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12:55am April 3, 2012

More about my sexuality and past relationships

I recently wrote a little about my sexuality. Here’s more.

I’ve basically only had relationships with two people. Two and a quarter, maybe, if you count this weird long-distance thing that briefly happened that I can’t quickly describe. But really two.

The first one, happened when I was young. Too young to understand. Before I knew what had happened, I was already in the middle of it. I hadn’t even worked out the meaning of my feelings for women, and hadn’t expected to practically wake up one day and find myself in a relationship with a guy. I’d always just assumed I was too young for the feelings that I was told I was supposed to have.

And… I did develop some kind of feelings along the line. Beyond the bad ones, I mean, of which there were plenty. The relationship had become abusive and complicated. I feared leaving him because he claimed we had a telepathic link that, if broken, would cause death or psychosis for one or both of us. Yeah it was that kind of thing. But the sexuality stirred up my hormones and suddenly there were feelings and I thought this was what my mom had insisted I would feel.

Except something happened later that showed me I was wrong. By then I had worked out I had feelings for women. And. It was not even close to the same thing.

When I spent time with a woman I was attracted to, wow. It was like the entire world flowed through both of us, physically and emotionally. It’s probably cliché as hell to bring out song lyrics but it was like this (by Sinéad Lohan, an amazing song if you can find it):

You’re in my love, you’re in my blood
You can be anything that you want
You climb into my mind
You drive everything inside wild
And then i curl around you madly
You say you’ll mind me with your life

[…]

I want nothing else instead
You are the colours in my head
When we were dancing in silence
You said

The silver shooting star
Brought us to where we are
Carried over everything
We have been through so far
Our hearts are bound in hope
And spirits from above
Have tangled us together
In never ending love

So… yeah. It was like that. It was like every part of me – emotional, physical, intellectual – was focused on the sheer wonder and beauty of being around this person. Just to be around her, to spend time with her, to walk down the street holding hands – I’m having trouble coming up with the words I mean. But it was more meaningful and joyful and beautiful and world-altering than actual genital sex acts had been with my boyfriend. She and I never got to that point – but given how everything else felt, I never felt the need to rush towards that.

That experience was one of the things that convinced me that my genuine attraction was almost exclusively towards women (and related genders). It was like the difference between a one-dimensional experience and a three-dimensional one. And it wasn’t just because of the two specific people involved, either. I felt this difference in dimensions between the very few non-women I had been attracted to, and the very many women. Only the attractions to women spoke to my entire soul like that.

A homophobic asshole (seriously, he openly called me a pervert) once told me that since I’d never had genital sex with a woman, I couldn’t possibly know my attractions. And that sort of thing is why I hate the way people equate these things with the sex act alone.

I am sure that if I’m ever in a position to have genital sex with a woman, in a way that doesn’t run into parts of my body I don’t want touched, then I will enjoy it. But that’s one tiny piece of a huge picture.

It’s even a tiny piece of what sex itself can be. I don’t consider it any less sexual, to lay on top of each other and make long, low noises that vibrate through each of our bodies. To repeat each other’s names until we enter a state where our deepest selves can meet. To experience union on as many levels as possible, whether touching physically or not. How is that not sexual? Genital sex is only one route to the same place. There are many routes just as amazing if not more so. Which is why I consider genitals only one small part of my sexuality. I can have amazing, erotic, multi-orgasmic dreams about just snuggling.

Weirdly enough, although that was easily the more intense and meaningful of my relationships, I often omit it in discussions of sexuality. I think it’s because of a weird thing that happens in lesbian relationships, especially among young people or people still exploring their sexuality. Which is that it just sort of happened. Neither of us ever formally described ourselves as seeing each other. Despite the relationship at that point being blatantly sexual. And we never formally broke up either, things just shifted back into the non-sexual zone and she started seeing other people. So it’s sometimes been hard for me to identify that for what it was, even though I was head over heels in love.

Anyway, bottom line is that when I’m around a woman I love, the entire universe sings just because she’s nearby. When I was involved with 1 ¼ guys, it felt more like playing a role, and the sexual feelings were mostly there during actual sex and touching. During which the most intense orgasm couldn’t even close to match the feeling of just being in a room with, or snuggling, or holding hands, with a woman I loved.

It’s weird. Because in myself, I don’t have any particular gender, and have trouble understanding gender in others. And yet my sexual attraction is heavily gender-based – not on my end, where I have no gender, but absolutely on the other person’s end. I’m filing this under “brains are weird and make no sense”. (And my identification as a lesbian despite not having a gender myself, should be filed under “in the real world, this is the most practical label for me”, nothing more.)