I'm not feeling so great right now. I have had an absolutely fantastic day with my boyfriend. It was brilliant. We got to laze about naked while it was really hot outside, we had some fantastic sex and we spoke for hours about all kinds of different things. I love my boyfriend so much, we really connect on both a physical and a mental level. This was day 2 of a so far fantastic week for me, and I really didn't want anything to ruin it.
Except it did. I hate it when my boyfriend goes home. Not only for the obvious reason that he's leaving, but it means I have to go back to my parents (who I unfortunately still live with). EVERY time I come back inside from saying goodbye to him, it starts. The tirade begins, and the general gist of it is this - my boyfriend is using me because all we do is go up in my room and have sex. We need to get out more. I argue back, but they just don't listen.
To be fair, most of our relationship does take place in my bedroom. This is mainly because it's the most convenient place we have where we can both be together, and admittedly, with the door locked there aren't any clothes being worn. And we have sex a lot. Does this make our relationship worthless?
There seems to be this idea (not just from my parents, but society in general) that a man and a woman can't be behind closed doors without being at it like rabbits. Whilst me and my boyfriend do have sex while we're together, we also sit and talk about all kinds of random crap. We've always talked about random crap, years before we were together. He managed to end up as my boyfriend because we'd spent so long talking about random stuff, we really got to know each other on a level that I'd never got to know anyone on before. However, because we have sex as well, does this cancel out this quality time?
My parents seem to think my boyfriend is just using me for sex, because we have sex every time he comes over. Is it unnatural for a guy and a girl in their early twenties to be having sex when they see each other once a week? To be honest, we don't go out much. I'll admit that perhaps we should, but not at all for the reasons my parents think. My parents seem to think that having a relationship is all about going random places. Sometimes I think my parents went to so many places (I've been subjected to so many stories) that they hardly knew each other beyond their knowledge of the places the other liked to frequent. My dad spent a few years working away in London. He'd spend Mon-Fri working in London, and then on the Friday night he drove the few hours home and then they'd go to the pub together. Personally, this seems insane to me. Once or twice perhaps, but if I'd been working away and hadn't seen my boyfriend for a week (which is usually the norm for me, actually), the last place I'd want to be is the pub. I'd want to be at home having some quiet, quality time with my partner. When my parents rant and rave and I ask where we should go, they don't really have any suggestions. The beach, the moors, places like that. Places they know full well that I absolutely hated when they dragged me there as a child, and places I'd refuse to go to if my boyfriend asked me to go there with him. Their only other suggestions seem to be the pub or the cinema - neither of us drink and I hate being around drunk people, and I have quite bizarre tastes in films. Without going to detail, if it was made in Hollywood, I probably hate it, and the more up to date it is the more I hate it. You can imagine that it's rare that a cinema shows a film I want to see (once or twice a year at the most). I also have bizarre tastes in music. The contents of my MP3 player, with only a very few exceptions, consist of soundtracks to the crazy films and plays I like, along with one artist who I particularly like. I would really love to see her in concert actually. The problem there? She's American. Most of her concerts are in America, and although she does a few over here, they're small affairs. She's an independent artist and isn't terribly well known. No gigs at the O2 arena or anything like that. Occasionally she'll fill a theatre, but most of the time she performs in pubs and bars. All of these are in London, several hundred miles up the road from me, neither practical or affordable to get to even if I got the weekend off work. They say we should go and get food somewhere together. We've been to get KFC a few times, but it's wrong because we come home to eat it. When my parents were dating, they kept a bottle of vinegar in their glove compartment because they went to the chip shop that often (you couldn't make this stuff up). I think that's terrible! It's not something to boast about!
The only suggestion I have to add to this list is shopping, but I hate shopping with other people. I can't stand it. I much prefer to go on my own because my taste in shops is embarrassing, and the shops I do go in I end up coming out of without having really looked at anything because I'm worried the other person is getting bored.
This isn't to say we've never gone anywhere together. As I said, we've been to KFC a few times, we went to the Rocky Horror Show together, we saw Alice in Wonderland and New Moon in the cinema, and we'll be seeing Eclipse when it comes out. He came with me when my amateur dramatics group got together to watch the video of our show. We've been to the chip shop a few times. I took him to the leisure park I work at and went on the rides. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting. My parents forget all this stuff however, because we only go out every few months, rather than every week.
In a relationship, I don't look for someone to go around doing random things with. I want someone who I can be me with. When I was single, I rarely went out anywhere, and I spent most of the time in my bedroom anyway. However, now I have a boyfriend, this is suddenly terribly wrong. Someone please tell me if I'm wrong, but am I supposed to suddenly change who I am now I have a boyfriend? Am I supposed to start enjoying things that I hated before?
Even now, my parents go out together on the weekends. That's great, but they have to do that. I really don't think they're actually capable of sitting down in a room and being able to hold any kind of lengthly conversation without it turning into an argument or my dad needing to turn the TV on. When my parents go out, a lot of the time they don't even stay together. Dad will be wandering on twenty meters ahead of Mum. She can't look at anything and she gets highly frustrated by it. Me? I find it difficult to be anywhere with my boyfriend if we're not holding hands.
Me and my boyfriend, we could talk for days. We never run out of things to talk about. It can be the most random things, but we get to know each other better through these things. Today we spoke about hats, tattoos and piercings, amongst many other things. It sounds arbitrary, but it led onto so much other stuff, I feel like I know him that little bit better now.
As I mentioned earlier, my parents say my boyfriend is using me for sex. To quote my dad: "He could have two other girlfriends on the go for all you know!" I've told him that he doesn't know what he's talking about. Sometimes he asks me to enlighten him, but I refuse. He says it's because I'm talking out my ass, but in fact it's because it's deeply personal. Being a parent does not give you automatic rights to know what goes on in your child's relationship (at least when your child is now an adult themselves), even when it's going on under your roof. There are some choices and personality factors that I would never expect my parents to accept or even understand.
Those of you who've read my previous posts will know that my boyfriend is polyamorous. I'm okay with this, I accept it. However, as much as I think it, I can't tell my parents that actually, under the right and agreed upon circumstances, it would be okay if he had two other girlfriends on the go. The only way it would be unacceptable to me would be if he hadn't told me about them, which given the fact I know he's poly would be a stupid and incomprehensible thing for him to do.
My boyfriend is not using me for sex. If anything, I'm using him for sex. If one of us is going to end the day without having an orgasm, you can bet your life savings that it'll be him, not me. If he can't give it to me, I will get my toys out and give it to myself. I LOVE sex. It's fantastic and absolutely fascinating. However, no matter how much I love sex and how much we do it, there is more to our relationship than that. I'm aware that, no matter how unbelievable it seems to us right now, that as we get older the sex will slowly dry up. But at least when it does dry up, we'll still have our personalities and be able to occupy each other with talk about what we're going to do when we're running the country, which games are the best to play, my boyfriend's love for prime numbers, the computers we want vs. the computers we have and so on and so forth. I'm trying now to think of the last casual conversation I heard my parents have. I honestly can't remember.
People are different, and the relationships they have are different. This is what my parents can't fathom, no matter how much I tell them. Me and my boyfriend do more than have sex, but if that's all we did, would our relationship be completely worthless? It's open to debate, but it's not the case anyway. Personally, I judge the success of a relationship on the happiness and compatibility of the two people involved than how many photos you've got in your photo album. I will rest in the knowledge that if a disease wipes through the world, making all our genitals disappear and collapsing the world economy, we'll live a penniless existence in the woods, happy enough just being with each other and talking until the world's end while making bets on which of my parents is going to kill the other first.
Wednesday 23 June 2010
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Chance and Destiny
I like to believe in fate. I can't say whether I actually do believe in it or not, but there are some brilliant things in my life that terrify me over how easily they could have just not happened.
How me and my boyfriend met was very much down to chance. We both got involved in a youth organisation, and it would have been so easy for one or both of us to have not joined. My tutor at college encouraged me to join, while he can't even remember why he joined. The first meeting of this organisation was a Saturday, and I work on Saturdays. Again, I could have so easily not made the effort to get that day off work. We'd likely still have met, but that first meeting was more of a social, get to know everyone kind of thing. I might not have caught his eye otherwise.
I didn't appreciate it at the time, but he really made an effort to get in contact with me. It felt kinda stalker-ish at the time, but I'm really glad he did now. It shows me that even back then, he was really serious about me. He knew (or otherwise found out) what college I went to and phoned them up, asking if I had a college email address. I didn't, but he left his email address and asked them to pass it on (which they did, after they phoned up his college to check he actually was a student where he said he was). I emailed him, having no idea what the conversation was going to be about.
He eventually got hold of my phone number too, which again was something I didn't appreciate at the time, but I'm glad it happened now, because it was another way we got talking.
I have to admit that I didn't really like him at the beginning. I was not of the maturity level to have a relationship, even though I was sixteen, and I didn't have the skills to be able to do gentle rejections or anything like that. I had no handle over guys. Meanwhile, my boyfriend would not take no for an answer. He did freak me out quite a bit. There were times when he crossed lines that he shouldn't have crossed, and I didn't handle it maturely either. I don't have the original emails saved (plus some of it happened on a forum which is no longer in existence, where he Googled me and found me), but I do have some of the early ones. I read them maybe once or twice a year, and it's difficult to get my head around the fact that these emails were actually between me and him. It's like they're two completely different people.
I'm way too forgiving in nature. People can do things that really piss me off, but I find it difficult to hold a grudge for very long, even when I want to. It annoys me sometimes, but I like to think part of it is fate. Back then, my boyfriend did some things that would have warranted me never talking to him again. I actually told myself once that I wasn't going to talk again, but obviously I did. I don't think I even lasted a day.
They were dark and embarrassing times. I hate thinking about them and I hate talking about them. I really do find it difficult to think of as me and him back then, and its embarrassing to think about the way we were. Even if I had been ready for a relationship, I'm completely glad I didn't say yes to him. There is no way we'd have what we have now. Although the early days were bad days some of the time, they were necessary, and I'm really glad they happened. If we'd got together from the start, it's unlikely we'd still be together, because we weren't compatible back then, and being together wouldn't have given us the opportunities to slowly change each other.
What I've learnt from this whole experience is to never write anyone off in life. You never know what that person might bring to your life if you let them. If you had told me back then, when I was sixteen, this creepy guy who wouldn't leave me alone was eventually going to become my first boyfriend when I was 21, there was no way in hell I'd have believed you. He pissed me off a lot back then, but the ends justifies the means I suppose, even if it was somewhat accidental. If it weren't for my forgiving personality, then things would have turned out a lot differently, and we'd never have discovered how compatible with each other we actually are, or rather, how compatible we became. He eventually got the message that I wasn't interested in him romantically, so we just kept it as friends, got talking and we ended up changing each other (he taught me to be more self-confident, while I showed him how to not consider himself the be all and end all of everything, and we met in the middle). Over years of talking, I eventually actually did get romantic feelings for him because of the ways we changed and how well we got to know each other.
We talk about it sometimes, how scared I am how it could not have happened. The thing is though, I can't say that there isn't someone out there who is even more suited to me than he is, but fate or chance never threw that person my way. If it had happened that way, my boyfriend now could have been that guy who might be more suited but I never found him. I guess you can't miss what you don't have. It's awful to think of my life without him, but I wouldn't miss him because I wouldn't know him.
When we talk about it, he always says it's destiny. I like that idea. We're so suited to each other, and the circumstances that led to us being together were so long, complicated and unusual that it would have been so easy for it not to happen. If you took away just one component then it could have never have happened. I could have stayed pissed at him and never spoken to him again. He could have been more well-adjusted at the time and taken no for an answer, and never spoken again. Even further back than that, I might not have been able to persuade my parents to get the internet (before me and my boyfriend met) and I wouldn't have had an email address for him to contact me with. I had only recently had my first mobile phone then. What if I'd been turned down for the job that gave me the wages to buy that phone?
My boyfriend tells me it was destiny, it had to happen that way. If things had been different, he would have found a way. I can see how people find comfort in religion, because I'm personally terrified over how easily the best thing in my life could have not happened. The idea of fate is comforting to me, because the alternative scares me too much.
How me and my boyfriend met was very much down to chance. We both got involved in a youth organisation, and it would have been so easy for one or both of us to have not joined. My tutor at college encouraged me to join, while he can't even remember why he joined. The first meeting of this organisation was a Saturday, and I work on Saturdays. Again, I could have so easily not made the effort to get that day off work. We'd likely still have met, but that first meeting was more of a social, get to know everyone kind of thing. I might not have caught his eye otherwise.
I didn't appreciate it at the time, but he really made an effort to get in contact with me. It felt kinda stalker-ish at the time, but I'm really glad he did now. It shows me that even back then, he was really serious about me. He knew (or otherwise found out) what college I went to and phoned them up, asking if I had a college email address. I didn't, but he left his email address and asked them to pass it on (which they did, after they phoned up his college to check he actually was a student where he said he was). I emailed him, having no idea what the conversation was going to be about.
He eventually got hold of my phone number too, which again was something I didn't appreciate at the time, but I'm glad it happened now, because it was another way we got talking.
I have to admit that I didn't really like him at the beginning. I was not of the maturity level to have a relationship, even though I was sixteen, and I didn't have the skills to be able to do gentle rejections or anything like that. I had no handle over guys. Meanwhile, my boyfriend would not take no for an answer. He did freak me out quite a bit. There were times when he crossed lines that he shouldn't have crossed, and I didn't handle it maturely either. I don't have the original emails saved (plus some of it happened on a forum which is no longer in existence, where he Googled me and found me), but I do have some of the early ones. I read them maybe once or twice a year, and it's difficult to get my head around the fact that these emails were actually between me and him. It's like they're two completely different people.
I'm way too forgiving in nature. People can do things that really piss me off, but I find it difficult to hold a grudge for very long, even when I want to. It annoys me sometimes, but I like to think part of it is fate. Back then, my boyfriend did some things that would have warranted me never talking to him again. I actually told myself once that I wasn't going to talk again, but obviously I did. I don't think I even lasted a day.
They were dark and embarrassing times. I hate thinking about them and I hate talking about them. I really do find it difficult to think of as me and him back then, and its embarrassing to think about the way we were. Even if I had been ready for a relationship, I'm completely glad I didn't say yes to him. There is no way we'd have what we have now. Although the early days were bad days some of the time, they were necessary, and I'm really glad they happened. If we'd got together from the start, it's unlikely we'd still be together, because we weren't compatible back then, and being together wouldn't have given us the opportunities to slowly change each other.
What I've learnt from this whole experience is to never write anyone off in life. You never know what that person might bring to your life if you let them. If you had told me back then, when I was sixteen, this creepy guy who wouldn't leave me alone was eventually going to become my first boyfriend when I was 21, there was no way in hell I'd have believed you. He pissed me off a lot back then, but the ends justifies the means I suppose, even if it was somewhat accidental. If it weren't for my forgiving personality, then things would have turned out a lot differently, and we'd never have discovered how compatible with each other we actually are, or rather, how compatible we became. He eventually got the message that I wasn't interested in him romantically, so we just kept it as friends, got talking and we ended up changing each other (he taught me to be more self-confident, while I showed him how to not consider himself the be all and end all of everything, and we met in the middle). Over years of talking, I eventually actually did get romantic feelings for him because of the ways we changed and how well we got to know each other.
We talk about it sometimes, how scared I am how it could not have happened. The thing is though, I can't say that there isn't someone out there who is even more suited to me than he is, but fate or chance never threw that person my way. If it had happened that way, my boyfriend now could have been that guy who might be more suited but I never found him. I guess you can't miss what you don't have. It's awful to think of my life without him, but I wouldn't miss him because I wouldn't know him.
When we talk about it, he always says it's destiny. I like that idea. We're so suited to each other, and the circumstances that led to us being together were so long, complicated and unusual that it would have been so easy for it not to happen. If you took away just one component then it could have never have happened. I could have stayed pissed at him and never spoken to him again. He could have been more well-adjusted at the time and taken no for an answer, and never spoken again. Even further back than that, I might not have been able to persuade my parents to get the internet (before me and my boyfriend met) and I wouldn't have had an email address for him to contact me with. I had only recently had my first mobile phone then. What if I'd been turned down for the job that gave me the wages to buy that phone?
My boyfriend tells me it was destiny, it had to happen that way. If things had been different, he would have found a way. I can see how people find comfort in religion, because I'm personally terrified over how easily the best thing in my life could have not happened. The idea of fate is comforting to me, because the alternative scares me too much.
Sunday 6 June 2010
Openness
I've had lots of people say they admire me and my blog for how open and honest I am. It sort of feels strange when people say that because I don't really think about it like that. I just seem to come out with all this stuff because it's just what I think.
Throughout my life, I've always been a very quiet person. My brain is always buzzing and I never stop thinking, but it's only in recent years that I've started letting these thoughts come out of my mouth (or fingers, if we're talking about the internet). Especially in secondary school, I never had much confidence in myself, and I think subconsciously I had a fear of saying what I thought because I was scared of making a fool of myself. I was also aware that I didn't quite think or act the same way as everyone else.
It's strange now, because I've had experience of life on the other side, as it were. One of the things I love about my boyfriend, is that he and I are incredibly similar in the way we think. If I'd been born male, I'd be just like him, and the same vice versa. I feel so lucky to have him, because I feel a real mental compatibility with him that I've never felt anything even remotely similar with anyone else I've ever met. I can just tell him anything.
The most wonderful thing about my boyfriend is that he doesn't judge me, or anyone else. I think this is really why I can come out about stuff to him that I would never say to anyone else. It's helped me to come out of my shell and really be myself with him, which I think is incredibly important. In ways, it feels like I'm not being myself around him, because he doesn't get to see the same me that the rest of the world sees, but I think really he's seeing more of the real me. He sees the way I act because of the thoughts in my head, uninhibited. The rest of the world sees the way I act based on so many different things - self-consciousness, feelings for my social setting and the people I'm with, even environmental things like time of day, weather and things like that. All these things can really affect my mood and how much I'm willing to reveal of myself. I'm getting much better lately. Before, I was so reserved it was almost to the point of being anti-social. Things I revealed about myself were on a need-to-know basis.
When I was in year seven, I was actually quite outgoing. I had a reasonable group of friends and I wasn't really afraid to express who I was. However, at the end of year seven one of these friends left to live in another country, and the whole group sort of lost touch with each other. I joined a few more friendship groups after that but I never really had the same kind of connection.
There was one specific occasion I remember when I was doing my A-Levels. In one of my classes there was one guy who was a proper lad. He was really outgoing and nothing fazed him. One lesson, he randomly got an erection, and he announced it to the entire class. Shock, laughter etc., but nothing compared to the shock and laughter when I said he didn't need to tell everyone. It was kind of embarrassing, and they were all shocked that I didn't have much of a problem with him having an erection, just the fact he told us all. I wished I hadn't said it, and a while later I sort of thought "Okay, maybe it was a bit gross", but I look back on it now and I don't really think that at all. My issue really was that he announced it to the whole class. The morality or whatever you want to call it of getting an erection in a lesson can be debated by other people, but honestly, if he hadn't announced it, nobody would have known. I sit at work, rating customers in my mind (both male and female) and thinking about whether I'd do them, comparing my boobs to the boobs of other women and all sorts like that. It feels strange me admitting that because it feels really unprofessional, but the fact is that it's all in my mind. I'm never going to admit what I'm thinking to the person or any other person, and I'm never going to act on any of these thoughts, so what's the harm? I know my unease at admitting that comes from other people who believe there is harm in it.
I admit there are sides of me that my boyfriend probably doesn't see as much, or at all, but I think it's only natural. One time, I randomly decided to do a full blown song and dance performance to the opening song of Repo! The Genetic Opera for them. She commented after (once I'd run out of breath and needed a drink) that I'd never do that in front of my boyfriend. To a certain extent, she's right. However, I don't think it's that I wouldn't, it's more than I don't. I'm in such a loved up mood when I'm with him, I don't feel the urge to go into crazy mode. As we've been together longer, he has been getting to see a little bit more of my crazy side, and I suspect that when we're eventually living together, he'll see alot more of the crazy side to me - the side that likes to randomly sing and dance, I talk to myself and if an awesome song comes on that I like, I won't dance, but I'll run around the place.
As well as my boyfriend, I think I also have the internet to thank for my confidence and openness, although my boyfriend kind of falls under that heading too. It's really hard to imagine now, but when I was growing up, we didn't have the internet. Hardly anyone did. Those who did had dialup. There was no Facebook or anything like that. My first venture onto the internet was a Final Fantasy forum when I was in year ten and I had no proper friends (Pokemon had gone out of fashion and the group of friends I joined after that started sneaking out of school for fags and I didn't wish to join them). It was amazing. I loved being able to talk about whatever I wanted with all these random people. It was the first time I had the internet anonymity and there wasn't the confidence or self-consciousness barrier there was with the rest of my life.
I'm hugely grateful to the existence of the internet, as it ultimately led to me and my boyfriend getting together. It really couldn't have happened otherwise. Even if we had been meeting up/texting on a regular basis, as mentioned before, I was really quiet back in the day, and I didn't tell people very much. There's no way we could have gotten to know each other on the level we have if it weren't for the internet. Even if you strip away the anonymity, there's still the removal somewhat from a real social setting. They say the internet these days is reducing peoples' ability to socialise in real life. I can see that to a certain extent, but in another sense, for those people who already can't socialise IRL anyway, it can be a stepping stone to getting to know someone and then giving you the confidence to talk to them in person later on. Most of what I know about my boyfriend, I found out on MSN. Even now, I really value MSN conversations. We talk about all sorts of crap when we're lying in bed together, but you still can't beat the randomness and spontaneity of an MSN conversation. Plus, MSN doesn't leave me high with hormones and unable to hold a conversation that isn't about how much I love him! Sometimes, I think that even when we're living together, we're going to have to still have MSN conversations. I'd miss having them too much!
Despite the advantages the internet gives you in any conversation, I still don't feel I've really taken them on board and actually taken advantage of them. I often tend to not think before I say things, meaning I end up saying things that were perhaps best left unsaid. Things usually seem so innocent in my head, but they end up coming out wrong, or other people take them differently to the way I had intended them. Despite the naughtiness of this blog, I'm really an innocent person at heart!
Anyway, there was a point to this post. I ended up going off on a tangent. :P
My point was, how much I appreciate how open I can be with my boyfriend. It doesn't feel weird for me to tell him even the most sensitive stuff. He's the only person I've ever cried in front of without feeling like a complete prat. I really can tell him anything.
I see other couples, both in real life and people from the internet, and it seems to be a completely different story. Relationships seem to be like treading on eggshells (or whatever that saying is) for other people. I've seen other couples absolutely distraught when one of them reveals that they're not completely straight. I told my boyfriend I was bi-curious and we had a long discussion about how awesome it would be if I had a girlfriend. There is no sexual act I could really suggest that I wanted to try that would get a negative reaction, where I've seen other couples get freaked out at the suggestion of light bondage. I'm not sure what I could actually do to get a negative reaction out of him. Even when I'm hormonal or start getting pissy with him, he's completely accepting and understanding. Recently, it occurred to me that I should probably ask if he's okay with me divulging all these details of our sex lives together, and he told me that it wouldn't be okay if I WASN'T writing this stuff.
I love him to pieces. I want to spend the rest of my life with him, and not just because I love him. I couldn't handle anyone else. He's set the bar so high, no other boyfriend could compare. I couldn't deal with a boyfriend where I had to watch and consider what I was saying all the time. I couldn't be with someone where I couldn't say what I thought without worrying about how they'd react to it. I'm extremely lucky that I found someone so un-judging and accepting of me first go.
Throughout my life, I've always been a very quiet person. My brain is always buzzing and I never stop thinking, but it's only in recent years that I've started letting these thoughts come out of my mouth (or fingers, if we're talking about the internet). Especially in secondary school, I never had much confidence in myself, and I think subconsciously I had a fear of saying what I thought because I was scared of making a fool of myself. I was also aware that I didn't quite think or act the same way as everyone else.
It's strange now, because I've had experience of life on the other side, as it were. One of the things I love about my boyfriend, is that he and I are incredibly similar in the way we think. If I'd been born male, I'd be just like him, and the same vice versa. I feel so lucky to have him, because I feel a real mental compatibility with him that I've never felt anything even remotely similar with anyone else I've ever met. I can just tell him anything.
The most wonderful thing about my boyfriend is that he doesn't judge me, or anyone else. I think this is really why I can come out about stuff to him that I would never say to anyone else. It's helped me to come out of my shell and really be myself with him, which I think is incredibly important. In ways, it feels like I'm not being myself around him, because he doesn't get to see the same me that the rest of the world sees, but I think really he's seeing more of the real me. He sees the way I act because of the thoughts in my head, uninhibited. The rest of the world sees the way I act based on so many different things - self-consciousness, feelings for my social setting and the people I'm with, even environmental things like time of day, weather and things like that. All these things can really affect my mood and how much I'm willing to reveal of myself. I'm getting much better lately. Before, I was so reserved it was almost to the point of being anti-social. Things I revealed about myself were on a need-to-know basis.
When I was in year seven, I was actually quite outgoing. I had a reasonable group of friends and I wasn't really afraid to express who I was. However, at the end of year seven one of these friends left to live in another country, and the whole group sort of lost touch with each other. I joined a few more friendship groups after that but I never really had the same kind of connection.
There was one specific occasion I remember when I was doing my A-Levels. In one of my classes there was one guy who was a proper lad. He was really outgoing and nothing fazed him. One lesson, he randomly got an erection, and he announced it to the entire class. Shock, laughter etc., but nothing compared to the shock and laughter when I said he didn't need to tell everyone. It was kind of embarrassing, and they were all shocked that I didn't have much of a problem with him having an erection, just the fact he told us all. I wished I hadn't said it, and a while later I sort of thought "Okay, maybe it was a bit gross", but I look back on it now and I don't really think that at all. My issue really was that he announced it to the whole class. The morality or whatever you want to call it of getting an erection in a lesson can be debated by other people, but honestly, if he hadn't announced it, nobody would have known. I sit at work, rating customers in my mind (both male and female) and thinking about whether I'd do them, comparing my boobs to the boobs of other women and all sorts like that. It feels strange me admitting that because it feels really unprofessional, but the fact is that it's all in my mind. I'm never going to admit what I'm thinking to the person or any other person, and I'm never going to act on any of these thoughts, so what's the harm? I know my unease at admitting that comes from other people who believe there is harm in it.
I admit there are sides of me that my boyfriend probably doesn't see as much, or at all, but I think it's only natural. One time, I randomly decided to do a full blown song and dance performance to the opening song of Repo! The Genetic Opera for them. She commented after (once I'd run out of breath and needed a drink) that I'd never do that in front of my boyfriend. To a certain extent, she's right. However, I don't think it's that I wouldn't, it's more than I don't. I'm in such a loved up mood when I'm with him, I don't feel the urge to go into crazy mode. As we've been together longer, he has been getting to see a little bit more of my crazy side, and I suspect that when we're eventually living together, he'll see alot more of the crazy side to me - the side that likes to randomly sing and dance, I talk to myself and if an awesome song comes on that I like, I won't dance, but I'll run around the place.
As well as my boyfriend, I think I also have the internet to thank for my confidence and openness, although my boyfriend kind of falls under that heading too. It's really hard to imagine now, but when I was growing up, we didn't have the internet. Hardly anyone did. Those who did had dialup. There was no Facebook or anything like that. My first venture onto the internet was a Final Fantasy forum when I was in year ten and I had no proper friends (Pokemon had gone out of fashion and the group of friends I joined after that started sneaking out of school for fags and I didn't wish to join them). It was amazing. I loved being able to talk about whatever I wanted with all these random people. It was the first time I had the internet anonymity and there wasn't the confidence or self-consciousness barrier there was with the rest of my life.
I'm hugely grateful to the existence of the internet, as it ultimately led to me and my boyfriend getting together. It really couldn't have happened otherwise. Even if we had been meeting up/texting on a regular basis, as mentioned before, I was really quiet back in the day, and I didn't tell people very much. There's no way we could have gotten to know each other on the level we have if it weren't for the internet. Even if you strip away the anonymity, there's still the removal somewhat from a real social setting. They say the internet these days is reducing peoples' ability to socialise in real life. I can see that to a certain extent, but in another sense, for those people who already can't socialise IRL anyway, it can be a stepping stone to getting to know someone and then giving you the confidence to talk to them in person later on. Most of what I know about my boyfriend, I found out on MSN. Even now, I really value MSN conversations. We talk about all sorts of crap when we're lying in bed together, but you still can't beat the randomness and spontaneity of an MSN conversation. Plus, MSN doesn't leave me high with hormones and unable to hold a conversation that isn't about how much I love him! Sometimes, I think that even when we're living together, we're going to have to still have MSN conversations. I'd miss having them too much!
Despite the advantages the internet gives you in any conversation, I still don't feel I've really taken them on board and actually taken advantage of them. I often tend to not think before I say things, meaning I end up saying things that were perhaps best left unsaid. Things usually seem so innocent in my head, but they end up coming out wrong, or other people take them differently to the way I had intended them. Despite the naughtiness of this blog, I'm really an innocent person at heart!
Anyway, there was a point to this post. I ended up going off on a tangent. :P
My point was, how much I appreciate how open I can be with my boyfriend. It doesn't feel weird for me to tell him even the most sensitive stuff. He's the only person I've ever cried in front of without feeling like a complete prat. I really can tell him anything.
I see other couples, both in real life and people from the internet, and it seems to be a completely different story. Relationships seem to be like treading on eggshells (or whatever that saying is) for other people. I've seen other couples absolutely distraught when one of them reveals that they're not completely straight. I told my boyfriend I was bi-curious and we had a long discussion about how awesome it would be if I had a girlfriend. There is no sexual act I could really suggest that I wanted to try that would get a negative reaction, where I've seen other couples get freaked out at the suggestion of light bondage. I'm not sure what I could actually do to get a negative reaction out of him. Even when I'm hormonal or start getting pissy with him, he's completely accepting and understanding. Recently, it occurred to me that I should probably ask if he's okay with me divulging all these details of our sex lives together, and he told me that it wouldn't be okay if I WASN'T writing this stuff.
I love him to pieces. I want to spend the rest of my life with him, and not just because I love him. I couldn't handle anyone else. He's set the bar so high, no other boyfriend could compare. I couldn't deal with a boyfriend where I had to watch and consider what I was saying all the time. I couldn't be with someone where I couldn't say what I thought without worrying about how they'd react to it. I'm extremely lucky that I found someone so un-judging and accepting of me first go.
You are visitor no:
