Author and Columnist
Last night at the drama awards, outside by the railing, [Kate] affected me more than she knew. Part of her - rather, most of her at this point - views sex and sexuality as dirty and wrong. At least, nothing she wants to do right now.
I cannot speak to Kate's experience. It is not to her younger iteration that I am addressing these responses. Her reasons for feeling this way are largely her own. Of course, I know a version of what happened before she knew you properly, but that isn't something that should be ruining your night. What happened isn't something you can time travel to fix--an intrusive thought I am aware you have--and this savior complex doesn't do you any favors.
Sex at eighteen is a curious animal. Your hormones scream out for adult acts and your mind is half-child. However assured you are of rightness and prowess before twenty, you are wrong. There are stretches where you want sex, but you also don't want the emotional complications of being someone who has sex.
I don't know about the dirtiness. You will, mostly in your future, sometimes have sex in situations that depress you. You will have sex and spend the rest of the day where the only emotion you can find through the numbness is disgust that you didn't stop it. You will be in coercive and abusive situations with people who don't mean to harm you, but who do anyway. You will have sex when you do not feel like it because that is what they expect of you and you think it is easier to give in.
Kate and you were both barely old enough to be doing the things you did. Young men and women are not fantastic at articulating their deepest needs over momentary wants and so mutual compassion was difficult.
The drama awards are not the best place for this conversation, but it isn't as though you didn't have it every few months, rarely in a healthy space. To this day, you wage a largely quiet battle against perseveration on things beyond your control. Sorry about that.
I am not a time traveler either, but I wish that I could go back and help you think through your sex issues with Kate so that they didn't ding your relationship. They are yours. Whatever Kate was going through were her issues. Despite sharing bodily fluids, you do not share the same issues.
Even with me, the man who has pledged to wed her and who loves her endlessly.
Listen, I try not to cringe reading things that you wrote. In doing this, I have made this agreement with you. I am going to take you seriously. But you don't always make this easy on me.
You loved Kate more than you came close to loving anyone at that point in your life. You were never going to marry her. I don't think she ever pledged to marry you, at least not seriously. She was as dotty with love as you were then, but you can't take statements like this seriously from so young of lips.
Marriage is a partnership that involves joint taxes and buying the organic apples even though they are more expensive, and she doesn't eat them anyway. Marriage is wonderful, one of the best things I've ever done, but it is much more than sharing a bed.
The world's portrayal of it revolts me.
No argument here. Sex is rarely shown in the right light in the media. No wonder you get the wrong ideas.
The number of reasons to have good sex beyond horniness and love is vast. I'm not sure you realize yet that sex can just be good fun, that you can joke through it and not take it so damn seriously.
You will be a happier man when you can mutually giggle through foreplay, but it may take a while.
I remember a moment in your parents' driveway with Kate. I don't know why you got this in your head, but you were certain that Kate was going to suggest that you have sex in her backseat. You were so jittery about this, so anxious, that you were almost hyperventilating. Even remembering it now, I can feel that tension. Then, when she asked why you were being weird and you explained, she said simply that she hadn't intended on doing that. It was a relief to you because you had built something up in your head until you were certain it was going to happen. She said no and you could breathe again.
So, yes, you take sex too seriously and put too much pressure on yourself and her.
However, I do think I am handling this in a far more mature and loving fashion then being an asshole like I was before (And I will take a long time to forgive myself for that.)
I suppose that is an improvement, then, though I would like some written evidence of this. I still wish you had treated this issue more tenderly and in a more relaxed fashion that you did. Kate had anxiety enough without your overemphasizing the importance of sexual contact.
It may startle you to hear that most of your favorite memories of Kate involve the two of you fully dressed.
It has been the ambrosia of the senses and the heart.
Again, my dear former self, I am sworn not to cringe much or mock you. You need to hold up your end of the bargain by knocking off this flowery, disingenuous nonsense.
You like fooling around with the young woman. Good, she is a lovely, clever person. It makes perfect sense that you would love an intimate connection with her.
What you wrote is not helping anyone. I don't think you mean a word of this purple prose, nor would anyone reading it. You want to believe this is how you think and feel, but you don't. What you do feel about it is more than some hindbrain lust but lying that it is the closest you've come to touching Heaven is counterproductive.
(For the sake of total fairness to you--and I do this begrudgingly--you do once have sex so intense that it causes you to briefly go blind and deaf because it throws off your blood pressure. That's not a joke, though is possibly a reason to see a doctor.)
So when she gets that look - like she's fallen down a dark hole and is lost - about prior stuff (not that she isn't entitled to, for she is), I get very sad. Not depressed, just sad.
Oooh, I know this one! At my job, we talk about this regularly. What you have is vicarious trauma and it is toxic. It is you taking something that another person is going through, something that should not involve you, and making it all about you. When you are putting someone in the position where they have to console you for their problem, you are being malignant and are contributing to reenacting the trauma. It is honestly an awful thing to do to another person and it is far from kind to do it to yourself.
That isn't your right. You can sympathize with Kate and be there to talk when she needs to, but it isn't your burden. Your purpose in her life is not to play white knight and rescue her. She is rescuing herself the best way she can, and you need to let her. When she needs your help, she will let you know. Until that point, take a deep breath, don't perseverate on the topic of sex, and love her. That's all she needs from you. You would be a happier person if you listened. Just love Kate and throw expectations away. Enjoy the company of one of the best people you've ever met without needing it to be everything and always.
We've been quite serious for ten months. She has helped me work through so much of my emotional baggage. And for that, she simpl[y] does not know how thankful I am to her.
Wow. Ten months. It is your longest relationship to date. It might be your healthiest, but you didn't give many other relationships the chance to blossom. Still, Kate was delightful, so no wonder you wanted to stick around her.
That said, one's lover's role is not to heal them. They can encourage and support when one works to heal themselves, but it is not a burden that belongs to the person in your bed. Pay a trained professional.
Also, not to minimize too much, but your "emotional baggage" is that your supposed best friend and your girlfriend hooked up while you were at geek camp. Gutting for you then, no doubt, but not as devastating as you inflate it to be. You do not blame yourself. You were hurt by two people, then you ended up in a relationship with a young woman whom you liked far better and loved far more honestly. (Your ex only said that she loved you at the end and she barely meant it, if she did at all; you can't love people who don't love you back, no matter how physically compatible you are.)
Furthermore, she said a few nights ago that she had serious issues with sex. But she refused to disclose them to me. That hurt me a lot. That was why I was irked at her yesterday before the awards. I was expecting that she was going to leave me over her hang-ups. I stopped being irked when I ascertained that she was okay and barely remembered saying it. But she did say it, and I do want to know.
I don't know what to tell you. That sounds like a trying headspace to be in, my dear, neurotic boy. These late adolescent relationships are the crucibles in which one grows strong from hard lessons or melts to slag.
I have so much advice I could give, but I will focus in on this: nonattachment. You cling to and demand answers for things that have passed. If you didn't hype yourself up over what you assumed Kate might have meant, you would have had a far better time at the drama awards and you would not have stressed Kate and forced her to return to this difficult topic. Here, very clearly, we see an experience that could have been bright and fun, but which your anxiety and mind-reading turned into insomnia-inducement.
Kate was trying the hardest she could. I can't tell you what this story would look like from her perspective. I doubt you ever got a satisfying answer to why she said this, and it isn't worth my speculation now. You ruined your night because of expectations. You didn't trust your girlfriend to be as open as she could be. You suffered for it enough to write this.
And, before it ends between you two, you will both suffer for this again.
It seems to me, even in the nascence of this site, you understood that you were the protagonist, but you were not the hero of your narrative. Probably a good place to be. There are few more things more dangerous than to decide to pick up a sword and shield in a world with no dragons.