I've had a number of intense and enjoyable experiences lately. I don't regret anything I've done, and I'll happily keep doing it. There is a missing element, though. Its absence is beginning to create an anxious sadness in me. I despise admitting it, but it's there, and I'm afraid that the longer I deny it, the worse I will feel.
I think that to feel better, I soon need to experience sex with someone who wants me. In other words, I miss having sex with someone who seeks intimacy with me; who is interested in more than rough or transgressive or exciting sex; who wants to share true intimacy, the kind it's difficult to experience without really knowing someone and wanting to make them feel good out of some measure of respect, tender regard, desire for communion. . . . And someone who wants me specifically -- not just because I'm the person who is willing and handy.
Don't get me wrong. Casual sex has been great for me, and I don't want to stop. But I can't live on casual sex alone. I need more than that. If not always, at least occasionally. I suppose it's a sort of defeat to admit it. I didn't want to write it down or say it out loud, I know that much. It makes me feel weak, and I hate letting my insecurities show. I wish it were the case that I felt my inherent worth strongly enough that I never needed to have it affirmed by someone else. Apparently, it is not.
The real question is whether, in the absence of such a partner, I can deal with sex in other contexts. I have been able to so far. But this gnawing disquiet has crept in, and I don't know what to do to rid myself of it.
The photo is mine -- taken on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska.
