Today I would like to talk about a triggery, twitchy, button-pushy topic for me. It scares the hell out of me to put it out in public. But here it is, anyway. Romance.
I’m twenty-nine years old. I’ve never had sex with anyone. I’ve never had what I would describe as a satisfying romantic relationship. I’ve had exactly one boyfriend (no girlfriends). The relationship with him was long-distance, very short, and fizzled out in a cloud of mutual apathy. He preferred his Robot Wars robot to me, by any measure I can think of, and I had to make all the first moves in the relationship – which honestly made me feel a bit weird and frustrated because I wasn’t that crazy about him, either. I was 20 and desperate to prove I could actually go out with someone; I’m not that proud of this particular episode in my history.
There’s been one guy in the history of ever who has spontaneously kissed me, and he wasn’t someone I wanted to pursue a relationship with (for many complicated reasons!) and to be honest the whole incident sort of freaked me out.
I was once sexually assaulted, in such a mild and ridiculous way that I hesitate to refer to it as a sexual assault. But though the actual assault wasn’t particularly bad, my feelings of fear during the event and my shame immediately afterwards were intense (it took me two days to tell someone about it).
I’ve been “in love” many times, by which (according to other people’s definitions) I mean I’ve had many intense crushes on various friends with whom I’ve had various levels of closeness, though this hasn’t happened for a while now. I’ve also had plenty of celebrity crushes, and this still persists. I can’t recall a time that I’ve ever felt attracted to a stranger simply on the basis of their looks.
It depresses me that I won’t ever again feel the way I felt about my formative crushes in my teens. People tell me that’s a good thing, because it was childish infatuation and not real love, but I have no adult attachments to replace those childish attachments with, and I feel bereft without them. It’s all well and good if you can grow up and replace crushes with real love, but I haven’t managed to do that, so I’m replacing the crushes with… nothing.
I don’t believe I’ll ever be loved in the way I want to be loved and I’m not even sure what that means.
I want to share these feelings of attraction with someone. Except I also don’t, because the idea of someone being attracted to me scares the shit out of me. Especially if it’s a man (about 70% of the people I’m attracted to are men); I’m deathly scared of men. I’m not even sure why. I’m scared that they will rape or kill me, even though I know rationally that most men won’t. It’s dumb.
It doesn’t help that I don’t have a clue how to tell the difference between the guys who will try to hurt me and the guys that won’t, and I have such massive issues with anger and aggression that I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to start defending myself if someone did genuinely try to hurt me. When I was mugged last year, I fought back very ineffectively. I ended up with scraped knuckles, a torn shirt and bent glasses. So there’s a feeling of incredible vulnerability there, that I don’t have the tools to avoid the small minority of guys who would want to hurt me, or the tools to protect myself if I found myself in a threatening situation. If that mugger had been interested in doing me serious harm instead of just snatching my handbag, he could have done. Very easily.
So it seems rather counter-intuitive to put myself in a vulnerable situation like a date, especially with a total or near-total stranger, when I have no idea how I would protect myself if things went wrong. Rape is common. Date rape, which is just rape with a pretty face on it, is common. Sexual assault is common. Strangers are scary, strange men especially so. I’m not capable of keeping myself safe in such a situation, and keeping myself safe is the key goal in every single pattern of mine that I have identified. I am a master of intricate strategies to protect myself, and particularly of intricate strategies to protect myself that also hurt me, a lot, as a side-effect.
And that’s exactly where I am with this, I think.
What I need most of all is to be safe. I cannot see a way in which this horribly vulnerable situation, this “a date” thing, could ever, ever be safe. It’s terrifying. It’s an awful thought and pushes my buttons really, really hard. It’s no good telling me to push my boundaries, leave my comfort zone and take risks. That’s not going to happen. I need safety, desperately. I need something to hang onto. If I’m going to press ahead with the scary stuff, I need things to ameliorate it, to make it less scary. I need ways to feel supported in it. To support myself? I don’t know.
There’s another thing, too. The generally accepted way of meeting people you might want to date is to go out drinking or clubbing. I hate those kinds of environments, unless I’m already with a group of close friends. I do large groups very, very poorly, and usually not at all. And they’re full of people I can’t imagine wanting to date anyway, because they’re the kind of people who love big groups and get very drunk for pleasure. I have little or nothing in common with those people!
So where the hell would I find single people that I have something in common with? I don’t know, I’m clearly doing something wrong (maybe everything). I guess because I have my set routines and find it very hard to push my way out my comfort zone. And because I’m quite ashamed of my desire for romance! I should be able to get by without it, right? Hell, most of the time I do get by without it – I’m surviving, aren’t I? Paying my rent and bills, feeding myself, so on and so forth. Doing my self-work in a slow and haphazard way. In practical terms, I’m doing pretty much fine. It’s just that sometimes these feelings take me over and then it’s really hard to get the practical stuff done.
Of course, a romantic relationship probably wouldn’t help with that. In fact it would probably give plenty more opportunities for hurt and suffering, and more opportunities for me to hurt someone else, which is something I try really hard to avoid. (Often, to the point of avoiding talking to people, so that I don’t hurt them inadvertently.) The reality almost certainly wouldn’t live up to the fantasy. I find that depressing too, because it means that there’s no way for me to get what I want. The world outside my head is full of uncertainty, randomness, pain, stupid people, and chaos. There’s no reason to believe a romantic relationship would offer any more protection from that than the utter solitude I live in at the moment. But I feel so alone.
Of course, I know that my definitions are all wrong, by which I mean nobody agrees with me. What I want and what I expect and what I need are three different things. None of these bear any actual relationship to what I might actually get. Which is completely depressing.
My head’s a mess and I don’t know where to start. Or rather, I don’t know how to stop; thinking about this isn’t helping, as it never seems to help, because I just go round and round in circles. I’m not ready to break into this thinking yet, only to try and describe it from all sides, to try and see it as a whole instead of as a bunch of different sharp things that are hurting me. This whole mess of thinking is so much of the sticky stuff that lives in my head; so much of it is about whether I want to be loved, whether I deserve to be loved, whether I need to be loved (whether I should need to be loved). What I could expect from love if I had it. The part where I don’t expect to ever have it, so it seems a bit academic to think about that question. The part where love comes in many different forms, and if I whine about not having love, it feels like an insult to the friends and family members who do love me, just not the way I mean.
The part where I feel like a stupid teenager for even thinking about this, and for not having it all worked out by the age of twenty-fucking-nine. Hell, plenty of people are married with kids by this age.
(I don’t give two hoots about marriage, and I definitely don’t want kids.)
Plenty of women are married with kids by this age, is what I meant just there.
How much of this is about how a woman measures her worth? How much of this is assimilated patriarchal bullshit about how women are worthless unless they manage to hook a man? Because I don’t accept any of that rubbish, but there’s so much rubbish that lives in my head that I don’t want, and it wouldn’t surprise me if at least some of it was the crap that we all get from dominant culture. As a feminist, it pisses me off that there is rubbish in my head that I don’t want to subscribe to.
There’s guilt associated, because I am jealous of every single person I know who is in a relationship or married – which is all of them. Hell, some of them are in multiple relationships. The jealousy makes me angry. The anger hurts because I don’t dare to express it. It turns inward and I get angry with myself for feeling it, and the guilt rises up in me, rides me like it’s possessing me. Guilt: a huge part of my mind and my life.
I don’t even know how useful it is to get wound up in all this stuck, all this confusion, all this mess. I can talk it out, think it out, write it out, and it doesn’t solve a thing. Maybe because it’s the equivalent of asking yourself, “but whyyyyyy?” – a useless question. And I don’t know how, out of all that mess, to identify something I can start with, something I can sit with or some need that I can address. There’s too much of it. It’s too complicated and it hurts too badly for me to make sense of it.
This. Right here. This feels like it’s at the core of the stuff that’s wrong with me. My inability to have a sensible relationship with love. This is my basic fuck-up, the one that’s at the root of all the others. And I don’t know how to dig it out. It’s attached to me, because it’s a root, and if you move it, or even you even touch it, it hurts.
I’m in a lot of pain right now.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
This isn’t something wrong with you. This is damage. This is trauma. This is something profoundly wrong with patriarchal culture. I know because I’ve been there right down to the sexual assault that didn’t seem like that big a deal but left me feeling unsafe and doubting and blaming myself for years. I know this tends to sound patronizing, it often did when people said it to me, but: get therapy. Talking about feeling unsafe and having someone to strategize about feeling safer with will help. You’re instincts are dead on. You need a feeling of safety before you need a relationship, and you can find it, if you ask for help and acknowledge that the fact that you live in a scary world where the simple act of trusting people is both dangerous and courageous is not your fault. E-hugs. E-puppies. I’m sorry these things happened you. There is nothing wrong with you.
Oh, Lucy. *Big Hug*
That does sound super hard and painful and terrifying.
I agree with Keely regarding therapy. I think it would be really helpful and cathartic. It isn’t easy, it can be pretty hard. But I think it’s worthwhile. That has been my experience. It’s great to feel understood, always have someone to listen objectively, someone to help you look at the issues from different angles, to distance yourself from them, understand them in helpful ways, someone to guide you to the light, so to speak.
And I think that, regarding how to meet potential romantic relationship partners, the safest bet may be befriending someone and letting that bloom into something romantic. Meeting someone and waiting until you feel safe to choose to let anything else happen.
Also, about a woman measuring her worth in this respect, I think it’s an issue for men too, albeit to a lesser extent. It’s definitely cultural and patriarchal, yes. My relatives have always asked: so, do you have a boyfriend? Always the main inquiry. What’s up with that? Sh*t.
Huge tangle of painful fears and unknowns and shames. That’s so hard. I’m really sorry.
Like Keely, I hear safety coming out as the top priority. In unravelling all this, there is probably a certain order of operations; if you start with the big fundamental needs for safety and love, that could leave practical problems such as how to meet people who don’t love bars and clubs as mere targets for creative brainstorming.
(BTW, My favorite way to meet new people: the fake housemate search. NB This might not be your way.)
The loneliness you wind up with is something that, ironically, I’m in total solidarity with. Believing you’ll never be loved the way you want to be loved? Feeling like a stupid teenager for even thinking about this? Yeah. I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s going to recognize this – and that, if I may say so, is comforting. Thank you for letting such a big pain hang out here.
Hey Lucy, I wandered over here from Havi’s blog (I was curious about the showering thing…) and I’m floored by how well you’ve articulated the way I used to feel. I spent my high school and university days having intense infatuations with people and wondering why everyone was pairing off but me. I had a few sexual encounters that were more like sexual assaults, mainly as a result of trying to force myself to like someone I wasn’t really interested in. (Ten years later those encounters are still screwing up my brain.) I was jealous of all couples. In my early 20s I had a brief and very dysfunctional relationship with an impotent agoraphobic who lived in a different town to me. When that ended I had another few years of singledom. I could not for the life of me work out why I couldn’t find a relationship when everyone else could. (So it seemed to me, anyway.)
Eventually I, too, realised that the only people I would meet in bars and clubs were the kind of people who like bars and clubs, so I started thinking about where the kind of boy who likes what I like would hang out. I decided he would probably be at home on the computer, so I signed up for an online dating site. I met someone nice there, then met him in real life, then we moved in together and just like that four years have gone past and we’re still together. But I’m not trying to write an ad for online dating.
I have this theory. All those people we know who are always in a relationship of some kind, always hooking up with this person or that person, going on dates and being so disgustingly ‘normal’ – they have generic relationship needs. They could be with just about anyone and still have a good time. People like you and I, on the other hand – those of us who are a bit odd, who maybe scare people a bit with our weird senses of humour, who are possibly a bit abrupt in conversation or who just need to spend inordinate amounts of time alone in the dark – we have very specific relationship needs, and this makes it very difficult to find people who can meet those needs. We don’t match those generic people. We need other weirdos, but we need their weirdnesses to be compatible with our own weirdnesses. It’s a tricky problem.
I know I’m now one of those irritating in-a-relationship people, but my single days were *fucking hard*. I was completely miserable, clinically depressed, confused, ashamed… well, you know. All that. But for all the hard of my single days, being in this relationship has been *so easy*. I don’t know what use this information is to you other than hopefully helping you keep the faith that one day this issue will be resolved for you.
You’re not weird for being 29 and not having this sorted out – well, you are weird, but that’s not why. And I suspect you quite like being weird, a bit at least. And if you don’t, you should, because that’s what makes you awesome. And believing in your own awesomeness is a good step to take when things are a bit crap.
And you’re entitled to want to be loved. It’s perfectly natural. It’s just that society and culture has given us the false impression that there is a ‘normal’ way for it to happen.
(And, since I originally came here about the clean thing, feel free to email me or tweet at me for support if you think that would help. I’m in a different time zone but I’ll endeavour to respond as quickly and helpfully as I possibly can.)
Hi Lucy. You’re absolutely right, relationships are not safe – getting involved with anyone is a big risk. Because your safety issues are so big right now, maybe the first thing might be to work on letting go of your judgments about yourself for having these fears? Frankly, even though I’ve been in several “big” relationships (and have been married and have kids), I still don’t really understand how any of us ever makes that leap. It’s freakin’ terrifying. Honestly, if the relationship I’m in were to end, I believe I’d just forget about the whole thing for the rest of my life.
So I’d suggest just this. Try get to acceptance about where you are, whether through therapy or using Havi’s various techniques, or whatever works. Also separate out what you *really* want from what you *think you should* want. Maybe what you really want and/or need, once you clear away the societal expectations, is something completely different from what everyone expects, including yourself.
None of what you said is really that strange, you know. You’re just more conscious of it and able to articulate it than most.
Oh my God, everyone. The blog suddenly stopped emailing comments to me, I haven’t been checking, and I just saw all the wonderful comments that you guys have made. (Apart from Keely’s, who I did see the day I made the post, but… I fail at responses.)
To all of you, I want to say: THANK YOU. You are all fabulous, and it’s wonderful, wonderful and wonderful to know that I am not alone in the world. And that I’m not the only person who has ever had these problems.
@Keely Thank you, honey, I will take those puppies and I will totally take the hugs. I am seriously thinking about therapy, and looking into getting some recommendations from people I trust.
@Natalia Yes, what the hell is up with that? My relatives are mostly OK, but I do have one aunt who is always on about either that stuff or how I have to lose weight – hence why I don’t talk to her much! And it’s weird: I have several male friends, but they tend to be taken, gay or just not interested. (Or not interesting!)
@Anna Thank YOU! You are a darling. And I am completely going to respond to your email tonight. When I mentioned on my page about comments that I suck at email I was not lying. Sorry.
@Chloe I am totally stunned how similar our stories are, and very very relieved to hear that you eventually found what you were looking for! That’s actually quite a cool approach; I’ve signed up for the odd online dating site, but haven’t really done much with any of them, because they scare me a bit!
Oh – and I just followed you on Twitter and may well take you up on that offer. Thank you so much! (Someone else also offered support for the not-showering thing via Havi’s blog; I’m developing a little team of Havi-ite cheerleaders and it’s really really cool!)
You’re right. I totally love being a freak. Just – apparently I have specific ways I want to be a freak. I don’t know!
@Anna-Liza You are so wise about this. That is really where I am and what I’m trying to do, at least some of the time. Thank you for giving me the idea that I’m on the track, and for saying that I am not strange and that my fears are at least a little bit legit!
<3333 to you all (in case anyone doesn’t know that’s a biiiiiig heart).
Hi,
I know you wrote this post a while ago and maybe this isn’t relevant to how you feel right now but this is where I found you, and someone else might read your post and maybe it will help them. I too came from your comments on Havi’s blog because I was interested about the showering thing, I don’t know if its for the same reasons as you – mainly cause I don’t know why I feel the way I do, but I find that difficult too.
Firstly *lotsa hugs* it is big and scary, you are not crazy/weird/abnormal for being scared. Secondly, one of the things that stuck out at me is your fear for your personal safety. I’ve never done any self-defence classes though I have thought about doing them (stucky thoughts holding me back most probably). I wondered if you took a class (they often do them especially for women) then you might feel more confident about what to do if you are in that situation in future, even though it is unlikely.
Thirdly, I was that kid at school who didn’t get involved with anyone. My friends were having boyfriends, kissing and having sex and I was seventeen and hadn’t held hands with a boy let alone kissed one. I met my future husband online as a friend (not through specific dating site), we got to know each other for months before meeting up. Neither of us are drinking/dancing/night out types – we’re stay in and read/watch tv/play computer games/surf online sort of people, and now we do those things together (in the same room, discussing stuff). It was still scary taking those first steps (meeting up, holding hands, kissing etc.) but by the time those scary things came up, I could see that the gains I’d make, the new people I was getting to meet (him and the in-a-relationship-me) were worth the risk, and I wouldn’t regret trying, even if it didn’t work out.
You might meet your future partner online or offline, but you’ll probably have the most luck if you focus on yourself. Find out what makes you happy. Do it in a way that you meet new people (whether that’s joining online communities related to your interests or doing a college evening class in something you enjoy). That way, you meet new people who see you at your best – having fun, learning, being you – and you will attract the people who like you for who you are and you’ll have a shared interest to talk about. You can be friends and find out more about them in a safe way, like finding out if they are the type of person to take things at your pace. It doesn’t mean that you won’t ever have the scary step of going further, but hopefully when the scary bit comes, you know enough about the person to know it’s a scary step worth taking (rather than taking scary steps on the off chance that something good might come, or avoiding them all together).
Thats what I wanted to share. You sound really smart and you probably know all this already, you might not even be looking for anyone by now, but if you are, or if anyone else who reads this thread is then I hope it helps. I’ll go and catch up with the now-you you now. (that made sense in my head).
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