So I went out the other night in the hopes of getting some action. I was going with a large group, but made sure to invite one particular boy who I have history with. I then proceeded to flirt with him, but not to the extent that it was obvious I wanted to go home with him.
This was probably because I wasn’t sure I did.
I did want to go home with him. Sort of. But I didn’t want to go with him definitely.
So it didn’t happen.
This was also, I believe, due in part to the fact that he’s a little shy. If he had breathed in my ear, “I want to take you home tonight,” I would have said, “Yes,” and meant it. But since he didn’t, with my body and my heart and my head, I said, “I don’t know.”
The last time I hooked up with him, I was sure about what I wanted and I went after it. There was no hesitation, no confusion, no waffling. I pressed myself against him when it got crowded, lingered at the party when he did, and after getting all the right signals, practically followed him home.
And it was great. We connected – in every way. It felt natural and special and right.
This time, though, I was confused. I had clearly invited him out for a reason, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to follow through with it. I’d made a promise to myself that the next person I slept with would be someone I really wanted to be in a relationship with. This wasn’t really that, but I was also becoming aware of my desire to be with someone, to experience that closeness that only connected physicality brings.
Then, to make matters worse, I got stuck in my head. Did I really want him, or did I just want to be with someone? Would it have been using him to go home with him? What would happen the next day? Would I feel good about it, or would I feel like I’d betrayed my promise to myself? What about him? What would he think? At some point I also realized that in addition to connection, I wanted to feel wanted, and that made me question whether the whole thing was just a play to feed my ego. By the time the night ended, I was exhausted from all the considering. And when I left the concert without him, I felt equal parts disappointment and relief.
I’ve been confused about what I want lately. Or rather, I’ve been telling myself I’ve been confused. In fact, I believe I do know what I want – I was just judging myself for it so quickly that it barely had time to register in my consciousness.
I want sex. I want closeness. I want to feel alive and present and desired by someone distinct from me – someone present, grounded, earthly. I want to be with a man, a being whose skills and energy complement mine rather than match them. I want to be with someone who fully and effortlessly has all the space in the world for me, my emotions, my drama, my fear, my joy, and my sexuality.
I want a solid, grounded man to hold me. Just hold me. I don’t need you to do anything or say anything or commit to anything. I just need you to be with me. Right now, with my scattered, flighty, overwhelmed feminine energy, I want your stable, grounded, masculine energy.
You bring the coloring book, and I’ll bring the color. You bring the concert hall, I’ll bring the trilling, lilting voices. You bring the groundedness and space, and I’ll provide all the creativity and play that could ever be needed. You bring the solidity and the backing, and I’ll give you all the expressiveness and vibrance that I have within me. In other words, if you bring your essence, I will fill it up with all the bright, feminine, out-of-control grace and color tints and shades and nuances that exist.
What I truly desire, deep down, is, partnership – the kind that takes commitment and perseverance and a willingness to play the game of connection for connection’s sake, for the beauty of the tension between duality and unity.
But for now – dare I say in the meantime? – I crave something simpler, and perhaps more rare: exposure to one who will help me ground myself right now, right here, in this moment. I don’t even need to talk to him. I just want to be around him. I want that protective energy to envelop me for a night, for a moment, for a series of moments. For a series of moments that strung together restore something that has been lost for a time, a sense of fullness and wholeness and enough-ness. I get enough. I have enough. I am enough.
I want this. And in finally articulating it, I realized how strongly, harshly, and completely I’ve been judging myself for wanting it. For just a few of the following reasons:
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I shouldn’t need a man. I should be able to find that groundedness within me. More often than not, the traits we desire in a partner are the un-owned aspects of ourselves. So I shouldn’t need or want a man in this endeavor: I should just be able to develop the aspects I’m missing within myself and not need or involve anyone else. I should be able to do this all myself.
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I’m being selfish: I yearn for touch and connection without even really considering the other person – other than the intuitive and magical sense that in the moment of connection, perfection is created and he would actually have to be along with me for that ride, or it wouldn’t be what I truly want. Still – isn’t it wrong to want connection without simultaneously wanting to know what the other person wants – or already knowing?
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I shouldn’t sleep with anyone else until I’m sure I want to be with him. I made a promise to myself and going back on my word would be disgusting and mean that my word means nothing.
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I shouldn’t want someone outside of me to ‘complete’ me. I should be able to be a full and complete version of myself and be able to fill myself up and make myself happy and not have to rely on any outside sources for any of that.
But even after all of that, I do still want what I want. I can judge myself and squash myself and monkey-mind-prattle myself as much as I am humanly capable (which is quite a bit). I often feel like I police myself and my wants, considering whether they are ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ or ‘possible.’ If they are not, I attempt to change them, or not feel them, or stuff them down, or eliminate them. Rarely do I sit with the fact that all of that chatter exists, and … I want what I want.
I want what I want because I want what I want because I want what I want.
How do we know when our wants are sacred, and when they are too much? How do we know what too much even is? How do we know when we really are being selfish?
I know I need connection, but how much of it? I need love, but how much and from whom? How much can I sustain my own self? I know how to protect myself, and I do. I know how to ground myself, and I do. And at the same time, I crave more of it. I crave being with a man – and maybe that’s all I am meant to know. What I crave.
So universe, complex, vast, unpredictable, ineffable, and multifaceted as you are, I ask you most humbly to please allow me to connect with another individual. Let me find another human being, another soul, who knows not what I know, feels not what I do, and instead comes from a different place, a place not of longing and desire, but of perfection and assertion, at least for a moment. Let me join, for one fleeting, exquisite moment, with someone whose yang fits essence-fully, undeniably, soul-fittingly fully with my yin.
I submit that it is our deepest, truest, most heartfelt desires that provide the truest compass in our lives. Then we take those desires and judge them. Too much. Too silly. Too selfish. Stupid. Ridiculous. Impossible. Inappropriate.
In fact, we judge our desires so much, so deeply and so automatically that we often shut them down before even realizing we have them.
But perhaps instead of shutting them down, we are meant to open to them. Maybe instead of practicing being good and right and appropriate, we are supposed to practice the opposite.
Perhaps the only thing we should all be practicing is actually feeling our desire, letting it fill us up, expand our beings, become our futures. Perhaps it is even when we feel our desires fully, all the way through, they come, inevitably, to pass.
