Beyond The Forbidden Wire...

It's been awhile, a couple weeks anyway since I have re-visited the subject of my last marriage and this notion I have come to believe that I, in fact was never faithful to that marriage or any other romantic relationship I have ever been in. I am wondering now if I am truly capable of loving another person at all now. So I start to really wonder about that and ask myself some hard questions along those very lines: Can I truly love another person? Am I trustworthy and can I trust anyone else? And am I even capable of love at all...honestly, I don't know?


Looking back now I know that every relationship that was ever involved in was horribly flawed..they were always all about me. It turns out that even when I was focusing on "them", it usually was just to make things better for myself or to get something that I wanted...mostly attention, ego stroking and sex.


Then in addition to this notion that I can't truly  love another person...comes the subject of sex and with it many other tough questions follow: Are my beliefs, expectations and feelings about sex and having sex so disturbed, distorted and distressed that I can never have a full and healthy sex life with another person? Good question..and I don't know the answer.


There is so much baggage that I have carried with me ever since I was raped. Because of the circumstances of that situation, I really began to struggle with my own sexual identity...even to the point where I began question whether I might be gay...and all of this at 12, 13...14 years of age. I just knew that I felt different and this shouldn't have happened to me but it did, it was screwed up and therefore I WAS screwed up too! I began really focusing on sex and having sex... with girls. Remember..I was a virgin when I was raped. Long story short I lost my virginity to a high school aged girl from my church youth group that same year and regularly met with her and her friends for periodic "booty calls" at her parents house after school because they worked.


I remember feeling guilty about pursing and especially about enjoying sex yet it was so exciting and made me feel so important, like a big shot...I didn't want to stop! I have no idea what those girls thought about the whole thing but to the best of my recollection the meeting those girls for sex went on for several years until I had grown up a bit and was in high school myself. By that time they had then graduated and gone off to college. But then I was in a pattern of having a steady girlfriend and all my relationships from that time on were sexual in nature.


I was pushing the envelope sexually though I was monogamous and honestly hadn't a lot of different girlfriends. Now, looking back on it
I just think ...er I know that I was having major issues trusting people....which shouldn't come as a surprise knowing what I do now. I was a completely confused wreck when it came to emotion and sex....I tried to detach from the emotion of it and look at it as simply a way to physically satisfy myself...like masturbation with a human partner...exactly the opposite of how I really believed deep inside. But the emotion always began to creep in...


It would take decades to work out this confusion and even now I am wondering if I am really capable of healthy sexual relations and a healthy relationship at all. Kim and I have obviously discussed this at length and since we actually were sexually active with each other during our active addiction when we were boyfriend/girlfriend (We abstain now from sex and have for over 4 years) so she has experienced first hand how extremely intense and emotional I had become about having sex. I think the passion, intensity sheer emotion of it, fueled then by my raging addiction really frightened yet excited her at the same time. I feel the same way about it...


So I have no idea how I am going to act and react until I actually begin having having sexual relations again with a partner. So It frightens me some just thinking and wondering about it.


I am going to close for now. I'll pick up this subject either later tonight or tomorrow. It freaks me a bit but if I don't try and get it out in the open and work through it.. well I'll never heal or be able to move on.


(Photo by Kathy Tomson)