex-girlfriend, it was my responsibility to put him first and to not spend time with the guy who had hurt him so badly by kissing his “misled, vulnerable” girlfriend (me). Yet again, I found him telling me who I was and who I should be. It took months of lunch dates, where he yelled and I sat in silence, before I was willing to cut him out of my life.
I didn’t cut out our mutual friend, the boy who had started all the trouble. He was sleeping with more than five girls at that time, and I became another. I got used, but I know he didn’t mean to use me. It’s so much harder to be mad at someone who accidentally hurts you. I fell for his words about how sweet I was, how I was the only one he felt comfortable around. My sobriety, vulnerability, and kindness were novelties to him just as they had been to his friend. After one of the girls he was seeing told him she loved him, he ended things with me. I cried and my heart broke a little bit.
He was mysterious, and still is today. I realized that I have no responsibility to earn the trust of a man who is mysterious and to make him feel comfortable opening up. It usually means that he’s just as much of an unsolved mystery to himself. This guy is one of my close friends today, and honestly I don’t know how. I don’t think we get much of a choice in who we are able to forgive and who we hold grudges against until long after we leave this planet. He tells me that I am his best friend. He tells me that I know him better than his family does. I still sometimes feel like I barely know him. A few times a year, he tries to kiss me. I’ve turned my head the other way every time. That is one of my greatest victories. I’m in control.
Since the year that all began, I’ve had many undefined relationships with other noncommittal, fearful, sweet, but ultimately inconsiderate guys. I’ve never had a one-night-stand; my relationships tend to last 1-4 months. I have a hard time not pursuing someone when I think they could be interested. I tend to let things drag on, focusing on the good signs and minimizing the red flags. One guy told me he didn’t want to date but that he couldn’t stop thinking about kissing me, so I kissed him. Another told me our relationship could be whatever I wanted it to be, and then when I asked for commitment, he refused.
I managed to end things with my most recent partner after a few months. He was honest about not wanting to commit, and I told him that our casual relationship wasn’t working for me anymore. That would have been a great ending. A couple months later, I texted him one night after a family member passed away. I wanted someone to talk to who I wasn’t going to see the next day, someone who would be a phenomenal listener but who wouldn’t bring it up again. Essentially, I wanted an emotional one-night-stand. He listened perfectly. He validated and expressed compassion for all of my messy feelings, and we didn’t touch once.
When I walked him to my front door, we hugged. Instead of opening the door, he took my hand and asked if he could stay. Without saying anything, I walked him back upstairs, When I woke up the next morning, his limbs lazily wrapped around me, he asked if we could talk again. When we did, it was really only him that spoke. He rambled for many minutes about how he realized he did want to commit with me, before making a full one-eighty and deciding that he didn’t want anything romantic with me. I’ve rarely felt so confused. It was another month before I let myself get angry and told him how hurt I was. He said he was sorry I felt that way. He walked away to a different girl, a new girlfriend. I obsessed. Why wasn’t I good enough for him? I knew it wasn’t the chemistry. My friends helped me to see that it was my real-ness. I scared him with my seriousness and with my desire for authenticity in my relationships.
Every single one of these men has told me that I’m special and good, only to later oscillate about what he wants. None of them have shown commitment from the get-go, and I have been indoctrinated with the belief that it is my fault if they won’t be vulnerable and commit. I fell into a rhythm that felt normal: hook up, build a bond, and then find that they are too immature, afraid, or uninvested to commit to anything. Most of the times, all that I’m looking for is a commitment to get to know me better, outside of the bedroom.
Being single has helped. I don’t remember ever feeling so able to be okay on my own. Most nights when I journal, I find that my mind is as clear as it has ever been. I feel more capable and comfortable in my body and mind than I ever remember feeling before. This pandemic has been the first time in my life where I have gone months without giving a guy a second thought. I’ve come to terms with the fact that the next person I fall for might be a girl. I’m now excited about that. Of course, I worry about what will happen if I meet a nice person and things actually do work out. How can I keep being myself, keep being as comfortable and joyful and whole as I’ve felt this year? I feel so much pressure to date. I realize it comes from an ingrained fear that if I don’t “test the waters,” I’ll never become good or experienced enough at dating to find a long-term partner.
My hope for myself is that I am able to protect and nurture the self-respect and contentment I have cultivated this spring. May I find a good balance between trying out partners and only dating those who really are into me. All the podcasts and movies and blogs say it’s now, when you’ve cultivated deep self-respect, that the good ones start to show up. Maybe that will happen, and maybe it won’t. It’s interesting how even as I reflect and write these wishes for myself, I hesitate to write this next line. May I only date people who I truly believe are interested in respecting and getting to know me. I’m still afraid of missing out. I’m still afraid to be too judgmental, too much of a prude, too picky. Why is it so scary to have standards?