HONEYGRiP

Hi, my name is Regan and I suffer from a tremendous fear of intimacy. 

*PHEW* Releasing that didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would. 

The more I learn about myself, the more I understand my patterns; the more I understand my mistakes – I see I can’t deny it.

Someone once asked me why I am so attracted to the “assholes” and I thought the answer was their cockiness  (which I confused with confidence).  It is not.

Let’s dig deep. 

I preferred the challenge of the asshole (aka Mr. Unavailable) because subliminally, (I now realize) I didn’t really want to catch him. My own fear of intimacy would’ve prevented me from truly connecting with him even if he up and changed his unavailable ways. It’s easy to always blame the guy, to call them dogs, or to say they done me wrong. But in reality, I was always the one who set myself up for failure. I was just as emotionally unavailable as they were to me. 

Where did this all begin? 

My theory is it began with my father. A man I never really knew, a man I’ve met but really only know through others’ somewhat jaded descriptions and summations.

My father was by all accounts a player. A good looking, charming man who always had multiple women; who always told multiple lies and who had no problem deserting multiple responsibilities.  When I met my father as an adult I realized that he was a guarded, selfish and emotionally unstable shell of what a man should be. He had justifications for why he deserted my siblings and me. Why he retreated from his own relatives and why he could not find any stability in his own life. I remember once he wrote me a letter that I read to my boyfriend at the time, and we both thought it sounded more like a man who was trying to “rap” to me than a man who was trying to reconcile with his adult child. After that creepy letter, I walked away from that situation completely feeling confident that NOT having a relationship with my father was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. 

I remember having a discussion with one of his sisters who told me how abusive my father was to the women he dated and in particular to the woman he married. One story she told left me so scarred because as I listened I realized that my father was just like the man I was involved with at that time. In fact, it amazed me.  I had completely sought out the type of man my father was without even knowing who my father was. I was dating a man that cheated on me, verbally abused me and then emotionally tormented me much like my father had done to countless women in his life.

Wanting a man just like dear old dad. :/ They say your father is your first love for a woman. I realize I was no different, except my first love, would call and never show, promise me the moon and stars and never deliver, talk that good shit and then disappear.  Leaving me waiting, and ultimately blaming myself for things I didn’t do. 

And this is the relationship that set the standards. :-(

Is it any wonder why I could never truly put any stock 100% in any man?  Never able to exhale, always expecting the proverbial letdown…

While my mom on the other hand, always tried to instill in me to be as self sufficient and independent as humanly possible. I recognize that it was intended for my best benefit. Insuring that I would never leave myself so vulnerable that I would end up being so severely let down or stuck in a situation from which I could not recover.

But in the interim, I learned how to completely detach myself from my feelings.  If I never care, nothing can ever hurt me. If I don’t give you my heart, how can you ever break it?

Which leads me today, to understanding that the proper way in which relationships function is by achieving intimacy and also through understanding that any relationship devoid of intimacy is not a relationship. 

As my friend Janice eloquently explained: 

Our men reflect our inner state…they mirror us. I’ve attracted emotionally unavailable men because I fear intimacy on some level. My heart isn’t fully open.

She is so right. The men I attract and am attracted to pick up on this and we feed off of one another. (Eureka Janice!) 

I know lust, I know sex, but I don’t know love or intimacy. I don’t know how to let my guard down and let a man in without the fear that the rug will be pulled out from under me or that he will promise me something and completely fail to deliver.  I realize now that Human Dildos don’t work for me because I NEED intimacy.  Sex is nice, but intimacy is WAY better (I’m guessing).  I realized this when I noticed that the sex with my last HD wasn’t getting me off in the ways I had hoped.  As I said, he had the tools and the technique but he always left more to be desired.  That is to say, there is nothing wrong with him, he served his purpose and I’m happy to say, I let it go.

Now, I have begun to focus on myself, and building the tools within myself to make me more confident and comfortable with the idea of trusting someone and ultimately sharing the most intimate things that I normally work to hide.

I’m opening my heart right now. And I’m beginning to share those intimacies here. And that’s a start, right?

Posted 4 months ago — 5 notes

Just randomly found this previous post. I wrote this about 7 months ago and I am proud to say that I got 2 of them done this year. One of them was the one I believed to be the most impossible-BTW. I thought it was important to note the power of #LOA. The flirtation was minor but at least I know if I put it out in the universe I can make it happen. Now, if you’ll excuse me- I have to go work on all the rest on my list. :P

Posted 8 months ago