No Sex, No Problem
Unwrapping expectations
Marriage is a wonderland.
I am not talking about my partner. I have no idea what it is for him. This is a question I ask every year on our anniversary, an inquiry that always induces an eye role: “How is marriage for you?”
It is a question I ask myself not annually, but daily. Many times, a day, if you must know. I am not a natural nor organic co-habitant nor sustainable relationship romantic. But here I am, content and endlessly challenged, and this is what is the EVERYTHING – contentment.
If happiness is all astronomy, then the stars are a thermometer. We never gage ecstasy in degrees: there is no accountability when it comes to joy. Yet modernity and routine beget endless inventory.
Is it enough?
And am I living up to my potential?
Is this fulfillment?
Enough?
Reality check – it is the pedestrian oscillations where the bulk of our lives are set and spent. Joy visits only on occasion, a moonlighter and deadbeat lover showing up messy-haired and bearing flowers. I missed you. Causing the abandon of reason and rationale. Happy and necessary intoxication. (Who does not enjoy a tryst?!) Yet, it is only that. And thus, the measure and success of live, love, work, the interpersonal, intimate, spiritual, and wallet is in the ebb and flow, NOT the shooting start asteroid of joy and epic peak of the erotic epoch. Concession is not necessarily loss, but rather honesty and timing.
I have had the honor and pleasure of a robust and entertaining personal history track record. It is a good story and was a great effort. “Wild and Free” takes a good deal of pussyfooting. At this juncture, my nimble and creative efforts are geared elsewhere. To business, writing, clienting, teaching, etc. The excitement and hijinks of romantic fisticuffs and comings together cannot reasonably exploit my energetic cachet. That is a choice and too, truthfully, a temporary and magnificent disappointment. Naively perhaps, I imagined marriage as an extended dating period. Well, HELL NO is that the case. Any bozo could tell you. And six years in, you might think I would have gained more wisdom than whining, but nope. I still enjoy a good foot stomp and bummed out tantrum.
If we use this same, and hopefully humorous, template for our careers and work, might it offer some head spinning in regard to aims and expectation? How often do we – me too – set our sights based on articles, blogs, other people, parental pressure vs what and how we can and do work and want best? This could be why we do and re-do our resumes, get advice from the most odd ball places – wait staff, siblings, loves, our dentist, you-name-it. We are wondering if or how or what ‘doing it right’ looks like. Answer: you.
Back to the body and self-exploitation to an educational end – may you enjoy two personal examples of how engaging with our persons can offer excellent insight to how we engage beyond the bedroom and other forms of naval staring.
Shaving: I don’t do it.
Under the influence two years ago, I got into a conversation about body hair with a colleague who is female, sexy as heck (not a judgement or stigmatization, but fact), and also decades younger than me. I was having a “day” with my aesthetic esteem. One of those “I hate what I am wearing, and the day has only begun” kind of times. Well, there she was, two drinks in and looking like I could not remember ever feeling, unshaven and proud. And beyond insecurity I thought “Why do I?” Again, the answer was – fear. I had and always did shave because I assumed if I did not, I was a monster. Once in gym class, a horrific fellow seventh grader told me my leg hair made me look like a gorilla. I asked my mom how to shave that night.
Did you read that right? Did you get the memo? I started and then continued shaving not because of want but because of fear. And heavy on shame. This was the beginning of an inquiry about why. Do I do it because I want to or because I am intimidated or afraid about how or what I might enjoy?
The conclusion is obvious – I shaved from shame and so I quit. And you know what, ain’t no problem and actually joyful. Now, that is not to say cold turkey is the only way, but it sure can be a lightning rod.
Today, I am hairy and maybe scary, but also totally OK.
Next instance: We don’t have couple friends.
Both deeply connected and too islanders, my partner and I drift through the World in very different ways, and at opposite speeds. We have not ever enjoyed a week-to-week schedule of shared time off and unhindered holidays. Yet, in a deep commitment not only to each other but to the idea of commitment itself, we don’t make time, we make impact.
This can be texts or calls, but more so talking deep and brave and weird and intensely on and in the times we are together. And being really specific about time we are having together. A BIG learning for me was to resolve expectations around HOW we spend the time – sexy or not per se – and not having that be a binary win vs lose, but what I am experiencing in those windows. Again, we see expectations and thereby prejudice. All of that is a learning stop loss. The thing to learn is that there are few, if any, external templates for success or justice or “right” or “ill”. Sadly, and most wonderfully, we are our own bell weathers of and for enjoyment. That can be terrible. Knowing we are to find what fits on our own is a hell of a lot of responsibility. Just like house plant parenthood, you can do it. No joke, you can. Whether in relationships – with yourself or others, in a job, or space, or interview, academia, what have you – you have, no matter how magnificent it may seem, a task, map that guides as you go. Today it may fit, tomorrow it perhaps might not. Thus, the negotiation and relationship building that goal setting is.
What can we learn about intimacy that translates to career? Everything. Absolutely everything. When we are vulnerable in one space in space most raw, how we tackle that is very translatable to “the office”. Our egos live large in the things that our cultures value – money, food, sex. If you get weird and survive in one space, how can the lessons learned there filter to the others?
Back to Wonderland of the bedroom. Do know that pants off hit on a lot of levels. Do, please, do not be afeared to get raw and use the wisdom of raw to aide yourself in all of your brilliant totality. I myself will be so and I do hope to find you next to me.
