Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice of life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.

Dear Internet,

It’s Christmas Eve and I didn’t think I would be writing to you so soon but after the fat girl surgery webinar I watched on Thursday, chances are it’ll be New Years that I’ll skip since I could be in the hospital for up to three nights and the last thing I’m going to want to do is write.

I’ve just finished watching Lady Chatterly’s Lover (2022) based upon the 1928 book by D.H. Lawrence.

First, the movie is super sexy and the sex scenes are hot. Better than porn! It’s on Netflix. Go watch.

Second, the movie is a mediation on love and the class inequality of early 20th C Britain.

(I’m interested in the prior not the latter.)

It recalls my own sexual relationships, some more current than others.

I think about TheBassist in the way that I think about lessons. I thought I was deeply in love with him only to realise, not long after, I loved the sex; that I was having sex because I surely wasn’t having it with J. But even the sex got tired quickly. TheBassist only liked one or two positions and no make outs. It was pretty boring.

And once when I was brave enough to tell him my desires, he acquiesced for an evening and never touched me like that again.

(I remember this day. We were walking out of Toys’r’Us and were talking about something having to do with sex and I told him I liked having my hair pulled, tossed around like a rag doll, having nips at my neck and breasts and body, massive long make-outs, dry humping, and the occasional butt paddling. Like I said. One night and it was back to me on top and no make-outs.)

We had everything in common and nothing in common. I cried for days during that relationship, for I had left J for TheBassist and on one hand I was convinced I was doing the right thing by leaving J on the other I saw it as my penance to stay with TheBassist because I had left J.

Love is fucking complicated.

I once asked on LiveJournal many years ago that if you were in a sexless relationship, would you stay with your partner? I thought that at the time I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. Sex was as part of my life as breathing. Several people said they would. I privately judged not really knowing, or understanding, what love is.

I may have been wrong all these years.

While grappling with my mania, living in CT, and having a sexual albeit intellectual challenged relationship with TheBassist, I started seeing a therapist.

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I don’t talk about mental health that much anymore because it’s exhausting. I have illnesses, I take medication and I have a therapist. I’ve been stable for the longest time in my adult life. Sometimes I feel the urge to fight for the right to be heard but again, I’ve been writing and talking about my brain for over 20 years and honestly? It’s overwhelming along with the exhaustion.

I’m just tired. Let me have my Lamictal, Zoloft, and Latuda and watch TV or read a book in peace.

With that being said, one of my diagnoses is Borderline Personality Disorder. Unlike bipolar, which is chemical and can be treated with drugs, BPD is a personality disorder which means therapy, mainly DBT and CBT techniques, help with the illness. BPD can go into remission (as such as I am now) but it never really gets cured or goes away.

One of the hallmarks of BPD is the fear of being abandoned. In my case, I turned up the vixen mode to 11 with partners on the premise that if I was good at sex, and willing to do just about anything, people wouldn’t leave me. (Also, manipulation was huge.) But relationships breakdown for numerous reasons and I didn’t really understand why and thought more fucking would cure it.

But interestingly, my motto was “If you leave me, fuck you.” If the relationship broke down, I would simply just move on to someone else. This, as we know, gives off the hard-to-get vibes from the exes so a lot of them wanted to come back and since I was probably with someone new, I said no and their “longing” continued.

(I cannot tell you how in my youth how many people said leaving me was a mistake. Was it because I refused to mourn the relationship? Was I that good at sex? Was my mania that attractive to keep me different enough to keep the want alive? Who knows!)

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Another hallmark of BPD, and bipolar, is sex. Hence the turning up the vixen until 11. Sex outside? Orgies (one but still)? Blowjobs while driving in cars? Hand jobs in movie theaters? Anal? Intimate objects? Being willing and able at any time? Phone sex? (So much phone sex.) Net sex? (So much net sex.) Badly written porn (from me, not them but sent to them)?

Yes.

The thing with sex and being BPD and/or bipolar is risky behavior. Having grown up with people in my life I shouldn’t have hung around with and their relationships, I painted myself as a monogamous nymphomaniac rather than having that risky behavior because I knew intellectually shit could get bad real quick.

I used to carry condoms in my purse when I had a partner because you never know when you needed a good fuck.

So, back to TheBassist and therapist.

This therapist specialized in bipolar and BPD and I was telling her of what was going on and she said simply, “You don’t need to have sex.”

Now, as someone who has understood and researched her illnesses all these years and knowing that sex was painted as risky behaviour and to some extent manipulative, I knew she was right but it took her saying it before it finally the lightbulb turned on.

That night when I got back to TheBassist’s house, I didn’t have sex with him.

Or the night after that.

And the night after that.

A resounding clue to the fragility of our relationship is that he immediately thought I was breaking up with him because I wasn’t fucking him anymore. I should have left then, I should have packed Ted E. Bear and burned rubber to Grand Rapids and beg J for forgiveness but I didn’t.

BDP was telling me to still stay because I needed him to want me no matter how I felt about him.

2014-2015 was rough.

Lessons.

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I’m afraid of pleasure.

My desire for sex, my 40s were to be off the charts and I think everyone has lied, has waned considerably. J pointed out that I’m afraid of pleasure. He has bought me expensive vibrators and dildos and they gather dust. One year he bought me an expensive Japanese metal toolbox for my toys. He put silver heart stickers on it.

They are nearly forgotten. Probably dust on the toolbox.

I keep thinking about that therapist and after all those years of being on sexually, now I am off. It’s a relief because I don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore and a concern because I want to have a healthy sex life but at the same time, I’m tired.

I’m always tired.

Everything feels like a struggle when it comes to sex. I have a rotating cast of future husbands and wives and I cannot feel desire for them. I see someone somewhere and I note their attractiveness, but I do not find desire in their beauty. It just is.

I cannot remember the last time I masturbated.

And enjoyed it.

J has some concern about this and I brush him off. He’s not pushy in that he demands to have sex as his libido is low due to drugs he’s on but he at least has wet dreams and desires. I, however, couldn’t get wet even if Christian Bale was in front of me stroking his dick.

Okay, that may be a stretch, but you get my point.

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I watch movies like Lady Chatterly’s Lover and I wonder why I’m not being taken with sexual abandonment under an old oak tree in post-1920s Britain. Where is my Yorkshire lad with shoulders like an ox, arms like anvils, and a stomach so flat you can count his intestines?

(He of course would be an intellectual god on top of it.)

One partner back in my early 20s once said my idea of romance and relationships were skewed because I read too many romance novels.

I’m a smart person, I think, and I get romance and sex in novels is blown up a thousandfold and unrealistic but I have had that abandonment in my life. I have had that wild desire and panties so wet I soaked through jeans. I know it exists. So maybe, they just didn’t want to have abandonment with me?

This is all fine but let’s be honest, that kind of sexual relationship isn’t sustainable. Love, romantic love, is not just genitals rubbing against each other. Part of it, but not all of it.

Please do not think there is no affection in my relationship with J. We hug, have real kisses with tongue, and stroke each others bodies all the time. Just, I don’t want to do anything beyond that.

I think I swung to the other extreme of what the therapist probably meant.

Couple all of this with sexual abuse and trauma

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It’s often too much and too overwhelming.

I keep putting working on this. Now I have a good excuse as I’m having my innards rearranged on Tuesday. I have things to think about on other topics. Not banging J or masturbating didn’t seem like that big of deal but now we grade our sex life and instead of having sex once or twice a week like we did years ago, it’s now once or twice a year.

When we were in Barcelona getting dirty in the fuck-me shower, I put a dab of soap on my hands and stroked his cock. It felt silky under my touch and while giving him pleasure was important, I was marveled by the feel of his cock in my hands. I call him “silken cock” now and he gets embarrassed. All’s well in love and sex.

If this missive is all over the place and makes no sense, I’ve tried for it to make sense and how my thought process works. It sounds better in my brain than probably on paper.

To sum, I want to have a healthy sex life and enjoy masturbation again but I’m crippled with adverse action to sexual pleasure yet I dream of unrealistic movies and books to bring me that lack of sexual need in my life.

That sound about right?

lisa x

A Most Unrealiable Narrator

A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #131…