Inadequacies and Judgments

You know what will make the sanest, most even-keeled person go a little bit insane? Sexual insecurity. Serious. Imagine this, for a moment: you're floating along with someone, hanging out, making out, having a good time, enjoying each other's company. You start to think, "Wow, this is really nice. Maybe I can trust this person!" And so you do, and the two of you have sex, and a week later you're getting the "I'm just not really available for any kind of relationship right now" line.

Punch. To the goddamn. Gut.

If you're reading this, and you know how to handle that kind of thing without going completely off the rails for a few days or a few weeks, please let me in on your secrets. I've never been able to deal other than being an ugly walking anger ball for a while, and I *really* don't like being an ugly walking anger ball, even if it's only for a few days.

The thing that makes sexually-based rejection so much harder to take than rejection based on other criteria is the specter of all the other issues raised by a rejection that is, at heart, physical.

I’m not right for you because I talk too much? Ok, well, I do shut up sometimes, but that’s cool, I’m just a talker and I probably always will be and if it really bothers you that much, well, then.

I’m not right for you because I’m a bleeding-heart? Fine. I can understand how it might be difficult to integrate orphan’s Christmas and an ever-shifting array of household guests into your life, but I’m not going to give up those things, so let’s part ways.

I’m not right for you because you don’t like how I have a tendency to put my life and my feelings out there for the world to read? Sigh. Yes, I get it. I can try like hell to respect your privacy and leave you unidentified, but I’m always going to want to write and say things and try to communicate, and if you’re really uncomfortable with that, then we’re not right. I don’t want to hurt you.

All of those things hurt. They do. Any rejection stings. But rejection based on some kind personal characteristic, no matter how much it stings, can be gotten over so long as you hold true to your conception of yourself.

But, “You’re bad in bed; I’m out” is so much more hurtful. For me, at least, it raises all my unsettled intellectual insecurities. To be rejected for something physical means that what is most important is my physical being. It means my value to this person lies in my body, not my mind. It turns me into arm candy. Or, that’s what it feels like, and that’s what makes me crazy. The idea that I decided to trust someone who doesn’t give a flying fart what’s between my ears, only between my legs, and that that’s not even good enough, makes me question my judgment. And questioning my judgment makes me de-value my intelligence even further on my own until I arrive, finally, at the rock bottom conclusion that I am, in fact, nothing but arm candy and spend a few days crying silently, afraid to raise my voice or my head.

I’m not the most even-keeled person to begin with, please keep that in mind.

After I’ve hit that point, I usually rebound enough to think at least marginally critically about the whole thing. Often it turns out that I’ve been basing the whole assumption of rejection based on sexual inadequacy on something specious, and there are (in fact) myriad possible reasons for the rejection. Because there usually are. Hurt makes us jump to conclusions that are insupportable in the calm light of reason. Passion is a beautiful thing, it really is, but like any beautiful thing it can blind you if you stare at it too long. Then it’s a matter of talking myself through the other rejection-scenario and pep talking myself up to a point where I’m more or less functioning again, although fragility remains, always, a little more brittle, a little less able to withstand.

Rejection always, always hurts. There’s no way around that. Or at least, no way that I’ve found that leaves my basic empathy responses intact. There’s no way to feel for the world without feeling the world, and that means that you are going to get hurt.

Alternatively, I manage to work myself into a state of righteous indignation long enough to cut the person loose because it really *is* true that they only think of me as arm candy and I don’t need people like that in my life.

That’s a cop-out on my part, if you didn’t notice the hypocrisy I just exposed. When it comes down to it, everyone has the right to be happy and it would be awesome if we did that without hurting anyone else ever but that’s a pipe dream. And if the sex really doesn’t work for you, that’s as valid a reason for ending a relationship as any other. I recommend giving it more than one shot, but hey, some people make decisions quickly, who am I to judge. Saying that appearances don’t matter is naïve; denying that the physical self has as much reality as the mind is ignorant. We aren’t just brains. We’re bodies, too, and our bodies matter. Someday I’ll have to get as comfortable being judged for mine as I am with being judged for my ideas.

I’ll take any tips you got that on that, too.