Things Are Getting Desperate When All the Boys Can't Be Men

I'm still thinking about the theory I arrived at last night, and I can't believe I never thought of it before. It makes so much sense. All this time, I thought I was attracted to emotionally unavailable guys, but now I realize that they weren't emotionally unavailable, they were sexually unavailable.

When I think back to a few such relationships, starting with The Only Living Boy in New York and moving backward chronologically, I realize that these guys were emotionally very much there for me. The Only Living Boy in New York was, in fact, a very good and supportive friend when that was all I was asking from him. It was only when I started to push for a real relationship -- a relationship that would have, by definition, contained a sexual component -- that he resisted. The Only Living Boy in New York, not coincidentally, has an injury that I would assume makes sexual activity difficult or maybe impossible for him. I already mentioned the issues Doug Funny and the virginal guy I dated had.

I always heard that guys are sexual animals, and that it's easy for women to find men to have sex with them because men want to have sex all the time. I never found that to be true. In fact, I was always puzzled by the fact that most of the guys I liked acted like they liked me too, but they never seemed to want to have sex with me. It just seemed so strange. Why would they want to have this deep, emotional intimacy with me, but never even want to kiss me? Why would they act like they were attracted to me (and have this deep, emotional intimacy with me), but never want to take it to the next logical step? Their answers to these questions was always that I had misunderstood their intent, and that they had never wanted to be more than friends. They may have believed that to be true, since it would be easier than admitting that they couldn't perform sexually or were afraid to try. I took them at face value, and I blamed myself for reading more into the situation than was called for or not being attractive or appealing enough to make them want to be with me in a more physical way. Women blame themselves for impotence or male sexual dysfunction all the time, and it isn't anyone's fault. By the same logic, it wasn't my fault that these men had sexual difficulties, and it really wasn't their fault that they wanted emotional closeness with someone they liked very much and thought was special nor was it their fault that they couldn't weave sex into the relationship. I always thought they were cads who were leading me on, and now I think that, at least for most of them, that probably wasn't true. (For a few, it probably was, but not for the major guys.)

This conclusion frees me. I see now that these relationships were not my fault nor were they the products of my imagination. I also see that the guys I chose didn't have emotional availability problems but rather sexual availability problems. (I should note that some of these guys had girlfriends, which complicates things, but Doug Funny's girlfriend, as mentioned, had her own sexual dysfunctions, Puffy's girlfriend lived in a foreign country, and The Only Living Boy in New York's girlfriend...well, I don't know about her, but I'd be willing to bet there is something going on there.) I also see that I did not imagine their feelings for me, just that I did not understand everything that was going on with them. Men are more sensitive than women, I think, about sexual problems because an inability to perform is an indictment of their masculinity whereas women are almost seen as more feminine for being reserved and indifferent toward sex. I can't believe it never occurred to me that as I was choosing men to suit my own issues, they were choosing me to suit theirs. To paraphrase Mimi in Rent, each of us was looking for baggage to go with our own.

This also solves the big mystery of why, after years of therapy to stop choosing men like my father, I still couldn't find a healthy relationship. My mother kept saying that it was because I was still choosing men like my father (emotionally unavailable), but that rang false to me. My father, like everyone else, is a complex individual, so there are certain traits of his that could be found in other guys I liked, but only in trace amounts and only coincidentally. The Only Living Boy in New York, Doug Funny, Puffy and many others were not at all like him. Now I see that I was right in thinking that my mother was misunderstanding the situation in some fundamental way. I wasn't choosing men like my father. I was choosing men who wouldn't make sexual demands on me, and who didn't want me to make sexual demands on them either. (I don't really want to tie that last part in with my father because that goes to a gross place.)

Now that I'm resolving the physical problem that made me sexually unavailable, I'm excited to see what happens. At whatever elemental level that attracts humans to one another, I will be different. Instead of giving out a vibe of sexual unavailability, I will be giving out the opposite vibe. It stands to reason that I will start to attract men who respond to the new signals instead of men who would have responded to the old signals. (It really is incredible the way that we, as humans, sense these things about each other. It's like how, in Twilight, Edward Cullen initially didn't think much of Bella Swan until he got close enough to smell her blood, and then he fell in love with her. Could someone please read the Twilight books and then email me so we can discuss it?) I think it's going to be a new chapter in my life, a new adventure, and I welcome it.

Baby Vamp

I succumbed (suck-umbed?) to the call of the Twilight series this weekend. I didn't have any plans, as per usual, so I bought all three of the books and read them. The books are long, but since they are aimed at young adult readers, they don't take very much time to read. I remain convinced that L.J. Smith's The Vampire Diaries were a major inspiration for this series, but they were entertaining books. My only complaint is that the heroine ends up with the guy I was rooting against (this always happens to me -- I rooted for Felicity and Noel, Joey and Dawson, Sydney Bristow and Will, Jim Halpert and Karen, etc.), but they were pretty good.

Other than reading these vampire books, I ate. I recently (as in, last Wednesday) decided to join Weight Watchers online, and I don't think I've ever been hungrier. Weight Watchers has a choice of two plans, but the one I chose allows me to eat any amount of food I want as long as I choose from a list a of "core foods." So, if I feel like eating a whole jar of dill pickles, that's no problem. I can also eat as much 94% fat-free microwave popcorn and drink as much Diet Coke as I want.

Why did I join Weight Watchers? I don't really think I'm fat, though I have to concede that I'm at the larger end of mainstream sizing. Lately, I've been going to a more challenging exercise class and the changes I've noticed in my body have made me more confident that I've been in a long time. Bizarrely, I think the very fact that I've been feeling better about myself influenced my decision -- like, I felt like I deserved to feel even better about myself than I already do. I would be lying if I didn't also concede that The Only Living Boy in New York played a role in the decision. I don't honestly think that my physical appearance impacted his decision because the fact that someone is aesthetically pleasing does not always mean you want to be in a relationship with that person and sometimes, you want to be in relationships with people who are not traditionally good-looking. However, if and when I run into him again, I don't want him to think, "There's what I'm definitely not missing." It's kind of the same strategy Anne Hathaway is employing against Raffaelo Follieri. Plus, I really need to stop attracting these emotionally unavailable men (The Only Living Boy in New York is just Puffy Redux, but there have been others as well like Doug Funny). Maybe if I felt better about myself, I would attract guys who felt better about themselves. Or maybe I would attract more guys period, and I could weed out the emotionally damaged ones.

I have some definite concerns about losing weight. The first and silliest is the feeling that I don't want to date anybody who wouldn't have been attracted to me at my larger size, assuming I succeed in losing weight. That's just dumb, but it's something I think about. The second is that I want to make sure that as I'm effectuating a physical change, I'm dealing with the psychological aspects as well. I mean, I didn't let my weight get to a level with which I'm not comfortable because I was just that hungry. Eating has an emotional component for me as well as a physical one, and I would say the emotional is more important. Food is something I've had a love-hate relationship with my whole life, and a few years ago, I just decided to stop caring about what I ate or trying to go on a diet. The first diet I can remember being on was when I was eight years old, and I was off and on them basically until I went to law school. I think that taking that time just to eat what I wanted without judging myself had the healthy effect of breaking me of the shame associated with eating, but it didn't cure me of the desire to use food to self-soothe. If I'm upset, my first thought is to eat either because I want to feel the comfort of building a protective layer of fat around myself or because I want to punish myself by being fatter. My weight has yo-yoed over the years almost as much as Oprah's, and while I'm not at the biggest I've ever been, I'm probably toward the top end. I think the reason I haven't sustained any of the weight losses I've achieved over the years is because I never dealt with the psychological motivations for eating (well, that and the fact that I haven't always used the healthiest methods to lose weight). It's not something I'm going to resolve in one night, but if I hope to make any kind of lasting change in my life, it must be addressed.

Maybe if lose weight, I can find myself a cute vampire and/or werewolf boyfriend like Bella in the Twilight series.