Dear lannawannabe:

“My parents are both pretty shy and also introverted. This means that we really stuck together a lot when I was a kid, and even a teen”- most preteens and teenagers no longer spend the majority of their social time with their parents alone, but with their own peers. Because your parents were shy and introverted, they didn’t have many friends coming over with their own children with whom you could have socialized. When other teens spent their time outside their home, with peers, you spent your time inside your home, with your parents, just the three of you.

Your parents did a good job preparing you for an independent, adult life as far as living on your own (“I’ve been an adult for years! I moved to a new city for school, I live on my own, have taken care of myself for many years as an independent woman”). But of course, they couldn’t possibly prepare you for a romantic relationship because.. well, they weren’t your peers. Not having adequate exposure to your peers, you were what you termed yourself, “a late bloomer”.

And so, at 27, the idea of a romantic, sexual relationship with this 29 year old guy, seemed to you “to be the start of ‘real grown-up life'”- because unlike having the experience of living on your own, you did not yet have the experience of a  romantic, sexual relationship.

You used to imagine having sex with “characters from tv shows, musicians, etc.”, and of course, that did not prepare you to a real life romantic,  sexual relationship. You then had some in real life sexual experience with one guy, “more like fooling around” which was “pretty horrible, unpleasant”, and then, at 27, you experienced an “Almost-Relationship” with this guy.

Unfortunately for you, the guy wasn’t of any help in making it a good experience for you. It was bad at first, and then, when you did feel some sexual pleasure, and “liked to make him feel good”, he did  not reciprocate (“there was no reciprocity there.. felt like a sex doll… he saw me like a plaything. This hurts a lot”)-

– you, in non-sexual contexts, had experience with reciprocating affection and attention, and you extended it to the sexual context with this guy. He, on the other hand, had sexual experience before meeting you, but he didn’t have much experience of reciprocating emotionally or sexually.

He was good at texting while you were out of town those few weeks,  but once you were back, he wanted to have sex right away, and for the duration of the few weeks he had sex with you, he didn’t reciprocate,  but used you like a sex doll, a plaything. It is hurtful to be used that way, because a person needs to be treated like a person, not a thing.

There are lots and lots of people, particularly young men in certain cultures, who are experienced sexually, but not in an emotionally intimate, mutual way. Instead of treating the woman  as a person with feelings, a person who matters, they use the woman as a thing, to satisfy themselves. And if they buy the woman dinner before sex, they feel like.. good people, I imagine.

So what  is next for you, in this adult world of love and sex?

anita