Archive for the ‘Emeebee’ Category

The Final Close Encounter With Emeebee

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

Looking backward from 2010-06-13 to 1994-01-10.

I Got the Date 

[Emeebee] agreed to my terms; sort of.  Details on that debate to come.  Yet a premonition haunted me in the days prior, that this would be our last real date unless I could pull off something momentous to turn her around.  Though I thought my arguments as sound and persuasive as possible, she was apparently not persuaded.  The conditions she stipulated before she’d agree to this meeting were proof of that; namely that I not pressure her for further encounters, and that I ‘live in the moment’ for this one.

Until recently, getting this beautiful woman into bed had never been difficult.  Indeed, we shared her full-sized sleeping platform just two weeks after meeting for the first time.  She required little preamble or priming (wining and dining), and to me, this was a great thing.  I never thought her sluttish or whorish for the quick ramp-up, and so, never held this against her.  Nor did I feel that our current problems were because we “rushed in” too fast.  The challenging issues that arose to dog us in the end resulted from vast differences in our values; discrepancies that existed long before we ever met, and which would remain even if we’d taken years to get to know each other before getting sexual.  Turning promptly sexual did not cause our problems.  But it did quickly reveal gaping disparities; allowing us to learn early on that we’d probably not get along very well over the long term.  Indeed, protracted courtships generally do not resolve such basic differences, and in fact, can delay discovering them.  So I’m glad we took it fast. 

But one might think that I used manipulative tactics to get her allow me to undress her so quickly.  But I didn’t, because no only would I have declined such behavior, but there was no need for it. 

Certainly, there was nothing covert or underhanded in my approach, because my conscience would not allow me to mislead her.  So all I did was to be gently honest early on about my desires; those being that I found her intensely appealing.  I’ve never liked hiding, exaggerating, or downplaying my interest in a lady, and always felt that if she’s at least as attracted to me as I am to her, then she’d happily accept an early expression of interest in intimacy from me.  Emeebee bore this out.  In point of fact, I just did what my heart said to do, and avoided anything that my conscience objected to.  I went with the flow as it unfolded, and this particular flow led quite directly and rapidly to the two of us, enjoying each other unclothed. 

I didn’t voice my physical attraction with words so much as with my eyes, and eventually my hands; I looked her up and down constantly on the first few minutes of our first date at Ruby Tuesday’s.  But she didn’t seem to mind.  In fact, she liked my interest and never appeared to be intimidated or otherwise put off by it in any way.  This early and subtle but definite mutual understanding set the tone for much of the rest of our romance.  It enabled us to connect immediately, and enjoy each other’s bodies throughout our all-too-short involvement.  I valued the notion that she did not make me “work for it” much.  Unlike fellows who deem ladies as sluttish whores for allowing sexual relationships to begin so fast, I thought this one of [Emeebee’s] most intriguing assets. To me, it meant that she knew what she wanted, could recognize it quickly, and thus not require much time to get to the fun stuff.    

However after a few weeks of pleasurable sins in the dark, things went downhill fast; as the first infrequent arguments inclined throughout late December, into routine verbal altercations; rising in fiery intensity to a crescendo that never really calmed down again until we’d gone several months after this without talking to each other.  Eventually, heated contention came to characterize our relationship more so than any other passions; for because in the final few weeks, we could have nary date without skirmishing. 

Once we got a few nasty verbal battles under our belts, her visits decreased and she showed much reluctance to head for the bedroom when she did come.  So, by the time this encounter came about, we hadn’t seen each other since New Years day, some ten day earlier.  So while I was tickled and silently hopeful that her visit this evening might be a positive turning point for us, I also suspected that this would likely be it; our last time together in the bedroom.

In light of our recent history of quarrelling, her surprisingly congenial attitude on this day of January 10th, 1994 would not last long I feared; for we’d been fighting so much lately that avoiding new arguments had become monumentally difficult.  All she had to do was look away at the wrong time during a discussion.  All I needed to do was ask her for a kiss or try to hold her hand in public, or suggest in any way that I desired a future with her.  Every we exchanged had to be carefully measured because if either of us slipped up as we so often tended to do, the fights would begin anew.  I rushed to schedule this date; to occur as soon as possible. 

She agreed to visit without all the griping about having to do all the driving necessary to make our dating feasible.  In return, I contracted to not ask her for future dates or say anything that telegraphed my desire for any sort of future with her beyond this night.  Neither of us would discuss our hopes, or expectations, or the rich history of slights we’d accumulated against each other over the Christmas holiday.  This would just be two people coming close and enjoying each other’s present-day company; no frets about our prospects, and no grudges about the past. 

We’d have a no-strings arrangement this time, and though this went against so much of what I believed a healthy relationship should be, I embraced it as best I could.  After all, agreeing to her terms meant that I’d get to see her again and perhaps get her into my king-sized waterbed once more.  But more importantly, it also meant that I’d have another chance to “work on her” and perhaps persuade her to change her mind about dating others while we slept together. 

I hated her wish to date multiple guys because it suggested that she deemed me inadequate to see exclusively. If she was running around I reasoned, her odds of finding another and then disappear, were high.  I thought her quite beautiful and was sure that most other guys would too, and seek her in droves accordingly.  I wished neither to share her, nor risk losing her. 

To this point, she’d adamantly defended her desire to “date around,” and maybe this should have clued me in long before it did, that she would likely never love me.  I suspected this to be the case since our first blow-up a week before Christmas.  But I wanted her so much that I refused to accept the notion as a likely possibility.  I wished not to give up on her or retreat in any degree, because potentially, she meant the end of my years of chronic loneliness and despair.  If we could somehow make this work, I’d gain a stunning woman to share my home with eventually, and gain some real purpose for all those years of extra hours I was putting into my job.  The idea of her clothes hanging in my closet alongside mine some day fired many a dream of the two of us building a life together there on Copper Creek Court, and I just could not let that go.  But with struggle, I would keep my mouth shut about it for a while; though I’ve always been a heart-on-the-sleeve sort of guy.  I’ve never believed in utilizing omission through silence for strategic gain.  But if doing so could win this lady’s heart, I’d try it. Indeed, I’d have tried most anything.  

She said often that if I didn’t so regularly remind her of how much I wanted her, that she might come to want me like that too; though she could make no guarantees.  But for much of my dating life, I alleged that the more I said it, the more that each lady I desired would love me.  Indeed, I’d often heard ladies complaining to one another that their men hurt them so much because they said so little, and I was bound and determined not to be like those quietly care-free fellows.  Women would love me by god, because through my words, they’d always be sure how much I loved them, and I’d give them no reason to fear loving me.  There would never be any doubt about my always-honorable intensions. 

This would surely get me ahead because it seemed that a woman’s greatest fear in letting her guard down with a fellow and falling in love, was her doubt about the sincerity of his affection.  So I figured that the more often I reassured her verbally that my passions indeed ran very deep, the sooner she’d succumb, and express hers as well. 

In fact, strangely and arrogantly, I deemed [Emeebee’s] worries about the real depth of my love to be the only relevant reasons for her reserve.  It couldn’t possibly be that she felt no vulnerability to me that was worth protecting.  I assumed blindly that her fondness for me was certain, that she was just hiding it to protect herself, and that all that stood between us living happily ever after were these unfounded fears.  Get rid of these I thought, and we’d be good to go for a life of unbounded joys of merging.  All I’d have to do to eliminate her insecurities was to let her know enough times that I wanted her. 

So NOT speaking my passions challenged me most vigorously, because while I wanted to be open and completely truthful, that’s not what she sought.  So after nearly a month of fighting, I admitted to myself that if I was to stubbornly continue my campaign to win her over in this way, I’d certainly wind up losing her.  So, at least for this date, I opted to hide the real me just to see if she might be right.  Maybe a more indirect approach would persuade her to let go and fall, and though I knew in my heart that this would never come to pass, I wanted to believe so badly that it would, that I managed to keep mum for the entire night.  I neither cried, made demands, coaxed, nor otherwise battled for her to reveal her love.  I was good; just as she’d requested.

The Date Begins   

She arrived at around 7:00 PM while I was heating up our dinner in the oven, which consisted of chicken pot pies, fruit cup, and ice cold milk.  We didn’t talk much during the meal.  I didn’t want to talk, and neither did she.  I asked how her schooling was going and what she’d been up to since New Years day.  But she only provided one and two syllable answers:  Fine.  Okay.  Pretty good.  Not bad. Not much.  Nothing.  Indeed, our non verbal communications in the bedroom were far more extensive and pleasing than these terse exchanges.

I wanted to get the real show underway.  So I didn’t even wash the dishes after we finished eating; opting instead to clean them the next day.  Right then, getting physical was foremost on my mind because when we did, the pain of our differences all but disappeared, and I was feeling a lot of that pain at that time.  Indeed so far in the new year, the sting of our separateness only subsided when I slept.    It followed me to work, sapping my ability to concentrate on important tasks, and it forced me to go to bed very early each night.  Sometimes, it was lights out at 7:00 PM, because I just didn’t want to stay awake; tormented as I was by my despair, loneliness, and anger.   

[Emeebee] and I might not have been able to relate on much else.  But while lying next to each other with bare skin touching bare skin and cheek rubbing cheek, this corporeal connection was potently reassuring.  Our differences outside the bedroom hurt so much I recon, because they posed a serious threat to our time in the bedroom.  The more we fought, the more it hurt, because the less likely it would be that we’d spend as much time together, in the buff.  But when we actually were in the buff, there was no pain of separation because we weren’t separate then; we were together.  In the bedroom therefore, the bickering had no teeth because its threat of future elongated separation didn’t mean much while we lay there naked, holding each other tight. 

We might not agree on how much driving she should do to facilitate our relationship, or how much she should help me cope in the fully-sighted world.  Plus, I would never forgive her for harboring that mean spirit that possessed her during the trip back to Dayton or how she behaved during her visit to my hometown. 

But in her arms, the past mattered not.  I didn’t care what she had done while she loved me because the allure of her nakedness smoothed over any nasty edges.  So I could easily forget yesterday’s coldness as long as she was being warm today.  Her extreme beauty, particularly when she directed her tender affections at me, enabled me to put her history aside most any time we occupied the same bed at the same time.  Of course however, it also intensified the loneliness and my sense of abandonment when we were apart. Yet, I didn’t care.  Irrationally I admit, I didn’t care, because the joys of the good times made the sorrows of the bad times worth enduring; at least for a little while. 

I would not be placated until we got through this dinner formality, and began in earnest the hand and body holding that was ultimately the only good part of our relationship left to enjoy.  

Off to the Bedroom

I eagerly helped her undress as we talked about our respective days at work; untying her white sneakers and taking off her socks for her, unbuttoning her blouse and jeans, and then acting as a clothes rack as she draped her garments over my right arm after we’d slid them off.  Though we rarely cooperated about anything these days, we still worked well together in the joint effort of stripping each other down.  Watching the tops of her pants and the dangling ends of her belt descend slowly past her thighs and knees, and then accumulate on the floor beneath her calves and around her soft ankles still accelerated my heart.  Any inclination I might have had to argue about anything was erased by this exquisite and tantalizing view. 

I marveled at her beauty, and everything about this picture of her sitting on the edge of my waterbed, bathed in the dimmed mirror light from the dresser nearby, was enticing, and matched in nearly every detail my most erotic fantasies.  She looked torturously sexy. 

Yet though this vision shortened my breathing and brought the sound of my heart beating to my ears a little, I felt only slight warmth in my loins.  As with [Dawn] so many years earlier during my first pillow kiss, complete arousal would not come; though unlike in [Dawn’s] case, [Emeebee] and I shared an admittedly short but also rich history of intense eroticism.  Since we started dating nearly two months earlier, [Emeebee] and I enjoyed several highly fulfilling encounters in my bedroom. 

But on this night, horniness eluded me; for by that time, a lot of nasty water had passed under our bridge since our first encounter the week of Thanksgiving, 1993.  Unfortunately, in addition to our exhilarating sexual history, we now had a dubious record of slights, emotional neglect, resentment, and anger. 

I had not forgiven [Emeebee] for how she treated me on the drive back to Dayton two weeks earlier, and the way she left me alone once we got there.    Indeed, I agreed to end my vacation with my family a few days before New Years and return to Ohio, because I thought that the two of us would spend some significant time together repairing our damaged relationship.  But as it turned out, we saw each other not at all in the three days between December 28th and the 31st; [Emeebee] had too many other things to do to meet with me, she said.  So I was left for three days, alone, regretting that I had not remained at home with my sisters to ring in 1994.  Then, there was New Years Eve and her refusal to drive me home though I had become quite sick with a cold and fever as the celebration progressed.  Finally, her wish to date others clearly signaled that she did not consider me even close to an ideal lover. 

This was the hardest truth of all to face because the constant and prominent threat that she’d probably be gone tomorrow scared me.  It numbed my physical responses I suspect, because it made relaxing and letting go in her arms impossible.  So while I could look at her, and emotionally as well as intellectually recognize her stunning loveliness, I could not immerse myself in it physically.  Though she looked every bit the part of a perfect-10 seductress, I could not be seduced. 

As stubborn as each of us was, I feared that our underlying issues would never get resolved.  These created a then-chronic negative tension that repressed me; keeping me limp and detached physically from [Emeebee]; her beauty did not overcome this acute impotence.  This accordingly, would likely remain. As long as there was tension, I’d never react sexually to her beauty, and so, never get to fully enjoy it even though I did find emotional peace when she was near. 

Indeed, I didn’t choose to be without sensation.  In fact, in spite of it all, I truly wanted to find erotic bliss in her arms, and maybe even enjoy an orgasm at her hands.  So I wished to (at least temporarily) forget all that she had failed to do to make me believe it safe to love her fully. 

But I couldn’t put her recent abandon out of my mind. In fact, whenever I’d perceive even the smallest spark of sexual desire, my conscience would immediately follow up with a dissenting voice.  “You can’t be with her like this,” it warned, “because she doesn’t love you.  Period!”  With rapid effectiveness, this internal scolding extinguished all sparks that evening.   So I never did get aroused, though I thought [Emeebee] to be among the most beautiful women there were.  Yet while I knew that there were none better looking, I also realized that further involving myself with her would compromise my values greatly.  Though she was among the best there was, I’d nonetheless be settling if I did. 

Then, as today, I was bad at settling; opting instead for either the best I could get, or doing without entirely.  Someone better than nothing but not the best just has just never been good enough.  True. [Emeebee] was among the best physically.  But I could not ignore her gaping lack of love for me; as she made it apparent with most every word and touch.  Even the just-going-through-the-motions way she held me, telegraphed that she felt that she could do much better than I, and wanted to.  While in some of my life, I’ve struggled with the effects of low self-esteem, I’ve generally avoided them when it comes to romantic relationships; at least as an adult.  Since [First Love] and all those teenage years of hurt because she did not love me back, I’ve generally been able to sidestep similar situations.  Or, if not sidestep them, then at least, to recognize them early on as dead ends, and get out before too many months pass. Though I desperately wished things to be different with [Emeebee], I knew deep inside that this association was but another dead end, and thus I could not continue the work of improving it.  So on some level, I realized that this was it; that this would probably be the last time I’d ever see her in the buff.  Given all our problems, any hopes I’d harbored in December about a long-term future with her were gone.  Yep.  This would probably be it.

I did not trust [Emeebee] to adequately and consistently give priority to meeting my needs emotionally and sexually.  So a part of me feared being with her this way on this occasion.  But I also appreciated the rarity of bedding a woman as gorgeous as she.  So I figured that it would be quite some time, if ever in fact, that I’d have the privilege of hosting another. So, I’d best enjoy this one as much as I could.  Thus, I continued with this encounter though the physical stimulation was missing. 

She wondered aloud why I wanted her to stay when I felt virtually nothing sexually. I was mad at her, yes, and since we’d agreed not to discuss our contentious issues this night, this anger was not dispelled. But I admired and adored her nakedness so much that it encouraged me to forget for a bit.  I realized that in days to come, I’d be crying for more of this scene, and I hoped I could head off at least a little of that future sadness by fully indulging now, while I had the chance.  While I could no longer appreciate her erotically as she lay beneath me, I knew I would miss this in the days to come, once she was gone. Thus, I had to “get it while I could,” hoping that an extra big fill of her now would ease the intimacy starvation that I’d experience when doing without her later.   

She crawled into my bed then, wearing only her underpants, and like a dog, I followed, and then savored her. 

I found her eyes and gazed into them for what seemed like a half-hour, noting the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, her gentle heartbeat, her scent, and her moist breath as it passed my cheeks and fogged up my glasses. 

We didn’t kiss much these days.  But for a second, I wanted to as I stared at her pink lips; but resisted to avoid offending her.  Though she was now almost completely exposed and laying with me, a kiss to her lips ironically, seemed highly inappropriate.  But I didn’t mind really; just grateful that she had decided to come here at all. 

Our conversation stopped as I slid her silk underwear her underwear past her calves, then her ankles.  Finally, I lifted the panties away from her feet and beheld her.  She rested then, while I undressed, content with the silence and with being naked.  No modesty.  She liked being on display.  It turned her on, and as I moved my eyes over her long and slim body, her breathing got heavier. 

She was getting aroused, and this emboldened me.   So I decided to kiss her after all.  No, she did not turn away.  In fact, she moved closer to meet me.  It was wonderful; her lips, warm and wet, actively accommodating mine and her excitement growing by the minute.  Apparently, she too could set aside our dissimilarities long enough to fully enjoy our animal-like oneness.  I regretted though, that I could not fully, although I did like the intimacy.  Though the water was not as pure as I would have liked, drinking it did quench my thirst; a thirst that I would all too quickly develop again shortly after her departure. 

After a few minutes of lip locking, I moved down to her neck without lifting my lips from her fair and soft skin.  I located each of her carotid arteries by way of their pulsating warmth, and gently kissed and caressed each one.  I found the spots on her neck where she frequently put perfume.  How uniquely her these aromas were.  She moaned a little as I nibbled at her ear lobes and blew some of my air into her ears.  I dared not whisper, “I love you,” though I did feel an urge to say it. Instead, I just softly spoke her name a few times, and then began an inch-by-inch exploration of her body with my right hand while stroking her hair with my left.

I took in every detail of her face, hair, and neck, deeply breathing in her feminine aroma, hoping somehow to retain a lasting trace of her that might comfort me in the weeks to come.   She was beautiful, hands down, and at this point, she represented my best game ever; for I’d never been with a lady as physically perfect as [Emeebee].  Not even [First Love] rivaled her because at five feet ten inches tall and weighing 130 pounds, [Emeebee] was the very sort of statuesque, tall, and thin lady I’d come to desire the most.  Physically at least, [Emeebee] was second to none. 

My right hand then paused on her small yet fascinating breasts that reminded me of [First Love’s].  [First Love] was thin and fair, and small-breasted as well.  But she was also eight inches shorter than [Emeebee].  I thought nothing of this before meeting [Emeebee]. Indeed, until [Emeebee] came along, [First Love] was my standard of excellence in beauty; she was the yardstick.  But this was because I hadn’t experienced any women more attractive to me, before falling for [First Love].  But [Emeebee] stole top billing from [First Love], and though this recent relationship had run afoul, I nonetheless began silently comparing new women to [Emeebee] rather than [First Love].  Further, though [Emeebee] and I had a painful time of it, the [Emeebee] experience allowed me to finally lose my love for [First Love] for good after some twenty-one years, because among other reasons, it altered my romantic standards.  Or at least, it helped me to more fully discover what my real standards were. 

Then, my hand lighted on her flat and quivering tummy and I traced circles around her belly button with my index finger; lightly combing the fine hairs there with my fingernail.  She quivered more at this, and she whispered slowly, “yes, yes!”  I quivered too; for though I was still not aroused, I knew this scene to be among life’s greatest blessings given how rarely it happened to me, and how emotionally satiating it was. 

There are many more joys when I lay with a naked, beautiful woman than just the getting hard.  There was also the thrill of shattering a sort of glass ceiling as well.  Consider that during young adulthood, I’d often worried that I’d never experience a “perfect ten,” and that I’d forever be consigned to sixes and sevens, or eights at best.  But [Emeebee] was a high nine and in fact, may indeed have been a ten had we not disagreed so often on so many fundamental tenants of successful relating.  Yet here she was, sharing my bed and her body too.  Wow!  In spite of it all, she was by far the lady who most closely resembled the gorgeous girls in my fantasies. 

Thus, a sense of profound relief flooded me every time we met like this.  Why?  Because I knew that I’d never again have to fear living my entire life without knowing what loving the best women for me is really like.  Indeed, the best is by no means overrated.  For the first time ever, an intimate encounter duplicated and even surpassed the depths of pleasure that heretofore, I’d only experienced in daydreams.  So though I might not have been very horny, I immensely enjoyed the encounter just the same. 

My hand then crisscrossed her abdomen, and the hair down there thickened as I zeroed in on the center of her sexuality, and a few goose bumps appeared besides.  Occasionally, she’d hold her breath in anticipation of where I might touch next, and how.  Then, she’d arch her back to push against my hand with her middle.  She was enjoying herself, and I enjoyed helping her to do that. 

Now [Emeebee] and I had been to bed several times before.  But the novelty of lying with such a long and thin goddess never wore off.  In spite of our current problems, I was just as eager to get her into my room this time as I’d been the first.  So eager I was that though not horny, I was still appalled at the thought of losing her and never being able to sample her in this way again.  So while I still had her, I determined to live out all my fantasies.  Any scenario that I’d ever derived while masturbating alone, I wished to try out for real with her.  This was it after all, and if I was ever going to know the sorts of physical exchanges that heretofore I’d only imagined, this would be the time to try them.  

I finally arrived, and [Emeebee’s] moaning became a mixture of pleasure and impatience as well; as if she was saying, “I’m really enjoying what you’re doing.  But get on with it already!”  She was quite moist, and it wouldn’t take much effort therefore, to carry her over the top.  I liked this.  I liked seeing that I could do something that pleased her so much when in so many ways outside of this special space, she found me lacking.  The bedroom was at last the only place that [Emeebee] really appreciated and respected me. 

Accordingly, I worked her until my wrist hurt; until she came.  Her intense thrill at my touch confused me though.  I wondered how she could stand so steadfastly against building a loving relationship with me when, at least here, I satisfied her so much.  Though she may have thought that our sex was great, it did not impress her enough to convince her to be my exclusive significant other. 

Then, I shyly looked longingly at her feet, wishing to do a little foot worship.  “It’s okay,” she said compassionately.  “Go ahead.  It won’t bother me.”  Indeed, she probably resisted completely falling for me because she thought it strange that I liked massaging and kissing her feet.  Now as relationships go, there’s typically not a single reason why they succeed or fail.  But the fact that she often commented about how strange and dysfunctional my fetish was, left no doubt that it weighted heavily in any choices she made where the two of us were concerned.  Unfortunately, we never discussed her hang-ups in detail. 

The Wrap Up

So, we lay together for an hour or two talking about this and that, until she grew bored, got dressed, checked her watch, and left hurriedly.  Sadly, not only was this my last physical encounter with her, but it would turn out to be the last time that any woman ever slept with me in the waterbed.  All told, I only entertained my girls in it a dozen times or less in the entire fourteen years I owned the thing; though when I purchased it, I’d envisioned sharing it most every night.  It would not be until many years later that I finally realized just how profoundly it this last date with [Emeebee] actually was. 

She moved to the edge of the bed, stirring up the water inside the mattress; making it softly slosh around. She slowly threw her legs over the padded side rails and then stood up.  As she fumbled with her clothes that I’d piled in a small heap on the floor earlier, the certainty that this would be the last time we’d see each other like this burst into my consciousness. 

Strangely though, as much as I loved her, I did not feel sad about the inevitable prospect of losing her.  That wouldn’t come until a couple days after she left.  But at the moment, though I knew for sure that this was it, I felt neither happy nor sad; for this evening had quenched (at least temporarily) my thirst for her.  As long as she was still physically close, I could still reach and touch her and smell her scent on my clothes and pillows.  So the reality that she was already gone was easy to ignore. 

Plus, with her still so close by and the memory of what we’d just finished still fresh in my mind, her upcoming absence didn’t matter so much.  It was hard to fully miss her while I’d just experienced her completely and in abundance.  I knew I would long for her profoundly once my love thirst returned; as it surely would in the coming days.  But this night’s dose of [Emeebee] had completely filled me up and left me wanting for nothing; neither physically nor emotionally. 

Leaving the fountain in a desert oasis is easy once you’ve drunk so much water that you get sick.  But a day or two back out in that dry, hot, and relentless sunshine and you’ll long for that fountain again.  The same occurred with [Emeebee].  While I knew that I’d cry for her a lot in the coming weeks, no tears came on this evening as I basked in the afterglow of our physical indulgence.  I felt no sign of the loneliness to come as I watched her put on her socks; though I knew my thirst for her would indeed soon return.  But at that instant, it was nowhere to be found; for she had completely satiated it by allowing me to make her feel good. 

But sooner than I expected, glimmers of the full reality of our breakup intruded.  As she dressed, she matter-of-factly suggested that I attend Group Interaction (a local singles group), and that she was going to start going again the following weekend herself.  Now I started hurting, and so resented her upper hand.  I hated her selfishness and how yet again, I’d totally fallen for someone who could not return my love; someone who had not fallen for me.  Why did it always seem that the girls I desired most, wanted me the least? 

Eventually, I would be happier without her; especially with the warmth I’d loved from her in our early dates had all but gone.  In fact, once she emerged from the covers, the coldness that so characterized her attitude lately, returned in full force.  As proof of that, she mentioned her plans to meet other guys, while my feelings for her were still so strong and raw.  She could not be talked out of going; dead set on attending the Friday night gatherings, and I could do anything to stop her. The power was clearly hers.  

Her insistence on dating around brought back that familiar old pain of loss and grief that I’d come to know so well, in the aftermath of [First Love].  Back in the fall of 1980, when [First Love] called it quits with me, I promised myself profusely that I’d never get into these dead-end emotional quagmires again with women.  Yet here I was, caught yet again some fourteen years later, in another dismal letdown every bit as cruel; maybe even more so. Though I’d managed to avoid this worst sort of rejection for over a decade, I felt like a fool for having allowed this to occur a second time. 

I wondered what the matter with me was, that not only had I failed to win her heart, but also, I didn’t see earlier that I had in fact lost her heart already.  Well, actually, I’m stating the facts with excess optimism.  The truth is that I never had her heart to begin with.  She was never really into me, and sometimes she’d gently say that in not-so-many words.  Once, instead of saying that she loved me as we held each other on another intimate occasion, she said, “I have love flowing in my blood.”  Then, when I said back, “I love you too,” she argued that that was not what she meant.  Who does that?  But I ignored this and other foretelling statements from her; hoping that she’d change her mind once she got to know me better.  Well, she didn’t; but I changed mine.  I fell in love, and forgetting all her prior notice, I wondered what was wrong with her too, and came up with a plethora of [Emeebee] blame in answer.  But as I’ve come to understand in the sixteen intervening years between then and today, I caused much of my own pain back then because simply, I paid no mind to her reserve.  My grandmother used to say, “If you don’t listen, then you’ll feel.”  Well, she was right.  I didn’t listen, and so, I felt, real bad.

I just couldn’t listen though while basking in [Emeebee’s] near perfect-ten looks.  On the one hand, her beauty allowed me to better tolerate her self-centered nature.  In fact, the stunning character of her immediately-visible good parts blinded me to her less observable (and certainly less pleasant) aspects. 

But, on the other hand, her sexy legs and sophisticated air also made her coldness more offensive.  Her beauty not only made her very alluring, but also quite dangerous too.  As I’ve learned: The prettier the ladies are, the more it will hurt should they not reciprocate my feelings.  Now I don’t mean to suggest that prettier girls are less trustworthy.  But if they can give you lots of great pleasure, then they can also give you much great pain, and I sure got the painful side of her. 

In fact, I should have paid more attention because of this.  I wish I’d have understood back then that the more attractive I find a woman the more careful of her I must be about falling; especially without a clear invitation from her to do so. 

Perhaps [Emeebee’s] behavior would not have been so unusually torturous had I observed her as a stranger.  But being subjected to her care-free attitude while my feelings for her made me anything but carefree, I could not help but to either cry, be depressed, or argue with her anytime I go the chance.  If she hadn’t been so striking, I don’t think I’d have cared as much about how selfish she was, and her aloofness would have hurt far less.  But then, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the good times as much either.  J 

She was very pretty.  So I highly desired her.  But her selfishness prevented me from enjoying her as often as I wished.  That hurt and angered me because girls like her only came into my life every several years at best.  So, realizing that once more, this one (yet another one) would be walking away for good really crushed me. 

My desperation to stop the chronic loneliness forever stole my wits because I was certain that if she would only love me, then the sad times would in fact, go away.  There’d be someone fun to dine with on the weekends and go dancing with on Saturday nights.  I often held visions of [Emeebee] waking up beside me on the Sunday mornings after such nights on the town.  Then the two of us would get up after an hour or two of making out, and head to her Unitarian church for the morning services.  Through prominent daydreams likes these, I could not see the truth; that I was making lots of unfounded assumptions about [Emeebee]. I was forcing her into a role (albeit just in my imagination) that, had I watched better over a longer period of time, I’d have realized she neither wanted nor was capable of filling.  In short: I moved too fast, and for that, I got burned big time.  This experience taught me a lot about what to watch for in the future before hanging my hat on any woman’s star. 

Yes, all the dreaming I could muster could not hide the fact that this was surely it, because once she got her orgasm, we shared no mutual longing it seemed.  Though I wished she would have spared showing me her blithe parts, I saw also quite a soft and gentle side, and that’s the piece of her I fell in love with.  Hmmmm.  If only I could have tossed the bad side and kept the good, I’d have gotten a true dream girl in the flesh. I tried in essence to do this, by focusing too much on her positive traits and too little on her negative ones.  The problem was: I did this too well; not realizing that if you’re going to love the good in a person, then you must also accept the bad.  Because I esteemed the good in her too highly, her nasty side blindsided me.  The result: I came to be in love while she did not.  All the longing was in me, so she exuded all the power.  I wouldn’t have lost so much of the power, if only I’d looked at her more carefully while I still had it. 

While in bed together, the threat of losing her seemed far away and inconsequential.  She was giving me what I wanted them.  So the power imbalance meant nothing.  But when she’d talk of dancing with other guys at the singles group, the truth of the imbalance became clear once again; as menacing as ever.  Though while in her arms, I’d managed to push this actuality to the side, it always arrived again any time she was not around to hold me and protect me from it.  She was exercising all that control now; showing little deference toward my feelings.  She was actually calling this sad truth to come back. 

No, I disliked the extreme ups and downs that the course of our relationship took by this time.  I knew that I’d not put up with this from [Emeebee] for nearly as long as I had from [First Love].  So, I told [Emeebee] that I didn’t wish to see her like this anymore.  Later nonetheless, my resolve weakened and it would be nearly a decade before I finally shook my weak knees for [Emeebee], and therein lie some interesting tales which I’ll write about later. 

But at least initially, I fully intended our last time together to be just that; one final romp.  I figured that I’d never get over her as long as we continued sleeping together, because sharing her bed was just so electrifying.  Yet, each night of pleasure demanded the following week’s worth of pain as payment; and that cost soon became too high. 

Though I would not say that I deserved the best treatment from her specifically, I did feel that I was worthy of being much happier with a relationship in general, than what I was able to achieve with [Emeebee].  So, with memories of the [First Love] debacle still fresh in my mind, I refused to endure [Emeebee’s] neglect, once it became clear that she was neglecting me. 

Yet in spite of her vast appeal, or perhaps because of it, getting over her was imperative.  Because I enjoyed her so much, I could permit myself to enjoy her no more.  I knew I had screwed up by pushing so hard for quick and committed relationship with her, and now wanted to do whatever required to stop the pain and make it right.  So I resolved that this definitely was going to be it, and that I would never move so fast again with anyone; no matter how wonderful they at first seemed.  Indeed, in light of this experience, the more wonderful they are, the slower I’d best go. 

It’s funny.  Women are always saying to me that they want to move slowly.  Until [Emeebee] I took that to mean that they must not be attracted to me because, with [First Love] anyhow, ‘Moving slowly’ typically meant no movement at all.  But the [Emeebee] experience brought new insight.  Perhaps ladies want to go at a snail’s pace because, as I so liked [Emeebee], perhaps they like me too; optimistic, I know.  They might just be taking the steps I missed with [Emeebee], and simply trying to protect themselves; something I failed in royal form to do with [Emeebee], and as a result, paid with years of emotional torment.  So perhaps they’re just being careful, and their reserve just signifies caution rather than revulsion.  Hmmmm.  How do you tell the difference?  That’s a topic for a later post.

Yep, I knew I was going to miss her. She may have been selfish. But at least she was honestly egotistic.  She never sugarcoated her lacking desire for me, and in fact, put it right out there many times.  Any compassion for me she might have had did not compel her to capitulate to what I wanted; no matter the agony this caused me.  She stuck to her guns; taking no pity on me, and at the time, I hated her for this.  I thought her a cold and heartless person because I just didn’t get how she could allow me to suffer so, when easing my pain would have been so “easy” for her if she’d only just visited my bed a few times a week.  

Yet in retrospect, I’m glad she avoided being kind to me if that wasn’t what she really wanted to be.  Her brute sincerity convinced me to pull away more quickly than a softer approach would have, and though this hurt intensely at the outset, I have no doubt that her atrocious decisiveness enhanced my ability to quickly let her go.  If she hadn’t been so mean, I might not have found the resolve to end our involvement as quickly as I did.  But find the resolve, I did.  Her callousness was thus a blessing. 

I realized that the next day, I’d be hurting no doubt as the memory of our last night seared in my mind and I began to withdraw from the drug of her nearness.  But this had to be it.  It had to be.  Because I loved her so, I knew I could love her no more.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

True Loves List

Monday, October 19th, 2009

These girls wooed me the most over all.  Not that they   all   produced the greatest sexual or romantic desire and gratification, though some of them did.  But at times while either pining for or dating each of these, I felt I could be with no one more suited to my tastes, morals, values, education level, religious beliefs, social status, and so on.   While grazing in these ladies’ pastures, the grass immediately surrounding me was always the greenest.  Indeed, there was no such thing as greener grass on the other side of the fence.  There may have been   equally   green grass; but none greener.  I sensed that I was dating among the best I could, and that there was none better.  Now I’ve dated many others besides these.  But only relationships forged with the ladies in this list appeared to be the best that a relationship could be; at least for a few months to a few years anyhow. 

And now, the list:

  1. [First Love]   in 1972 through 1990.
  2. [Molly]   in 1974.
  3. [Ann]  in 1974, and briefly in 2004.
  4. [Maniac]   in 1975.
  5. [BT]   in 1976.
  6. [Shaina]   in 1977.
  7. [Dawn]   in 1979.
  8. [Cher]   in 1981 through 1983.
  9. [Andrea]    in 1982.
  10. [Shelly]   in 1983.
  11. [Shanee]   in 1983.
  12. Paula Eide    in 1984.
  13. [Fannie]   in 1984 through 1987.
  14. [Kate]  in 1986 through 1987.
  15. [Lenee]   in 1988.
  16. [Elstan]  in 1988 through 2002.
  17. [Cassee]  in 1989, 1994, and 2000.
  18. [Renee]   in 1990 through 1991.
  19. [Juanita]   in 1991, 1994, and 2001.
  20. [Roberta]   in 1991.
  21. [Chrissy]   in 1993.
  22. [Emeebee]   in 1993-1998, 2000-2001.
  23. [Carlene J]  in 1993 and then again in 2000.
  24. [Melinda]  in 1995, and briefly in 2007.
  25. [Alandra]   in 1996-1997.
  26. [Judith]   in 1997-1998, 2010.
  27. [Vee] in 1997 -2002, 2006.
  28. [Kar]   in 1998-2002.
  29. [J]   in 1999-2000.
  30. [Lynn]  in 1999-2000.
  31. [Beejay]   in 2000 through 2001.
  32. [LizDee]   in 2002 and 2004, briefly.
  33. [Emmy]   in 2003, and 2005.
  34. [Kandi]  in 2003 through 2005.
  35. [Ballerina]   in 2004.
  36. [Linda]   in 2009.
  37. [Miss Independent]  in 2009.
  38. [Prism]   in 2009.
  39. [Elsee]   in 2009.

 

Click on each name link to see the posts that pertain to that lady.

Take care.

Tom Hesley

Foot-Worshiping Party

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

I took the plunge today and signed up to attend my first foot party in early May. From what the host described, this could be exactly what I’ve sought to either indulge in or get past my fantasies of worshiping the feet and legs of beautiful women. He says that they carefully screen the ladies, who are no older than 25, and who are thin. That’s a real relief, since the tall and thin type that I prefer are so hard to find at large these days.

No cameras, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco products allowed. No exchange of bodily fluids or any action whatsoever above the knees either. Cleanliness is the operative word here; the women wash their lower bodies between each session, so there’ll be no odors to ruin the erotic mood.

They’ll offer a few VIP suites, where one may worship in private if desired, and they provide food and beverage as well in between the sessions.

The building adheres to all fire and safety codes since it is a public facility, and is located in a nice area in southeast PA.

The party is billed as   private.    So you can only attend by invitation in order that they can assure their customers that only up-standing people will be there. They maintain tight security, and they’re a bona fide business as well; it’s not just some guy having a house party in his cramped apartment. Safety and privacy therefore, shouldn’t be issues.

Such establishments eliminate all the painful screening that I’ve endured through the years, without much success I’d add. The women at these gatherings know that the guys are into foot worship. In fact, they enjoy it themselves, which is why they’re there in the first place. Thus the risk of rejection when approaching one of these beautiful strangers approaches zero; a nice change from the near one hundred percent rejection rates I’ve gotten throughout the past score.

Foot parties like this should save money too; I won’t have to “wine and dine” women anymore just to find out if they’ll remove their shoes and stockings for me. Plus, the need for long courtships is nonexistent. No more wasting money on women who end up never baring their legs anyway. No more waiting for years sometimes for them to do so. No more milking my wallet as much as they can by putting me off for a long time. This setup really does embody   instant   gratification.

There’s no pretense either; no need to hide one’s true desires behind propriety and silly, outdated mating conventions. There are no complicated and hit-but-usually-miss protocols to follow, and I won’t have to waste my brain power learning about her “insides” before she’ll let me love her outsides. A good thing too, because if I have to play therapist to one more lady, I think I’ll go crazy myself. Here, unlike more traditional methods of pursuing women, I can indeed enjoy the milk for one night without having to buy the whole cow forever.

Could it be for the first time since my longing for women began, that I finally have a reliable source of beautiful ladies who will help me bring my childhood fantasies into reality without asking the world of me in return? I hope so. Whether it is or isn’t, I must find out.

Now I am concerned that this will hurt [Emmy], because I do love her and so, I wish to minimize her pain as much as I can. Our therapist and I are putting many hours into helping her understand. But the bottom line is that she’s just going to have to accept my need to play until I get it out of my system, just as I had to do when ladies like [Emeebee],   [First Love],  and others asked it of me. I know from experience that it’s painful. See my 1994 Love Quest Archives to read about the extensive and long-lasting pain I felt. I grew a lot from that pain however, and [Emmy] will too, I hope.  Regardless, I must come first. If that makes me a nasty, selfish person, then I’ll embrace that judgment if it means that I can finally get what I want.

Tom Hesley

My Commitment Jitters

Monday, March 30th, 2009

My current objections to complete physical and emotional commitment to one person follow. I didn’t always feel this way, and I may not always feel like this. But currently, this is where my head and heart are.

In fact, these points really started resonating when I reached the age of 43. Before then though, I was all about monogamy; convinced that there was but one dream girl who could meet all my physical and emotional needs forever. But alas, I’ve been unable to find such a goddess and after contacting well over 14,000 women as I quested for the perfect lover, I’m convinced that such an all-encompassing person does not exist. So I seek no longer to find Her entirely in one person.

However, She is out there. But She resides in several women; not just one. Some women are great friends. Some are great lovers. Others are good house keepers and cooks, and some I could watch all day as they parade about in frilly bikinis. I’ve found that no one woman has it all; one reason why I’m leery of committing all of my self to a single lady. The heart is quite the empty place that takes more than one person to completely fill up.

Commitment can be a hard and costly arrangement to break if you learn later that you don’t like it. You must jilt your lover to remove yourself, and the pain of jilt is horrible for both the perpetrator and the victim. It weakens and sickens for long periods too. I know, because I’ve been jilted many a time and jilted lovers many times myself. Believe me. Neither scenario is very pleasant. Really, I don’t know which role is less enviable; doing the leaving, or being left.

I’ve never been very good at ending foiled relationships. In fact, several times, I’ve had to seek a therapists’ help to do it. The deeper the commitment, the more painful is the beloved’s rejection, and the more difficult it is to leave if you decide that you must. So these days, I’d just as soon avoid all that and keep things light and free, with no strings beyond the next few dates.

Further, to me variety really is the spice of life, and I love it. Without it, life is bland and lacks excitement and adventure. So I fear limiting my variety by committing to one woman who would meet my every physical as well as emotional need. This scares me because for among other reasons, it would keep me from exploring females of different backgrounds, races, religions, ways of life, temperaments, and values. I savor the novelty of firsts; the first black woman ever dated, the first model, the first doctor, the first ballerina, the first bisexual, the first woman young enough to be my daughter or old enough to be my grandmother, the first cowgirl, the first foot whore, the first stripper, the first lady with 41-inch legs, and so on. You get the idea. It’s nearly impossible for me to ignore a “first lady” even with a girlfriend on my arm that I love. The intrigue overwhelms me, so that I just have to check out the first. If I can’t, then I feel trapped and soon resent my “jailer.”

Yes, firsts are great. But “lasts” usually bore me as in the last black woman I dated, the last stripper, the last model, and so on. When a first becomes a last, as it must once its explored fully, her freshness fades away along with the eroticism that goes with it. When the first is not a first anymore, curiosity has been satisfied. So there’s less intrigue and less sexual interest. To keep my passions alive, I must keep a steady stream of first ladies flowing past me; something I cannot do if I’m committed fully to one woman.

I’ve also observed that pushing for commitment made most of my beloveds bolt; quite the painful situation to be sure. I loved my time with each of them, and so I keenly felt the loss when they left. It hurt intensely, and this emptiness could take many months to get past. Read my stories of [Emeebee] in 1993 through 2001, and you’ll see what I mean.

Needless to say because of all that, I have strong associations between wanting commitment and getting hurt. The two seem to go hand-in-hand because they’re almost always found together. That is: Where there’s a desire for exclusivity, there too is the pain of not getting it. Indeed, I ruined many more relationships than I helped by espousing monogamy. To quote a popular oldie, “You lose your love when you say the word MINE!” That’s certainly, and quite painfully, been true for me.

I know women say they want commitment all the time. But my experience is that the ones I really desired did not want it; at least, not from me. They accused me of assaulting their rights to be independent when I asked them to date only me, and they left my bed when I spoke of marriage, never to return. In my experience, promoting commitment does more harm than good to an otherwise healthy, more casual relationship. Ironically, I’ve learned that I get more when I seek less. So why seek more? Why seek commitment? If it’s good the way it is, then why push for more?

Since I love lustful relationships, and since historically lust doesn’t last beyond the first few months, I avoid long-term physical commitments because when the commitment outlasts the lust as it usually does, I’ll eventually be stuck where I no longer wish to be quite probably forever, and I won’t do that. Unfortunately, commitment guarantees not, a forever supply of fun sex. In fact, it may discourage it. Total commitment to one can be a death kiss in the bedroom. So again, this is another reason why I’m skeptical that commitment is the happiness panacea that its supporters claim it to be.

Finally, life-long commitment today means a lot more than it did say, two-thousand years ago. Back then, couples were lucky if they survived past the age of 30. Now, they live to 80 and beyond. So the length of a life-long promise of fidelity has more than doubled in modern times, and this reason alone gives me pause when considering whether this is something I really want to get into.

Then there’s the idea that the longer a commitment runs, the more likely it is that one of the partners will decide to end it. This can occur not only because there’s more time for unhappiness to grow. But nowadays, people are exposed to many more opportunities to heighten their happiness; opportunities outside monogamous relationships. They’re tempted more because they’re exposed to more people. Obviously, with this comes the risk that they’ll meet someone more intriguing than their current mate. It happens all the time. With people traveling around so much for jobs as well as pleasure, they’re constantly exposed to a steady stream of new and beautiful strangers; any one of which could easily spell the end of their current commitment. Long-term commitments these days are just too risky therefore. They’re not natural and the sense of security they create is just an illusion. So I don’t need it.

People often seek commitment, wrongly believing that the marriage license will guarantee their beloveds loyalty. But it just doesn’t work out that way too often. If a person wants to cheat without being officially committed, then he’ll surely want to do it when he is. Whether or not he promises fidelity with hundreds of witnesses watching, if sleeping around is in his blood, the wedding won’t rid him of that. So it’s irrational to think that repeatedly campaigning for someone to commit will actually make them want to commit. You might get them to agree to it just to shut you up. But would they really want it? These days, I wish not to take the chance that they won’t.

Commitment, even one without a marriage to substantiate it, can put people at great financial risk. I’m sure we’ve all heard the many stories of folks literally losing their shirts to a jilted partner. Commitment might be a good thing for the young, where there are few separate resources to worry about. But us middle-aged folks should be careful, especially if we’ve accumulated any sort of fortune; money or otherwise. We could lose half of it or more if we fully commit ourselves in public to the wrong person.

Besides, commitments very often don’t account for the changeable nature of the participating humans. People change, more so today than ever before because, through computers and the Internet, they have more knowledge at the ready than they did in, say, the tenth century, before the word telecommunication was even invented. With more knowledge comes greater enlightenment, and with greater enlightenment, comes more extensive and rapid change. So presumably, we change more in a given year nowadays than ever before, because we receive more enlightenment, which happens due to our ever-increasing ease of access to pertinent and valuable information.

But the requirements of traditional commitments such as marriage do not change as quickly. Marriage means marriage basically, whether you’re one, five, or fifty years into it. This traditional institution does not bend easily to accommodate open relationships for example, should a couple’s libido go away. Society feels that they should remain monogamous even when neither partner is fulfilled sexually. It encourages couples to take harmful drugs to artificially amplify the sex drive rather than to just find a more desirable partner who could elevate the libido in more healthful ways. This is wrong. We shouldn’t be binding people so with this outdated practice of marriage. Nor should we provide these noxious potions to get people to fit into the marriage framework for which they simply were not designed.

Also consider that the ideal of long-term commitment makes people overly critical and judgmental of each other. This encourages inequality and bitterness in society, and we certainly have enough of those already.

But think about it though. Let’s say that you’re interviewing for two jobs. For the first, you want someone to cut your grass, one time only because you’re going on a business trip, and you won’t be back in time to cut it yourself before it gets too long. For the second, you want to find someone to help you take care of your ailing mother, on an on-going basis. Obviously, you’d use much greater care in choosing for the second position than you would the first. You would ask more questions, check more references, be more sensitive to cleanliness and attention to details, and generally you’d apply a much higher quality standard to the second person than the first. So it would be harder for someone to be hired for the second job.

The process of finding suitable lovers works the same way. We’re way choosier when seeking a life partner than when hunting a one night stand or other casual relationship. This sounds reasonable. But the problem is that with so many believing that marriage is the ideal and that anything less is worth nothing, we tend to be ultra critical of our suitors, perhaps to our own detriment. We rule people out too soon, refusing to have future interactions with them because we deem them ineligible long-term, futuristic mating stock. As a man who’s received over 14,000 rejections throughout his love quest, I can tell you that it doesn’t feel very good when a lady says to me, “Nope. I won’t hold your hand tonight because you’re not someone I’d want to spend the rest of my life with.” “Well, so what?” I say. “Would you hold my hand if I was someone you’d like to spend just the next few hours with?”

The point is this: Perhaps if we stopped expecting so much of people, we might be less judgmental. If we ceased squeezing suitors into our molds of the distant future (which we can’t really predict anyway), we might be slower to think them beneath us. In fact, we might not even care that they’re beneath us, if all we seek is a few weeks of fun as opposed to a lifetime of commitment. We might find real enjoyment in the moment, delight that is not predicated on our estimation of the future someone could provide us. So we could find true love where we never thought we would.

In my view, religion and other traditional institutions have oversold the virtues of commitment, offering it up as THE way to live. But they’re wrong. When I see all the unhappiness that one person being tied to another causes, especially when the other does not want it, I’m even more convinced that a long-term monogamous commitment is certainly not how I want to spend the remainder of my life.  Now, if I met a right woman?   Who knows?

Tom Hesley
http://tomhesley.com/

Emeebee, You Were Right

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

Hi   [Emeebee].

It’s been eight years since we talked last, and fifteen years since our last night in bed together. I miss you. Those times were electric, and I’ve not experienced any dates since that topped yours and my passionate hours as we lay in each other’s arms, kissing, exploring, and basking.

If I could do it over, the one thing I’d do differently is this: I wouldn’t push you so hard for a you-date-only-me arrangement. In fact, I wouldn’t push you at all. Though I did not appreciate it at the time, we had a most pleasing affair, just as it was; one that I would learn in the years since, would be most difficult to replace. Laying with you, holding your hand, kissing your arms, giving you foot rubs, marveling at how perfectly shaped your legs were and how sultry your voice was; these were (and are) the things I really wanted. Nothing more, and nothing less.

But I argued for more; too much more. You remember. I wanted you to stop going out looking for other men, and to see me exclusively.

I never understood why you wanted to date around, and I hated it. After all, I didn’t want to date around on you, and the fact that you wanted to on me made you seem smutty. Besides, you were beautiful and so I knew that if you did go hunting, that you’d surely come back holding some other man’s hand. I just couldn’t face that possibility, and thus fought to stop it at all costs. Losing you was one big cost I hadn’t anticipated, and I still feel that loss today.

I was 33 years old and you were 40. Maybe this is something that people don’t really understand until they hit their 40s. I didn’t get it until I hit 43. But at 33, I was idealistic, and I truly believed that what I needed in my life to at last drive away loneliness for good, was the undying love of one single woman. I thought I needed nothing else, and so I wanted you to take up this role.

But I get now why you avoided it, I think. You see, today, I’m the one asking my girlfriend for what you asked of me in 1994. That is: I want to date around now, just as you did. Regretfully, I couldn’t give you that then. Instead, all you got from me was bitterness and anger without an ounce of understanding and support. But I must say that [Emmy] is handling my request much better than I handled yours, and she’s only 25 years old. So I guess I was a bit childish. [Emmy] is more mature about this at 25 than I was at 33. Indeed, she has agreed to let me play with other women with her blessing, and she’ll continue dating me too. She doesn’t like the idea, to be sure. But she understands that I must do this so I can really figure out which parts of my life-long fantasies are worth pursuing, and which I should can because they’re wrong.

I was juvenile with you. I just didn’t understand when you and I were hanging out that possessing you as I was would surely drive you away. I didn’t want to understand either, because I was so afraid of losing you. You were just so special. I’d never been with someone as tall, thin, gorgeous, and intelligent as you. So I did whatever I could to assure that you wouldn’t be whisked away by another. I held on to you so tightly in fact, that you slipped through my fingers. Sadly, I made happen the very thing I tried with all my heart to prevent; you left, never again to return.

We had our problems, and I admit with hat in hand to causing most of them. My relentless insistence on commitment was by far our biggest issue. Was it not? My righteousness poisoned our every conversation eventually, and I am so, so sorry for that. This one bone of contention probably triggered all the others, and through it all, we grew some pretty bad feelings toward each other, didn’t we.

Maybe these slights are too deep to reverse, even today. But you appear sometimes in my daydreams, as alluring as ever, and I find myself regretting that we have no contact at present, physical or otherwise. If I’d been more understanding we might have spent many more hours tickling and caressing each other than we did. I get now that time in bed with you was far more valuable than your promise of a forever after. I’m sorry I didn’t see that back then and I’m mystified today over why I wanted your promise of fidelity so much, and why I could not enjoy you without it.

I miss our good times, and I want some of them back. How about you? Would you forgive me? Would you play with me again? I promise. I’d never ask you to stop seeing other men. I would enjoy you without possessing you, and you need not play with me every day either. Once every year or two or five would be fine if that’s all you could manage. I’d be happy with whatever you’d want to offer, and I’d be dating around as well.

So if any of this resonates, you know what to do.

Take care,
Tom Hesley

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Seeking Pity, Getting Love

Sunday, October 16th, 2005

Dear [Mentat],

Yes, many questions float around in my head about how useful seeking pity will be. As noted, I don’t think a woman asking it of me would persuade me to give her a chance in love, particularly if I felt no carnal attraction. So, do I even have a right to expect such special dispensation from women? Am I crazy for hoping that someone else would be so moved if I’m not moved myself? I value those in-love feelings above all else in my relationships. Without those, as I see it, what’s the point of being in a relationship at all? It seems that most others feel likewise. They want to be in love, and they leave when they fall out. But if my imperfections keep women from loving me with passion as my experiences suggest, then am I wrong for wanting to be in love without being able to inspire similar feelings in women? No. I don’t think so.

Many have never experienced LAFS and so insist that it’s a myth. But this resembles the congenitally blind man, insisting that colors aren’t real because he’s never observed them. How meaningful is that? His prove-it-to-me attitude hinders his ability to assimilate new concepts and grow, because he rejects that which doesn’t get through the filter of his own experiences. Colors do exist, no matter how fervently he denies them. And like colors, LAFS too exists because studies show that between sixty-five and seventy-five percent of the population say that they’ve experienced it. Fortunately though, I need not take it on faith because I’ve seen it for myself long ago, as puppy love for   [First Love]   in 1972 as well as in several subsequent relationships. That passion along with its derivatives, survives to this day, and I must admit that if   [First Love]   were to request a new association tomorrow, I’d have trouble saying no, though I probably would say no. I still love her, though I’ve not seen her since 1990. The point is that people often dismiss LAFS as short-lived and superficial. But it does last in my experience, and in fact, the more quickly it comes on, the longer it will probably last, as discussed above. I’ve loved   [First Love]   now for thirty-three years, nonstop.

Though I have a better appreciation now of why women take a long time to warm up, I think, that at least for men and for many women as well, the slower attraction comes on the other hand, the more fragile it is, and thus, the less likely will it endure. Indeed this bucks conventional wisdom. But again, allow me to expound a bit more on my story with   [First Love]   to illustrate. As I said above, she took seven years, count ‘em,   seven years   to finally say that she loved me; no LAFS on her part. Even though her love germinated slowly, once bloomed it lasted but five short months. Then she left, without a backward look. Her love came slowly, and left abruptly. All those cans of pop I bought her at school meant nothing. The rose bush, the cards, the repeated requests for her hand at proms, all of it never really made her love me, not in the pleasantly enslaving ways of LAFS. If I’d realized then that her absent LAFS damned us as a couple, I’d probably have stayed clear. But what’s done is done, and I’m actually glad for those bitter-sweet times because of how they underscored the importance of the LAFS ingredient. [First Love] showed that a beloved without LAFS probably means long, cold times of uncertainty, pain, and eventual dream-doom for the lover.

I’ve loved women for whom the initial attraction (LAFS) was intense as well as those who inspired no such feelings, not even after years of knowing them. Comparing the two, the LAFS relationships by far fulfilled the most, because these rarely bored me. But when they did bore, on those occasions when that initial attraction faded, the resolve to stay in them nonetheless,   never   faltered. In the height of our happiness, [First Love's] body ceased to amaze me the way it had in school, just like the glass of water grows less interesting once a thirst is quenched. In high school, one look at her gorgeous legs and my heart would start beating fast, the penis would stand erect, and concentration on anything else but the fantasy of passionately caressing her became impossible. Of course prior to 1980, I never got to do that for real, and so, my unresolved passion for her only grew, intensifying the thrills of the fantasies. But once I had lived the dream a few times, the thought of it grew much less intriguing and foremost.

Also, those same fantasies stopped tasting as sweet because partly, the curiosity that fired them before 1980 was gone. Once we moved in together, [First Love]   was readily available in reality. So any time a fantasy occurred, I could immediately fulfill it before it could mature into the knee-weakening lust of deprivation which had so characterized the core of my existence in the 70s. In fact, at times that summer on Jackson Street,   [First Love]   would lay on the couch in bare feet, short shorts, and bikini tops. Yet I’d experience no longing as I beheld her, though this vision often appeared in highly charged fantasies in high school. She looked as plain as plain-Jane can look once my sexual cup (if you will) was full. Some might say that now was the time to move on to greener pastures.

Yet I never considered leaving her, because those initial sparks of LAFS, though gone, had ignited much hotter emotional flames in their wake. While in the beginning, the LAFS passions of physical attraction and curiosity were really all I cared to indulge, later they subsided, and while still important, contributed much less the reasons I wished to stay.   [First Love]   was smart (never airy), attentive, and thoughtful. Though less powerful, a pleasant non physical sensation of overall satisfaction emerged. The loneliness was gone, and the sense surfaced that I’d finally gotten what I wanted after all those years of campaigning and begging. Gone was my tendency to gawk at other babes in the street.   [First Love]   was undeniably among the most attractive women in the world, and she completely quenched the thirst for involvement with all [other] such ladies. No one could produce more pleasure and sense of fullness for me. Even at age nineteen, I knew there were no more loveable women out there, and though admittedly I hadn’t experienced many women to that point, with   [First Love]   loving me, I didn’t want to.

When we find someone good enough, the need to look for anyone better vanishes, and so we become unresponsive to the wooing charms of others. Returning to my water metaphor, completely quench a thirst at home for example, and you’ll stop desiring water anywhere else as well, so long as you return home periodically to drink. Why drink elsewhere when you’ve already got the best water at home?

Of course, along with the quenching of the thirst comes decreased desire for the water. This is normal and expected. But some folks mistake their faltering passion for it as a sign that the water itself has become less desirable. I point out that

1. the water being less desirable, and
2. desiring the water less

are two very different concepts although people typically respond to both phenomena identically – by seeking different water. They look elsewhere hoping to find “better” water – water for which they again thirst and subsequently enjoy drinking once more. But the water at home is still as good as it always was, though it might not seem so to the man without thirst. Chemically, it hasn’t changed, and thus would still quench even the direst of thirsts, if such a thirst still existed. So often people want to have their cake before them, yet eat it too. That is, they want to experience the highly pleasant feelings of desire being gratified, yet they also expect that desire to persist beyond its gratification so that they might repeat the pleasures of that gratifying experience indefinitely. This however is irrational because we’ll stop desiring even the most desirable water once we quench our thirsts. The same can be said of women.

As   [First Love]   quenched my thirst to bed with beautiful women, my excitement in the bedroom declined surprisingly fast. Briefly, I was saddened that those explosive passions didn’t appear more often, and never to the degree that they did during our first time or two together. But I figured that the same would happen with   any   woman, and this de-emphasis of the physical was just a normal part of any happy relationship. Indeed anecdotes abound about how over time, lovers spend less time absorbed in each others’ bodies. Mom spoke often of this, as have my sisters, and [our electronics teacher] as well. In fact, so does Maslow, more generally, in the preface to the second edition of [his book]   Motivation and Personality.   He suggests that when a basic need is satisfied, humans virtually always start taking for granted the object that satiated their thirst. They lose interest in it and often discard its gratifier, only to find later that their lust for it returns. Then, they have to acquire the object all over again to re-gratify themselves.

Had I stayed with   [First Love]   long enough, this might have happened. I might have fallen out of love and strayed eventually. But as I said, in our brief time together, never once did I behold another woman with any lustful longing, even though the excited passion for   [First Love]   had shrunken. [Our electronics teacher] described that initial magnetism as temporary, and being a man with a rich dating history who later became a good provider, he seemed qualified to offer useful insights into these issues of the heart. Further, in my case, how he described it was precisely how it was. The first couple times with   [First Love]   were wondrous, and after that, became unexciting and perhaps a little boring. But I knew all the while that   [First Love]   was a keeper, because as the fantastic interest in her abated, so too did my lust for other women. When completely gratified,   all   sources of carnal enjoyment become uninteresting, just like the one that is gratifying us. My passions for   [First Love]   indeed declined, but I knew better than to allow myself to believe that I no longer needed her. Though I didn’t   feel   the need, I was certain that it was still there just as certainly as the need for good water to survive is omnipresent, even during times when we don’t thirst for it.

However, it’s also true that we might stop desiring our water at home for reasons other than the mere fact that through sheer gratification, we want it less. We may learn for example when we next visit the water cooler, that someone has put sulfur in it. In this case, we would go looking elsewhere for better water, and rightly so. Though we desire the water at home less due to the sulfur, our thirst for it in general remains. Here, the water   has   lost its desirability. So while it follows that we’d stop desiring water when it ceases to be desirable, it’s not true that water stops being desirable merely because we stop desiring it.

When it comes to women, it’s important to know the causes of reduced passion so we can rightly decide whether to stay with our current lover or seek another. After all, we’ll never escape reduced passion. That is to say, whether she’s truly our lifelong dream girl or just someone we   thought   to be such (but learned later was not), in either scenario [reduction or loss] of lust will almost certainly result.

I don’t mean to brag. But I never had too much trouble telling the difference between real and apparent dream girls.

Involvement with a real one quells all passion for other women, while dating a near miss does not.

I’m proud to introduce real ones to my family and friends, but not so excited to have apparent ones come here.

Even after the love lust is completely gratified, I still wish to stay with the real dream girl, but [am] eager to leave apparent dream girls.
I know I’ve got a real keeper when there’s an implicit, highly intuitive sense that I can do no better, and wouldn’t want to, even if I could. With an apparent dream girl however, this certainty never comes, or if it does, only lasts for days after meeting her for the first time.
I only dream erotic scenes with real dream girls, and never about apparent dream girls. Thus I will not commit to a lady until she’s appeared in my dreams in the pleasing ways of love. Until she does, we cannot rightly conclude that she’s a real dream girl. After all how could a real one not appear in dreams as the ideal lover?

Real dream girls never stop feeling like dream girls, no matter what they say or do. Irrespective of how poorly   [First Love]   treated me for example, I still never questioned my love for her. I’ve always loved her, even today, in light of everything both good and bad I know about her. As stated above, I’d be hard pressed to turn down a new opportunity to date her (though my intellectual side would prevent me from becoming a doormat again). Apparent dream girls on the other hand, can easily make me doubt my resolve. All it takes is a foul word or tone, or too many incidents of them squeezing the tube of toothpaste in the middle, or leaving too many dirty dishes unwashed, and I’m ready to pack it in.   :-)

If forced, I’d give up my family for a real dream girl if they inserted themselves between us. But as happened with [Mim], I was grateful for their intervention because [Mim] was but an apparent dream girl.

A real dream girl instantaneously transmutes the historically selfish person into one of understanding and compassion. An apparent dream girl is much more subject to abuse because her welfare isn’t paramount in her boyfriend’s eyes. So all these cases of abuse you hear about? I bet most every one of them occur because the guy settled for an apparent dream girl and didn’t wish to hold out for the real thing.

Real dream girls really turn me around at levels that go much deeper than reason. Their internals become mine. What they value, I come to value too. And this is not simply a case of me hiding my real preferences to please them, because at the most internal levels, my preferences themselves actually change. Example: Though as a loveless man I’m convinced that I’ll never want children, I’ve observed this idealism to melt during times of involvement with ladies I truly loved ([First Love], [Emeebee], [Alandra], and [Judith]). Suddenly, the thought of a crying baby and all the hard work necessary to keep it safe and healthy seemed so natural, so right, and so fantastic. Yet when those relationships ended, I soon returned again to the prior dogma of being childless forever.

Real dream girls it seems, are the catalysts to this empathic merging. Apparent dream girls however, do not change us in this way. On the contrary, they may even strengthen our dogmas of single-hood. I never wanted children less, for example, than I did while dating [Mim]. Nor did I wish to “play the field” more. The fact that she wanted commitment and kids made no difference because her desires to me seemed like little gusts of wind along the path I’d already chosen for myself prior to ever knowing her. They did not alter that path, nor was I compelled to willfully resist it. Real dream girls however, rewrite our life desires and plans. Jim Croce seemed to miss this point in that song   I Got A Name   from 1973. He sings, “If you’re going my way, I’ll go with you.” One gets the idea that whoever it was to whom he was singing, was clearly not a real dream girl to him. It might have been an apparent dream girl, a family member, or his mother. Heck, it might have been some man like his father or boss, or anyone else whatsoever. But it was certainly not an apple of his eye, for he spends the whole song affirming his individuality and stand-alone strength. He says he has a name like pine trees lining a winding road, singing birds, and croaking toads, and like a north wind whistling down the sky, the whippoorwill, and the baby’s cry, he has a song. He makes sure we know that he sings that song loud. And he seems to disparage (just a little) the folks who aren’t so outwardly assertive, like his father, by saying, “And I carry it with me like my daddy did, but I’m living the dream that he kept hid.” Perhaps he’s never been touched by true love. To his real dream girl, he might have sang instead, “Well I know I could share it [his dream] if you want me to. And if you still want me, I’ll go with you.” Too bad he died struggling to affirm his aloneness.  I could go on and on, but I believe you get the idea.

I don’t know if I’ll ever find a real dream girl who thinks of me as a real dream guy. However, whatever it is that creates such a wonderful empathic disposition of oneness among true lovers is bigger than a person’s need for compassion or how they talk or how they look. Though surveys say that women by in large are turned off by neediness, I believe that the woman who eventually falls for me won’t mind, just as [Parkar's wife] doesn’t mind [his]. I’m only interested in ladies who’s attraction to men centers around his holistic essence, and not so much around his specific traits (like neediness, wallet size, Etc.). Thus, I feel more confident about seeking compassion. Who knows after all, where it could lead?  [I might end up,  dating up,  afer all.]

Okay, I’m done with this.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

Lady Lust, Thirsty Craving

Sunday, August 14th, 2005

[Mentat],

Actually, I didn’t realize immediately that this was tongue-and-cheek. But that’s okay. Your invitation gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own history with women, and work, and my interests both internal and external to relationships. As a result, I discovered the following: Craving may indeed be a chief source of misery as you put it. But it’s also instrumental to furnishing the world’s most intense pleasures, especially where woman lust is concerned. I have difficulty therefore, with aligning against craving because of the goodness it makes possible for us.

Forgive my dogmatism. But I have much history of indulging my craving for women. Many women. I’ve chased ‘em with just sex on my mind, where getting what I wanted from the relationship without regard for the ladies was paramount ([Peggy Sue], [Shanee]). Others I’ve loved when I couldn’t care less about sex and instead, was intensely attentive to my careers at [work place 1 and work place 2] ([Hane]). Still others, I’ve selflessly loved (like [Lenee]), when I wanted nothing from them except their happiness. I’ve noticed that as a youngling, I was more lustful, and less anxious about the practical sides of an involvement. The woman’s happiness meant less then. But with age came a heightened appreciation of the pragmatic issues. Today, I recognize that though my ultimate goal is still   my   happiness, I must first ensure that the woman is happy if I ever expect to achieve my own bliss. But more on that some other time.

In short, I’ve chased women while harboring varying degrees of obsession. I’ve loved ‘em when my only strong interest was them and the relationship ([First Love], [Cher], Paula, [Emeebee]), and I’ve loved ‘em when the relationship actually took a back seat to hobbies like ham radio, home maintenance, and personal growth concerns ([Hane], [Hanna] [Chrissy]). I’ve attempted many times during the 90s to dull the ache of low love by seeking unrelated accomplishments (ham radio licenses, promotions at work, Microsoft certifications, new music to listen to, et al). But through all that, I’ve found that for me, it’s best to obsessively focus on satiating the craving for intimacy,   until   it’s satiated.

Genuine longing for true love cannot be diminished by enthralling one’s self in a hobby, a career, a religion, a drug, alcohol, lots of friends, a humanitarian cause, or anything else. The only way to truly quench the thirst of the lovelorn, is to find   true love.  Nothing else will do. It makes no sense that one can increase his chances of finding true love by not pursuing it devotedly, and then devoting himself primarily to its maintenance.

Now what you say above, along with our many lengthy conversations on the subject, suggests that you feel that it’s better for a person going into a relationship, to have many interests outside the relationship – quests that are totally independent of it, and efforts that he keeps up even after the relationship intensifies. I admit that   some   external interests seem necessary to prevent growing tired of girlfriends. I don’t want to see them all the time or be consumed with why the relationship is working or not. In fact, as I age, I find that I need more time alone each week for reflection, reading, writing, and such, and any woman I date in the future must accommodate this. However, I’m not convinced that as a rule, love works better when the lovers have pursued (are pursuing) unrelated accomplishments.

Every degree of obsession (or devotion) to relationships to the exclusion of external pursuits, offers advantage as well as folly. Since I’ve opted to satisfy my cravings for women by focusing mainly on how to discover and attract beauties, as opposed to suppressing these cravings by acquiring many non related pursuits, it does seem that you and I have different philosophies on how to achieve happiness and minimize suffering.

Let me say for the record that I respect your view, and believe that given your unique experiences, your position is best. However, don’t be offended because I’ve devoted the rest of this writing to poking holes in your position. I only wish to communicate that your view does not work for me given   my   unique experiences, and to show you how I came to my view, and why.

It may be that one who nurtures many outside interests is more attractive. At least to some anyhow. Indeed, some women are drawn more to the well-rounded man than he with few other interests than to love somebody, and to be loved back. Our well-rounded fellow here, who we’ll call Worldly, might attract more women because he’s less available. After all, with lots of other interests, Worldly has less time for love. At least, he doesn’t want to make the time.

The notion that absence makes the heart grow fonder, indeed rings true in many human interactions. Some Worldlys know this well, and use this to manipulate women into longing for them. They deny their ladies the attention they want. They know that women desire Worldlys because they can’t have them as much or as completely as they would like. Here, Worldly’s claim to fame is his ability, intentional or not, to leave women wanting for more because he chooses not to completely fulfill them. He’s never fully theirs, and they know it. Though they hate this, their yearning for him intensifies because of it too. Whether or not he deliberately makes himself scarce, his lack of presence charms women. The uncertainty about what he’s doing when he’s not with them fans the fires of their passions to roaring, white-hot crescendos. This is one explanation of why worldly men might seem more attractive to women.

But this type of attraction, born from shortage and doubt, and possible button-pushing, is not what I consider valid. It is subject to manipulation and abuse by Worldly, and causes stress in the hearts of Worldly’s women. One could argue that it’s partly this self-absorption which seems to be more common today than in the past, that heightens the risks of disappointment in relationships. Relationships however, aren’t supposed to be stressful. Many are not. In fact the healthy affiliation should lower stress, rather than raise it. I suspect that the women in those many surveys, who say they like best the man who has numerous exterior interests, are themselves neglected to a degree by him. They don’t mention the lonely nights, with him away somewhere off chasing another dream, or the troubled finances because he overspends on his non-romantic pursuits. If I read your words correctly, you say that having other interests may make us more able to be attentive to a lady’s needs. But the opposite is also true, and often appears as a destructive theme in otherwise healthy unions. These studies that advocate moderate to low levels of exclusive focus on the relationship, often don’t consider this side of the story, and can mislead readers as to a woman’s true desires in mates.

Worldly’s breadth of knowledge, acquired through years of pursuing many diverse goals, can augment his desirability. Women say they like a man who can teach them new things, and in fact, much time is spent, particularly early in a new union, of lovers doing just that — teaching the other what they want to learn.

A man of breadth will probably make more money and be better able to recover from setbacks like job loss and illness. And he may be better equipped to rear children.

Worldly will likely be better at empathizing and relating to her plights, if those plights fall within the realms of his experience. In this way, you are right. Worldly could indeed be a more effective listener and supporter. Clearly, moderate focus on other pursuits does enhance the health of any romance by improving one’s ability to understand his mate’s difficulties.

But the question is: How much diverse pursuing is the right amount? And when is it too much? There is a balance between internal and external pursuing. I position that fulcrum as follows: This of course varies from person to person, and there’s no right position for everyone. But for me, top priority is to discover and hold on to a fulfilling love relationship. That’s first. First, above computers, books, self-improvement, writing, the Lions Club, the WPSBC Alumni Association, all of it. While I enjoy reading, writing, Djing, music, and so on, I would gladly trade most of these time-passers for equivalent time with my dream girl. I would swap several hours of reflection per week for time in her arms. I’d pawn all my ham radios to buy her a jewel. I’d sell most of my books to make space for her belongings in our home. Now I wouldn’t give up everything for her. Just most of it. Some of it I’d save as a diversion, for those times when we need to get away from each other. But I have no burning desire to be a Worldly. What I burn for, is to have my dream girl on my arm.

Indeed, the big reason I’ve acquired my many pursuits is because so far, I’ve been a dismal failure at the one goal I most want to achieve. You talked in another post about the value in recognizing that while we may not be good enough at meeting certain goals, that meeting other goals can still make for a happy, fulfilled life even though we can’t accomplish the original goals. I agree that, as Burns might say, it’s possible to be reasonably happy and comfortable without getting everything out of life we want.

But neither Burns nor Ellis, nor anyone else I’ve read has said that it’s possible to be   maximally   happy and   supremely fulfilled   when you’re forced to turn your back on your dream because you’re not good enough to make it come true. That goal of finding my dream girl is the most important yet difficult unfortunately. Its victories have been few and short-lived, and as we’ve discussed, numerous formidable social forces oppose me in it. On the other hand, my non relationship goals tend to offer greater success potential. There seems to be fewer opposing forces in these. Thus, it’s easier for example, to pass the next exam in ham radio, or the next level of Microsoft certification, than it is to mate with a perfect 10. My BS degree, and the four promotions at [work], though they took some time and much effort, were easier than finding true love. Easier, but not as fulfilling.

It was wonderful to get the diploma and the raises. Yet it was empty too. While I’ve achieved success in numerous self-oriented pursuits, and used their victories to manage my depressions, they never completely erased the loneliness. Oh, they took my mind off of it for periods and contributed greatly to my overall “reasonable comfort” with life. So they had overall good effects.

For a number of years, I became the classic workaholic. The job, and doing it well I made my center of existence in the early nineties. While I figured that attaining notoriety would make me more attractive and later, enable me to achieve a healthy balance between career, relationships, and personal interests, I loved the work itself too, with its many thrills of getting programs to run correctly. However, with each promotion, after the celebration was finished, and everyone went back to work, I found myself still in the same, unrelenting rat race. While I had moved a few steps further down the road toward success, and got to taste significant thrills along the way, I was still on the same road, still thirsting. Except for the bigger paycheck, I wasn’t any better off. Girls didn’t want to date me any more as a senior software engineer than as an associate when I first joined [that company]. Besides, the jobs got harder the higher I went. Greater demands, increased coworker conflicts, more blame for things over which I had no control, more harsh judgments from bosses, and with that, less job security and more stress. No fun. More money and higher status didn’t make me any happier with life.

Yet I persisted, hoping I’d find happiness in a nice home. So I bought the classic big house in the suburbs – a hallmark of a successful career. Yet a cold draft whistled down the stairs each night when climbing them to bed. No, there were no open or leaking windows up there. There wasn’t any   real   draft at all. No, this draft was a manifestation of a recurring thought: a reminder that though I “had it all,” something was still missing. And that something, as you’ve probably guessed, was my dream girl. The draft reminded me that though I’d worked so hard to build a good career, I was not getting the rewards promised by parents, teachers, and friends. Indeed, I was just as lonely in that big house in the suburbs as I was during the McKee Place years. What had the intervening years of hard work really gotten me? I had money, but that wasn’t enough. I had colleagues, but outside work, they weren’t around. I had lots of hobbies and spent thousands on them. The house itself kept me pretty busy for the first two years. But I still felt alone and unfulfilled. I did everything I could to make the American Dream come true. But still, there was no one upstairs waiting for me in the bedroom. No one to comfort me and make my work woes disappear for the night. No one to warm that cold air that repeatedly whisked by my face, bringing tears to my eyes frequently. So while it could be said that my career and house made me more like Worldly because they gave me numerous pursuits to focus on besides relationships, in my experience, they didn’t make me more attractive to women. At least, not more attractive enough to date the ones I desired. Nor did they eliminate that thirst for love.

No promotion ever felt as good as when   [First Love]   finally said yes after seven years, or when [Judy] let me give her a foot massage in the [camp] swimming pool and asked me to help her learn more English. Given my experiences, loving interaction with a dream girl is the only completely fulfilling activity there is. And I’ve tried many activities besides this, to know this. Yes. We need periodic victories, even small ones, to keep the blues away. And as mentioned, these little successes seem easier to come by when pursuing non-relationship goals. But no wins, either singularly or together, have ever filled the void of that missing romantic victory for me – lasting love. A win’s meaning is lessened when it doesn’t bring one closer to fulfilling his life purpose. At this point, my own Worldly pursuits, though by many accounts successful, have yet to bring me the relationship I so want, or to give me the degree of fulfillment that loving the right person has and would.

I would, without hesitation, trade ten promotions for ten years with my dream girl. I would swap the entire 15 years of aloneness at [work as a software engineer] for 15 years as a janitor in a dead-end job, so long as I had my dream girl by my side. These days, career and money concerns seem so trivial next to the love quest. While the Ohio years will always be an integral part of any success I achieve in the future, occasionally I look back on them as colossal wastes of time. Stopping that waste was, among other concerns, what drove my decision to finally leave, which marked the beginning of my mid life crisis. For the first 25 years of adulthood, I did what you’re supposed to do, and maintained plenty of personal pursuits – ones that had nothing to do with relationships. I went to school, got a degree, forged social connections, got a job, bought a house, did some traveling around the country, achieved excellence at that job, and went to church. I danced at night clubs, wrote articles for the local singles group, and maintained numerous platonic friendships.

But with mid life came the realization that none of this was getting me where I most wanted to be. Nor did any of it ever alter or obscure my true purpose, to love and be loved. With mid life, it became clear that time’s a wastin’ and that I’d best make radical changes in my approach if I hoped to ever love my dream girl. The change I opted for was to concentrate my focus and effort on what really matters, and give up those pursuits that don’t. In short, I tried, as you suggest, to make “other accomplishments.” It didn’t work for me.

Now, let’s explore another dimension of this. Worldly would argue that having many outside interests makes us more well-rounded, and as such, provides more interesting experiences to share with mates. The contention is that Worldly types bring more of value to the relationship than men of less breadth.  But as mentioned above, selecting breadth over depth has costs. Women enjoy a man’s wealth of diverse knowledge, but won’t like him spending so much time away from them to keep it up. While they’ll appreciate his zeal toward pursuing numerous and diverse goals before they met him, they’ll probably not want him to spend as much time with that once they make him their boyfriend.

Also, while lots of initial common interests are a plus, they are by no means necessary for long-term happiness. Frequently, couples bond with very little in common. Yet they live long, happy, united lives. What they don’t share at the start, they come to share once the relationship is underway. They join clubs, bowl, and ski, read books aloud to each other, dine, and listen to the radio and watch movies together, creating some common experiences that were lacking at the start. As the union progresses, the list of shared memories grows, and that initial void of wanting commonality shrinks and eventually becomes insignificant. The longer they stay together, the more in common they have, and thus, the more they have to build upon. As I see it, the only truly necessary commonalities at the start, are dreams of dedicating their lives to a love partner, and a mutual and profound attraction to each other. If both lovers share these goals and passions, differences become less detrimental. Love indeed conquers all. M. Scott Peck touches on this point in “The Road Less Traveled.”

Now to another point: Relationships are pursuits, no more or less inherently worthy than any other. They offer boundless opportunities for personal growth, spiritual enlightenment, and the thrills of accomplishment. True, they have potential gotchas – hurt feelings, heartbreak, uncertainty, agony, danger, and bitter failure. No different than any other pursuit really. Play actors cry when they don’t get the long-sought part, just as lovers sob when their beloveds hurt them. The agony of waiting for the adored to call, is duplicated in the life of the CFO, awaiting last quarter’s financial reports. Athletes hate when their bodies don’t do as they want, sort of like beloveds hate it when lovers refuse to perform a certain way. The absence of harmful disappointments cannot be found in any pursuit, romantic or not.

Few pursuits offer immediate success to anyone, and all of them necessitate that we make ourselves highly vulnerable to failure. Liability is a cost of renown, and the better you want to be at something, the more of yourself you must dedicate to it, and thus, the greater will be the psychological bruises should you hit a setback. But people supporting a tempered approach to love believe that they’re safe from heartache, if they put just a small portion of their eggs in the relationship basket. They spread their remaining eggs among many baskets. They think that failure in one area won’t be as devastating because fewer of their eggs will suffer damage since fewer of them are invested in this one pursuit. However, in so doing, they trade the excellence of depth for the safety of breadth. They either don’t realize or don’t care that for truly exceptional performers, heartache is plentiful whether you’re courting a beautiful woman, or wooing your boss for that promotion, or attempting to climb Mount Everest. The more you desire anything and the more of yourself you invest in it, the more pain you’ll experience when things don’t go your way. This phenomenon is no truer of the search for love, than say, the search for the cure for particular cancers. All pursuits, carried to the extremes that world class superiority demands, require almost complete focus and tolerate little distraction.

Like any other quest, to do a relationship well demands lots of dedication and constant work, along with a high degree of dogmatic obsession. Most happily married couples agree. If you’re going to play the piano well, you can’t also expect yourself to be a professional golfer (unless you’re extremely gifted!). Likewise, if you’re going to be a career man, then you must trade away some ability at being a good husband and father, and vice versa. You just can’t do it all, nor can you do anything well without performing poorly at something else. Olympic athletes also exemplify the fruits of complete dedication to single disciplines. Few would make Olympic teams if they didn’t practice sixteen hours a day. They must do that in order to achieve true excellence as well as a competitive edge. But how do you avoid putting your psychical wellbeing on the line if you’re going to maintain this routine for long? Indeed, much motivation to achieve derives from an implicit knowledge that our worthiness will suffer if we don’t accomplish the goal. We fear this eventuality, and those who fear it the most often tend to be the highest achievers. They’re the wealthy executives, the world-class athletes, and among the best lovers.

The idea is that most any discipline (loving another included) demands much investment of self to achieve and preserve greatness at it. Any more than just a trifle of diversion to non related pursuits impedes one’s progress in the primary objective. So why must a man dedicated to satiating of his love lust (as I am), be any less psychologically healthy than one who spends decades training to set foot on the moon or to write the great American novel, or to become a Buddhist monk? Pop psychology often illustrates the down side of obsession and how bad it is to be overly dedicated to a single goal, relationship or other. But without obsession, great works of art such as the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel, the statue David, and the symphonies of Beethoven would never have come to be. Why do we seem to regard the role of obsession in relationships with more skepticism than in other pursuits? When channeled such that no other’s rights are trodden on, obsession and compulsion are crucial ingredients in those long-lasting relationships. They are good things in this context, and so necessary to becoming an excellent mate, just as they are in virtually all other pursuits. Lessen your focus by pursuing more than just a small number of pursuits, and you sacrifice your chances of being good at any of them.

In short, I believe that neither breadth nor depth is the patently better mode of living. Sometimes, breadth is good. At others, depth works best. Now relationships don’t always require constant full dedication (depth). In fact, the best unions achieve a high degree of trust between the participants. The more mutual trust, the less necessary it is for lovers to focus on the relationship. Once this trust is achieved, then yes, it would seem healthy for the lovers to spend less time focusing on their bond, and more pursuing outside interests. But again, the appropriateness of such efforts varies as the relationship progresses.

Also, Worldly himself probably got to be Worldly as the result of a series of intensely focused pursuits. Though he has a rich history of diverse experiences, they did not come to him at the same time. They accumulated over his entire life. At any point in time, the number of concurrent pursuits is likely to be very small (say one to three). Worldly himself is more a sum of his single-minded obsessions than a master of managing large numbers of simultaneous pursuits. :-)    At this point in my life, I’d say that I’m a Worldly engaged in fulfilling his biggest dream so far. That may be good. It may be bad. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I can’t give up on my dream. I’ll either make this dream come true, or die trying. While The Quest has dragged my heart through many a painful trench, turning my back on It, has (and would) just replace one kind of pain for another. I’d be trading the disappointment of rejection for the laments of those resigned to the impossibilities of their dreams. You know the old saying: It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. More on this in other posts.

Tom Hesley

More Explaining

Tuesday, October 26th, 2004

Dear   [Ann],

If you want to talk about how / why I ended it, I can do that. Just give me a call when you’re ready. Perhaps talking things out will help you come to understand that this was very torturous for me as well.

Yes, I’ve had to end some other relationships in a similar way. [Emmy]  was one of them – she was obsessive about her guide dog, [...], talked a lot with other men, and was 22 years younger than me to boot. Sheryl [...] was another – well, you know why I had to leave her. Each [relationship] had its own set of reasons for ending.

On the other hand, I’ve been left by women more times than I can count.   [First Love]   broke my heart. So did [Shaina], [Emeebee], [Judy], [Kar], [Vee], and others. I’ve done my share of crying over women who thought me not good enough for them to fall in love with.

It’s hard to find a “right” one – where both people find each other attractive, and continue to feel that way over time – especially after the first fight. Hopefully, each time through it though, we learn more about what we need to look for and insist on the next time around.

I knew you were going to be hurt, having been in that position of being left myself many times. That’s why telling you was so difficult. I do not relish hurting anybody. That’s the big problem in searching for a right person – sometimes, many people are victimized by the quest. But please believe me when I say that hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do. If I indeed talked to you too long before ending things, this was why – I couldn’t bare the though of causing you pain.

Yea, perhaps I’m not much of a man as I’ve been told, for handling things as I did. But I couldn’t leave you high and dry while [your daughter] was still at home, and I wasn’t sure back then that things wouldn’t work out romantically for us. It’s very difficult (and some would say “shallow”) to quickly make the decision to leave. Perhaps you’ve never had this trouble – you certainly rejected me quickly enough back in 1974. :-) But for me, it’s often not so easy.

I want to fix your computer for you, but don’t want to come there until I sense that we’re really past this. Hopefully you can forgive me and we can be friends again.

Tom

Elstan Update

Friday, December 13th, 2002

Dear [Tad],

Well, I think I’ve told [Elstan] in every way I know, both directly and subtly that I want her, and she has not responded positively. Can’t keep knocking my heart against that iron-clad door, which never seems to open for me.

It seems like that has been my problem for way too long with women. I find one I like and then I try too hard for too long to get her to let me into her life. I did that with   [First Love], [Emeebee], [Judith], and others you don’t know. I just need to quit sooner I guess. You’d think I would have learned my lesson by now. That is, if they don’t accept you immediately (or very close to immediately), they ain’t gonna accept you ever.

Tom

Men Keep Getting In My Way

Wednesday, February 14th, 2001

Dear [Emeebee],

[Me, getting a bit frustrated at her repeated put-offs.]

Sheesh. What do you see in that guy anyhow? Based on what you’ve told me, I treated you far better than he does. I treated you damn good too. I never “decked” you or raised my voice to you. Never lied to or misled you with purpose. I communicated openly about my feelings and tried to create an environment in which you felt like you could do the same. I was willing to learn how to do some of the things you like to do so we’d have more things in common – dancing and the choir in particular. I opened my heart to you and offered to share a significant part of my life with you, several times over the years. I have proven my ability to generate and sustain wealth, keep a good job and a house. Yet you repeatedly deny my requests for romantic time together. What is your problem? ? ? Hmmmmm???

I’m left wondering why you don’t respond to my good traits, which I shouldn’t have to tell you, are abundant. Why can’t you see that? If you were perceiving things clearly, you would choose to love me, instead of making time with him. You have eluded in the past to my weakened eyesight as a limiting factor in how far we might go romantically. Yet, apparently, it is YOU who has trouble seeing things as you should see them. And this, I submit, is the real reason why our relationship never flourished and was so limited in its duration and extent.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you too.

Tom Hesley

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