Finding Strength of Will

Got an email from a friend this week and I wasn’t sure how to reply. You’d think it would be easy. Something simple would suffice, like: “I wish I were there to go with you. Sounds like a lot of fun.” But for some reason I found it difficult to say even that. Here’s why. We’ve been friends for a long time now. Since our first teenage years. We were friends by nature of a mutual friend first, but over time our own friendship grew. He was quiet and reserved, introverted. He like to have things just so. His room was always in order and he paid attention to the details but without getting bogged down by them. He seemed to know what he liked and what he didn’t like without much hesitation. All quite different from me. My room would go through fitful bouts of cleanliness and disarray. My likes and dislikes related much more directly to my mood rather than to any empirical method of elimination of less appealing options. Even my favorite color varied from day to day. He and...

I had begun to see a pattern in my life.  With those people that I would open up to, to allow them to really see the true me, faults and strengths, I would begin to form incredible healthy, loving connections that made both of us in the relationship feel more whole, loved, and accepted.  It is an amazing feeling.  I will take that feeling over any other "high" any day, hands down. I saw a comment by one of my Wife's friends on Facebook this morning: " Today I realized that I am afraid to enter into a relationship space with a man because I am fearful that once I allow myself that vulnerability, I will completely lose myself within that person. That that person with then take advantage of the vulnerability. This is going to take longer than I thought." In my weird world of SSA, I am feeling exactly  the same way.  Oh, the complexity of life!  While sexual intimacy will always be reserved for my sweetheart and true love, I am learning, a little painfully...