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ladychatterley -> RE: Chickening Out (10/17/2006 7:21:42 PM)
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Overall, I mostly agree with what's been posted. But, in my opinion and experience, even when you meet the right person, you may still have doubts, and fears. If you are chickening out because you don't know if you will be alive the next day, keep chickening out. There is no place for those fears and your intuition is probably warning you away from a not-safe person. But, for me at least, I think I have met the right man, and I still want to chicken out. Only time will tell, but I care deeply about him, and even if we met in a vanilla form, I would want to date him (till I broke up with him for some stupid reason cause of the whole not-nilla thing) because we have amazing communication and similar interests.
And yet, I continue to have major doubts, not because of him, but because I don't like this part of myself. I'm scared I won't be spiritually fulfilled, will get resentful in a few years for giving too much, will be taken for granted, will turn into a little giggling twit with no backbone, will become emotionally stunted or something, that I'm re-inscribing patriarchal commodification of women and I'll wake up one day and say 'what was I thinking?'. This is a price I think we pay for being SO far outside the mainstream, and we are outside the mainstream no matter what side of the stream you swim in. If you are like me, you ran away from this for a long time for a reason! It may not be a good one emotionally, but it is a narrative through-line that has considerable intellectual power. If you fought your essential nature for decades, the right person isn't going to make you stop fighting yourself.
For me, I've actually found a man I can share my fears with, in the appropriate time. (It only took me a decade of lurking, meeting people occasionally and running back to the nilla world!) But there are times I just have to suck it up and deal. It is part of who I am deep down and I can't change it. Intellectually, the idea that we explore our shadow sides in our erotic nature, and that my accomplishment and drive during the day is flipped at night, but not negated, that has helped me. But intellectual understanding only takes me so far. You have to start living it to let the intuitive learn it is OK too--like muscle memory or something. The first time you put on roller-blades, it will be terrifying. There is a leap of faith that has to happen and if you wait for the perfect person that makes all your fears go away, it may never happen because, for me, the vast majority of my fears were about who I am, not whether he was safe.
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