shifting_definitions tender_square what if we let go of the idea that couples are supposed to last forever? what if we stopped looking at the end of relationships as failures and instead viewed them as successes that lasted for as long as they did? what if we saw our partings as the completion of all the lessons we were meant to learn from one another, as a preparation for the next stage in becoming who we’re meant to be? 220109 ... unhinged i no longer claim the label bisexual am also veering away from the label monogamous radical self honesty has brought previously unimagined changes (lama rod may have broken my heart but he also gave me the techniques to put it back together; a true kagyu guru) 220109 ... Soma When I was a teen, I was told I should like to kiss boys and marry them. But I didn't want to kiss anyone. I figured it would come in time. I had my first kiss at 19. He locked me in his car and climbed over the seat to kiss me and tell me how much he adored me. Then I dated him for three years because that was what you were supposed to do with men who kissed you. He always wanted me to touch his dick. Gross. I was relieved I could refer to Christian morality as a way to get out of this. When I was 21, I broke it off with my first boyfriend and dated a guy I was close friends with. He was a self-professed "nice guy." We played video games together and liked to talk about women. Everyone liked to look at women, I thought. We dated for years. When I was in college, my roommate was my soulmate. We always talked about how much we loved each other. It was completely platonic. We didn't like to be touched. But we always had each other, emotionally. When I was in college, my best friend was a woman. I slept next to her on trips. I helped her with everything I could. I lived and breathed her. She was amazing. I was jealous when she dated guys, they weren't good enough for her. And when she eventually got married, I coordinated everything for her. She stopped talking to me after the honeymoon, without ever saying why. I think I get it these days. When I was 23, I married my close male friend, because that was what you were supposed to do with guys you cared about. I loved him, I absolutely did. But sex? It was horrible, to say the least. It was nothing like I fantasized. Why couldn't we just kiss? Kissing was nice. We stayed married for almost 10 miserable years. The doctor diagnosed me with vaginismus, and told me it was a mental block, and that I should see a sex therapist. I couldn't afford one, or even find one in my state. The counselor I saw told me I just "needed to try harder and pray about it." My close friends told me maybe I should just use more toys or something. Nobody understood it. I felt so lost. Something was wrong with me. I was in my 30s and freshly divorced, pursuing polyamory because I felt that I was a broken person. Someone who could love you, but never make love to you, not matter how much they wanted. I dated a man from the west coast who looked stunning in a dress. He noticed my discomfort while we were making out, and told me "Did you ever think you're just not into men?" and my mind exploded. It's insane how much changing a single definition can upset your world. I wanted to belong, to fit in somewhere because I hadn't fit anywhere my whole life. Heterosexual. Homosexual. Bisexual. Pansexual. Demisexual. Questioning. Bicurious? Panromantic. Asexual. Graysexual. Cupiosexual. Queer. It turned out, none of those shifting definitions I used for myself mattered once I learned to be at peace with who I was. But they seemed so vital. These days, I still date that stunning man, and have a girlfriend too. And I like kissing both. And I'm not obligated to more. They don't see me as broken. They see me as me. 220110 ... tender_square i can’t tell if i’m trying to rewrite the past, she said. like, you receive a new piece of information and you try to carry it back to further your understanding of something that wasn't as clear then? her therapist asked. more like, i use it to try to explain how i got into the mess i’m in. she could tell her therapist couldn’t exactly follow. for instance, i know that i do that with my first husband, that i look back and believe that i shouldn’t have married him. that i had my doubts. but as the sentence left her lips that didn’t quite capture what she’d meant either. it was more that i didn’t know what to do. or rather, i took an easier way. he never asked me to marry him, see. it was just sort of this agreement that i went along with. i thought we were breaking up. it’s not that i didn’t love him. it was more that i didn’t think he was ready for that kind of commitment and i had stayed in windsor for him; i’d stayed because of the whole border situation. she took a moment to organize her thoughts. i wanted to go to toronto. but i was worried about packing up and trying to make it on my own; i was a mess. and when he offered to stay with me, when he said we would get married i thought, “this is my way out of windsor,” and i didn’t want to turn that down. what’s interesting to me about this narrative, her therapist said, is that you created a story about whether or not you could strike out on your own, independently. and that’s the same story we’ve been talking about in these recent sessions. you’re realizing that you don’t need to rely on someone else to take on what's important to you. you know what else i noticed? that when i think about whether i would’ve gone to toronto, the story i often tell myself is that it would have been a disaster, when that may not have been true at all. yes, i was having a rough time, but i’m resilient, i’m hardworking, i’m resourceful; who’s to say that i couldn’t have done well there under the pressure? who's to say that i wouldn't have risen to the occasion? why is it that i’m rewriting these narratives for the sole purpose of judging myself more harshly? 220110 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Shifting definitions - and everyone's is just a little bit different, like Chomsky's notion of internal grammar. Everyone knows who's writing this now :) As for attraction, I'm textbook bisexual. Unless you pull the definitional rug from under my feet - and I saw someone online do that, saying why don't people just say pansexual, since there are more gender expressions than just masculine and feminine? So I'm also fine with being called pan; it's just that bi is more familiar. Besides, I feel like I'm more attracted to people that look masculine or feminine rather than androgynous (doesn't matter whether someone is cis or trans, it's more about overall presentation). Although androgynous looks can seriously rock! But then when people say demisexual is about only being attracted to a few people, I think, "Okay, I fit the second part, but I wouldn't say it's demi-anything. It's just the combo of being shy, not having super-showy looks, and perhaps not letting my guard down with people until I know them well." I never really had celebrity crushes, though. Sometimes I wished I did. I couldn't be bothered to look up the background on famous people and pretend I knew them, though I could like their looks (Britney Spears, though I denied it; Elijah Wood, though I also found cartoon Frodo attractive; Parminder Kaur Nagra - I had to search her name just now; Sarah Silverman at one point; Kunal Nayyar, because he's hot, although Doctor Cabbie was kind of disappointing). But that seems like more of a personality thing. Monogamous, as far as I can tell. Sad_romantic with comic undertones. I mean, I'm happy with my relationship now, though sad the two of us have to live on separate continents for a while. 220220 what's it to you? who go blather from