I recognize that suggesting that one can "heal" from a ubiquitous cultural milieu is some big clit energy. But that just means that half the population won't be able to find it anyway.
I don't know where I am in this journey...whether I've just begun, or whether I've been doing it since I was seven years old. Every four years I reach a growth spurt where all of the tightening skin around me splits, and I swear I don't know some fundamental truth, like what love is or what I want from relationships.
But I know what I don't want. And healing from the Patriarchy, for me, means first and foremost distancing myself from it.
Easier said than done. Like most bi-ENMs, I was raised hetero-mono. Not just by my loving parents, but by the world I grew up in. I was "wired"--a word many men use to explain their behavior while also excusing themselves from working on it--for the heterosexual monogamous relationship.
As soon as my hormones began rumbling, I was taught to cross my legs and apologize. I was taught that sex would be the greatest feeling if-and-only-if I rejected my present desires and waited for an attractive man to show up and promise me his loyalty. I wasn't supposed to test-drive, because sex was the greatest feeling, period. I was supposed to "give myself" to him if he promised he would always be there and never divorce me.
And so for centuries, men have worked on that initial impression, and women have worked on selecting a partner and then "maintaining" his consistent loyalty. If he loves me, he'll stay. If he doesn't love me, he'll leave. So dive into his world first, but don't overwhelm him with your own thoughts.
Cultural conditioning is a weird thing. We all buy into it even if we don't want to. God knows men don't like this pressure either, but we still find ourselves stepping into these dislikeable roles. Even in polyamory, where we're supposed to break free from them and make our own rules.
"This man is going to be the last man I fall in love with," I say every time I fall in love with a man, because it always takes so much out of me. What hurts the most about the end of every heterosexual relationship is that I always get to the point where I actually trust it. And as the signs of distancing begin, I started to gently, but clearly, suggest that we do some repair work.
All of a sudden, the books that he's bragged about reading in the beginning--about relationship longevity, John Gottman, Esther Perel--none of that matters anymore. He is worn out from life, and I am a detail that can't be maintained instead of a person who's also invested a lot of her time into the relationship. Repair work is harder than starting over for him, which is why so many poly men try to date younger than their age (for more on this, see my previous post).
"It's so funny," one of my male partners once said, "that nothing bad ever happened to you."
****
I can tell how much I need to heal, because all I want to do right now is start fires with men. The more violent, the more satisfying. I get into as many arguments on reddit as possible, and literally delight scrolling through painful vulnerabilities on /r/askmen. If I can respond to a man with an invalidation that a man once used on me, I basically cum. Your mort is my petite mort.
"Hurt people hurt people," my therapist tells me, and I imagine my cackling face flickering in the light of the flames.
It's just...it's time for me to stop talking to men altogether. Except when giving them my drink order. Occasionally they make good points (about things completely unrelated to women), like some of the social variables that are playing into the current economic state, or the funniest parts of the latest Ben Shapiro piece (god knows I'd never have the stamina to do that). Alas, I'm positive Cody Johnston is taken.
But for the first time, I'm in a loving relationship with a beautiful woman. We're going through gay NRE, which makes hetero NRE look like store-bought cookies from the UK. We've never once diminished ourselves for the other. We live for the other's laughter, her goofiness, her jokes, her art, her expression. We hold each other (or create space) during relapses of trauma.
What I love the most about this relationship is that I can't see the end of it. As a hypervigilant, horny, strung-out demisexual, I'm always looking for ways a relationship could go wrong, and I basically refuse to enter a relationship that I can already see the end of.
But there's no script for this. We just care about each other. And have really good sex. I don't fixate on her or what I'm afraid I'm not getting from her or what every comment or response "means." She doesn't distance herself or hide her feelings from me. We both ask for what we need. We both give what we're capable of giving.
I think my gay relationship is teaching me what healthy relationships are. I know that sounds cringey, like gay relationships are perfect or magic or token or that I'm using one to make my heteronormative life better. That's not what I'm trying to say--I'll fuck up there too, I'll hurt-and-be-hurt, and my girlfriend is not responsible for teaching me. But she is here next to me while I'm learning some hard lessons.
Healing means re-wiring your brain. Which feels very fucking weird. Not all guided re-wiring has had benevolent intentions. (Cue LGBT community looking down in their iced coffee and raising their eyebrows.) It's why trust in your personal therapist is so crucial. Because the most electric sparks we feel are the ones that are familiar, not the ones that are healthy. Attraction isn't 100% reliable when you're trying to heal.
I have talked to many straight men about the cultural environment they feel stuck in--loneliness, wishing they could catch a break, if only they could find partners who didn't want to talk about feelings all the time--and am baffled at how many of them refuse to try seeking out male partners, who are clearly more suited for their sexual and emotional needs.
Because it's not what they're attracted to.
And that's why I'm taking a sabbatical from men--not just as partners, but as friends-who-talk-about-sex. Of course you're not attracted to what you've been raised to fear, numb-nuts. You have to take a dive into the unknown. What are you afraid of? That you won't like it? That you will? Jesus, take a goddamn risk.
Anyway, they'll figure it out or they won't, it's not my business anymore. I just want to sit under a willow tree and drink sparkling rose and play tarot cards with other queer witches.
I can't wait to not-watch every straight romance movie that comes out even more than I didn't watch them before, and to watch them diminish like Blockbuster Videos. Queer or GTFO, sluts.
