Wuv, Sweet Wuv

I’m writing, not so much as a response to, but a riff on No Arms James’ recent blog about being single, and longing for a relationship. The following is want his blog prompted me to think about for myself.
Attractiveness is so much more about what goes on inside your own head than what goes on inside the other person’s head. I remember when I wasn’t getting laid for awhile and I happened to be on the phone with my friend, complaining about how I just wanted any kind of dick and none could be found. She called me a liar and reminded me that, just like rule 34: if it exists there’s porn for it; if you exist there are several people who would not just fuck you, but thank you for the privilege. The fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t want to fuck them.
As a fat girl, I could get BBW freaks lining up around the block to tongue my cellulite, but I don’t want that to be the focus of my sexual experience. I have no desire to be the object for someone else to project their fetish onto. If I happen to be in a relationship with a man who finds my body to be sexy, all the better for it, but I’m not the kind of girl who needs to embody anybody else’s sexual desires*—no matter what they might be.
I think that every person has to consider their sexual energy and emotional investment to be a valuable commodity, and also to consider their potential partner’s to be the same. I’m not going to pay out my sexual energy on something or someone I wouldn’t consider a fair return, and I wouldn’t expect someone else to be paying more into my bank than I could pay into theirs. I need to feel that I am worth my partner’s time and that they are worth my time.
Personally, I remember lusting after men who I admired because they had what I wanted, but because I didn’t have anything I wanted, because I didn’t have anything I thought that anyone would want I couldn’t fathom why they would reciprocate my feelings.
If I don’t have pride in myself, if I can’t look at my accomplishments and feel that I have earned my right to stand toe to toe with my partner or potential partner, how could I carry a relationship without inequity? At the end of the day, I need to be able to look at myself with admiration in the same way that I would look those men I used to wander after. I would pine away for a man to see in me that which I could not see in myself and that’s why I was so uncomfortable with being alone.** I didn’t want to be with me! How could I expect someone else to want to be with me?
To qualify: it’s not superficialities that I found my worth in. Whether I am fatter or thinner, richer or poorer should have no bearing on my personal worth. I always tried to loose weight, or to look good on paper in order to justify my existence, but that’s not what is really important to me. When I take value in things that cannot be taken from me (humor, creativity, delight, strength, intelligence, love etc.), when I accomplish personal goals that have nothing to do with what I should do, or what I am expected to do, I am able to feel equal to other people in the world. Because when I don’t consider these things, I have a tendency to feel like the best ever or the worst ever, but never just a regular human being.
I waste a lot of time comparing myself to other, really cool people and wishing I was like them. The truth of the matter is that I just wish I wasn’t me, and the solution I’ve found is to make the decision that I’m okay with being me, and that I can be a person I’d like to count among my friends and family.
What this has to do with getting laid is that when I like who I am I have no fear of rejection because if a man doesn’t like me, I like myself enough to value my opinion over his. And if a man does like me, and does want to be in my life, I value my time and energy enough to make sure that I can return that investment before moving forward.
And you can say that this whole blog post means nothing because I’ve been with Ben since I was 18 and I don’t know shit about being single as an adult, and I don’t. But I do know that if I depended on him for my self worth this shit would have been over before it begun. If I couldn’t say to him, “if you don’t like it, get the hell out,” and if I couldn’t have him say the exact same thing to me and me ok with that, I’d be a worm of a woman, always wondering what he wants, what he’s going to do, trying to please him because my worth would rely on him and not me.
This was long and didactic, but for some reason it’s what I wrote so ignore it if you want to, it’s basically mental vomit but maybe it can be helpful to you.

* The truth of this statement varies from day to day, and mood to mood. This sentence is not a guarantee of level-headedness or maturity on my part and should not be taken as such.
** That and my poor neglected libido.