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Love Languages – Nature v. Nurture

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It is hard to distinguish which of my love languages (and in what proportion) are actually mine. Actually are me, rather than how I was raised. The primary one is easy – touch – because it does not appear anywhere else in my family.

My mom’s side of the family is big on hugs hello and goodbye (and because of their long time integration with my dad’s side of the family, my dad’s side has become accepting of this as love), but my mom’s primary receiving and giving love language is clearly quality time. Which as a non-neurotypical kid, this was hard to grasp. What is “quality”? How much time is sufficient to count? What makes her happy in this regard has been what I have focused on as an adult. And this seems to be sufficient to count, for her.

My dad’s side of the family does not do the touch thing. I cannot speak with any degree of accuracy about my dad’s siblings, nor my grandparents on that side, but my dad primarily gives acts of service. So, even though it is not my primary (or even secondary) giving or receiving language, I know what it looks like, and I recognize it when I see it. I see the intent, even if it does not easily register in my personal psyche as given “love”. Which is weird, because when I give love, it is definitely the secondary way in which I give it, because I am a caretaker. I cook, I bake, I do dishes, I drive when needed, I fetch things, I feed the cat. It is odd, at least to me, to give a language in a way that receiving it feels very different.

My secondary love language when it comes to receiving is words of affirmation. None of my current partners are good at this. Moss is fairly good at this, although his primary love language is very distinctly acts of service. It is a pain that none of my partners, nor most of my family, can give to me in one of the languages that feels the most natural to me to receive. Words matter to me, and I want those words backed up with actions, however the combination rings most sincere to me.

The best, from a distance, is well-placed/times/combinations of words of affirmation, combined with promises of good/great touch. Tell me what you want to do with me physically (even in a completely platonic sense) and what doing that specifically with me will mean for you and for our relationship and I am fucking sold. In the right mood and mindset, this is why dirty talk really does it for me – it is the combination of words, with the thought of good touch. Very delightful.

The best way for me to know I am loved (from a distance) is to be told (some of that is trauma-informed and I do not know how much, yet). It is the easiest, even from close up. But hug me or cuddle me close, and tell me how much I matter to you? That, that is the bomb.com.

How can I love you best?

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Men

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Currently I feel weird about my attraction to men. Okay, well, my attraction to men is complicated (and usually has been) and my attraction to non-men is much less so. Being aesthetically attracted to men who I’m not in a relationship with is an outlier to me, so definitely worth filing in a mental brain catalog when it happens.

But lately I’ve been running into an interesting phenomenon with regards to this that is, while not a new thing, is not the usual case. I’m saturated at the moment, so, for some reason, I feel much more aesthetic (and in some cases, physical) attraction for men. I wonder if not being in a position where I can’t/won’t act on it makes that attraction more easy to acknowledge and let be. It certainly makes having a friendship with some men more easy. I can acknowledge that I generally find them to be attractive individuals, without any desire to act on that.

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Gender Nothingness

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I struggle with the concept of gender often. I’m not agender, I know that for sure. I have an attachment to some manifestations of gender identity and expression (like “bi-dyke”, as the most accurate description of the intersection of my gender expression and sexual identity), but no resonation with the concept of identifying as a gender. Gender is too much work.

I latched onto the word demigender as the most accurate single word representation of my gender, in the big picture. It doesn’t convey the nuance, or the day to day feeling, but it works overall.

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Glitter and Gold

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I will admit, I’ve been procrastinating on writing this because I can’t think of a name for the new guy in my life.  I’ve come up with something I think will serve as a good placeholder though: Enigma.

I met Enigma at a friends’ burner camps’ event out in the woods back in late spring or early summer of last year (the last fundraising event before our regional big burner event)  – I went there and Diplomat came with me (reluctantly).  I drank and did my introvert social thing – go out and talk to people, retreat, come back with backup, retreat, then get caught up in conversation with someone, and, for a bit, the rest of the world becomes fuzzy.  Diplomat and I were standing near the campfire, talking to folks, and we ended up talking to this one guy that somehow drew me in.  I get swept into conversation and flirting (weird, me flirting…) and Diplomat peels away, leaving me with this guy.  Eventually I go to find Diplomat because I wanted to fuck him in the sex tent before we left (there’s a mildly amusing story to do with this, but that may be for another day).

After we leave the sex tent, and both kinda wander off to do our own thing, Enigma and I find ourselves talking again.  I mentioned that I was cold (because I dislike completely redressing after undressing) and the man takes off his overshirt and gives it to me.  It was big on him, so I was swimming in it, but it really helped.  He ends up peeling off and I end up walking around the party in his shirt.  After an hour or so, Diplomat and I were both getting tired, so we go to say goodbye to our friends, and I try to find Enigma to give him his shirt back, but only find him busy in the sex tent, so I gesticulate that I’m leaving the shirt right outside the tent.  I’m bummed that we didn’t get to exchange info other than names.

I consider trying to track him down through friends on Facebook, then consider that that may be a little too weird, and try to just live with the fact that I may never get to see/talk with someone that I had had a fabulously engaging conversation with at a fun party.

Apparently the universe had other plans, even if it was a bit slow in implementing them.  This year, at about the same time, I went by myself to a party held by one of the camps who had thrown the party I went to last year.  I mostly just went to get out of the house, socialize with people I like, and to ogle the pretty people in their undies – so sue me, I’m a voyeur.  And who was there, but the mysterious man who I thought I’d never see again.  We fell back into conversation, first in a group context, then I braided his hair in the sex tent (not a euphemism).  This time, this time we exchanged contact info before we left and end up setting up a first date for early in the second week of June.

Holy shit was I nervous when that date came around – when it’s easy for someone who doesn’t know me well to figure out that I’m nervous, that’s quite a thing.  But things went well.  We got coffee, I got dinner, then we wandered around the downtown talking.  I hoped that it would result in a second date, but wasn’t holding my breath.  The next week, he ends up accompanying me to get the second part of my most recent tattoo done, and we get dinner afterwards.  So, for awhile, he was the only person who had seen my tattoo all finished, and I liked how special that was, so I left it that way.

After this point, we were texting at least semi-regularly, so it didn’t seem out of place for me to mention in the last week of June that I was nervous about a conversation with Moss (that ended up with him breaking up with me).  He offered to help/talk with me afterwards and I told him that I would let him know.  After Moss left, I ended up messaging Enigma and asking if the offer for help was still out there.  He said it was and came over to my place and we cuddled and talked and I processed.  A week or so later he asks me where we stand and I say that I don’t know how much I can put into a relationship while I’m still processing the end of that one, but that if that was ok, I might have more certainty in a short while regarding what I could offer.

Things pick back up in July.  We end up going to the “local” lavender festival mid-July, which was a ferry ride and a drive away (turns out we both love ferry rides), which gave us plenty of time to talk.  We explore the festival together, share an elephant ear, he got lavender plants for culinary purposes, then we went out to one of the farms, where he took pictures of me in the lavender (an expressed desire) and of the lavender itself.  We end up having to take the land route back home because the ferry was too busy.

Then we went on the most gloriously empty-trailed hike up north the next week, and we finally end up expressing sexual interest in each other (and end up making out several times, among other things).  We talked about mental health stuff (both his and mine) in great detail on the way up to the trail (after a communication confusion got us off to a later start).  On the trail we had a lot of great conversation – including about my gender stuff – and a load off my mind (I had been worrying about whether my fledgling interest in pursuing things of a sexual nature with him was just one-sided).

In the following weeks we have a date an average of once per week.  In early August we agree that we’re dating and later on we talk about what that means to us and what each of our intentions are with regards to a continuing relationship with each other.  At that point in August, we are talking most days of the week, and are definitely in each others’ lives in an involved way.

We’re now in September and the trend of growing involvement in each other’s lives is continuing.  This Sunday gave me great potential hopes about how we will spend time and what our future will look like (together).  No spoilers about details!

 

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Honest, lovable, and painful

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Yesterday Moss and I had a talk scheduled. I knew there was a good chance it would end in a break, but I had to be optimistic (because I wasn’t sure how I could get through my work day otherwise). We got together after we both got off work and wandered around a local park together. Then we stood and talked. He said that he couldn’t bear to drag me around while he figures out how he wants to deal with his pain and depression, and awfully abusive/stressful work situation. That it isn’t about how he feels about me because that hasn’t changed. That I was asking for reasonable things that he just didn’t have the ability to deliver on at this point in time.  That I deserve better than how things have been going.

So we talked a lot (at the park, at a local community garden, and for a little time back at my place) to try to figure out shit, to reaffirm our feelings for each other, to reaffirm what is true for us. Cuddled and held each other. Tried to figure out what was still on the table for any kind of relationship moving forward (at this point, sex, love, cuddling and affection, just not that kind of commitment).  I’m honestly more than a bit proud of him for taking care of himself, though I am worried about his depression.

I think he’s having some issues seeing past the depression, guilt, stress, grief for the long-term relationship he lost and the dreams he had for that.  Grief that was never really dealt with in a healing way.  I also feel a bit guilty for knowing that it’s possible/likely that I’m not going to be the only one swept up in this – Eve may be as well – because it’s not a matter of it being me that’s the problem, it’s the idea of commitment to a very uncertain future that’s the problem.

Commitment.  An odd theme recently in my life.  Painfully so.

I’m really at a loss here. Usually when relationships end for me, I had reached the point that I had stopped planning ahead for the relationship. That’s usually one of the biggest signs for me that things are going to end soon. But here… here I hadn’t.  I had plans and dreams, even if they may have seemed a bit far-fledged with the distance we’ve had between us recently. So I’m mourning that which may never be. The tiny and the grand plans.

I don’t want the new spark – I wish I did.  I want this relationship.  With its flaws and triumphs, sorrows and joys – for better or for worse.  I wanted the chance to see him heal and grow from inside a partnership, because I know how beautiful it can be.  But I don’t want someone I love to hurt, so if I have to watch the growth from a few steps back, then there I’ll be.  Even if I want more than is possible at this point in time, even if I’ll probably always want more – this is my chance to move past what I want (in the way of a relationship with him), and to be a supportive, caring, loving friend.  Maybe it’ll happen again.  Maybe the timing will be closer to right at some point (and I plan on being around if it ever is).  But I can’t build my life on maybes, waiting around for him to want me in his life again in that way.  What I can do is to be what I can be for him, for no other reason than because it’s the right thing to do.

I love you babe, truly and deeply.  And I always will.  And if you ever want to run away with me (even if just for a short time), you know where to find me.

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What Is Love?

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(Baby don’t hurt me, no more. There I did the song thing, now I can get it out of my head.)

One of my favorite bloggers has recently been posting on what love means to them (here and here), which got me to thinking. What is love to me?

For me, it depends on the context of that question. I may have a million reasons to love someone in a given moment: the gift they’ve given me, the conversation we’ve had, great sex, emotional bonding moments, amazing cuddling, that look in their eye or in their smile, something that reminds me of a moment we’ve had together that was meaningful to me, etc. But I do try to be careful about saying it for the first time to someone, because it has baggage in our culture.

The love threshold for me is this: Do I want to take on the challenges that come up in the context of our relationship? Do I have space (or can/do I want to make space) for those challenges in my heart? And when I know for certain that the answers to both those questions in unequivocally and enthusiastically “yes”, then I know I’m ready to say that to them.

The great thing about this? It applies equally well for platonic, sexual, romantic, intellectual, and familial love.

I’ve heard arguments that you can’t really know you love a person until you have a fight with them. Which I think is far too specific. I think that simply any challenge that causes an emotional reaction, whether that be annoyance, anger, or sadness, will do just fine (and possibly other emotions as well – I haven’t dived very deeply into that, so I don’t want to speak without knowledge). Moss and I were talking a bit ago, before I had the chance to think about this all, and I mentioned that we’ve never had a fight (which we still haven’t) and how some people use that as a gauge of whether you’re in love. His response was that we’ve had a lot of hard discussions, which is definitely very true. Do I love him? Without a doubt.

When I tell someone I love them, I am telling them that I agree, in that moment, to take on whatever challenges may come and that I will tell them if I don’t think I can, whether that be just for a specific instance, or as a general statement. And this is actually what I ask myself each day – do I think I can take on the challenges for each of my relationships, no matter what comes? And if I don’t have the tools to deal with them in the moment that they come up in, can/will I seek them from within myself, a friend, a partner, or my therapist? And can I honestly admit to myself and to the other person when a challenge is beyond what I can handle, without making it seem like they have any obligation to handle it for me?

This also explains for me why my love for Minx exists in the present tense. The challenge that came and comes for me is/was dealing with her death. That was the final challenge in our relationship. And it took me a long time to realize that I did not have the tools to deal with it, but a therapist and pharmacology might. So I sought those out. And that, combined with a supportive network of friends and the love of Trydaen, is how I got where I am today. Every day I wake up and I try to face the challenge of grief and depression that came with that sudden end. And, 99 times out of 100, I am successful on my own. The rest of the time, I ask for help.

So, to my partners, to my chosen family, to my close friends, and to at least the immediate members of my family of origin – I love you.

(But that song is still stuck in my head. Curses)

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So far out…

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My dear Minx,

Each day I creep closer and closer to the day where none of the cells in my body will have ever known you.  For some reason that seems significant to me.  Already it is hard for me to remember the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand, and the smell of your skin.  I remember your face, because of all the pictures that I still look at every once in awhile.  I remember the scar around your waist.  I remember your sweetness.

I am far enough out that there is not enough information for me to assume what you would have thought of my life as it is now.  But, it is your death that forced me to change, forced me to examine what I found important, forced me to look into the void and deal with what that meant to me.  I do no longer see it as entirely a negative thing – if you were alive, then I would not wish you dead just for the sake of my own growth – but more as something that gave the me I am now space to come out and spread their wings.

I am happy these days.  I have found love in a few places that I never thought imaginable.  Deep, sweet love.  Love of a depth and breadth I hadn’t ever imagined before.  I wish you could meet them, see what joy they bring into my life, witness the magnitude of the love in my life.  But, my dear sweet Minx, that will never happen.  So I guess I will have to settle for luxuriating in that love, washing my dears with my tears of extraordinary joy, and reflecting it back, whenever I can.  My loves have challenged me and I have grown, grown beyond the extent that I did because of grief.  I love who I have become.  I love the person I get to be with my partners.

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The whys of beginning

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My therapist seems to be rather curious about my relationship with Moss, possibly because it has been on my mind for the last couple months, trying to resolve what has come up.  So she asks me about the beginning of things – what drew me to him, what the spark was, why I was interested in continuing it.  And I started thinking recently – what about the other folks in my life?

So, roughly in order of when I met them (as I think that’s more relevant to this particular subject), here we go.

Trydaen – I met him about eight years ago and we started dating a bit more than six years ago.  The initial draw was that he was so full of new facts and information and seemed so smart.  The spark was that he was (and is) very passionate and full of enthusiasm and had such an adorable smile.  I want to continue with him because I learn something new every day with him, without fail.  I want to continue with him because I want to see who he becomes as he gets older and I want to be a part of his life for that.  I want to continue with him because we have similar goals in the long term, and have discussed what that means for us.

Moss – I met him about four years ago – I think shortly after Minx’s death.  I’m not sure of the exact timing.  We started dating a bit more than a year ago.  The initial draw was that he seemed very confident – a bit on the cocky side, but not overly so.  The spark was the kisses and the sense that there was something going on under the surface.  We kissed a lot at parties for a long while – nothing more, as the situation was not conducive for a long while.  I want to continue with him because I enjoy finding out what is under the surface – the more I dig, the deeper it seems I can go.  I want to continue with him because I know he’s willing to put in work to be with me.  I want to continue with him because I want to keep exploring where our dynamic will go.

Ember – I met him a bit short of four years ago, but I can’t remember which of two occasions it was.  We started dating about five months ago.  The initial draw was the pretty hair and the shared interests.  The spark was, oddly enough, not getting to kiss him, because, well, relationships are complicated.  I want to continue with him because he’s a good cook.  I want to continue with him because I don’t need to worry about how things are going with us.  I want to continue with him because the cuddles and conversation before and after sex are delightful – he comes from a different place than I have, so I get to see the world from a different perspective.

Lola* – I met her about two and half, maybe three years ago, at a local play party.  I remember complimenting her on her shoulder tattoo and when she turned around and responded, I thought that she had such a pleasant voice and that she looked very sexy in the corset she was wearing.  We started dating about a year and a half ago, but have been in an odd sort of transition phase for the last couple months, so I am uncertain where we will end up.  The initial draw was the tattoo and the curiosity about the person behind it. The spark was a sexy party  – me watching her play DDR with great enthusiasm.  I think, actually, that enthusiasm was the spark.  What I am certain of is that there are reasons I want to continue having her in my life.  The first being her bright energy – she fills up any space she’s in with such light that it is hard to be gloomy there.  The second being that she is great to cuddle with – I love wrapping or draping my arms around, over, and under her.  The third being that there are a lot of places where we complement each other, where we knit well together, even if there are some places that we do not.

Diplomat – I met him about two and a half years ago for the first time (which, sadly I have very little memory of), but re-met a bit short of two years ago.  He is, oddly enough, the only person on this list that I didn’t know for more than a year before we went out on a first date.  We started dating one year and ten months ago.  What drew me to him was a mutual nerdiness about Shakespeare and the willingness to do that in public.  The spark was having touch as a mutual love language – I hadn’t realized how much I missed touch until we spent time touching.  I want to continue with him because I love seeing where he has grown and changed in the time we’ve been together and I want to see where that goes, but that’s only half of that equation.  The other half is his encouragement of my own growth.  I want to continue with him because I want to see more of that goddamned smile.  I want to continue with because there are so many places for us to travel to, to take in together.

I hope none of these come as a surprise to the named folks who do even occasionally visit my blog.  Or if they do, I hope it’s a pleasant one.

None of these are all-inclusive.  It would be the height of foolishness to even think I could capture all of a relationship and what I value with a person in a single paragraph.  There is so much more to each of these stories, more than even I have words for.

* I am including Lola because she is still a part of my life even if we are trying to figure out how that will work out for us, if it can.  And because I love her and that will continue to be the case even if things don’t work out at all between us.

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The Dark Side of ADHD

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I used to say that I was forgetful.

And I definitely am, to a certain extent.

ADHD robbed me of so many of my memories as a kid. The best way to explain what’s there is to say that my memory was random. I can tell you the exact setting and feeling of my first kiss in extraordinary detail, but struggle to keep what foreign language skills and vocabulary I have learned. I can tell you about Queen Elizabeth I’s life and family context with the accuracy of a lifetime researcher, but I can’t, fo the life of me recall the first time I told someone that I loved them (in a romantic sense).

I was considered gifted from a very early age. The teachers who caught on to this encouraged my parents and I to have me in classes that reflected this. And I would do well in those classes, until I had a test. During tests I would struggle with recall and get grades that did not reflect how well I knew the material, how well I grasped it.

I am sometimes mad at my parents for not having seen this earlier. If I had been treated for my ADHD starting in middle school or high school, I could have done so much better academically. I could have gotten the grades that reflected my learning rather than my shit test-taking skills. I would probably remember more of middle school than a few scattered memories.

I have been on some form of ADHD meds for close to a year and a half now. It has been one of the most amazing time of my life – not just because of the amazing people I have met and/or started dating, but because I am starting to remember. I am starting to have better memory recall. I can remember the first time I said I love you to not one, but three different people in that time period. I a remembering more of the small moments – the details of conversations, the looks in people’s eyes, and the nuances in articles, books, and papers I read. I feel more full of life now, more full of the things that make me happy.

No, I will never be “normal”, nor do I have any desire to be. I am proudly neurodivergent. No medicine in the world can change that I have ADHD. But I am glad to have finally found something that gives me more space to be me, with all the awesome that is in my life.

It is the greatest gift for the storyteller in me. The ability to remember.

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Compersion & Envy/Jealousy

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Compersion is a complicated thing for me.

Let’s start out with the simple stuff.

The definition of compersion according to Wiktionary is:

  1. The feeling of joy one has experiencing another’s joy, such as in witnessing a toddler’s joy and feeling joy in response.
  2. The feeling of joy associated with seeing a loved one love another; contrasted with jealousy.

The one I’m mostly using for this post is the second one, although I do have to make it abundantly clear that I do not agree with this portion: “contrasted with jealousy”.  For the longest time this was the definition I used, so I thought it was something that I didn’t experience because I definitely deal with jealousy.

But as Page Turner notes in her post “Cultivating Compersion Can Be a Helpful Distraction from the Pain of Tackling Jealousy and Insecurity“, the two concepts can exist alongside each other.  In her words:

You can feel happy that your partner is happy and also feel insecure, overshadowed, displaced, envious, or any of the other things that masquerade as jealousy.

I realized what compersion was like for me watching my partners with their other partners.  Whatever else I felt about my relationship with my partner at the time, I was always happy to see them getting cuddles and kisses from the other people who they care about.

Envy is a big part of what made compersion a hard thing, until I figured out a good strategy for dealing with whatever is making me envious: looking into the situation, figuring out what I wanted (because, for me, envy is usually an expression of me feeling like there is something missing in my relationship or the situation), and asking my partner for whatever I felt I was missing.  The other part of this is having partners who I know genuinely want to work with me to help resolve these issues in whatever way it is possible for them, or, if there isn’t a possible way, will at least actually listen to me.

This is not to say that my envy has been solved.  Far from.  It comes up for me often enough.  And sometimes there isn’t an easy answer for it, other than just sitting with it, like in the few cases where me having what I am envious about isn’t possible or isn’t something long-term me would really want, but short-term me has feels about.

One example of this that comes up is being envious of my metamours for getting more time, especially casual/non-date time, with my partners because they live together.  Dissecting this, there are a couple things that can come up:

  • Not feeling like I get enough time with my partners, especially non-date hangout time.  I can ask for time.  Hearing that there isn’t any more time to be had is disappointing, but in most cases I can deal with that.
  • The privilege of being the person who is assumed to be default/most important by most of society.  Of being part of the unit that Christmas cards are addressed to, who are invited to parties, who don’t have to be hidden from anyone.  Not much of this can be addressed, other than the last bit – and that, not easily.  Monogamy as default is a bitch.
  • Wanting to live with someone.  This is not really an issue for me, mostly because I am uber picky about who I live with.  It took me years before I was willing to move in with Trydaen, and a couple more before I actually did.

The whole thing that brought this up?

Seeing a note from Eve to Moss because she was heading out of town.  Less than 10 words.  I felt envious that she was in a position that missing him isn’t the case most of the time (that it is so different that it is worth noting).  But as that felt out, what remained was joy.  Joy that she loved him, joy that she left him a note, joy that he had her in his life, and joy that they are there for each other.  Even though I am not sure if that if I had left a note that she had found, that the end result would be joy.  Didn’t matter at all.