Harry Potter:
(I noticed that you wrote "one of my biggest issues" and not, say, "my biggest issue")
ah i don't know what my "biggest" issue is, but as work affects 75% of my waking hours during the week i consider it more pressing than the relationship issues that i'll outline below
Harry Potter:
Because you are in your early 20s - a period usually dominated by sex hormones - one such deeply personal issue would be your relationship (or its lack, and the social feelings on top of it) to current/potential/imagined sexual partners and the sphere of modern coupledom.
a good call, as my initial reaction was a reluctance to share. but it got me to thinking...
first of all: lust, and lots of it.. lots of watching porn, uh, onanising, fantasies with basically every girl i've met for the past however many years.. though no success in actually getting very intimate with one until last May. it's a long distance relationship (that i'm still currently in), though, and the lust and, uh, onanising, didn't stop or abate much until recently. it was quite annoying, being horny randomly.. what is eventually helping me get over it (not being so lusty) is a combination of:
- realizing that the things i'm lusting after are simply mental images which aren't actually real
- noticing that the lust simply abates if i don't satisfy it when it arises and i get distracted or whatever
- just really realizing how painful and narcissistic and self-aggrandizing the entire lusting after, then satiating said lust by yourself by using fantasy and imagination, is.
the latter point i've just kept coming back to and i think finally it's taking effect.
luckily i got into a very nice relationship last May so I haven't felt a lack of affection or a desire to mate with others or anything like that. it is long distance; we see each other about once every 2 weeks. i don't miss her in the meantime.. only after one visit or two, for a few days, did i miss her a bit, a while ago, but by then i was already into the actualist method and i guess i realized it was silly to pursue that feeling and i managed not to (i nipped it in the bud).
relationship-wise, it's pretty great. i think when i'm with her, it takes me out of the context of my normal life, away from friends and work (especially as it's always on the weekends), and that allows me to completely relax and let go and be chill. she is very non-reactive, as am i usually, so we get along famously, with very little drama between us. there are only two issues i can think of..
1 is the sex. it's harder for me to get off than i feel it should be.. so while she seems to enjoy it i feel i could be, more, and i'm not sure why. i think it was related to the lust above - years and years and years of pleasing myself with fantasies has made it difficult to enjoy said pleasures without the fantasies. i think just having a convo w/ her about it, resulting in two parties interested in making it better, would solve the issue, but i haven't brought it up yet. my excuse is i don't see her often, and when i do i don't feel like bringing it up.. so it goes.
2 is 'love'. it's a confusing topic for me. for a while i was really scared, wondering what i'd do if she said 'i love you' - what would i say? do i love her? when i thought about the issue i'd just tense up in fear/anxiety.
at some point (and just now again, though i now realize i had been over this before, though perhaps not spelled out in so much detail), i investigated the issue.. it seems love has been an issue for me for a while, not just recently. one of my friends is very affectionate and he often says he loves his friends, including me, but when he says it to me i'm not sure how to reply. i just dont seem to feel the 'love' that he does.. the same with a few other friends, the same w/ the girlfriend, i suppose - what is 'love'?
then i remembered how for a period when i was younger my mom would say she loved me and i wouldn't reply either with an affirmative or a negative.. i also just didnt know what to say! do i not love my parents? isn't that terrible?
the explanation i came up with was as follows: i was born in another country. when i was 3 my dad left for the US, and when i was 4 my mom left. i don't remember this, but my grandmother told me this story: when my mom left, when i realized somehow i wouldn't be seeing her for a while, i cried and cried, wishing for her to return. my grandmother pointed to a plane and said: 'see that plane? your mother is on that plane. she's going to a far away land.. and all your yelling and screaming won't change that fact.' at this point i understood and immediately stopped crying. she took it as a sign of intelligence so she liked to tell the story. now i think what must have happened is that i loved / was attached to my parents very much as a kid (or at least my mom), but when she left like that and i saw nothing i could do would make her return perhaps i realized such attachment was useless, so i either stopped it or (more likely) repressed it. i say repressed cause it seems hard for a kid to stop attachment like that. and also when i came to the US and was re-united, the first day they had work i cried just as hard for the entire day until they returned. (again i don't remember this; my parents told me that one.) so some attachment must have remained.
but i'm not sure that i'm repressing my love for others as it is. i remember about a week into college (living at the dorms) i was already calling my room 'home'. if i think back to times i had w/ my girlfriend and i try to conjure up the image of 'love', maybe something starts stirring, but i soon realize that i didn't feel that at all when the events happened - i was just more or less fully relaxed and enjoying myself. there must be some affection as i like talking to her and hugging her and showing other signs of affection.. but like i can't apply the label of a sticky clingy feeling called 'love' to it. likewise with my friends.
about the only times i have been sure i've felt love were a few times when intoxicated, e.g. when rolling, though that was more like Love Agape (unconditional, "the world is just a wonderful place" type love), or when drunk, which maybe was more like the traditional one.
so perhaps i really am not so attached.. for sure, though, i felt that i should be, that it was correct to love, hence why i felt bad thinking about it.. especially reading notes from my girlfriend indicating a more attached-type of affection (instead of, say, in-the-moment fooling around), i'd even start crying, not from happiness or love, i now realize, but because i felt i didn't deserve it.. and i believe i felt i didn't deserve it because i felt i didn't feel that love, and i felt i should have, i suppose due to society's values. that seems to have abated, though i'm not sure if it's fully gone.
what will i do if my girlfriend asks me the question? i don't know. realizing that the entire question is simply posed by my self to itself reveals just how twisted the whole scenario is =P. i would probably point to our experiences together and say 'would what i say now change any of that, or change what is happening now, or what will happen?'