Maybe I’m paying more attention now, or maybe other sexbloggers I visit are more willing to talk about stuff beyond the wet and friction parts. But it’s good to know that I’m not alone in trying to find my way through the mess of my life. Waking Vixen shared some thoughts on sexual autonomy that hit home.

Jane put up with a lot of this self-doubt stuff, and when I’d go on about not being able to bridge the sexual gap between how I’m imagined and how I am, she’d ask me why exactly I was so fixated on having partnered sex. The right and healthy answer for me is “because I like it and its fun,” but during those moments, the truthful answer was more along the lines of “because I need to be wanted and to prove that I can.”

How I’m imagined and how I am…..seems like a big difference between those two for me right now. Also the focusing on sex with somebody else is something I’ve been stuck in alot. I’m not hung up about masturbating, but it’s been something I do more to scratch the itch rather than to enjoy it for its own sake. And since R, there hasn’t been a lot of it. I think it’s time for both of those things to change.

Vixen closes with this:

Truly, it’s all about balance, but when other people’s balances wobble, I have to be able to make do with what I’ve got. I have to do better than that – I have to maintain and fulfill my own sense of sexual self. I can invite others in to share what I’ve got, but kick them out when they’ve overstayed their welcome.

I think R got to me as much as he did because I haven’t given a lot of attention to my own sense of sexual self. And that happened because I’ve been thinking of my sexual self as something that has to have somebody else to activate it. That isn’t true, and I know it…..or at least, I used to know it. Vixen, thank you for the words of wisdom.