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.