Negotiating a ‘Relationship’

Am I a bitter feminist, or what? Maybe just too particular? Is it a self-esteem thing? Or, curiosity unsatisfied?

I’ve written a blog about what a sexual hook-up is worth, in terms of friendship, sexual pleasure, or the remote possibility of a relationship. My theory is that if you won’t or can’t ask questions about anything, or you can’t get answers, what are you really getting?

A friend, and I use the term loosely, has wanted to get together with me after many years of us not seeing each other. When I first met him, I thought there was at least a possibility of ‘friends with benefits’, but it didn’t take long to realize, because he let me know by saying so and how he addressed our ‘friendship’, that he didn’t want that.

It wasn’t just that he had other priorities. He’d cancel plans with me at the last minute, or stand me up. Yet, when we were together, he presumed an intimacy we did not have. I was really attracted to him, but he was ambivalent about me. At least that was the vibe he gave off. Sex did not lead to emotional intimacy, and it did not lead to greater physical intimacy. It didn’t lead to better, more satisfying sex.  it couldn’t. He had an emotional barrier.He was clearly alienated.

He was not the first man I was with who behaved this way, but he was one I let get away with it. To me, if you don’t want to go out with me, if you don’t want to meet my friends and don’t want me to meet your friends, you’ve made it so we are not becoming friends. We are people who know each other, and just barely.

I imagined many reasons why he wanted to keep an emotional distance. Since we didn’t really talk, I never knew. I was a different race, he really didn’t like me as a person that much—but I was available for furtive sex, he had sexual kinks he didn’t want me to know about (or maybe he was bisexual…I have no idea…). Whatever the reasons were, he held them ‘closely to the vest’, and it was emotionally exhausting.

What happened was I started living with a man, a foreigner, who didn’t speak that much English, but who was responsible and reliable. We didn’t have a sexual relationship, but he gave me stability, and I was mature enough emotionally to understand that that kind of dynamic was very important to me. We’ve been together almost 20 years. He’s very generous and helpful. His barrier is physical intimacy, which I know is partly cultural, and this is how it is.

So, sort of out of the blue, this guy wants to ‘reconnect’. There is no possibility of a romance here. He is not a dog lover, and I live with dogs and I’m very involved with the pet industry and people who work with dogs. But is there even a possibility of a friendship? Have his views changed at all? Or is it still the way it was? Where we don’t know anything about each other and he doesn’t want to know anything about me or continue to assume a lot about me? Who else is he seeing socially, or are all his relationships with barriers? I have no idea.

What I do know is that for me, to get together to go out to lunch every few weeks, and pay for it, like a meeting…is bullshit. It’s like unfinished business every time, and I no longer do that with anyone who is not part of my social circle.

 

“Must Love dogs”

Realizing that this is my last chance for romance (who am I kidding….a sex life…) and knowing several friends who met their mates online, I decided to try online matching.

There are many problems to this approach if you are picky and not desperate.

One is; that the companies that offer the databases have a lot of trouble with SAVING your information. They ask for the same information every time.

Another is: men don’t tread profiles. They look at your photos and decide you are the one. Their profiles are vague as well. It’s as thought they don’t know themselves.

Another issue is that the website owners do ‘bait & switch’. You can look for free, but if you try to respond, you must pay; worse, they make it so the fee automatically renews to your credit cared if you don’t stop it. I have written in my calendar when to stop payment, but still…

Yet another issue is…proximity. So many guys respond and think that we both should travel an hour or more to get to know each other. I don’t think so. I have turned down jobs because I have to be in traffic. I know how important proximity is to intimacy. I guess most men either don’t think about this or don’t care, but I’ve been in long distance relationships and I am looking for a guy to be with physically. You want phone sex? Pay me.

I don’t want to jump into any more missionary position sex, nor do I want to wear high heels, a garter belt & stockings, be tied up, you get the gist.

The other issues is that I don’t want to be with a Christian man (unless he’s from southern India—part of another long story…) I don’t care if these guys don’t think they are religious, it’s a cultural thing. It’s part of being part of the dominant culture, a culture I can barely wrap my tiny brain around.

We Jews acquiese a lot. In an urban area, you don’t find many people who ar overtly anti-semetic, or do you? So many people think Moslems, Hindus, and Sikhs are all the same, and ‘godless’.

I am exotic, and I am a really good lay, and I won’t compromise on this. To go to all this bother and have to get used to accomodating another personality is exhausting to me.

I admit it. The character I’ve been writing about: the perfect, handsome, sexy young man, has been taking up a lot of real estate in my head and I am comparing prospects to the imaginary lover. It’s a problem I created porn myself, but it’s something early on I don’t care to discuss with strange men. One guy actualy asked me my bra cup size. It’s apparent from my photos that I’m built like a Khajuraho statue. Why would you think it appropriate to ask about my underwear before anything else? I think it would be inappropriate to ask if you need Viagra to get it up, but I am dealing with old men here.

What keeps coming to mind is something my widowed grandmother told me about why she wasn’t dating at age 50. She said these guys are looking for a cook and a nurse. She didn’t say sex, but I got the gist. Both of my grandmothers told me to look for a man to keep me in the style to which I want to become accstomed.

I have to consider all this. Usually, what I first reveal, other than the fact that I own my own home, is that I live with a man, and we’ve lived together for 18 years. It’s my most successful relationship. I know little about him except his persona.

I tel them I am a dog trainer, but apparently that means nothing.

I don’t want to talk to men I don’t know about being a figure model or writing erotica. I’ve got questions of my own.

We all want someone we can share a life with and be ourselves. I just wonder how many frogs I have to kiss?

“Today Just Wasn’t Your Day, Dear”

Venus was a a dog who lost her home at age 7—& her breeder took her back.

So said Dr. Sandy Gould for probably the 3rd or 4th time. last Sunday. Hoping against hope, I had entered Venus (Longrun’s Stay Awhile at Windrose, CGC, RE) in both Rally Excellent and Rally Advanced at the Rand Park Dog Training Club trial up at WAGS in Spring Grove. . It’s not like she doesn’t know the exercises. She clearly does. She just has a different agenda. Also, since the rules are slightly different in Excellent (from Advanced), and Dr. Gould set up a ‘figure 8 with distractions’ (for Excellent, dog bowls with treats), and there were smells in and around the ring, we entertained the crowd to a great NON QUALIFYING score.

After I got Venus away from the dog bowls, we seemed to be fine on a 3/4 turn and were about to go into the 3 steps backward when she heard…water running down a gutter which sounded like a mouse and walked over to the wall and climbed up to see if she could find ‘it’. Everyone laughed. Except me. Then when I got her attention back, she did a drop while heeling and a stand while heeling, b ut buy this time she had screwed up 13 of the 15 exercises. And Dr. Gould consoled me, but I told her we were coming back in for Advanced.

In Advanced, you can make more noise to get your dog on track. The ‘distractions’ were dog toys on the Figure 8, and amazingly we qualified with a 74 (so we got a Rosette—thank you, Rand Park DTC).

And if you compete, you know, at the handing out of awards, the judge often asks how many legs (qualifying scores) this is, and I said it was probably 12, but it didn’t matter, and everyone knew why.

Venus is 11 now. She and Dash both thought barn hunt was boring: if it doesn’t run, why bother. We may try agility, but I think I am done paying entry feels on these dogs. We’ll go to trai9ning just for fun and treats.

BTW—Venus was a nationally ranked Whippet last year for her qualifying scores in Advanced. LOL!