I have an amazing spouse. Yet I remain a slut: I believe in diversity. This post is about what I really want.
masturbation
I was lying in bed today when my spouse was out, and I began to masturbate. My mind roamed, trying to find some hot experience to imagine and cum on.
My spouse and I had had sex earlier. But not with a lot of time. My spouse had cum but not me. My cunt was still wet and curious.
I felt my clit, its ridges, the slickness. Does it feel like it’s always felt? Is it changing as I age? Do I want a stable long-term identity? Is this the same Nest I’ve been all my life?
I thought of a friend I love and wish to be close to. I rubbed myself and noticed my clit’s reaction. But are they what I really want? No, if things were right, we would be together already. We don’t quite match.
I thought of sex with my spouse earlier, how he fell asleep, and how it felt to be close to him. The kind things we said to one another. The way I kissed him and he held my breasts. I ask him to jiggle them. The way I pressed my body onto his and asked, “Is this ok?”
altar
On my altar I keep a picture of a woman, and that picture represents my desire to have a girlfriend. Someone who will be there for me and share life with me, separate and different from how I share life with my spouse. I dream of this person who might enter my life and nurture me as I nurture others. Someone to be tender, sexual, and reciprocal with. We could create something beautiful that never existed before.
Yes, I don’t need to settle for intimacy with people who don’t really want me, or who are using me for elusive stability like that last lady I got close to. I was worth friendship and cuddle, but I was not worth deep vulnerability or partnership, to her. She didn’t want me like that.
I threw immeasurable resources into this relationship, to be criticized and verbally attacked for my inadequacies. The whole time she told me everyone abandons her, a huge pre-offered guilt trip, until I couldn’t do it anymore either.
abandonment
What is abandonment? Abandonment is unfair and without warning. I tried ten different ways to have a sustainable relationship, but it was me doing the work to change things. She didn’t have the resources or skill to even see what I was doing, let alone collaborate. She took whatever I gave; that’s what she thinks love is. My kindness was devoured like the cookie monster eats cookies.
I don’t need to stay in relationships like that. True, I’ll be shamed for leaving and considered selfish for taking care of myself. But after a certain point, how I’m being criticized doesn’t matter anymore.
The feedback is not from a reliable narrator. It’s from a drowning person who clings to generous people like we’re life rafts, then hates us for helping. I saw her do that to her ex and her parents, and thought she would never do that to me.
what I really want
I want a partner who gives as much as they take. Someone self-aware— brilliant in many ways, including brilliance about who they are and why they’re on earth. Someone who has resources to share, not just surviving by the skin of their teeth.
I want a partner who loves themself. I want a partner who can carry their own emotions and doesn’t ask me to carry them, or worse, assume I will do emotional labor for them without that conversation. Someone who is smart about feelings and can communicate. Someone who’s smart enough to see the work I do and appreciate it in a way that’s commensurate with the difficulty of the work.
I want a partner who has a life. Someone who has friends, projects, and a good feeling about their work. They don’t need a paid job or to buy into cultural wellness tropes. Hopefully they will be independent from norms, at choice about what norms they choose to follow.
But I hope they shower regularly, clean their home enough to have me over comfortably, and show up for love. I want a partner who shows up for themselves and for me.
accurate
It would be amazing to have a partner who has a good read of how much they’ve been shit on and how much they’ve been blessed. I’d love to be close with someone who’s accurate about that, not buried under an avalanche of self-pity, unable to function with how fucked over they believe themselves to be.
Yes, people suffer, and so much injustice fills our lives. I want a partner who appreciates the good, and is real about the bad. I don’t want to be close to anyone who magnifies their own suffering while pretending I’m not disabled. Never again will I be close to anyone who makes me continually dig them out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves, and expects that, over and over again, as if I’m doing nothing. I can’t live depleted like that.
I want a partner with radical values like mine— not just theoretically, but living the values of mutual aid, consent, learning, and creativity. Someone who believes in caring for others enough to devote energy and time to that, not just wish for the well-being of others.
A sense of humor would be fun too, and shared spirituality. Maybe someone who likes some of the same foods that I do, and we could cook together. A good listener. Someone who has enough in common with me that we can understand one another, but different enough to learn a lot from one another and have separate lives in addition to sharing.
freedom
Yes, I’d love another partner who helps me build my freedom, not expecting me to sacrifice my freedom for them. Someone strong enough to be real with, about everything.
These traits are important to me. I’m glad I wrote it out– I hope knowing what I really want will strengthen my prayer. If I never get a girlfriend like that, it’s ok. With my spouse, I have more love than most people experience in a lifetime.
But if I can find another partner who is ripe and ready to love, not ready to just do the taking part of love, how fortunate I will be.
