Member-only story
Not a complaint or life-defining defect. Just part of who I am.
I did not wind up here by intended design, this outcome was not a deliberate target. It’s not because of any tenant of religious doctrine. No one has done this to me. It is simply the result of the choices I have made in the face of the circumstances I have encountered in my life. If I had a magic pen, would I write a different story for myself? Yes. But I feel no anger or resentment because I can’t.
We all have our own relationship with the various forms of intimacy. When it comes to physical intimacies the typical model is one of experimentation and exploration in the mid-teens leading to most of the iconic firsts. First kisses, first cuddles, first under-the-clothes touches, to the first time having sex. Driven by adolescent curiosity, with a nitrous tank of hormones, these encounters can run the spectrum from awkward and confusing to lovely and cherished to traumatic.
When it comes to emotional intimacy there is less of a typical model, primarily because there are so many different forms of emotional intimacy beyond the strictly romantic. Having said that, those experimental teenage years are usually the period when we have our first experience of falling head-over-heels in love with someone. We suddenly know what all the songs are talking about and we become obsessed with the other…