Raspberry Swirl

I was walking Teh Doggeh tonight and thinking about my upcoming surgery when something strange occurred to me.

I was considering whether (and this is not the strange part) my predilection for emotionally unavailable men is tied in with my physical difficulties with sex. It seems certain that this would be so. Back in high school, you could date someone for months, maybe longer, while not needing to consummate the relationship. As an adult, the general rule of thumb is three dates, which could mean anything between a few days to a few weeks. Knowing that the issue of sex is likely to arise quickly (heh), and also knowing that it is likely to be a painful and frustrating experience for both parties, it is understandable that I would be drawn to men with whom I unlikely to reach an intimate point because of their emotional unavailability.

The strange part is that it occurred to me that as much as these men are a pattern for me, I might be a pattern for them.

Doug Funny, during our brief romantic entanglement, told me that he and his girlfriend of four years had never had sex because it was painful for her even to try. Looking back on it, it sounds like she had (or perhaps has) the same problem that I have. I didn't then and don't now understand why she didn't go to a doctor to find out what was causing this pain, but that is neither here nor there. What I noticed is that he was in love with two women who had the same sexual dysfunction, two women unlikely to make sexual demands of him. Maybe our patterns (emotional unavailability and sexual unavailability) dovetailed, bringing the two of us together.

I initially dismissed this idea, reasoning that it is unlikely that Doug Funny could know at a glance that I would be sexually unavailable to him. But then I thought of something Humbert says in Lolita, talking about looking at a photo of young girls and knowing which one is the nymphet, and I realized that we all use subconscious cues or psychic impulses or scent or something to choose the people who offer us what we need. If someone who did not have my set of particular weirdnesses saw Doug Funny in a crowd of other men, he would not turn her head, but something in me recognized something in him and vice versa. I dated another guy once who turned out to be very sexually withdrawn because he was still a virgin in his mid-twenties. I would never have assumed that, but I was drawn to him for some reason, and maybe that was it. It makes me wonder whether some other guys I've liked, like The Only Living Boy in New York, have sexual issues of which I am unaware. It would explain a lot.

I made that last remark in jest, but it really would explain a lot. Most of the men I like share an atmosphere of emotional intimacy with me, but they are willing to go only so far with it and no farther. As soon as I want some kind of real investment from them, they tell me that they like me only as a friend and that they are sorry if I got the wrong impression. I am left feeling rejected and slightly crazy, as if I somehow imagined that there was something between us. But now it occurs to me that I may have trod on a major insecurity and that by pressing for an emotional commitment, I made these guys think I wanted more from them sexually than they could give. This may not be true in every case. Some of these guys may genuinely have seen me solely as a friend and unintentionally given me the wrong message, but not all of them. I can't believe it never occurred to me before because it makes so much sense that these guys would be choosing me because I could offer them the right amount of emotional closeness without physical demands and that they bolted when they discovered I wanted more.

It's weird and oddly comforting to think that my romantic problems could have a physical solution, or could at least be given a strong shove in the right direction by a procedure on my body. If I feel like I could have sex comfortably, what would that do to my confidence or my demeanor with men? Maybe I'll turn into a big ho. Here's hoping.