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The Trouble With Wanting Men
The stranger arrived at the bar before I did, as I intended him to, and was waiting for me at a table in back. He had the kind of face I like, and he had been a little difficult to pin down, delayed in his responses, which I also like. The place was loud with the 'having fun' sounds people make when they expect to have fun any minute now, so we were leaning in to hear each other. His hair, I thought, would be good to put my hands in. There comes a time, usually, when a few extra beats of eye contact are enough. We passed through these beats, took each other's wrists and met across the table, which was wide enough to frustrate kissing in the right way, keeping the rest of us well apart. Back at my place he was a little shy, I thought, or a little out of practice, but I felt he wanted me, which was what I wanted — to be organized and oriented by his desire, as though it were a point on the dark horizon, strobing. 'I was really looking forward to seeing you again,' he texted me the following week, around lunchtime, 'but I'm going through some intense anxiety today and need to lay low :(.' 'Totally understand,' I replied, but I didn't. Feeble, fallible 'looking forward' is not longing; a man should want me urgently or not at all. I was about to collapse into a ritual of frustrated horniness (fantasy, masturbation, snacks) when a friend urged me to join her and two other women for dinner. 'Of course he has anxiety,' said one of them, a therapist, who sat across from me at the restaurant. 'That's life. That's being alive and going to meet someone you don't know well.' 'Yeah,' said the woman beside her, a historian. 'It's called 'sexual tension.' Stay with it for a minute and you might get some.' 'They can't,' said my friend with triumphant disgust. She told us about a woman she knew who was dating a man from another city. After weeks of saying 'I can't wait to see you,' the man ghosted her during his actual visit. His explanation later? He'd been 'too anxious.' 'Aww, poor baby!' cried the historian, and we all cooed and moaned for the poor wittle fraidy-cat boo-boo, working ourselves into a frenzy of laughter over men's inability to 'man up and [expletive] us.' We were four women at a vegan restaurant in downtown Manhattan; we knew what show we were in, and we couldn't help but wonder, in a smug, chauvinistic way: Where were the men who could handle hard stuff? Like leaving the house for sex? The therapist mused about the anxiety of needing to 'justify the phallus.' 'You know,' she said, 'from the child's point of view, it's like, 'I get what Mom is for, but what are you for? What's the point of your thing?'' This sent us miming confrontations with imaginary members — 'Who invited you?' 'What's your deal?' 'Are you lost?' — which led to wisecracks about the not-so-precision scalpel of the surgeon the therapist was seeing. Privately, jokes aside, I am quite susceptible to penis — like, I worry that in some Hobbesian state of nature I might just automatically kneel to the prettiest one — but lately I have been bruised by the ambivalence of men, how they can first want me and then become confused about what they want, and this bawdy, diminishing humor soothed me, made me feel more powerful, more in control. 'When did the men get so anxious about desire?' asked the therapist, and I said I didn't know. 'Yes, you do,' my friend said. 'It was when they were put on notice that they can't just get drunk and grope us.' I haven't been dating long (just the other day my ex-husband and I received our Judgment of Divorce as an email attachment), but long enough to discover that I have a type. He is gentle, goofy, self-deprecating, rather deferential, a passionate humanist, a sweet guy, a 'good guy.' He tends to signal, in various ways, his exemption from the tainted category of 'men,' and it is perfectly understandable that he would wish to do so. It must be mildly embarrassing to be a straight man, and it is incumbent upon each of them to mitigate this embarrassment in a way that feels authentic to him. One of the reasons my marriage ended was that I fell in love with another man — whom I'll refer to by his first initial, J. Spontaneously graceful, with a soft voice and an inordinate, sad-eyed smile, J. made me laugh, stopping my breath. Being a 'good guy,' he intimated from the jump that he did not know how to 'do' relationships, giving me to understand that if I expected one with him (or, as he may have conceptualized it, from him), I did so at my peril (which was his peril, too, since he would hate to hurt me). Still, he pursued me; we seemed to be 'doing' something together. I keep encountering and hearing about men who 'can't.' Have these men not heard of 'don't want to?' My husband and I had an open relationship at the time that J. and I met, so the terms of our involvement were, at first, limited, and although J. exerted a pleasant pressure against these limitations, ultimately they suited him. I was the one who violated the terms by finding it intolerable, after a while, to care that much, in that way, for one person while being married to another. I could not disambiguate sex from love nor love from devotion, futurity, family integration, things I wanted with (from?) J., even as, throughout the year and a half or so that we saw each other, he continued to gesture to his incapacity to commit as if it were a separate being, an unfortunate child who followed and relied upon him, maybe, or a physical constraint. I stood there reaching for him while he sad-faced back at me like a boxed mime: He couldn't talk about it; he wished things were different; maybe someday the child would mature, the glass would break, but for now, there was really nothing to be done. It seems to me, surveying the field as a dating novice, that this kind of studiously irreproachable male helplessness abounds. I keep encountering and hearing about men who 'can't.' Have these men not heard of 'don't want to?' Maybe my friend was right about male anxiety at this moment. Maybe the men are taking a beat, 'laying low,' unsure of how to want, how to talk, how to woo. Maybe they are punishing us for the confusion. There are many routes to the species of disappointment I am circling here, but however we get there, the complaint is so common, such a cultural and narrative staple, that the academy is weighing in. We now have a fancy word, 'heteropessimism,' to describe the outlook of straight women fed up with the mating behavior of men. Coined by the sexuality scholar Asa Seresin, who later amended it to 'heterofatalism,' the term seems, at first glance, to distill a mood that is no less timely for being timeless. 'It was rly nice,' a close friend texted me recently, reporting on her third date with a lawyer. 'He's really really sweet and nice to me and good at sex. No doubt something humiliating and nightmarish will occur soon.' On more than one occasion, when my friend checked in with the lawyer to confirm tentative plans, he did not respond to her for many hours, or even a day. Granted, he worked a punishing schedule, but, my friend reasoned, it takes 90 seconds to send a quick reply. The dissonance between his caring and attentive in-person behavior and these silences confused her, and she mentioned this to him. The lawyer was sorry he had kept her waiting — he hadn't meant to — but, he said, her complaint had got him thinking: He unfortunately wasn't able to escalate whatever was happening between them into a 'relationship.' My friend clarified that she had not been asking to escalate anything, merely expressing a need for clarity about plans. He understood that, he said, but their 'communication skills' were obviously too different for them to continue dating. The humiliating and nightmarish part, she explained to me, was not so much the rejection as being cast against her will as 'woman eager for relationship.' In her memoir, 'Fierce Attachments,' Vivian Gornick describes the anguish of being ignored by a lover to her female friend: 'What I couldn't absorb,' she writes, 'was his plunging us back into the cruelty of old-fashioned man-woman stuff, turning me into a woman who waits for a phone call that never comes and himself into the man who must avoid the woman who is waiting.' 'I'm really done,' my friend said. 'I can't keep doing this. I don't want to be hurt and misunderstood constantly. I need to find some other way to live.' I agreed without thinking about it. (This is part of the pessimism, right? The feeling that further thinking about all of this is futile. Surely we have done enough thinking by now.) 'I wish I could just be gay with you,' she said, and I said I wished that, too, so much. This was our commiserative routine — what Seresin might call our 'performative disaffiliation with heterosexuality' — our spin on 'Take my wife, please.' Take my straightness, please. Take my attraction to men. Is 'heterofatalism' a useful concept? I took it up for a while, considered the positions. The writer and gender scholar Sara Ahmed has advanced the idea of 'complaint as feminist pedagogy,' arguing that to bitch is inherently transgressive, a form of resistance, while the philosophy professor Ellie Anderson suggests that women venting their dating woes constitutes a kind of negativity as rebellion. Was that what my friends and I were doing over dinner? Rebelling? The humiliating and nightmarish part was not so much the rejection as being cast against her will as 'woman eager for relationship.' If the experts say my romantic letdowns have some larger social significance, I am not going to argue. The men I want are not wanting me badly enough, not communicating with me clearly enough, not devoting themselves to me: All this certainly seems calamitous enough to warrant an 'ism.' And if it is an 'ism,' the problem cannot be me. It must be men, right? Men are what is rotten in the state of straightness, and why shouldn't we have an all-inclusive byword for our various pessimisms about them? Domestic pessimism (they still do less of the housework and child care); partner-violence pessimism (femicide is still gruesomely routine); erotic pessimism (the clitoris and its properties still elude many of them). And the petulantly proud masculinist subcultures that have arisen, at least in part, as reactions to these pessimisms keep coughing up new reasons to fear, rage against and complain about 'men.' But those 'men' are not the men my friends and I are feeling bleak about. It's the sweet, good ones. Dammit. I would like to believe there is something purposeful, resistant, even radical in the heterofatalist mode, but the more I voice it, the more I am inclined to agree with Seresin that it can produce nothing but more of itself. 'Heterosexuality is nobody's personal problem,' he writes. 'It doesn't make sense to extricate your own straight experience from straightness as an institution.' It isn't that my friend needs to find 'some other way to live'; it's that we all do. But instead of looking for it, we disaffected women 'perform' for one another this mutually enabling kind of maintenance, periodically off-gassing some of the shame and frustration of dating men and then chugging along with the status quo. Whatever Seresin's vision is, most of us can neither renounce our heterosexuality nor realize a significant renegotiation of its terms. What we can do, at least for now, is negotiate with ourselves. We can try to dodge 'old-fashioned man-woman stuff' by acting hopeless about relationships rather than 'eager' for them. Maybe this is the utility of 'heterofatalism' — naming the bitter pill before we force ourselves to swallow it and put on a carefree smile. Nice to meet you, 'good guy'; I am 'woman who expects nothing.' I was doubled over laughing, briefly tasting the knee of my jeans, while the man next to me on the sectional couch strummed a guitar and did a spot-on imitation of Bruce Springsteen. He had that lifting-something-heavy moan down cold, and he was improvising a song about work, American work in the American heartland, hyperbolically tough and tragic male work. Because I was losing it, he kept going, and I kept losing it, and at a certain point I wasn't sure if I was overpowered by amusement or just overpowered by him. On the way to his place, I had been texting with my aunt. 'Word from an expert,' she wrote. 'Wait til he wants it so bad he's nutsy cuckoo. Sounds facile but, man, truer words were never spoken. 'Make 'em Suffer' is my mantra!' I kept catching myself staring at his mouth, his bottom lip. He told me to slow down; he needed time to get a better sense of how I worked. I lay back to murmur, let him try stuff, and he warmed to his own control, putting his mouth right up to mine, then pulling away when I tried to engage his tongue. 'I see what you are,' he said finally, pinning my forearms. 'You're a bratty sub.' He held himself there, just out of reach, breathing on me. 'I like to make you wait,' he said. He did make me wait. I stood at the slot machine watching those cherries and fat yellow coins blur by, and they didn't stop. He was sweet with me in person, impulsive about biting my nose, but for stretches I wouldn't hear from him, or I would but only perfunctorily, and then, suddenly, he would pop up. Requesting clarification on what a man feels or wants or sees happening here has gotten me burned before, as it has many women I know. I have learned to regard such demands as 'demanding' in a feminized way — simultaneously bossy and supplicating, a reinscribing of the 'bratty sub' position. Taking my cues from him, I stayed mostly quiet. Call it 'communication pessimism.' On the bed, the 'female demand-male withdraw' pattern pulses with sensuality; in life it sometimes feels like it will drive me out of my senses. When my friend complained about the lawyer, I expressed outrage at his behavior and worked my way, quite naturally and along a well-worn groove, to a condemnation of all — OK, most — men as incapable of upholding basic standards of communication and care. I was thinking, of course, about J., and I am not proud that my instinctive response to the shame of being gender-stereotyped by life is to pay another stereotype forward. (Men suck. Groundbreaking!) That said, men's struggle to communicate in romantic relationships is widespread enough to have earned a psychological designation: 'normative male alexithymia,' or the condition of being unable to put words to emotions. This incapacity, Ellie Anderson argues, often forces women who date men to become 'relationship-maintenance experts,' solidifying what she cites as 'the most common communication pattern among heterosexual dating couples … the 'female demand-male withdraw' pattern.' Woman approaches man to discuss something; man removes himself. On the bed, the 'female demand-male withdraw' pattern pulses with sensuality; in life it sometimes feels like it will drive me out of my senses, and it creates work — tough, tragic female work. In the 1980s, the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild coined the term 'emotional labor' to describe paid work that 'involves trying to feel the right feeling for the job' (i.e. service work, health care, education). It must be an indication of our need for more ways to talk about the invisible affective labor that often falls to women that the term has suffered from 'concept creep,' stretching far past that original meaning to crop up in everyday conversations about unequal divisions of labor in our love lives. Anderson gives us a new term, related to but distinct from 'emotional labor' and more useful in parsing what we might call the micropolitics of dating: She calls the work women do to interpret mystifying male cues 'hermeneutic labor,' and she posits it as a form of 'gendered exploitation in intimate relationships.' The guy dating my friend may have been too busy lawyering to confirm his plans with her, but meanwhile, Anderson might say, my friend was working two jobs: one to earn her living, the other as sole manager of an emotional entanglement that was also his. Heterofatalism is partly just burnout. The stranger waiting at my usual back corner table looked a bit squarer than my average date — his hair appeared recently washed and cut, and he wore a button-down shirt — but some restless mischief played in his face, bearing itself fully in his laugh. Our conversation was brisk and jesting; I got the impression he was enjoying my company but that this was more bonus than criterion for him. He was partnered already, he had told me, and seeking only companionate sex; his dating profile referenced this clearly below a picture of him wearing a blue blazer and petting a donkey's head. We turned eventually to the subject of erotic temperament. He was interested in the possibilities that arise between people when any eventuality of marriage, procreation or fidelity was, so to speak, taken off the bed. What might then happen in that bed? In that community? In that world? Watching his clean-cut boyish form and listening to him speak with the eloquent enthusiasm of a connoisseur, the phrase that occurred to me was 'sex nerd.' Many dabblers in nonmonogamy were not really, he noted with a laugh, quoting the rapper Pusha T, ''bout dat life.' He was. I meet this type around sometimes: fluent in the language of polyamory, waving his respectful desire around like a plastic light saber: Pew pew. Why would you play with just one toy when you can take turns with all the toys? While at the same time vaguely subverting … something. Capitalism? What were my feelings, Sex Nerd wanted to know, about groups? I confessed to having no interest. What can happen between two people, that thing where a pair of beings lock onto and suspend each other, aching for and into each other — I was about that thing, that life. Sure sure, he got that, he respected that — but he had actually found that the intense, intimate kind of connection I described could occur between, say, four people. And when it did, he added with teeth, it was quite an experience. The bitterness does not replace wanting men, a man, the smell of a man's thin T-shirt, the dampness of the hair at his nape. I conceded that it was a fascinating prospect, but one I could not mentalize, or at least not in any way that moved me. Totally, he said, that was totally valid. He was generally eager to assure me that my desires were valid, both in person and later, when he wrote to me on more than one occasion to clarify that: 'If you feel our energies aren't matched, I won't argue,' and, 'If friendship only is preferred, I will understand,' and truly, 'No pressure.' Good guy. Protesting a bit much on the consensuality front, but basically a stand-up guy. Evolved, transparent, an enlightened creature of our new romantic age. If only I could desire a man like that, a man bringing such clear terms to the table, enough to be disappointed by him. (Isn't that what desire is? A site of potential disappointment?) But I couldn't, which was another disappointment. Two bodies were pressed together outside an entrance to the subway on my way home, the man's hand wrapped tightly around the back of the woman's head, and as I passed them a noise escaped me, a choking sound, a performance of disgust for the benefit of some bitter omniscience. The bitterness does not replace wanting men, a man, the smell of a man's thin T-shirt, the dampness of the hair at his nape after he exerts himself; the bitterness grows from the want and is mixed up with it. There must be something wrong, I keep thinking, with the way I desire. 'A good man is hard to want,' a good man wrote in the group chat. 'A hard man is good to find,' said another who knows I haven't had satisfying sex in a minute. 'A man is hard to find good?' said the previous man's girlfriend. 'A good find is hard to man,' I said, as if a guy were a tricky piece of equipment. 'Slow down, I need to get a better sense of how you work.' 'You're flattening the men,' a former lover wrote to me after I sent him a partial draft of this essay. 'They never get to be real — they're used to confirm a story about disappointment and frustration.' This man and I met last fall when he was, like me, reeling from romantic rejection, and within a half-hour we lunged at each other, as though by tacit agreement to be each other's comforting, orgasm-giving blankies for a time. We traded obsessive accounts of the failed relationships, cheered each other through the rigors of 'no contact,' watched Albert Brooks movies, belted Weezer songs to karaoke tracks on his couch. Whatever was happening between us went on for about six weeks, at which point I became annoyed that he was withholding something from me, though I couldn't say what exactly, and he became anxious about annoying me, and I accused him of coldness, and he accused me of being unfair, and so on. The familiar 'female demand-male withdraw' pattern descended over us like a polarizing spell, making me more goading and accusatory, him more defended and reserved. Unlike other, similar exchanges in my past, this one had an oddly mechanical quality, as though rather than venting real passions, we were locked into some tiresome, bewitched choreography. In 'Beyond Doer and Done To,' the feminist psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin describes the impasse two people can reach where 'each feels unable to gain the other's recognition, and each feels in the other's power.' In this state, which she calls 'complementary twoness,' both people feel helpless, both feel 'done to,' both feel the other is 'leaving us no option except to be either reactive or impotent.' Who knows how long the dance of complementary twoness would have lasted with my fellow Weezer singer had one or both of us felt ourselves to be in love. As it was, after a couple of weeks we were able to break the enchantment, and we remain friends. Eventually I admitted to him that it had felt more natural to me to default to 'wounded female' rather than assume responsibility for my desires. He, for his part, described a large-looming ex whose adept use of guilt had left its mark. It was one of those moments of becoming aware, suddenly and fleetingly, of how we play ourselves and cast others to play opposite us in the productions of our internal dramas known as days. My sexuality owes me neither protection nor affirmation; it is out for itself, out for a skirmish, a strain, a smell. He has questions now, about this piece. Aren't I oversimplifying the case of my friend and the lawyer? Isn't what happened there about more than communication? Don't I recognize a clear incompatibility, arising from both of their insecurities? And regarding hermeneutic labor: Why would a woman want to be with a man who required so much work? Such a woman must intuit that such a man is not ready for a relationship, or that he is unsure of his feelings for her. Isn't she just as much a part of the enactment of whatever 'heteropessimistic' outcome is looming there? In fact, isn't my taking my friend's side, as I seem to do here, related to the phenomenon I am diagnosing? Isn't the impulse to 'choose a side' itself perversely fatalistic, antithetical to the mutual recognition that is the very basis of a relationship? I toppled the whole structure of my life for a man who, when I asked him, 'Do you want to be with me or not?' replied, after a few seconds' silence, 'I want to be with you, and I want everything everywhere all at once.' J. was referring, of course, to the 2022 surreal sci-fi comedy set across a multitude of parallel universes in which many versions of the protagonists play out many versions of their lives, each millisecond branching fractal-like into countless alternate dimensions, creating infinite selves, infinite fates, infinite answers to the dilemma of how to be and with whom. This film had moved him deeply, seeming to capture qualities of his neurotype that he seldom saw portrayed. It occurs to me that the multiverse mind-set may also reflect the cognitive effects of dating apps that, defeatist by design, project a mirage of endless romantic possibilities across infinite timelines. One guy I went out with spoke with a hint of longing about the relationship between his grandparents, who barely spoke to each other before getting married as teenagers in Sicily, thrown together by slim-pickings village life, adolescent hormones and the oppressive myth of female honor. What a system, what a gamble, and then both people were trapped for life. But at least you were spared the anxiety of choice. At least there was that. The structure of my life needed toppling, it turned out, and I am grateful, and I have been doing my best to be J.'s friend. On a recent afternoon, my daughter and I sat on a blanket in a park with him. A group of teenagers were playing volleyball nearby, using a horizontally growing tree as their net. My daughter had a hankering to swing on that tree, and so we were keeping an eye on the teenagers, waiting for them to disband, urging her to be patient. A few days later, I received a characteristically whimsical text: 'In some other timeline we're still waiting by that tree for the teenagers to finish playing volleyball.' 'Some other timeline.' The phrase captures not only J.'s inclination to keep all possibilities perpetually and wistfully open but my own dogged attachment to a foreclosed dimension, my pouring into that hypothetical so much vitality, care and hope — laborious hope — that might have been, and might still be, reserved for what is possible and happening now, only once, in my fleeting middle age. To forego life for a fantasy: What could be more fatalistic than that? 'Maybe the problem is that you're a romantic,' says my former lover-slash-friend-slash-male-sensitivity-reader. 'And maybe so are the other fatalists.' Sure, maybe. We know — have long known — that romanticism and fatalism are dialectical lovers. When love fails, the very quality that elevated it above the common thrum of experience makes it impossible to imagine anything of the kind ever occurring again. The miraculous singularity of being in love is thus particularly fertile soil for a generalizing pessimism: 'I'm attracted to men because I love making bad choices,' goes one quintessentially heterofatalist tweet. This turn, from one man to the imaginary monolith of 'men,' both deprives the wounding man of specificity and shows him a certain loyalty; by casting him to play an entire gender, we make sure that we will meet him again. There is something here of the spirited young nun's frenzied renunciation, slamming the door on romance with an intensely romantic slam, then wedding herself to a male abstraction. One thing heterofatalism reflects is a persistent lack of faith that those we desire will be able to recognize us as commensurately human. I wonder how much, fearing what we expect and expecting what we fear, we summon the 'old-fashioned man-woman stuff' that keeps coming around. A woman comes, a man withdraws; this embodiment needn't necessarily become pregnant with larger meaning, but it often does. I end up wondering if it is my own fault somehow when the heterosexual dynamic cannot seem to transcend its own tropes, subvert its own symbolism, play out an entirely unpredictable scene. Seresin rightly pokes fun at the privileged ignorance of straights who, in moments of yearning to experience a desire that we imagine as more extricable from our own oppression, announce a wish to be queer. No relationship — regardless of gender, orientation, number of people — is immune from power dynamics; unequal distribution is always, so to speak, on the bed. But in queer relationships the roles are at least less determined, with perhaps more freedom and flexibility in who assumes which, and how. In other words, maybe our pessimism about straightness arises in part from a dawning sense of its anachronism. Maybe, like the surge of interest in straight nonmonogamy, it's part of heterosexuality's clumsy process of queering itself into a more fluid future. To break the impasse of 'complementary twoness' that can grip any pair of people, Jessica Benjamin imagines how we might collaborate, over time (and the time is crucial), to create an 'intersubjective third,' a space in which your needs and mine, your desires and mine, recognize and accept each other without competing for dominance. To create such a space, Benjamin says, requires a mutual surrender that is distinct from submission. I find this distinction difficult to grasp, which is perhaps to say that I experience desire in terms of a struggle that someone must lose. I am ready to cop to some unconscious masochism here. A good man is hard to want, after all, and my sexuality owes me neither protection nor affirmation; it is out for itself, out for a skirmish, a strain, a smell. 'The old way of mating is dead,' said my friend at our colloquy of female complaint over dinner, 'and the new one has yet to be born.' What is the new one? Pessimism may help us feel knowing, but really, we don't know. For now, life has us pinned here: 'I like to make you wait.' Jean Garnett has published essays in The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily and the Yale Review. A winner of the Pushcart Prize, she is at work on a book about relationships.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
I used to be an escort, and a former client wants to be friends. What should I do?
Until four years ago, I was a sex worker – specifically, a high-end escort. In my experience, when clients treat you with respect and understand the boundaries, it's possible to form a relationship not unlike that between a therapist and a client. One client I was particularly fond of was a man a few years older than me. He is on the autism spectrum, which makes him somewhat socially awkward, but he is intelligent, creative and empathetic – and passably handsome. I always felt he would make a wonderful partner for a woman who could see past his quirks. Last week, I ran into him at the library. The first thing he said was he'd understand if I didn't want to talk – but I was actually glad to see him. We spent about 15 minutes chatting pleasantly, and when we parted he asked if I'd consider meeting up as friends. I took his number and said I'd think about it. I'm pretty sure he's hoping for more than just friendship, but if my sense of him is accurate, he'd accept a 'no' gracefully and respect my privacy. The problem is I'm unsure what to do. Had we met under different circumstances, I might well have considered dating him, and I would definitely like him as a friend. I'm aware of the stigma directed at men who see escorts, but he doesn't fit any negative stereotype. Even so, the fact he's tied to a chapter of my life I've moved on from leaves me conflicted. I don't know if reconnecting would add something positive to my life – or blur boundaries I've worked hard to establish and maintain. I think the fact you're writing to me shows you do want to consider it, but are aware there may be some pitfalls. In some ways you're front-loading the issues you would have – because you already know something of each other's past – more than if you met someone the more conventional way. I consulted clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr Stephen Blumenthal, who has worked with people who visit sex workers. He wonders if this might be less a case of 'wanting a relationship, but rather exploring your boundaries in relation to your previous work and the life you have now'. You said in another message that you had hitherto kept your past work private. Perhaps you now feel ready to merge your past and your present/future, and by allowing this man from your past to possibly be a friend, you can see if this will work for you. Dr Blumenthal explains that he's known 'situations where men have formed relationships with sex workers. Some have succeeded and some have ended in disaster. It's impossible to know how things will turn out, there's no predetermined outcome. And yes, most people assume the relationship between sex worker and client is just about sex, but I've heard many a time it's less about sex and often primarily an emotional relationship that has sex as part of it. It's not always like that, of course, but it can be.' I think you have to be honest (as with all potential relationships) about what you want from this man, and if that's possible. You've been very good at boundaries before, this will need a different set of boundaries and they may need renegotiating, both at the beginning and at various other times as things change – if either a friendship or a relationship blossoms. 'The important thing,' says Dr Blumenthal, 'is to be fully cognisant of where the original relationship came from. A lot of sex work is about an illusion – that the client is the only one, that maybe they're loved by the sex worker. Here, exposing the relationship to the outside world may be problematic if you deny where it's stemmed from.' All relationships, whether platonic or romantic, start with a bit of illusion and projection, and what makes them succeed is communication, with the other person but also with oneself. That communication may allow the relationship to grow, or founder. You seem grounded and have established boundaries. If you feel safe with this man then it may not be a bad idea to meet him again in a public place and see if you can develop a new way of being together. Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions. The latest series of Annalisa's podcast is available here.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
I used to be an escort, and a former client wants to be friends. What should I do?
Until four years ago, I was a sex worker – specifically, a high-end escort. In my experience, when clients treat you with respect and understand the boundaries, it's possible to form a relationship not unlike that between a therapist and a client. One client I was particularly fond of was a man a few years older than me. He is on the autism spectrum, which makes him somewhat socially awkward, but he is intelligent, creative and empathetic – and passably handsome. I always felt he would make a wonderful partner for a woman who could see past his quirks. Last week, I ran into him at the library. The first thing he said was he'd understand if I didn't want to talk – but I was actually glad to see him. We spent about 15 minutes chatting pleasantly, and when we parted he asked if I'd consider meeting up as friends. I took his number and said I'd think about it. I'm pretty sure he's hoping for more than just friendship, but if my sense of him is accurate, he'd accept a 'no' gracefully and respect my privacy. The problem is I'm unsure what to do. Had we met under different circumstances, I might well have considered dating him, and I would definitely like him as a friend. I'm aware of the stigma directed at men who see escorts, but he doesn't fit any negative stereotype. Even so, the fact he's tied to a chapter of my life I've moved on from leaves me conflicted. I don't know if reconnecting would add something positive to my life – or blur boundaries I've worked hard to establish and maintain. I think the fact you're writing to me shows you do want to consider it, but are aware there may be some pitfalls. In some ways you're front-loading the issues you would have – because you already know something of each other's past – more than if you met someone the more conventional way. I consulted clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr Stephen Blumenthal, who has worked with people who visit sex workers. He wonders if this might be less a case of 'wanting a relationship, but rather exploring your boundaries in relation to your previous work and the life you have now'. You said in another message that you had hitherto kept your past work private. Perhaps you now feel ready to merge your past and your present/future, and by allowing this man from your past to possibly be a friend, you can see if this will work for you. Dr Blumenthal explains that he's known 'situations where men have formed relationships with sex workers. Some have succeeded and some have ended in disaster. It's impossible to know how things will turn out, there's no predetermined outcome. And yes, most people assume the relationship between sex worker and client is just about sex, but I've heard many a time it's less about sex and often primarily an emotional relationship that has sex as part of it. It's not always like that, of course, but it can be.' I think you have to be honest (as with all potential relationships) about what you want from this man, and if that's possible. You've been very good at boundaries before, this will need a different set of boundaries and they may need renegotiating, both at the beginning and at various other times as things change – if either a friendship or a relationship blossoms. 'The important thing,' says Dr Blumenthal, 'is to be fully cognisant of where the original relationship came from. A lot of sex work is about an illusion – that the client is the only one, that maybe they're loved by the sex worker. Here, exposing the relationship to the outside world may be problematic if you deny where it's stemmed from.' All relationships, whether platonic or romantic, start with a bit of illusion and projection, and what makes them succeed is communication, with the other person but also with oneself. That communication may allow the relationship to grow, or founder. You seem grounded and have established boundaries. If you feel safe with this man then it may not be a bad idea to meet him again in a public place and see if you can develop a new way of being together.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
I'm Married But Never Wanted To Have Sex. A Single Word From My Therapist Changed Everything.
Related: I was 34 and married to a man when it first hit me: I should have bloomed by now. In high school, I had always been way too into waiting for marriage to have sex, even though I wasn't particularly religious or conservative. I just thought, Well, a rule's a rule! You heard what our nervous P.E. teacher said, folks! Keep it in your pants! As I got older, fewer and fewer of my friends seemed as excited about abstinence as I was. It bewildered me — what was so great about sex? I spent so little time thinking about it that it really didn't occur to me until I was well into my marriage that maybe there was something much bigger going on. Several heart-wrenching therapy sessions later, I admitted to my therapist, 'I've never really felt the desire to have sex with men.' 'What about women?' My therapist asked. Her question almost confused me. I suddenly realized that even though I had always identified as bisexual, I wasn't actually picturing having sex with women I had crushes on either. Then she asked the question I wish I had known to ask myself years earlier: 'Do you think you could be asexual?' It was like she had unlocked the door to a word I didn't even realize I knew but that I had been waiting to hear my entire life. In the most basic terms, an asexual person experiences little to no sexual attraction — they are not sexually attracted to men or women or any other gender. Sexual attraction is different from romantic attraction, and your sexual orientation can be different from your romantic orientation. For instance, I'm romantically attracted to all genders (biromantic) but sexually attracted to none of them (asexual or 'ace'). Related: I always thought I was bisexual because I wanted to date men and women, but wanting to date them and wanting to have sex with them are two completely different things. And I never felt especially driven to do the latter. Flirting and kissing? Yes, please. Taking it to the bedroom? How about we see what's on Netflix instead. You'll notice I didn't say being asexual means being celibate or requires not having sex. Often people think the two go hand in hand, but that's where they get us wrong. Asexuality exists along a spectrum. Some aces are not interested in sex with anyone, including themselves. Some might not be sexually attracted to others but may still have sex with a partner because of the connection it creates or nurtures. Some, who identify as demisexuals, are only interested in sex with someone once they've formed a strong emotional bond with them. But the thing that all aces have in common is that sexual attraction does not exist or does not exist in the way that it does for allosexual people (those who do experience sexual attraction to others). When you don't have the words to describe something, it's impossible to imagine it. When I was struggling with my sexuality as a teenager, I at least knew that bisexuality existed. But I never knew it was possible to not be sexually attracted to anyone, so I just willed myself to try harder. I was at war with myself — I wanted to feel the desire I saw characters in movies and on TV experience, the way I thought I was supposed to, but my body just didn't. Dating was a minefield of fending off the sloppy bedroom invitation of a frat boy who I thought was 'very interested' in hearing about acting camp, and getting halfway through 'Big Fish' before finding a friend's hands down my pants. When you don't understand the signs of sexual attraction because they don't exist for you, every interaction can feel dangerous. I found myself wondering, Will this end in a hug? Or will I find myself petrified in his bed, afraid to say no? Once, when I was in college, I was thrilled to finally get my crush back to my dorm room after a party. 'My roommate's gone,' I said flirtatiously as I closed the heavy door behind us. 'Do you... want to sit down?' I asked, gesturing toward the only seating option: my lofted bed, 6 feet above us. 'Sure,' he said with a shrug. I smiled at him, then quickly tried to climb into the bunk bed as seductively as possible. He climbed up next to me, and we started kissing. Dreams do come true, I thought, buzzing with excitement over this kiss, which I'd anticipated for months. But before long, his hands reached for the bottom of my shirt. I froze, the familiar panic rising inside. Oh no. 'I... don't want to,' I said so softly I wondered if I had only thought it. He stopped and said, 'OK!' Relieved that he didn't seem upset, I smiled at him, then leaned in to kiss him again, but he pulled back. 'Wait,' he said. 'I'm confused. I thought you said you wanted to stop?' Now I was confused. What did he think this was about? I invited him back here so we could kiss and maybe cuddle for a little bit ― that's it. Did there have to be more? Once again, I had misunderstood the unspoken signals, and I sat watching him put on his shoes to leave as he tried to hide his disappointment. Years later, my husband and I met. We had a whirlwind romance. He was confident and funny and, importantly, very cool about me wanting to wait to have sex. Of course, just like in my serious relationships before him, there was always the looming tension and the quiet unease permeating the bedroom for me. I didn't get why people wanted it, and I found myself often on edge at night, the expectation hanging over me as I begged myself to just be 'normal' and feel the urge like everyone else apparently did. Related: It had always been challenging for my allosexual partners to not feel desired by me, and I didn't understand why I couldn't give them what they needed. Instead, I tried other ways to show my husband affection: I hid notes in his suitcase when he traveled and left notes on the table when I stayed out late. I drew pictures of inside jokes and wrote love letters because that was something I could wholeheartedly give, something that wasn't wrapped up in complicated feelings. I loved my husband, and I wanted to be near him and go on dates and cook together. (OK, I mostly wanted him to cook for me, but still.) Why couldn't that be enough? At the same time, I knew being sexual was important to our relationship, so I wanted so badly to try. Since everyone else in the world seemed to be into sex, I figured it was me who just needed to get over my personal hang-ups. I became a bedroom detective, constantly trying to unearth the root of the problem. Maybe my unease comes from the bad relationship I had while studying abroad, so what I need is to not be pressured, I reasoned with myself. And then a week later I'd tell myself, No, it comes from my sheltered youth, and I need some amount of initiation, but I can't feel tricked. But no matter how many perfectly outlined scenarios I came up with, nothing alleviated my anxiety about sex. Finally, that afternoon in my therapist's office gave me the answer I had been looking for. While the revelation was a huge relief for me, I was nervous to tell my husband. Would this be a dealbreaker? There was no roadmap available to me for how we would move forward with this new knowledge. I didn't know much about asexuality, and I had no idea if an allosexual person would want to be with someone like me. When I sat down and explained everything I had learned to him, it was actually a relief for both of us. I could finally be at peace with the fact that I experienced attraction differently than my husband (no more trying to force myself to be 'normal'), and he knew now that it wasn't that I didn't desire him. In the end, recognizing that I was ace helped remove a lot of the unease for me, because I wasn't fighting against my body anymore. I was so grateful to him for listening patiently and supporting me as we learned more about asexuality together. Was it always easy to figure out? Of course not. But now we navigate sexuality in our relationship in our own way, just like every couple does. Coming out to others as asexual has proved complicated, especially because there's so much ignorance and misunderstanding about asexuality in our culture. Recently, on a Netflix reality show, I heard a contestant say, 'I'm a human ― I want to get physical.' The implication was that anyone who wouldn't want to 'get physical' is somehow inhuman. Late-night talk show hosts use the term 'asexual' synonymously with 'undesirable.' Commenters on ace articles and social media posts fling hurtful assumptions at us like, 'What a waste!' 'Why are you dressing like that if you don't want to have sex?' 'So you don't feel sexual attraction... are you attracted to plants?' 'Are you a sociopath?' 'It's because you haven't met the right person' and 'You just need to get laid!' 'How tragic!' Constantly having to face so much stigma and misinformation is challenging and can cause aces to doubt ourselves and what we feel. It can also keep us in the closet, either because we fear what will happen if we come out or simply because it's exhausting to have to defend our identity and repeatedly educate others about our lives. There are many reasons to be sad about asexuality, but none of them have anything to do with asexuals themselves and have everything to do with society. Consider the young ace woman who is forced into marriage despite being sex-repulsed, or an ace man who goes to the doctor for advice only to be told he's dealing with a disorder and then subjected to conversion therapy. Consider the asexual person who is challenged by their family or bullied by their friends because not experiencing sexual attraction is believed to be abnormal or dangerous. But asexuals aren't sad because we don't feel sexual attraction. We're not missing anything. A lot of our distress would be alleviated if society accepted that we're happy the way we are. What's more, not feeling sexual attraction doesn't mean we can't go on dates (with other aces or allosexuals) or find partners or get married or have kids. For those who aren't interested in more typical or traditional romantic relationships or family configurations, they might form queer platonic relationships or create family from friends. There are lots of different ways to find and experience love and companionship that don't involve or require sexual attraction. Related: Finding and experimenting with new approaches to relationships and family ― and concentrating on those bonds outside of the realm of sex ― can be valuable for everyone, not just asexuals, and there's a lot more allosexuals can learn from us. We spend a lot of time thinking through what we like and want and, maybe more important, what we don't want out of sex and relationships. Thinking about what you actually want versus what you feel you should want can lead to better communication and the ability to advocate for yourself. In relationships like mine, where an asexual is paired with an allosexual, compromise and articulating our needs is essential. Beyond that, aces are great at creating solid bonds with friends ― maybe because we're great at prioritizing other types of relationships that aren't sexual. On the day I discovered asexuality, I left my therapist's office elated because I finally understood a crucial part of who I was. It was a life-changing moment, especially because it explained so much about how I show up in my marriage. Having a name for my identity — and an orientation that I can claim — has given my husband and me a new way to understand our relationship. Being able to be my truest self with him has made us stronger than ever. I dream that someday asexuality will be widely accepted as a valid orientation instead of a slur, a punchline or, worse, a disorder in need of fixing. There are many of us out there in the world — and many who may not even know they're ace because of how little information exists about our identity. I hope that will change as more and more of us discover and embrace who we are, continue to share our truths, dismantle the many myths about asexuality, and let the world know how much we love ourselves and our lives just the way we are. Erin Wiesen (she/her) writes about parenting and sexuality, and is working on a memoir about coming out as asexual in her 30s. She is an advocate for asexual representation and lives on the East Coast with her family. This article originally appeared on HuffPost in May 2024. Also in Goodful: Also in Goodful: Also in Goodful: Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
The Travel Hacks That Help Me Thrive as a Mom With High-Functioning Anxiety
An anxiety therapist and mom of two shares simple skills that could help you keep your calm on your next vacation. As a mental health therapit, educator, and advocate, I spend a lot of time helping others manage stress and anxiety, but that doesn't mean I'm exempt from it. In fact, as a mom of two young boys (ages 1 and 4) who lives with high-functioning anxiety, traveling can feel like a minefield of mental load, overstimulation, and unpredictable chaos. I know I'm not alone, and that's why I'm opening up to share what has personally worked for me in these recent years. I want to be clear: I'm not here to tell you what to do. This isn't a list of perfect solutions, but if you find one, let me know! This is a personal and ongoing practice that continues to evolve with each trip we take and I do not anticipate that all of these will be a good fit for you. What I am sharing is my real-life perspective in the hopes that it encourages you to reflect on your needs, and to explore ways you can feel more supported and regulated while on the go. Whether you're preparing for your first family trip or your fiftieth, I hope you find something in here that makes it feel even a little bit easier, lighter, or more grounded. Because you deserve that, and so do your kids. 1. The master family packing list: My mental load MVP I no longer start from scratch. I keep a running family packing list that I tweak based on what we learn from each trip. Before every journey, I revisit it, strike through what doesn't apply, and update it, but never delete. That history helps me remember what worked, what didn't, and what I definitely don't want to forget again. It's a shared note with my husband, which means I'm not the sole keeper of every toothbrush, sunscreen, or swim diaper. 2. Using 'Landing Zones' One Week Out A week before we leave, I place open baskets in designated areas (usually one in the laundry room and one in the kitchen) to start collecting items as I think of them. It makes packing feel like a slow build rather than a sprint. Also, it weirdly feels like I'm doing less laundry when I toss fresh clothes straight into the zone. 3. Priority Post-Its Sometimes I wonder if loving post-its is a solid sign that you might have high-functioning anxiety. I use them throughout my life to find and maintain my focus and packing is no different. As the trip nears, I start using bright sticky notes to capture lingering to-dos. I still use our shared digital list, but post-its are more 'in our face' near the packing zones. Over time it's become habit to just saunter over and check them when I have a moment and of course it feels great to cross something off! These stickies help me highlight priority actions that could get lost in a long, mostly-checked note. 4. Slow and Steady Packing Packing is mentally exhausting to me. I've stopped trying to do it all in one day. Spreading it over the week allows space to rest, think, pivot, or offer grace and skip a day if needed. This also allows us more time to find the items we need and save last-minute trips to the store. 5. I accept that something will be forgotten As a recovering perfectionist, I tell myself: Something will be forgotten, and that's okay. That mindset shift directs my energy toward what absolutely cannot be missed, like passports, IDs, phones, and medications. My husband is even allowed to check that I have my ID as many times as he wants: a rule we lovingly adopted after I forgot it on three separate trips (including our engagement getaway). 6. Snacks on snacks on snacks Even with buffets and restaurants on the horizon, I always pack a stash of snacks we know and trust. From 6 a.m. hunger to post-nap meltdowns in line, they're a consistent comfort in unpredictable moments. I am working on reminding myself that the snacks are for me too, and having snacks available helps us to listen and tend to our body cues no matter what time our reservations are. 7. Bags within bags (With Labels!) I'm sure you're not surprised that I'm going to celebrate the glory that is packing cubes, but I'm talking a bit more than that. I sort our things in smaller labeled pouches inside our luggage: diapers, toiletries, toys, electronics, clothes, etc. This prevents the chaotic 'everything everywhere' rummaging, which I find particularly overstimulating, especially when little hands are pulling at me. The labels also help everyone pitch in without needing to ask, 'Where's the [insert necessity]?' 8. Keep it cool A grumpy, overheated child (or adult) can derail a day. We travel with wearable fans, stroller clip-ons, and have at least one for each of us. I've learned to never underestimate the power of a breeze, especially since we have yet to travel to a destination that doesn't trend temperatures in the 90s. 9. Engaging, Low-Screen Activities We're not anti-boredom, or anti-screens but we do set aside special activities just for travel. What makes them special? They're not necessarily different from what our kids use on a normal day, they have just been tucked away for at least a few weeks prior to the trip. You can go buy all the new trendy gadgets if that works for your family, but simply paying attention to what our kiddos' current interests are and popping an old item out tends to feel special to them due to the novelty. Because let's be honest: most adults can't sit still and be mindful for 15 minutes. Why do we expect it from our kids? 10. Sleep is sacred We structure our travel days around sleep routines as much as possible. Of course it's not realistic all of the time, but being mindful of their natural rhythms helps us to give them a sense of consistency when there are so many other variables. It gives our kids a chance to reset, and us, too. Those quiet minutes are when we regroup, reset, or just breathe. 11. This trip will never happen again It may sound intense, but this mindset keeps me grounded. Every trip, no matter how messy, is a fleeting moment in our family timeline. Even the chaotic bits are pieces of a story we won't relive again. Like this morning: we were wrestling our toddler into new Star Wars sneakers to check if they finally fit. He was not amused and I could focus on that meltdown but someday, those shoes won't fit at all and he will not be crying over putting shoes on (well, at least I think). Remembering that helps me stay present. 12. Building a village Not everyone has a built-in support network, and that is hard traveling or not. We've worked hard to cultivate ours, it wasn't just there for us as we anticipated. A village isn't just who gives to you, but who you give to as well. Whether it's grandparents, fellow parents or trusted friends, having extra hands and hearts makes all the difference. 13. Inner child connection Through reparenting and generational healing, I've learned to tap into my inner child. It serves me everyday, but especially so on child-centric trips. This lens helps me at both ends of the emotion spectrum. It gives me perspective on my kids' needs and frustrations and it just helps me marvel at the little joys around me. 14. Go-to regulation skills What helps you reset? What helps your kids? Bring those skills with you, or adapt them for travel. Lately, we've been loving 'superhero breaths' (our 4-year-old's favorite), watching clouds drift, and using my anxiring. That ring has been a surprising calm companion for me and a curiosity for the kids. 15. Redefining me time I always pack a journal and a book, even if I only get 10 minutes to myself. When someone says, 'I've got the kids—take a break,' I'm learning to accept that offer. It's not always my instinct, but I'm leaning into the moments meant for me too. They may look quite different than they once did, but in this chapter relaxation isn't my top goal, it's creating core memories. Parenting with anxiety is already complicated and traveling can sprinkle a little extra challenge. These simple little strategies have helped me in recent years and I hope they inspire you to think about what works best for your family.
