The funny thing about falling in love (after a really long time of lamenting love) is the reactions of my friends and family.
Of course, in the beginning they think it’s just a passing fling (since I am well known for my passing flings). We all wonder, after such a long time, if I am even capable of the compromises that come with having a close, loving relationship. In their defense, I’ve been saying I don’t want to be in a long-term relationship for years. In my own defense….... Fine. I don’t have a defense.
Then my friends and family start to notice things and point
them out to me (to show me how wrong I’ve been). That’s when I began to realize I might be in
trouble here….
My sisters, for example, were over for a picnic to meet “Sam”
for the first time. I get a text from
him saying he was a minute away and I immediately began to primp - fixing my
hair and checking myself in the mirror.
My sister’s jaw drops open. “Holy
Shit! You REALLY like this guy!” she says.
((Blank stare from me))
Soon after, I go to my mother’s house to drop something off (a
few months after Sam and I had started dating). My mother takes one look at me
and says, “You look great! Isn’t being in love wonderful?! ((sigh)) I miss sex.”
((Blank stare from me))
My friends’ reactions varied from: “This guy really seems to
make you happy! Now don’t fuck this up!”
(very nice), to a less positive
reaction. The more I got to know Sam, the more I liked him. He is sweet, affectionate and very complimentary
and doesn’t care who sees it. Some of my friends assumed that I was settling
for the first guy that came along after my daughter left (not true, I’ve had
others) and basically told me that because I was allowing Sam to sleep and leave clothing here that “this isn’t who you said you were”. The thing was that I was as surprised as
everyone else, but it annoyed me that they felt I needed to remain the same way
for the rest of my life. (Well, excuse
me for being fucking complex.) Still others found the affectionate and loving
words this man said to me often to be “disgusting”. (Awwww! Someone’s kindness
and MY happiness bother you? That is so sweet!
Fuck you very much.)
As for me, I was pretty much a hot mess. The feelings were coming on fast and furious,
fueled by massive quantities of sex and a lot of time spent together
daily. He was even sleeping over! (Something
I always said I abhorred!!) I didn’t
want to be away from him (hell, I didn’t want to be out of bed). I was dealing with past issues with which clearly I had previously not dealt, fighting these growing feelings and trying to talk myself
out of it at every turn; not to mention all of these people close to me telling
me varying opinions (opinions are like assholes….) and I knew I needed some
help. More help than I could give myself
through alcohol and denial.
I have a good friend that had been telling me for YEARS that I needed to go see a professional to deal with my disdain of all things romance. She thought I protested too much and simply had trust/abandonment issues that I hadn’t dealt with (Ya think??) and that I could work through them with the help of a professional. (On a side note, I have been to therapy twice before in my life. The first was “couples therapy” with my ex-husband. After the second session, the therapist looks at me and says “I really think you need to find your own therapist. Your husband has many issues to work out on his own.” [RED FLAG! RED FLAG!])
This time, I went to see “Bob”. Bob is a well-known psychologist in the area
and I had heard his name before as a man that doesn’t mince words and speaks very
openly (Yay! I can swear!). He sounded
perfect for me! What I didn’t know at the time was that Bob specializes in sex
therapy. This became evident during out first appointment. Bob and I met twice. The first time we talked about my boobs for
about the first 20 minutes. No really.
Bob was having a field day with my past sex life and analyzing the fuck out of
me and trying to figure out what was wrong with my current sex life
(NOTHING). It was almost Freudian in
nature in that while I was trying to talk about my trust and intimacy issues,
Bob wanted to talk about the impact growing large boobs at 15 years of age and
all of the sex that I have had in my lifetime had on my trust and intimacy
issues (quite a bit as it turns out, along with a few other little events like
my ex-husband leaving me and our infant daughter in the middle of the night). I
know it sounds like a creepy couple of therapy sessions but it actually wasn’t.
In the end, I really like Bob, and I would
recommend him to others, if just for the entertainment factor alone.
So here’s the thing about therapy. Seldom does the therapist come to any
epiphanies for you. More so, the act of
going to a therapist makes you more insightful about yourself and any
epiphanies are yours to find. So while Bob obsessed about my boobs and my sex
life, I would leave his office and start thinking about the important
shit. If I had taken the time and effort
to go to therapy, didn’t that mean that I was ready, willing and able to make
the changes for which I was seeking the therapy in the first place?
