The Relationship Ship

I’m pretty good at confronting my inner demons that for the most part, feed off of me and me alone. I am open and willing to admit to my faults and work on learning from them and eventually moving past them.
But when it comes to interpersonal relationships, it suddenly turns into this hodgepodge like mess, a whole different story.
Basically, I am just simply terrified of hurting other people which in turn often leads to just that. Or, as I have recently realised, it leads to me hurting as well.

Do you ever carry out therapy sessions in your head? Questioning your feelings and emotions as if you’re talking to a different person entirely? Yeah, well, I do that quite often while on my way to the station heading for work. It’s a 20-minute walk, so I have all the time needed to get way too deep and way too personal for 7am in the morning. Today my therapy session started out with me entertaining the thought of me possibly being asexual, analysing my past behaviour and approach to both sexual and platonic relationships. I have yet to reach a conclusion as there’s a pretty high chance that I have simply developed an aversion to sexuality in general due to an internalised fear of facing my past and the issues and trauma that come with it. I am not going to open up about those memories just yet or even ever at all, but what I am going to share is just as scary and shameful to admit.

I am incredibly selfish when it comes to both platonic and romantic relationships. I’m not some incredible empath who doesn’t want to hurt others’ feelings, I avoid doing so because I know that it will cause me pain in the end as well. It took me months to recover after having dumped my first ever boyfriend, months! Even though I was the one to do the dumping. I have turned down uninvited advances from certain individuals only for them to turn on me so ending up being the one to be ripped to shreds. Sometimes I even question my love for my friends and how much of that is real and how much of it is just for show and out of routine. I get easily overwhelmed by being in constant close contact with others, my soul screaming for some precious princess alone time, so I take not one, but around 50 steps back and distance myself as best as I can only to feel guilty for being a shit friend and then showering the other side in attention and material gifts as that’s the only thing I can truly give them. Not my love, not my time, just stuff… But then what happens is that I once again get overwhelmed by all the plans I had made during this guilty high of sorts and I once again turn into a recluse.

I am moody as fuck and I do feel bad about it, but at the same time, would you rather have your plans canceled or have to bear through hours of my cringy distanced talk about nothing of substance.

Same would happen to me with romantic relationships, or rather my interest in the other party of sorts. I would get a high from the fact that my cold empty void of a heart is feeling things, I would want to know everything that there is to know about the special person, but the thing is that I don’t remember actually wanting to date anyone… ever? From idols and movie stars to regular coworkers I respect, I have never in my life wanted to see any of them naked. The thought would actually repulse me which made my game of wanting to learn everything that there is to learn about the person, quite meaningless. And they would usually get put off by my constant badgering as they likely assumed that I was looking for something serious. And I feel bad about this fact as I have no idea what I was looking for either, definitely not a relationship, definitely not a one-night stand either. Friendship? Is the closest thing I can come up with.

My whole relationship with sex has been … bad, to say the least.
The problem is that I never cared for sex, it never held any deeper meaning for me. So when I would go out for drinks with someone who I assumed I was friends with and they made sexual advances towards me, I would just go with it as that was the easier thing to do than to turn them down and lose a friend. Safe to say there were at least 5 such instances as far as I can remember always ending in me hurting their feelings for not reciprocating and in the end having lead them on. I do agree that that sounds like a horrible thing to do to someone, but from my point of view, I never once showed signs that I was into these people in any other way than friendship and just didn’t care about sex and its implications enough to walk away from the situation.

Sex never meant anything to me.

To make matters worse, there has been only one time that I honestly had fun during the whole spiel and that was when we had sex in his workplace office, right on the conference room table. I’m pretty sure that I was more aroused at the idea of such a movie-like situation, rather than the sex itself.
And to make matters even worse, I have only climaxed once while with a man, and it was so awkward and took forever and I honestly wanted the guy to just let it go, but he refused to so I “tried my best” to come as soon as possible cause I was getting tired and wanted to go to sleep.

But the fact of the matter is that I do get sexually aroused, but just not by sex. Rather the idea of it and the possibility of it happening. The teasing, the flirting, the games to see which side will lose first, and take the lead; I get hot for everything that comes before sex. Once you’re in bed naked together, that’s when I get turned off. I just… don’t care about sex.

Therefore I am still confused by my own feelings. The lack of interest and even slight disgust at sex might incline that I have some asexual tendencies, but I most definitely do experience sexual attraction and arousal, which would suggest otherwise.

Although to be fair, I have never truly loved anyone, I haven’t even been with someone who I had a crush on. It was always the other way around, me just wanting to avoid the awkward and friendship-breaking conversation and so just allowing the other person to do whatever it is that they need to do with my body.

And this brings us into my absolute complete lack of self-worth.
Growing up with intense mommy issues and the fact that I have never even once gotten even close to holding hands with my crushes in the past, I have learned to despise everything that there is to despise about myself. Yearning for the perfect body and the perfect face, wanting to be funny and witty while being painfully aware of just how boring I actually am, wanting to be… wanted.

That’s definitely a big one. Not only was I not interested in sex, I didn’t want to lose the friendship, I wanted to continue on feeling wanted and sensing that someone is truly enjoying my company. I am ashamed that such self-absorbed thoughts and feelings have resulted in hurt and pain for everyone involved.

In the end, I have no idea what I wanted to say.
I might be asexual, or I might just need to deal with my self-worth issues.
Maybe I’m demi-sexual and simply have never had the chance to feel the soft skin of someone I loved.
Whichever is the case, I do need to address this through actual therapy as the therapist in my head seems awfully unqualified for the job.