Lidia-Anain

Aug

06

women do know best & hardly settle

love & relationships / sex love joy archives

Had a very troubling conversation with some of my girlfriends on the phone that bothered me enough to write about it. We were chatting about relationships, love and life in general when one of the women on our call (she’s more a friend of a friend than my friend) started to belittle another woman we know for “settling” in love. Friend-Of-A-Friend went in about how the person Lady X married didn’t have as much education as X and the list of her complaints about X’s partner went on and on. I usually won’t touch the topic of settling when it does come up but this time was an exception. I decided to take on Friend-Of-A-Friend, but before I tell you how that went I want to tell you about a very revealing conversation I had with another friend of mine on this very topic.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine asked on her Facebook page:

When people say “settle” in love, what does that word, settle, mean to you?

When she asked, I definitely stayed out of the debate on Facebook but the next time we spoke on the phone about her upcoming book the subject came up and we chatted about it. Like me, she doesn’t care for the word. She asked the question as part of the research for her book and she was asking about it in a completely different light than most people usually do. Our initial talk on the subject was short mainly because we agreed on most things but a few days later I called her to share the epiphany I had about settling since our last conversation.

I rarely hear anyone say that men settle when it comes to love.

Honestly, when was the last time you heard anyone say that a man settled in love? People usually don’t say that. Yet, society loves to stress the point of women settling over and over again. Why is it that people are so consumed with this idea of women settling?

Jun

12

fourteen years of marriage

diary / love & relationships / sex love joy archives

On June 12, 1998 at around 10:30pm my love and I got married at the Chapel of the Bells in South Lake Tahoe, California, after only 45 days of knowing one another. We had only kissed once and had never had sex before we said our marriage vows. Our marriage began as our way of moving off base so we could hold on to what we could feel was growing between us. Our marriage was something we treated lightly during the first few months; we were friends playing house.

By October 31, 1998 it had become extremely clear that there was something powerfully healing that bonded us on top of the easy friendship that filled our lives with laughter and our sexual attraction. As time passed, circumstances beyond our control and many of the choices we made together and as individuals tested our marriage; we passed test after test. Passing these many tests over the last fourteen years has etched different dates in our memory that mean to us just as much as our wedding anniversary and October 31, 1998.

A lot of people look at the love we now share, a love that is stronger now than ever before, a love that is filled with hope, a love that is vibrant and shiny and easy and comfortable and everything that many people want and these people say…

You’re so lucky!

Well, we are lucky that at the young age of 21 we against all strange odds were paired up to clean dorms together for a week. We are lucky that we both agreed to do the craziest dumbest smart thing in the world by marrying one another just 45 days later. We are lucky that the Celestial Planning Committee made it so that we were together on October 31, 1998 so that we could realize that an easy friendship and laughter meant more to us than anything else at that time (and it still does). We are lucky in many regards but luck has never been what has kept us together.

Mar

09

there’s no reason to stay together if you can’t forgive

love & relationships / sex love joy archives

In my fourteen year relationship I have forgiven and I have been forgiven.

We would say that we forgave one another, we would make an attempt to move forward yet we would still not feel healed, we wouldn’t completely move forward and nothing would be resolved. It was as if one event started to make the relationship go sour, we forgave yet an unspoken baby elephant became the third member of our relationship, then time, bad choices, revenge, and each disappointment fed that elephant until eventually we became so used to feeding it that we stopped nourishing our love. The elephant sitting between us was huge; what was left of our love was tiny and starving.

This happens to many couples even though the circumstances that caused them and the new problems we face are different. It is so easy to have our perfect love crush us, pull the rug from underneath us, terribly disappoint us and/or completely destroy our trust. When that happens we often look back wondering was I intoxicated by romantic love so much that I did not see this person clearly but you did see them; it was that time had not yet given them enough opportunity to fail you. Almost everyone we love from parents and siblings to spouses and children to friends and business associates will disappoint us if given enough time and opportunity.

We know that people aren’t perfect and that they will at one time or another do something that causes us to hurt but why can’t we forgive when they do?

After all the hurt in my relationship I had to learn that to truly move forward forgiveness was about more than saying it or wanting it to be true. Giving someone another chance involves accepting that the person you love and have created a life with is capable of disappointing you again.

Feb

27

dreaming of sex with women & men & women & men

diary / introspection / love & relationships / sex & sexuality / sex love joy archives

A few hours ago, I woke up from a dream that was so romantic, intense, sexual, scary, sweet, confrontational and comforting all at the same time but it was mostly exhausting. Yes, exhausting is how I would describe most of the dreams I’ve been having this year. I don’t know how many of them I would call dreams because moving through these active endless vivid dreams feels more like a nightmare than a dream when what my body craves is restful sleep.

I have been dreaming of sex with women & men & women & men… a lot of sex and my spouse is always in these dreams.

These dreams where I am having sex with him and other people or where he is having sex with other people are very new. During our many years of marriage I can’t say I had sexual dreams in which I could clearly see his face. I would dream about having sex with a body and I would think it was him or in the dream I would feel his presence but I would never see him.

I see his face in my sexual dreams now. In these dreams we have reached the point where we effortlessly can have sex with others without the “checking in” with one another emotionally before, during or after. We are fully secure with our sexuality, our relationship and our emotions in these dreams. Sometimes there are events in these dreams that make me feel uneasy and it is always him that I look to for comfort or rescue. This is so new to me – all of it but especially turning to anyone for rescue. Very new.

Feb

10

5,000+ days of loving you

love & relationships / sex love joy archives

When in 1998 a handsome young man walked into my life, I instantly told myself don’t do anything stupid with him I had no idea that over 5,000 days later I would still find myself doing stupid things with him.

the first hundred years are the hardest.

A few years before meeting *him* while heading home from an Air Force physical at the Tri-Rail station in Miami I met an elderly couple. Both of them seemed to be fragile but vibrant. They sat close to one another and they laughed as they held hands. The husband helped his weaker wife get on the train. I looked at them lovingly thinking what was their secret to a successful long marriage. Young idealist me boldly decided to ask them their secret; assuming that they had always been together and that this was their first and only marriage. My assumption that I would never make today had been right they had been together for a long time.

This is how the conversation went…

Me: You two seem so very in love still. How long have you been together?

Him: We just celebrated our 75th anniversary last year. Our children threw us a great celebration for that.

The wife smiled and they held hands even tighter.

Me: That’s amazing! What’s your secret?

Him: We don’t have one but the first hundred years are the hardest. It gets easy after that.

He looked at his wife and she smiled at him. They both laughed. It seemed like his response to me had been their inside joke for a long time. She smiled at me and I am certain that although I was smiling I had a perplexed look on my face.

Sep

28

sex sometimes changes. now fix it!

love & relationships / sex & sexuality / sex love joy archives

This January I wrote this piece as my way of venting but also stepping back from the situation I was experiencing. I wanted to ask myself if sex was more important to me than all the other things that my relationship offered. Sex and affection in general ARE very important to me. I know that my love language clearly is affection. I want to be touched, caressed, held, kissed, fondled, fucked, made love to and I also want the words of love that come with all that. I want to be thanked for my devotion, loyalty and hard work that I do within my relationship and for what I do for our children. I want him to do all this without me having to pout or for there to go days, weeks or months before we reconnect; sensually and sexually.

Jul

18

do you really need advice on who or how to love?

love & relationships / sex love joy archives

One of my favorite Twitter friends has just about had enough with love advice. Over the last few weeks she has been popping up in my timeline often angry about the sorry shit that is being passed off as love advice. I always laugh when I see the tweets because I agree with her but I know that until the end of time there will be people giving love “advice”.

So. Here’s some love advice…

Jul

14

my heart is sick of being in chains

diary / sex love joy archives

Had a poignant conversation today with a new friend that I trust very much. A new friend that trusts me too. We have been confiding all sorts of things. We started sharing our dreams for our careers and we’ve moved to talking about our childhoods and mothers. My friend is beautiful on the outside but especially on the inside. My friend is balanced. My friend is smart. My friend is ambitious. My friend has it together. My friend is absolutely going places. I wish I was more like her but I am so extremely happy for her because the last thing I want is company in my misery. My friend is the me I could have been had I sought therapy and made better choices.

Jul

07

when an abortion happens in a good marriage

diary / love & relationships / motherhood / sex & sexuality / sex love joy archives

Six years ago I felt completely suffocated and restless. I had quit my job just a few short months earlier to stay at home with my two boys just until my oldest started Kindergarten then I’d go back to work to help pay for the degree I was finishing. My self-worth had been attached to my job. My self-worth had been attached to my title. My self-worth was not my own. In just a few months after quitting my job I found out that I was expecting another baby. I did not want another child. He did not want another child. We had not planned for another child and had taken the necessary precautions to not have anymore children by using condoms and birth control. We had other plans yet there we were expecting another baby and this time we knew that even if we weren’t ready we could not go through another abortion.

Jul

04

Portrait of the Writer as a Wife by Sezin Koehler

naked candor / sex love joy archives

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” E. L. Doctorow

Ever since I was a child I heard voices in my head. Sometimes the voices talked to each other, conversations I was privy to. Other times they would talk to me directly. Until I wrote their stories, conversations, poems down they would not stop. Most of my life, the same voices never returned once I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and hashed out their messages.

When I have writer’s block it’s not because the voices have fallen silent, it’s because their cacophony is so overwhelming I cannot pick out one voice to focus on, whose story I need to tell. If you are also a writer or creative type, I’m sure you’re nodding your head and smiling. This has happened to you too, hasn’t it?

Apr

11

what happens to a marriage after the kids are gone?

introspection / love & relationships / motherhood / sex love joy archives

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage.

And what happens to the marriage AFTER the baby grows up?

Most of us want to fall in love with that person that makes our good lives great. We want to fall in love, get married and have babies. Yes! Happily ever after is what we dream of but spending ever after together means there will be many, many years that you have to spend with your love after those babies grow up and leave. Unfortunately, many couples don’t plan for the years after the babies grow up. You might not know this if you haven’t reached your parenting years but once the babies come they tend to take over a couple’s lives. Almost everything becomes about the babies and sometimes…well, sometimes it leaves little room for the couple.

Mar

28

as man & woman

diary / love & relationships / sex love joy archives

I never found one Disney princess I could relate to as a child. Not one. I didn’t play with dolls either. My childhood games were all imagination and heart. Theatrical works written one act at a time in which I always was my own hero. Then one day in the sixth grade I heard Karyn White sanging “Superwoman”. Yes! I said sanging…she was sanging the shit out of that song. While many of my girlfriends SANG that song most didn’t understand the meaning behind it. My mother was a Superwoman let down by her knight in shining armor. So, I felt it in my heart, I understood, I stopped where I was emotionally and I sang it loud…

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