Life lessons in erotic packaging
This year I’ve seen a lot of characters, like no other year…even during lockdown. Why? The internet.
Also, I left my ex (as I’ve mentioned in almost every post before). I have not seen him since August 2020 but I didn’t dump him until sometime in September. I’m still uncovering all kinds of epiphanies but today one got me… it was attached to trauma from that relationship. Fortunately, a very gracious member of the male party lifted this rock with me, just as was done in order for me to find out I was in an abusive relationship. The whole reason I left my ex was because an astute guy said to me, in no uncertain terms, that I needed to leave my boyfriend, and not because he wanted to be with me, but because he sensed the danger I was in. It’s interesting that we’ve painted this horrible hyper-masculine view of all men, when it’s been my experience that men have been much more empathic in this healing than most of the women in my life. In fact, most of the ladies, except my mom, grandma, and a few good girlfriends dumped me quicker than a bag of bricks when they saw my real crazy. It’s been the men that have been most compassionate on this journey. For that, I am thankful to the divine masculine energy within their own psyche for stepping down and yielding to their own divine feminine.
So, in today’s episode of “Bernadette’s Boundaries”, an attractive acquaintance initiated a conversation about delightfully taboo things, as one would expect with that being the name of my life’s work. It started off detached but I suddenly found myself out of control of my situation. I was being seduced by someone I’ve never met and I wasn’t even sure if he knew.
Though he’d expressed he was in a relatively open relationship, to an extent I felt guilty. I felt like I’d allowed this to happen. I was enjoying it, but this person clearly laid out he’d dropped his wife off at the airport or a train station. He definitely indicated she wasn’t around. He went on to talk about their sex life. Of course.. this was all meant to be titillating but innocent. Only, I started to become very involved in sharing this fantasy. As though I were a she-devil luring men from their women. That’s the spell that was cast on me after my break-up by a few lassies that have accused me of this. One girl reached out to me on Facebook randomly to ask if I’d been chatting with her man on Clubhouse late at night. Her name happened to be my favorite name for a daughter, but I will no longer be naming any baby of mine after that wretch. So I sound like a bitter hag and that’s just kinda where the energy goes. It shifts swiftly from “I’m a homewrecker” to “I’m going to die alone”.
This is the result of being gaslit for ten years. I’d been accused of cheating when I didn’t even talk to a member of the opposite sex. This was done to me by my partner. The voice that was meant to affirm my goals and lift me up, instead found any cruel way to demoralize me, especially with sex. He demanded it, was forceful about it, and seemed to want to embarrass or degrade me with it all at the same time, and even when we weren’t… doing it.
With this near-stranger dispelling very vulnerable heartfelt descriptions of an out of this world experience that he and his wife shared with another couple, I was enthralled. To a dangerous extent for my healing. There was a lingering anticipation with it being written directly to me. The instant I noticed I was uncomfortable, I felt guilty. I felt as though telling him it was a little too real and that I was starting to become emotionally involved felt naive. The question from my ex-abuser was, “Why would you put yourself in that situation?”. Well I didn’t. The universe did. I’ve been looping in this for a while now.
One guy told me he wanted to marry me after we shared some erotica. Since I was very receptive to the attention, I allowed myself to believe this was love. He turned out to be initiating a relationship with another girl so that continued on while I was none-the-wiser. That instance bludgeoned my faith some more. Later, another guy accepted and matched my intensity, but he ultimately got a little too intense for me, personally. It was at that point I noticed the need to set the boundaries. The weirdest of all was when I was sent a disgustingly suggestive DM from a member of my family, although not blood-related, it was weird as fuck and I told him that immediately. That’s where I had the realization it was something I was doing. I had to stop and determine what was calling this sort of attention to me. Why so forward and intense?
Because I am healing and didn’t know how to set boundaries all this time. I’m only just learning. Today I had that moment to reinforce and defend the boundary. It wasn’t too late. I hadn’t sent this guy a nude photo or asked if he wanted to know what I would do if I were there in the scene he was describing. My past relationship fucked me up. My trust is nearly all gone for anything other than myself. My brain told me I was delusional to think I could be having this conversation. It was probably someone trolling me or his wife trying to find dirt on him. I panicked, realizing it was all in writing. I hadn’t said anything suggestive, but I certainly didn’t tell him to stop describing his grand sexual experience so vividly. Part of me wanted to not interrupt his flow of writing, part of me wanted to tell him I didn’t believe him anymore and that I was going to report him. All of me knew this was a test. A test of my own inner-knowing.
So I went to my fucking alter and pulled out my tarot cards, waved a wand over them, lit some sage, and sat with my own ass. It’s essentially counting to ten and breathing, only, there are archetypes for the cards that you can piece together like a puzzle. Its still your subconscious that puts the message together, but this way it just seems more productive to me. I asked to be guided to the message that I needed. That message I received was long and drawn out and there is no way to encapsulate it, but the abridged version goes like this: be honest. It was to truly express my feelings to this guy who seemingly meant no harm, but could also be his wife, or some group of trolls laughing their asses off at me.
After I regained my sense of calm, I returned to my laptop to write out details of my trauma in sterile pseudo-psychology. To my surprise he apologized. Instantly, the air felt lighter like I’d just moved a mountain out of my way. He’d gotten so lost in describing his experience, that he didn’t realize his passion was becoming less a lusty lucid dream and more a salacious primal affair. Which, I’m a fan of… just… the trust thing got me. That’s the thing. You can only get to that level of raw with someone you genuinely know. Not someone you’ve only ever met online. This guy set his boundaries and they were established from the beginning, so that was also a difference. I wasn’t clear about my status of curious but not interested in extra-wheeling currently.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t share these experiences as humans. It doesn’t mean we should have to either. I just wish we could without any attachment to them. Because today a stranger helped me discover the key to trauma I’ve been trying to get to the root of for a year. All because he felt like I was someone this story would be safe with. Which is truly an honor. So for the moments that I violated that trust by becoming involved myself, I was embarrassed. He assured me I had no reason to feel that way. Then we continued a platonic conversation with a better understanding of, not just each other, but the human experience. He removed any triggering statements because I described my past situation. Even though I hate the word triggered, he doesn’t know that about me but was gracious to do it. Because he was right… I had been, as much as I didn’t want to admit it.
I needed to have all my humbling flops post break-up in order to help me see that I’d failed to notice this pattern. That is: as strange as it is going to sound, that need for a sexual experience stems from a prior obligation to it. The old me used it as my sole expression of all the love languages, so it became a fixture in my allure as an eligible bachelorette. It used to be the source of my power in my relationship. When freed from that relationship, the remnants presented as a greater openness to experience. So, while I’m not completely healed, telling this guy that I wasn’t comfortable and drawing that line gave me my power back. I finally stood up for myself instead of trying to maintain someone else’s fantasy at the expense of my emotional well-being.
I am proud of myself, I am happy to have broken that cycle, and I am grateful for the conversations that led to this moment of self-realization.
