May 25, 2010

• There are a lot of things about me that are strange, it's true.  I won't deny it.  I often think of myself as too childish, too emotional, and sometimes too focused on sex and relationships.  I always thought I would end up wrecking my life somehow by this point, and yet, here I am.  But I look around me and there is carnage, there is ruination.  As my social life blossoms and my romantic entanglements become more and more stable with each passing day, my peers and wallowing in the beds they have made for themselves.  Some have already gotten divorced.  Some have jumped from partner to partner focused only on attraction and never on stability.  Some are just too selfish to ever be able to commit to a long term relationship.  And I think to myself, "If these people cannot do it, what makes my relationship stand the test of time?"  Not that any of my peers are especially outstanding people, nor are they particularly crappy, but I'm simply flabbergasted by the fact that only two of my close friends are happily married and many of them are still single in the mid-twenties to early thirties.

  So what is it that makes me (or my husband for that matter) special?  I was thinking about it and I've come up with a few ideas that are better expressed as a list:

  1.  We have compatible life goals, i.e. we both want children.  Because the end goal of both our lives is to reproduce and that is the most important thing to both of us, we don't butt heads about the path we will walk and instead happily walk the same path together.

  2.  We are rational people.  We can rationalize our own actions and the actions of others, and therefore avoid arguments based on a lack of understanding of motivation.  There are no silent treatments for days on end.  We tell each other why we became angry or sad, we discuss possible reasons and then we bypass our own emotional responses in favor of a mutual understanding of the situation.

  3.  We aren't afraid of "adulthood".  When I say that I am overly childish, I mean it in the most shallow of ways.  I laugh at farts.  I make rude gestures in public.  However, when it comes to money matters or other important life choices, I have no trouble being an "adult" about them.  Neither does my husband.  We know what is important and what one needn't be too serious about.  Consequently, we have fun when we should and get things done when we should.  I think that concept is lost on a lot of people.

  4.  We don't desire "freedom" in the sense that most people think of it.  We have no intentions of staying out until 6 AM getting drunk at random parties.  Neither of us likes the concept of "one night stands" nor do we have "friends with benefits" or any of that other frivolous stuff.  Having the "freedom" to addle one's mind and then have lots of sex without any real meaning behind it doesn't appeal to either of us, and I don't understand why I would appeal to anyone.  And I don't see marriage as some kind of prison that destroys all hope of happiness forever after.  In fact, I feel more free to be myself and tell people to fuck off now than I ever did when I was single.  I see marriage as a safety net, a big soft bed where one can curl up and be happy and be FREE.

  5.  We actually care about one another.  I'm not talking about how you care about your friend or you care about your mom.  I'm talking about willingly giving one's own life to save the person you care about.  If I was in a situation where my husband's life was in danger, I would do anything to save him.  Ask yourself, "If [insert significant other here] was about to be murdered and the only way to stop it was to die myself, would I do it?"  For me, the answer is yes.  The answer always was yes from the first time I said, "I love you."  That's what those three words mean to me.  "I would give my life for yours gladly."

  And maybe we are strange, childish, overly emotional and too focused on one another, but let me tell you that when I see a stream of frustrated, lonely people on my facebook wall I thank the universe that my mind works the way it does and that I met someone else like me.  Perhaps we are just lucky, but I don't think so.  I think those reasons I just listed sum it up.  A lot of the people I know are too fixated on being "free" and "young" to realize that their time is rapidly running out to find and subsequently make a connection with someone.  That connection has nothing to do with how much beer you can ingest or how late you stay out at night, nor can it be replaced by the company of dozens of strangers.  And it's based on honesty and trust, two things that cannot be generated from being a child forever in the ways that matter.

  Maybe I'm being too judgmental and chastising, but someone I know who is in his 30's and was married has recently gotten a divorce...over something really stupid that if I discussed, it would sound like a high school kid's problem in a two month long relationship.  I just...get so frustrated when I listen to people complain on and on about their supposed life partners' insignificant flaws instead of focusing on the big picture, that picture being a life of love and support given up for a life of loneliness and depression masked by alcohol, all over something pointless.  Ugh...

  --------------------------------------------------------

  I had a panic attack in the car the other day.  My husband had just picked me up from the lab and I had failed again, even after modifying which of the three ligases I was using.  I sat down in the seat next to him and he touched my shoulder and I just started crying.  I was crying so hard that I couldn't breath.  I coughed out for him to drive me home and I stood in the shower crying for another 30 minutes.  I couldn't even think.  My mind went blank and all I could think of was my failure.  It swirled around in my mind and became a huge, hideous cloud of dark smoke, choking me from the inside.  It was the most frightening thing I've ever experienced.  I didn't know it was a panic attack at the time, but when I explained it to my mother she immediately told me what had happened.  I never want to feel like that again.

  I took the day off all Sunday.  I just sat around and EV trained Pokemon.  I needed to de-stress and reevaluate what I was doing in the lab and why it wasn't working.  It helped a lot.  I'm back in lab today and feeling much better.  I've come up with several other solutions that I had previously missed because I was blindly following a protocol I had been handed instead of really thinking about what was happening in my experiments.  I think I can do this.  I know I can do this.  This is the life I've created for myself and I'm not about to fail at it.

  -------------------------------------------------------

  I have so much to say about my husband's and my mutual girlfriend that I don't know where to start, so I'll tell it like a story and italicize it and then see where that takes me:

  I've always felt as though I met the perfect male in college.  He is my husband.  But being bisexual caused me to long for a female as well.  I searched at college and turned up nothing.  Females are too different from me in most cases, and of course finding someone who is interested in mutually dating two people is extremely difficult. 

  Near the end of my time as an undergraduate student, I met a girl who really struck a cord with me and we became fast friends.  Sadly, because it was so very near the end, we hardly spent any actual "face-to-face" time together, but I think we could both sense a kindred spirit in the other.  We kept in touch and one day she suggested that I try a site called OkCupid.com for my female search endeavors.  I was skeptical, but it was free and she made it sound pretty fun.  I made an account and started contacting people I thought sounded interesting.

  One of the people I met was rather special in that she seemed like everything I was looking for.  I awkwardly messaged her, allowing a tiny hint of hope to creep into my mind, but keeping myself firmly rooted in the reality that she was likely not to even message me back as it is the way of the internet for these things not to work out.  But my hope was rewarded and we started chatting every few days, culminating in a meeting for ice cream and then a trip to her house for some general hanging out.  I had so much fun talking with her, probably too much fun since I can talk for hours, and I could barely bring myself to leave when the time came.

  Weeks passed and we spent more time together.  I was working on a costume and she had a career in costume making in the past, so at first it was mostly for me to come over and use her knowledge and her sewing machine.  As time progressed, I knew she had to meet my husband and I brought him along with me.  We all chatted and laughed and smiled for hours together and it was like a dream.

  But time constraints tore us apart.  My husband was winding down his last few days of employment and she was studying for her finals every night.  We traveled a couple weekends in a row, and consequently didn't get to see her for a while.  But the night we returned from our exhaustive travels we invited her over on a whim and it just happened.  I suppose while I had thought about it many times, mulled it over, savored it and then dismissed it as an unobtainable goal, but finally kissing a girl was just as exciting as I suspected it would be.  And we certainly didn't stop at kissing.  However, as a weary traveler, I didn't have the stamina I should have had for such a momentous occasion and we had to stop short.

  A few days later we had planned to have dinner together, but now it was something more.  I had stopped short the festivities of our first taste of intimacy with each other and everyone was anticipating continuing where we left off.  But I find, for myself, anticipation doesn't get me going as much as surprise.  I was worried, nervous.  I hadn't expected the first situation, thus I was left in a kind of limbo where I was excited that it had happened, but frightened that I wasn't really ready.  My husband and I talked about a lot of things prior to the all important evening, how far we were willing to go, what precautions we should take, on and on.  I got to the point where I wasn't particularly excited anymore, and instead just saturated with the idea that whether I was in the mood or not something was going to happen.  Like I hinted at, I'm not one who thinks you can plan good sex.  But I wanted to please her.  I wanted her to enjoy our company.  I didn't want to seem boring and prudish.  My husband forbid me, however, from undressing her completely.  He was worried about safe sex and getting tested for STDs and a whole host of things that, while valid, certainly didn't excite me for the evening.  I think we were all expecting something different and while it was alright, I think everyone ended up being disappointed.  Me because I didn't see her naked.  Her because I didn't see her naked.  Him because he was overwhelmed by the whole situation before it even began that night.  We had just made out for a second time in a threesome.  I should have been ecstatic.  Instead I just felt...kind of empty.

  In the days that followed I had little contact with her.  I actually let tears well up in my eyes a few times thinking that perhaps we had ruined it over a stupid make out session.  My husband and I talked about the dark cloud that had been hanging over the situation, her having a boyfriend, and how he didn't want to have sex until he was out of the picture.  I revolted and told him he was being unfair, but I still agreed that we should all get tested together if things went any further.  I felt it was a compromise between the two extremes that everyone (hopefully) could live with.  But that wasn't at the forefront of my mind.  What worried me the most was her face as she walked away from us when we dropped her off that night.  She looked as though nothing could have made her any sadder that the evening already had...and it ripped my heart apart.

  Finally I sent her an e-mail, voicing my concerns and telling her how I was feeling about everything.  She replied in kind and we talked everything over, what we should have done to begin with, even before the first kiss landed on my lips.  As I expected, we had all anticipated too much and spoken too little, especially about what we wanted out of the encounter.  I think it's all on the table now, at least I hope it is.  I tried my best to say everything relevant, but these things are complex and I may have missed a few things.  I am only human.

  And so is he, her boyfriend.  I'm tired of him being this weird grey area in the back of my mind.  I told her I want to meet him and I do.  I have no desire to become involved with him intimately, but I also have no desire to continue treating him like some kind of inanimate object in my thoughts.  And if he thinks she's wonderful, well, we have at least one thing in common.  I think he deserves to meet the other people his girlfriend is involved with, and if he's relaxed enough to do it willingly then there is no way I won't get along with him at least averagely well.

  In the end, things are going amazingly with limited hiccups along the way.  I never expected this.  I never thought that I would have a chance like this.  I never thought breasts would be so beautiful in person.  Most importantly, I never thought I would meet anyone else who could appreciate my strange personality.  I'm really happy.  I've lost my girl virginity and it feels nice.

  • 12:16 am
  • 1 Comment