This is everything. It is everything I have been thinking about and crying about and trying to write about these past few weeks. Last night in bed with someone I’ve been seeing I started to sob and I couldn’t quite understand why–why I was crying and why I felt so embarrassed letting him see me that way, messy mascara and reddened cheeks and the ugliness of vulnerability. To let someone see your weakness automatically grants them the agency to hurt you. It has been three months but I am not ready to be hurt again. Not right now. Not yet.
After reading this interview I know what I was trying to say to him last night, in between the apologies for “being crazy” and the jokes meant to derail my own derailment. It had nothing and everything to do with him–nothing because he could be anyone, everything because he is the perfect metaphor for my own internal contradictions: for the first time in a long time, I have no idea what I want.
I read this interview and finally I understood why I cry without warning when men absentmindedly press their palm to my sternum. It is this thing that I didn’t know how to express until now, because to say it outright would be to admit to everything I have sacrificed. To say it would allow the whole shining edifice I have carefully constructed with nonchalant shrugs and practiced passivity to be revealed for the ruse it always, always was.
It’s the “kind of sex [you're] supposed to be cool with as a postfeminist, twenty-first century Western woman—a casual sort of intimacy without intimacy.” I have forsaken romance, not only because I have come to believe that I don’t deserve it, but because I have been taught that in order to have sex I need to bury the desire for intimacy.
“For many young women there seems to be a lot of anxiety and pressure about appearing to be a burden, or needy,” the interviewer points out. “Yes, needy—which I think makes us really guarded, emotionally,” responds Anderson. “I think there are a lot of women out there who are very emotionally frustrated because they’re terrified of seeming needy.”
I have been taught that romance and sex exist separately, and that in order to have one I must shelve the other. I am a 22-year-old woman who craves sex with the intensity and frequency that most men do, and because of this I have learned to compartmentalize and surrender my right to emotional intimacy just to be touched. They undress me and I arch in enjoyment and say, “It’s okay that this one is the way he is, because the next man that I’m with will be different.” It is always the next one and the next one until there is no one left but me.
“I think that a lot of women know that they have the right to say no,” says Anderson, “but actually feeling like they have the right to say no in certain situations is a quite different thing.”
It is all about concessions.
We will most likely hear more and more about this as women my age–women who grew up with internet porn and the “hookup culture”–begin to reach our late 20’s, a time when we’re supposed to think about “settling down” and building emotional connections. I think that if we continue to bend and shrink and harden we’re going to eventually find that we don’t know how to be truly intimate anymore.
We trained ourselves to forget the ache of vulnerability a long time ago. After everything, I’m still not sure I’m willing to remember.
*Title by Jenny Holzer.
I read that article too – and couldn’t believe it. I agree with everything you are feeling and thinking and it scares me that this is the way the world is turning. I wish I was 10 years older.
@Bree I wrote this because I’m afraid that a lot of girls feel the way we do. Many of my girl friends–even my Mom!–have e-mailed me after reading this to voice agreement. It’s sad
My boyfriend of two years and I broke up a week ago, and although I have been able to distract myself with work and other friends as much as possible, the thought of “well what am I going to do now in terms of men?” consumed my head this weekend. This article really helps! It basically says, “You’re absolutely normal for feeling this way.” I am TOTALLY that girl that hates being the first to text/call/email. My absolute nightmare in a relationship is to be perceived as the insecure needy girlfriend. And right now, I think I can confidently say, hello jessica’s blog,I am not an insecure, needy single girl. But I do miss the romance. I think us girls still deserve some more of it. Here’s to another summer in the city.
@ Melissa Sorry to hear about your boyfriend but I’m so happy this post helped you! That is totally the reason I wrote this and many of my other stuff–to connect with people who feel the same way as I do.
Good luck– go get ‘em, girl!