Sex, Love, and Intimacy in Relationships
It’s Vday and if I'm quite honest with you, IDGAF. 😂🤷
I’ve never really been crazy about celebrating Valentine’s Day, even though I can admit to giving my hubby a hard time the first year or two when I had to tell him to plan a date *eye roll*. But who was I kidding? I really didn’t care as much about Vday as I did about him thinking of me. Surprising me. Making me feel special. This also was a surprise to me when we first got married, because if you know me at all, I’m not the most affectionate person. I’m gonna be honest and say I’m barely getting used to hugs and even being okay with crying. Dare I say, I quite often lacked affection the way most women seem to naturally have.
Anyway, hubby and I come from very different cultures. Not just that he’s British Nigerian and I'm African American, but even our home culture. I grew up watching my Dad surprise my mom with flowers, gifts, and gestures all the time. Like to the point where even I got sick of it. *gag* lol. My Dad would decorate the house with a theme for literally EVERY holiday, and he would always send Just Because gifts to my mom. So you know when I got married I thought for sure I would get the same. NOT! I was not getting gifts every single month. The horror!
Now, let me tell you, relationships are not easy and I come to you humbly as a woman who demanded her man meet every single *sometimes unrealistic* expectation with no room for error. What do you mean you don’t know how to be romantic? What do you mean that wasn't you that left the toilet seat up? Boy, please. I had to learn how to communicate with him the way I needed to be loved, and he the same. Like I said, an unaffectionate wife doesn’t exactly make a man feel loved. It’s real! I had to accept that I was not being a good wife to him in more ways than one. Woo! Truth moment.
That leads me to the idea of sex, love, and intimacy. I know dating these days is not getting any easier. I hear from my friends quite often that it is so hard to find a good guy. Even my guy friends say the same thing. Dating apps are unreliable and living in LA makes it almost impossible to find someone genuine (Hollywood and fakeness out here is real!). So, what and how do you find and keep something real?
Yes. Men are ridiculous. Men are confusing. Men are frustrating. But also, men are different, very different from women. I can tell you, my mind is BLOWN the way my man thinks sometimes. Like, you think what? And Why? Don’t you know your life would be so much easier if you just thought like me? C’monnnnnn. Lol. And I know I’m not alone. But truthfully, he thinks the same about me. Tells me all the time. *side eye* And Femmes, this is where going from love to intimacy is the only way to make a relationship between a man and a woman work.
And by the way, I don’t mean sex when I say intimacy. Intimacy is seeing into me. I feel like the most important thing is to find someone you can be vulnerable with. One person who you can reveal and trust your entire truth to. Is he willing to show you ALL of who he is, and will you be willing to accept his truth and flaws and love him anyway? (I’m not talking flaws like abusiveness or being mistreated, either). And can you truly open yourself up and show him all of you, and he loves you anyway? Will you be able to let go of everything you expect him to be and love him for exactly who he is? Intimacy comes from letting go of what the other person is not, and loving them in whole, for who they are. And that's hard.
The key to real intimacy also starts with YOU. You have to know yourself. You have to know your flaws. You have to know your fears, your hopes for the future, and your past. And when you know yourself, you know how to communicate what you need and feel. And let me be clear. I was WEAK in this area when I first got married. We both were. So communicating our truth looked more like two people arguing about surface complaints while real issues went unaddressed. And it looked like two people who were getting caught up in complaining about how many times the other person didn't meet an expectation we had of each other.
But thank GOD for understanding, forgiveness, and compromise. When two people want to love and be intimate, you will both do what it takes to make the other person feel loved. And you'll both do what it takes to know yourselves well enough to communicate your truth to one another. Anway this post is long enough so the last thing I'll say about intimacy is don't take your intimacy issues to other people or complain about your partner to your friends. Like Ginuwine said (yes, I took it wayyy back), ain't none of your friend's business. And you don't want the words you speak about your partner to be filled with hurt, but love! The more you speak love about your partner, because the universe does this crazy thing and manifests the things you say. So speak love and light. Message!
