So much has changed for me since my inaugural post nearly ten years ago. Back then I was a fresh and perky 36 yo who had just left her husband and had a small, preschool-aged child to care for. That woman was desperate for attention, love, affection, and sex. She was also a shriveled, sad, lonely thing with a heart filled with hope and confidence that she would have a better life away from her husband and her stifling marriage.
She was only half right.
In the 10 years since I struck out on my own I have run the race like a sprint. I went all out for miles and miles and miles, seemingly with infinite energy and optimism. I surprised myself with my own resilience to withstand the abuses men handed out like Halloween candy and I so willingly slipped into my pillowcase sack, grateful for the revolting candy corn of attention because at least it was candy.
My tolerances have shifted so dramatically over the last 2+ years that I cannot bear to read my older posts here. I am filled with sorrow for the woman who thought she empowered herself through the whims of men, when really she was trying to surf an avalanche. There are no winners in that scenario I now know.
My history with men and sex began with sexual assault and as recently as two lovers ago ended in sexual assault. Fifteen to 45, 30 years of abuse that I couldn’t bring to name as such. But yes, the first time a boy touched my naked body was an assault and the last time a man came in me without my permission or knowledge was an assault. And I am done.
So done. So sad. So angry. So confused. So helpless.
I can’t go back and do it all over again and I am trapped in this airless bubble that has stripped me of my curiosity and hunger. It’s not a challenge to find a man and get him into bed – it never really was. The real challenge was always how do I get him not to hurt me?
To not ghost me, stealth me, scare me, hurt me, to cum in me and leave 10 minutes later? To otherwise not treat me like a piece of trash? That was always the real goal, but I had it twisted. I thought it was the hunt, but really, I was being hunted while I was searching for the soul of a man.
The soul of a man who would be kind to me, tender, appreciative and brave. That’s what I was hungry for, the humanity I’d read about in articles and seen in movies, but had never actually witnessed myself.
I am now left with the brittle dried pieces of a story burned down to its spine The pages black and one iron grip away from dust. This mythical man does not exist to me; he is nothing more than a romantic tale to keep women on dating apps and forever searching for a human connection on the other end of a courtship. If women really understood that we were the prey animals of the human world, we wouldn’t be so quick to say Yes to the dinner or the nightcap or the walk along the river.
How can I open up when I am being hunted?
I’ve been thinking a lot about a couple of men whose time with me were both important and devastating. The Neighbor, Peter, The Vet, Francois, and The Golfer are the most prominent in my mind. Each wore me down in their own ways, past my boundaries where I allowed all sorts of mayhem and chaotic hope to rule my actions rather than calculated data: none of them had ever earned my time let alone my body.
I made excuses, simpered, intellectualized, and defeated my own inner voice and kept putting my hand in the flames. Off-blog:
- Peter sent me a scathing “cease and desist” text because he was happy in his new relationship, this after he’d pursued me again and had actively been trying to see me the previous weekend.
- Francois made plans to come see me for Fourth of July weekend and texted with me incessantly for weeks about his excitement and anticiaption only to ghost me the morning he was set to drive out. Then he blocked me.
- The Neighbor, the best sex of my life and a man whose shady ways gaslit my heart. He ultimately walked out of my life unexpectedly one day.
- The Vet’s friendship is contingent on me staying in my lane and not pushing too many of his toxic male buttons and I’m often left thinking back on how I was his canary in the coal mine to figure out that he wasn’t ready to be in a relationship yet.
- The Golfer, the last muse of this blog, managed be all of the others all at once: the best sex of my life, cruelly disconnected and uncaring he sent me a video of another woman giving him a blowjob when I reached out earlier this year, Invested in me only for himself he was ultimately a troubled, drunken soul I should have left well enough alone, but alas…
I don’t want to feel this angry and scared, but maybe it’ll be the next 10 years of my life. I’ll have saggy tits and jowls to learn to love by then. Maybe, I’ll find a kind and gentle man who’d like to join me, but if not, I’m perfectly fine being safe alone. Fuck the hunt.