Saturday, November 7, 2015

Sex and Pussy; A Journey Through the Decades Part 12

I've never been a big fan of porn.  I don't have any ethical or moral problem with it, but the industry itself relies on the exploitation of people, particularly women.  Most women who get into the business are broken, and most of them beyond repair.  A great many of them were sexually assaulted as children, and or horrifically abused.  For a very few, it is an expression of their sexuality, a path or process of empowerment.  For them, it is a rebellion, an ownership of sexuality in a society which goes so far as to place laws and limitations on women who choose to embrace sex.  Those women I admire, and it is those women who are bringing about change within the industry. Change is slow though, and it will be decades before porn can be a part of our culture without also being inherently derogatory to it. That is the problem I have with pornography, and why I have trouble viewing it without also feeling badly someone is suffering exploitation to produce it.  I understand men are visual creatures and some men rely on pornography to enhance a sexual experience.  I have no problem with this in theory.  I would share the experience with a partner if that was something he needed.  The problem with my husband was he was not sharing the experience with me.  I tried to express this to him, but he acted like a boy caught looking at a Playboy by his mother.  He said he wouldn't do it anymore.  Wanting to come to terms with our relationship, I allowed myself to be placated by this compromise, without trying to delve deeper into his reasoning, especially why he would rather tell me he wouldn't engage in it as opposed to sharing the experience with me.   

For a while, life went on.  I lived behind my rose colored glasses and our sex life, the intimacy we once shared continued to decline.  I tried to comfort myself by telling myself all the things we tell ourselves when we don't want to admit the truth.  "We were going through a phase."  "This is just how things are after you have been married for a while."  My friends asked me why I didn't have an affair, but I thought he deserved better than that.  I wasn't getting what I needed from the relationship.  I missed the intimacy and sex had become a chore.  There were times I would get him off so I could get to sleep or move on to something I wanted to do.  When we got a computer, we had hellacious fights because he would view porn on it, and the computer was accessible to the entire family, even the girls.  Porn sites would leave icons on the computer, some would leave cookies you couldn't get rid of and my husband was too illiterate to erase the browsing history.  I wouldn't show him how to cover his tracks, either.  I was infuriated my daughters were being exposed to his pursuits, but I was even more furious he quit making love to me and used me like a doormat.  There wasn't any tenderness any longer, there was no effort to please me, I was a wet hole he used when he got horny.  He would stare at those images rather than try to create something meaningful with me.   

This rejection devastated my self esteem.  I tried marital counseling but I was the only one interested in building a relationship.  He barely talked.  He didn't participate.  We quit after a few sessions.  I knew then our marriage was doomed, and I didn’t have a clue why.  This process was a slow dissection that happened over a few years, and with it went my self esteem, the image I had of myself and I lost touch with my own sexuality.  I not only did not feel attractive, I didn't believe I was sexually viable.  After all, if my husband preferred porn to a real live woman, what hope did I possibly have?  Now I understand this was his problem, not mine, but back then I took the shoulder of the blame.  I have this tendency to take an unfair burden of blame.  It goes back to control.  If I am at fault, then I have the power to fix it.  I was determined to fix it, even though it was costing me who I was as a woman.  It was a fight I would lose and it would take a very long time for me to understand I could not have saved the marriage because I was the only one in it.   

The marriage collapsed and so I set about trying to repair the shattered remains.  I was working all the time, struggling to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table but I wasn't meeting anyone.  I tried the bar scene again, but it was full of the same broken souls, twenty years older.  I tried internet dating and ads, but wasn't prepared for the misogyny I was subjected to in the replies.  I wasn't prepared for the lies and manipulations, for the men who wanted to use me, or for the men who wanted to cheat on their wives.  Even with my experiences, I wasn't prepared for any of this.  I tried to weed through it, I tried to be careful but I did not want to deal with what men my age wanted from me.   

I set clear boundaries, and most men crossed them.  Those were the easy ones to delete.  If they pressured me to talk to them on the phone or to meet sooner than I was comfortable, then I knew they would have no problem increasing the pressure to do other things I didn't want to do.  One thing I learned from being single and accepting sex in exchange for something else was that it always left me feeling empty.  You can't let a man have sex if you are trying to trade it for something else.  I wasn't willing to go back to bartering my body.  I wanted more this time.  I wanted a relationship and wasn't willing to barter sex in order to find one.   

I thought I was careful.  I was honest and straightforward in what I expected and what I wanted in a partner.  I exchanged emails with a fellow.  I can't remember his name but I'll call him Stan.  He was a superintendent of a public school system in Pennsylvania.  He said he was in the process of divorcing his wife but that the marriage had been over for some time.   I could relate to that. He seemed to want the same things I did, he said all the right words and we had talked for some length of time.  I agreed to travel to PA to meet with him and have dinner.   

I wore a cute pair of sweats to drive in and brought along a really nice retro style dress.  He was a little older than I was but I was open to anything.  When I was close, he called and told me he left the garage door open, I was to pull in and he would close the door.  He said he had a reputation and didn't want his neighbors gossiping about him.  That was suspicious.  When I got there, he arrived at the door in a pair of old and tattered sweats and was much older than he told me he was!  You would think he would want to make a good impression and at least have dressed for my arrival.  As I approached him, all I could smell was old people.  He reeked of old people.  I decided then and there I would make it through dinner and that would be the end of him.  I entered his home, and asked if he had a computer.  I wanted to check in with my friends, a part of the safety measures I was putting into place.  He did and while I was logging on, he massaged my shoulders.  That was too much too soon.   Then he tried to talk me into having dinner in the privacy of his own home.  That was also a resounding no.  It was bad enough I was subjected to an uncomfortable dinner, but I was not getting a good feeling about this.  I suddenly knew why I agreed to sex with some men, even though it really wasn't what I wanted.  Fear.  I was afraid in saying no I was going to be hurt in ways I didn't want to be hurt.  I was getting a little afraid that was going to happen here, but I wasn't the child I was before.  I wasn't going to barter sex so I didn't have to be afraid, either.  I told him I wanted to change so we could go to dinner and asked him where I could get dressed.  I was apprehensive.  I went into the room  and closed the door, wondering if there was a hidden camera somewhere.  The creep meter was swinging off the edge.  As I looked around, I saw jewelry and perfume, the signs a woman was living in this room.  I asked him about it and he said it was his wife's bedroom.  She was off at a conference for the weekend.  They were getting a divorce but were living together until the divorce was final.  That was the last straw for me.  I assumed when he said he was getting a divorce that they were living separate lives.  They had separate bedrooms, but that is far from separate lives.  I gathered up my things to leave and told him he shouldn't call me.  There were too many lies.  He became agitated and his voice rose as he tried to justify his lies, to explain them away.  He started to threaten me and suddenly thought better of it.  He tried to block my attempt to leave when I reminded him people knew where I was.  If he wanted to keep his reputation, he would let me leave unharmed.  He moved out of the way.  The entire drive home I thought I had dodged a bullet.  I was very grateful my friends wanted to know my every move.  They had his full name, address and we had done a background check on him before I went.  Too bad you can't do a background check on being a douche.   

I learned something important from him though.  It's a shame I felt sleeping with a man was better than being hurt if I didn't.  It puts a whole new perspective into the rape culture conversation and I wonder how many other women felt it was better to endure sex rather than to be hurt?  Would I have been raped if I declined?  I will never know, but I do know this time I wasn't willing to barter potential safety in exchange for use of my body.  You can't call it rape if you are trying to avoid potential harm, but you can't call it consent either.  A woman should never feel obligated to have sex in fear of the man getting angry enough to hurt her.  That's as gray as a gray area gets.   

I did not have good experiences with my ventures into online dating.  Men there are not shy of being abject pigs.  I tell them I will not engage in cybersex or sex talk and they do not hold their contempt for my boundaries back.   I am clear on what I want and expect and they don't hold their despise for me back on that matter either.  I am honest and straightforward and get called names for it. Some men went so far as to write pages of their thoughts on the kind of woman I am.  I think they must send them out like form letters to discourage confident, assertive women from venturing out into the online dating field.  It worked, I wasn't ready for that kind of negativity and hostility.  I did have a couple of really good connections, which ended abruptly when I told them I wouldn't sleep with them the second time we went out.  I was clear I wanted a relationship, but they thought they could charm me into a hookup.  One guy seemed to be on the same page as I was until I mentioned I was an Atheist.  He was shocked and offended.  It was on my profile, I wasn't hiding anything.  I'm thinking of giving online dating a try again, maybe after the holidays.   I know what to expect now, and my spirit isn't as fragile as it was after my husband left.  I'm in a better place.  I'm stronger, and more self assured in my sexuality.  

I went into dating thinking that was what I should do.  It was a mistake for many reasons, and I'm happy now a relationship did not develop.  It would have been another failure.  I wasn't in any kind of a place to choose someone who would make a good partner for me.  I had a lot of healing to do from what my husband had put me through, and I was about to take a massive hit I never saw coming.  I thought I had remembered what I needed to about the sexual abuse I had endured as a child.  I could not have been more wrong.  The next memory to break through would shatter my growing sexuality, and bring it to a screeching halt.  You can't grow what you haven't healed.   

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