I think that was me that said earlier this week to Marnia, “If I can survive this, I can survive anything.” I was talking about the fact that I am in the midst of the most intense week I’ve had yet in my college career. Midterms are kicking my behind, and the university I am transferring to in the fall has been sending me loads of information about what lies ahead for me as a student, and most of it requires some kind of immediate action on my part. It might as well be written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs at this point, because it’s all making very little logical sense.

So it was already raining, then it started pouring yesterday when my grandmother had to be taken to the hospital by the paramedics. I live next door to her in an attached apartment, and I am basically her personal assistant. We take care of each other in a lot of ways, as I wouldn’t be able to be a full-time student if it weren’t for our arrangement.

So I’ve been a little overwhelmed, but what really cracked me open today was an email I got from my ex, telling me rather casually that he is moving back to Japan. This isn’t really a surprise, the fact that he is going back, but I just wasn’t expecting it so soon. He and I were able to start rebuilding our friendship about a year after we split, and I am grateful for it. However, it still feels really strange to be so low on his list of priorities. You spend so much time with a person, and give so much of yourself to him, it seems that he would want to tell you more than a few days in advance before he leaves the country for an undetermined amount of time. I try not to take it personally, because I think he is this way with most people these days, but it stings.

I had been meaning to write here about my relationship with him, and our experiences with Peace Between the Sheets, and just hadn’t found the time. Somehow, now seems like a good time. It becomes fresh in my mind every time he leaves.

I guess there was a reason why I started my blogging here with the story of abuse, other than the fact that I think I just needed to get it out. My distorted self-image led me into some fairly awful relationships. Strangely, the boyfriends I had as a teenager were rather undersexed young men. I managed to pick out the ones who really weren’t all that interested in sex, which worked out for me, because I wasn’t very comfortable with it myself. Most of my sexual experiences in those years were either one-night stands, or short-term relationships lasting only a couple of weeks.

My first relationship that included a lot of sex lasted about nine months, and ended with me in therapy for about a year-and-a-half. My therapist and I never got onto the topic of sexual abuse. Needless to say, we never talked about the hangover after orgasm, either. I think I should mention that I’m relatively certain that the hangover period we discuss here on this website actually affects me about ten times more intensely than the average person. I don’t know why that it is, but I think if everybody felt as miserable as I do after orgasm, and especially after about four months of orgasms with a new partner, they would all be begging for other options.

Anyhow, my second relationship that was very sexual was my last one, which ended about two years ago. Seeing as how I spent that year-and-a-half in therapy trying to work through the issues that I thought had damaged my first sexual relationship, I was really confused when I start having the same demons come up the next time around, after about six months.

I’d known my ex for many years when we finally started dating. That, combined with the fact that I’d already spent so much time and money on therapy, made me very suspicious about why I was experiencing the same feelings of separation with him that I had experienced before. When I say “feelings of separation” though, I mean INTENSE feelings of separation. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. I fell again into a deep depression, and started having regular anxiety attacks. I didn’t really mention any of this to him at the time. And I didn’t leave him because I knew there was something else going on that I just didn’t understand right then. I knew that whatever was happening, if it could happen with him, the man I had loved more than any other, it was going to happen with every man, so I better just stick around and see what was on the other side.

In the back of my mind, I thought maybe it had something to do with sexual abuse. This is how it felt at the time. He had an insatiable sexual appetite, and because I was wholly unaware of the damage I was doing to myself and to our relationship, and because I never learned how to say “no” to sexual advances, I did my best to keep up with him. He also had a pornography addiction, although we did not view it as a problem back then. In my efforts to hide my feelings of separation from him, and to keep up with him sexually, I grew more and more resentful. In the meantime, I was trying to do a lot of spiritual exploration looking for answers that conventional psychology did not provide. It took about a year, but with a lot of prayer and meditation and listening to my inner guidance, I stumbled on Marnia’s book at a local bookseller.

I think I cried nonstop for about a week after that. It was tears of relief, or sorrow, of joy, of regret. Her words echoed my experiences and feelings EXACTLY, not the abstract, mainstream psychology, you’re-still-angry-at-your-father-for-something-that-happened-when-you-were-twelve bullshit. My ex read the book with me, and he saw the truth in it, too, although I don’t think it affected him as it did me. But he loved me, and so he agreed to give it a shot. Also, it was at that time that I finally found my voice, the one that could say “no.” We agreed to take a break from sex and orgasm.

So it started there, and I’m not sure I can articulate exactly what went wrong. This is the first time I’ve ever really tried. I definitely started feeling better after giving up orgasm, but our relationship never fully recovered. We really had no idea what we were doing, so the mistakes we made were understandable, I guess. Since he is not here to give his side of the story, and very likely never would be interested again in a community such as this, I can only speak for myself. And although this may sound full of resentment, I really do care for him very much, and have worked very hard to let go of the past and move forward.

What I feel I really needed from him I did not get. I really needed patience. From the outside, it may have appeared to be there. But from day one, he never stopped announcing how long it had been since we last had sex. Everyday, another tally was added, and everyday I was told the count so far. I still felt suffocated. I could never let my guard down. No matter how many times we did the Exchanges, I still felt as though I was there to fuel his addiction. When we weren’t able to move forward, it was always up to me to find the next solution. I constantly felt as though I had to come up with new reasons as to why we could not go back to conventional sex. He never took an interest in seeking new ways to heal or control his sexual energy. (This, by the way, is why I am so fascinated and encouraged by all the men here.) I felt desperate and full of resentment all the time.

I completely lost all sense of self. I was stuck. I put on about 30 pounds, which I really believe to be the physical armor I felt I needed to protect myself, because it fell of almost immediately after he left. I got lost in the suggestions of Marnia’s book and other readings of transforming sexual energy into loving, creative activities. Those activities became obsessive-compulsive tasks that I could lose myself in, and convince myself that I was doing it out of love. I did love him, I do still love him, but everything I did was out of fear.

For two years, we were never able to get it right. We never went back to conventional sex, but masturbation became an issue. He went back to pornography for a short time, but as far as I know, he stayed away from it most of that time. Basically, it went like this: we would practice the Exchanges, or some version of them, for a while. Then someone would masturbate, usually him, but I was guilty, too, after sometime. So we would try and start over. Then, we would fight because it wasn’t working. Then we would take a break from it. Then we would start again. Over and over and over and over.

The strange thing is that we were almost there, at the end. We actually got to the intercourse part, finally, about a week before he left. All that time, I felt as though it was my fault that it wasn’t working, that I just needed to drop my guard and open up and trust him again, and everything would be okay. But as soon as I did, he ran. It was pretty much my worst fear, and it came true. He told me at that point that it was more than he was ready for. I guess that meant that he was scared, maybe even more than I was. What a strange thing to find out after so long, huh? So maybe it wasn’t me, or at least not completely me, holding us back. Maybe he was telling me all along that he wasn’t ready, we just weren’t ready to let go of each other.

I don’t really know where to go from here. It’s about 3 AM, and I think I’ve written enough already. I’ve got about three days of hardcore studying to do to make up for the last couple days of chaos, so if I receive any comments here, please forgive me if I don’t respond right away. And as always, thank you for taking the time to read all this. I know it’s a lot.

Goodnite.