Mature Audiences Only

This blog contains mature subject matter. If you are under 18, please find a more appropriate blog. I suggest Midwest Teen Sex Show or the National Scoliosis Foundation Forums (depending on which google search brought you here). If you are over 18 but find frank discussions of alternative sexuality and relationships uncomfortable, please begin your exploration elsewhere.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Making it through the scary parts

A couple days ago, Russell and I ran into one of the challenges I've been dreading for a long time. I think I described it best back in May when I wrote about porn that made me cry. In a pair of sentences, the author managed to sum up the thing I was so blessedly afraid of having to say after surgery:
"I need you to stop fucking me like I'm dying, I'm not dying. But every time you touch me soft, every time you ask if I'm okay, another little piece of me falls off."
After a month of being barely touched and constantly tip-toed around I was going crazy (the PMS wasn't helping matters either). I was beginning to wonder if our relationship had shifted permanently when I wasn't looking. This led to a conversation much more grown-up and less dramatic than the one depicted in the story. We identified the biggest problem: He couldn't touch me much because he didn't know how to do it safely, and I couldn't tell him how to do it safely, because I wouldn't know until we tried. So, carefully, slowly, and with a lot of courage and respect for each other we started to explore the safer limits of what we could do together.

We've got a ways to go in rebuilding our confidence, but I'm glad we finally got to this point. It turns out, I was right. There really was no way around it, no way to avoid it. But I was also right in believing that, no matter what, we'd make it through together.

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