Blinded by the light!

I don’t know how many times I’d heard that song before I finally listened to the lyrics.  At which point I immediately went to Google to see if I’d heard what I thought I had.  Turns out a lot of people have thought the same thing.

For those who aren’t aware, the line is: “revved up like a deuce.”

Ok, enough tangent.  I’m learning so much!  About myself, my past, my patterns of behavior, and what may have contributed to them.  I’m actually really looking forward to taking a Family of Origin class when I go back to school.

So, I’d established that I seem to think sex comes before relationship, and intimacy.  I also recognized that this is, as I think they say in AA, stinking thinking.  (Note: I’ve never been to an AA meeting, but many of my brothers & sisters in recovery are cross-addicted)  But why?  Why would I always come out, boobs blazing, offering sex before anything else?

Oh.  Thanks, Mom.

Working on Step 1 has been an intense experience, and intensely rewarding.  Chris says, “this is an awareness program” (SLAA).  I’m basically going over my entire life with a fine tooth comb.  I still have a few years left to talk about with him, but I’ve noticed some obvious themes and patterns.

I just wanted love.  I was looking for love in all the wrong places.  (I can only hear Buckwheat singing that song, “Wookin’ Pa Nub,” thanks SNL)

Ok, so I didn’t get the validation I needed growing up.  Narcissist Mom drained all she could from everyone in the family, leaving little left for me.  A family of codependents, I have a (vivid, long-repressed, incredibly painful) memory of caretaking my oldest brother when I was 4 (and he was 16).  That’s the example that was set, and that’s how early I’d picked up on it.

Andplusalso the sex part.

Sex wasn’t just normalized in my family, it was practically applauded.  I have two older brothers.  Mom was very open about her opinion that Middle Brother was extra cranky, “prickly” she called it, when he wasn’t getting laid.  Basically, oh thank God he’s getting some now, he’ll be much more pleasant!  And she openly discussed her sex life with her first husband, and also my father.  No daughter should know some of the things I know about my father.  My favorite is the story she told me, I really don’t know how old I was, but we’ll say 10, where she compared the size of two men, and used a ketchup bottle and a salt shaker to illustrate her point.  That’s a story you joke with a girlfriend about, not your young impressionable daughter.

I was 11 when I had my first boyfriend.  He was kind enough to inform me that he had a condom if I was curious about sex.  I declined, but when I told my mother this, I didn’t get a birds-and-the-bees talk, I got a demonstration of how to put a condom on.  At 11.  No wonder I dumped my second bf because I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t kiss me.  My third boyfriend, I was 14, and things in the bedroom progressed just shy of sex.  (Lack of proper supervision is another theme!)  My mother took me to the gynecologist to put me on birth control.  Heh, the doctor declined, saying he (yes, she took me to a man, she liked him because he was Asian and had small hands) didn’t think a 14 year old should be having sex.  Pretty sure I was both confused and frustrated by that.

Even when she was just out for Christmas a few weeks ago, I was explaining how Seth dating triggered me, and I wanted to do something reckless.  Her response was a very enthusiastic, “You had sex!!!!”

So, to recap: I didn’t get proper validation, and was exposed to many different sexual concepts at an early age.

Sex can feel like an easy way to get validation.  Let me offer you sex, and by then I’ll have fooled you into liking me so we can get to know each other–and you won’t run away.

I’ll offer dessert first, so you won’t care that dinner is burned.

Man.  Awareness is powerful.  It can be pretty painful, but powerful.

And the next man I let in my life is going to have to eat his GD vegetables before he gets dessert.