Tag: intimacy

A Tribute to Friendship, Sex, & Milkshakes

Sunkissedsoul

Thankful tears flowed from my eyes this morning as I thanked a friend for being the blessing he is in my life.

He is my imperfect friend who has no pressure to live up to anything but being him, because his perfectly imperfect genuine self is a rarity.

Take a big, beautiful heart and add in compassion; understanding; trustworthy; humor; integrity; wisdom;hysterical; God loving; creative man who is well dressed and super fun ..there is my dear friend.  See?  Rare.

He accepts me as is.  He loves me as is.  He might sometimes be disappointed for my choices and how they will affect me; at the same time, he is not disappointed in me.  Big difference.

He encourages me to be the best version of me I can be while never loving me any less as I travel my journey and sometimes behave like a dumbass. (true story) We speak truth to one another; even when truth is ugly feeling.  The thing is…when truth is spoken in love and safety is present…it’s a sacred treasure.  He challenges me when it’s uncomfortable and would be much easier to not.

He knows my everything.  My everything is safe with him.  He has never played judge and jury to me.  That is magical.  We’ve all been in a place that we believed we were truly safe with someone…until a dreaded, unexpected moment illuminates a reality that safety has been an illusion.  There was not acceptance and love of who you are; perhaps there was acceptance and love for who they want you to be.  That is not magical, it sucks.

Laughter, tears, and everything in between are welcome. He is proud of my accomplishments, generous with his encouragements, okay with my sunshine as well as my melancholy and super fun to go to the grocery store with.  He loves sex (not with me), milkshakes, animals, learning and laughter.  The countless endless conversations we have will never have sufficient words to let him know that he is cooler and more than he will ever grasp.

I hope and pray I provide the same for him.  There are perhaps 10 people in my world outside of my family that I have this type of friendship with.  I intend to ensure they always know how deeply I love them.

As I expressed my gratitude to my precious friend this morning, my heart was pinged.  Is this not how our God designed us to be in relation with one another?   We are made in His image, right?  I know God loves me.  He made me.  He knows my heart, he knows the numbers of hairs on my head for goodness sake.  He knows my journey.  God weeps with me, rejoices with me, and loves me in the messy middle (which is where my humanness seems to have me living the majority of the time).

Beloved human connections (could, should, can) mirror our relationship with God.  We are God’s heart, walking outside of His body but still in Him.  Our loves are the same…pieces of our heart walking outside of our body but always in us.

True Friendship…it’s a beautiful form of intimacy.  In our individuality, we are still all reflections of each other.  In our separateness, we are still made to be unified.  How cool is my God?  Not only does he offer me unconditional love and friendship through Him…he gives me that in real live humans.

The reciprocity of real friendship is the ultimate legacy to leave with another.  This type of friendship has impacted my life profoundly for the better.

I am grateful to have even one friend of this caliber in my life; sex and milkshakes too.

Philippians 1:3  “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.”

 

Ouch

Sunkissedsoul

We had agreed to be honest with each other.  We had both been hurt by infidelity in our previous marriages and agreed to promote trust and safety with each other as best we could. We hadn’t been dating long; it was actually only our third date.  Our second ‘real’ time together.  The first date, I had come down with a stomach bug.  He was super sweet, bringing me flowers and sprite and hanging out for a visit.  I still am not sure if he brought those flowers to make sure I was being honest about being sick or out of genuine kindness.  Either way, I was impressed.

We seemed to click fairly well, yet we definitely were still in the stage of figuring out if we enjoyed each other.  I had noticed a rapid change in his behavior. Within a week, he had gone from “good morning beautiful”, “your mind is brilliant”, “you are amazing”; to a more formal style of communication minus the flirting.  I obviously noticed this, right?  It’s that gut check that says something is off.

Fast forward to the  third (and final) date.  We were in the middle of a rather intimate moment and involved in a deep conversation.  I had mentioned the change that I noticed.  He was quiet for a moment, I encouraged him to just share what was on his mind.

He hesitated for a brief moment before he said, “you are just bigger than the girls I date”.  His words jolted my heart.  In that moment, it was no longer he and I in the room.  Instead, it was rejection.  It was every single person who had ever said anything ugly about my body.  It was wound upon wound about the very thing I am most sensitive about.

I cried.  He apologized.  I was trying to decipher whether he meant he wasn’t physically attracted to me, or if he was being intentionally unkind or something else.  He assured me, he only wanted to be ‘honest’.  I don’t want to pick and choose honesty, it just seemed like such an intensely vulnerable moment to choose this brand of honesty.  To my own regret, I did not stop the evening there.  We continued down a path I wish we would’ve not traveled down.  The journey was less than remarkable.  Of course it was.

He left in the morning.  I spent two days looking at myself in the mirror; seeing not a beautiful woman but a little head with a huge, outrageously large body.  I didn’t eat much that weekend, because ‘bigger girls’ don’t deserve to eat. I punished myself with disdain and a refusal to acknowledge any of the progress I have made in the past few years.  I spoke of this only to a very small group of friends that know my heart more than I know it myself sometimes.  I was devastated, disgusted and ashamed of me.  I took myself to a place I haven’t traveled in an extraordinarily long time.  His apologies were texted through out the weekend.  I remained the nice girl and said I understood.  In the moment, I did understand because I myself, agreed with him.  I was more than I should be and less than enough.

The more I thought about it and received ‘medicine’ from the people who love me, the more I came to a different conclusion.  Today, nearly a week later, I am acknowledging that it’s okay to think he was incredibly shallow and wrong in that moment. I am going inside of myself and asking why I skimmed right over the pain when it happened and continued with a path I didn’t really want to go down. I am horribly sad that my size determined my value to him.  I am even more sad that I have spent any time of this precious life aching to be who he wished I was.

As I mentioned, we are each entitled and encouraged to have preferences and know what we are attracted to. What I cannot fathom is why someone would in essence, attack someone in a most vulnerable situation.  What is the ‘reward’ of that kind of honesty?

He withdrew, going from several conversations  a day to perhaps a goodnight or “how are you?” text.  I had no idea what was going on in his head.  Was he feeling so bad he didn’t know how to recover this?  Was he trying to ghost me?  I don’t know.  I finally just told him that his behavior was extremely confusing to me.  I received a quick response, “I am sorry, we are still friends, right?”

I explained that I was happy to explore a friendship but didn’t need a pen pal.  I sent him a video with my very real perspective.  He’s missing out.  His opinion does not determine my value…though it took me a while to get there and I’m still working on it.  I am the unique kind of beautiful that I love.  My heart is pure, my mind is inquisitive, my spirit is genuine and real, I am compassionate, funny, smart and though I am not Ms. Universe, I am the kind of beautiful only I can be.  He doesn’t see and that’s okay…he is not for me.  My last text to him was to let him know that I had his really cool wine tumblers if he wanted them back.

Truly, I don’t think this is a bad guy. I think he has parts of him that are super cool. He is intelligent, attractive on the outside and a great conversationalist. I do believe he is sorry for hurting me. I am sorry he hurt me too, yet I’m thankful that I was forced through this ugliness to face some feelings I’ve been burying for too long.

Since my ex- husband left our home, it was my prayer and my desire to learn to love and accept myself.  Fully.  Always.  I will continue to strive to be the best version of me, and I am lovely right where I am…not just when I arrive.

The pursuit of health and healthy living is of the upmost importance. I have worked my ass off the past two years to get to a healthy place…inside and out. I’m still a work in progress and hope to God I always will be.

I wonder about our world. I wonder what it would be like if the pursuit of kindness, character development, compassion, humor and gentleness were more important than the pursuit of a hot body. Maybe they are; I just haven’t found that person in my dating life.

If someone had to choose to love my mind and heart or my appearance, I would choose my heart and mind; no contest.  I know that while I have my physical preferences, heart, mind, compassion and character are my ultimate deciders.  I hope and pray that there is someone who loves ALL of me, not in spite of my uniqueness, but because of it.

Also…I am keeping the wine tumblers.

 

 

 

Life

Sunkissedsoul

There are occasions that I wish I could go back with my magic wand to erase certain points in time; there are other times that I’d like to go back and sprinkle more pixie dust where I previously restrained myself from doing so.  As this post-divorce journey complete with the roller coaster of grief, healing and transformation progress, I am still at times surprised by my own strong emotional reactions.

My beloved Anais Nin so eloquently said, “Sometimes we reveal ourselves when we are least like ourselves.”  There is intense applicable truth for me in this quote.  Recently, I was retelling my precious Mother something I had done that left me full of regret and shame.  She replied with, “Sarah Ann!  That doesn’t even sound like you!”  (She’s right, I know).  In other instances, I have found myself jumping quicker into aspects of a relationship that I ‘normally’ would think to hold much more stringent boundaries around.  This time, I scold myself…”Sarah!  Gaaaa…this isn’t even you!”  Hmmmm…is it not me or is it the me I have always restrained?

A dear friend mentioned “this version of me” in a conversation about this very topic.  Initially, this was a struggle to understand.  How can I be authentic and still a very different version of myself…what is real?  We are always changing, ever evolving, consistently transforming, right?  It seems the harder we resist change, the stronger change overtakes us.  I guess it’s all about riding the wave but why is that so much easier to preach than to practice?

In the ongoing self study I am doing, there are absolutely new aspects of me that are emerging.  I’ve decided that there is far more value in embracing and accepting myself than there is in trying to discern whether the aspects are truly new or just now being allowed to be present.  In the multitude of errors I’ve been making, there are lessons (albeit painful), there is growth, and mostly…there is grace.  I have to talk myself into the last one though.

HUGE valuable lessons I’ve received lately, they’ve been hard but in light of trusting the process and enjoying the journey, I’m doing the best I can to take accountability, apologize and move forward.  There’s always that inner voice telling me to make things right for everyone else and it’s exhausting.  One thing at a time, right?

  • Sexual intimacy…no matter what I tell myself…changes the emotional attachment dynamic.  When sexual intimacy occurs too early,  it can decrease brain power and increase ideation….thus elevating the chances that inappropriate emotional reactivity will occur.  Ugh.
  • People will judge behaviors.  Only God and I get to decide the best actions, thoughts and behaviors for me.  Feedback is always appreciated and weighed carefully, but in the end, the one who will confront my inner conflict is me.  So…thank you for caring enough to share, I promise to weigh it carefully.  🙂
  • Dating is an adventure.  There are friends to be made, things to learn about others and myself and tons of value in this season…but I still miss my family as it was and that is okay.  Grief for a loss and celebration of new can absolutely walk hand in hand.
  • Due to a chaotic childhood, I tend toward the ‘what if’s’ and control.  Not control to control; rather to keep my world feeling safe.  Not everyone (actually no one) is super appreciative of that…including me.  Rather than constantly worrying about creating safety through control, I’m changing my definition of safety and remembering my God, who has me in His hands…that’s really the only safety assurance I need.  (coming to terms…a process!)
  • Just because I have a great imagination and may have determined exactly how something will play out does not make my determination accurate.  As a matter of fact, following my imaginary scenario results in the aforementioned emotional reactivity which I strongly desire to move away from.
  • I may have missed a few spectacular opportunities because of my own reactivity.  I have embraced the icky lessons, asked forgiveness (from myself too), defined what I can do different next time and moved on with grace.  I still hate myself a little bit for it though.
  • Unrelated….the stroke has less power over me than it once did but still too much power.  Working on that.  Trying to replace my fear with constant faith and gratitude.  Keeping my eyes and heart open…I am incredibly blessed and I know it.

“Sometimes we reveal ourselves when we are least like ourselves.” – Anais Nin  It is remarkable what I have learned through the errors that are ‘so unlike me’.

 

Grateful in all things.