Thanks for sending the picture of the sexy dude in Macao. In my gay culture we say, "What a nice box or basket."
I'm glad that you want to collaborate on the short story. Your timetable suits me fine. Work may cause either of us to have to delay from time to time.
I'm glad that you treasure your relationship with your girl friend and do not want to lose her, in spite of the discontent both of you feel right now. Listen to the clear clues that she has given to you.
We human beings, but especially we males, are far too fickle to sustain a relationship if we base it primarily on sex. She stresses that she wants more "mental communication." That vague term allows her the imprecision that the emotions require. She's wise not to give you an exact list of requirements to please her. She wants a human being who cares to find out in each new situation how he can please her, not a robot who checks off a list so that he can get back to expecting her to please him.
I agree with my friend Carter Hayward, an Anglican theologian, when she asserts that "Love without justice is cheap sentimentality."
To honor your girl friend's request for more communication, you do not have to adopt a new list of conversational topics nor to abandon what you enjoy about your own masculinity, even your own brand of reticence: instead, study to behave justly to her.
Your society and mine have educated us as males to expect privileges that seriously threaten our ability to treat women justly. Women experience inequities not only in all kinds of access (to good jobs, to equal pay, to affirmation of their wholeness...), but in the expectations society holds them to in personal relationships. Women are supposed to nurture males, to wait on our needs, to mother us when we face stress or threats to our ego.....
To behave justly, we males do not have to stop wanting these good things: but we do have to learn to initiate them, to nurture our partners, to wait on their needs, to mother them when they face stress or threats to their ego....
You state, each time she comes back, she will tell me a lot of things about her but I simply do not feel interested. And I seldom tell her things about me for I consider them boring. I do not think this kind of exchanging of information as a kind of mental communication; and it seems that we have run out of topics lately.
Come off it, friend! I have heard you tell your most casual male acquaintances all kinds of details about yourself, and I have watched you attend closely to the smallest movements of a stranger. You have even written short stories to satisfy your need for detail!
Sherwood Anderson, one of my favorite American writers, once said that there's no such thing as a boring person, only bored observers. You and your girlfriend have not run out of topics, but have plugged up your imagination.
She is right to feel that you are shutting her out when you, known by all as a loquacious personality, shut up around her. Are you afraid that she might find you boring if you talk about simple things? With the one you love, why not take at least as many risks as you do with strangers?
You ask me to help you to distinguish between sex and love. I can't. And I think that you should not try to look at them as mutually exclusive.
You seem to fear that your girl friend wants you to give up on sex, or at least to let up on it. I doubt that you would have to do that to satisfy her. We do not have to devalue sexuality. But for our primary relationship to thrive, we must indeed treat it as primary: we must value its wholeness.
Translated into practical terms: when we're horny but our partner isn't, often we will nurture our partner if we do the dishes so that she can relax and read a book--especially on an evening when she's in a foul mood and not nearly as attractive as some other friend with whom we might spend the evening.
Many men know how to delay their own orgasm while their partners move to layer upon layer of concentric ecstasy; yet too few males know how to translate this sexual dexterity into other nurture when they put their clothes back on.
I find it helpful to think of how I would want someone to respect my daughter. I do not worry about the times that she is on her best behavior and in her best health..... It's easy to find kindness and affection then: but how will her lover treat her when she's at her worst. Will her partner love her enough to allow her space to befoul, affirm her enough to encourage her when she's most vulnerable and does not feel very good about herself or about her partner.
I am glad that you and your girl friend both enjoy sex. Have you learned to treasure the rich difference in the female's body clock? Do you set the pace? Does she? or Do you both? How essential is orgasm?
Some males require orgasm, at least their own, to feel that the intimacy has been worth their time. A few women think that way too.
Asian culture is rich in a rival point of view. I'll never forget an Asian tapestry which I saw in a Washington museum when I was only 21: in it, the woman sits on the man's penis while the two drink tea. Thirty years ago, when I first saw it, the scene seemed immensely foreign, and superbly erotic. It remains superbly erotic in my imagination at 51, but no longer foreign. Anyone anywhere is blessed who learns to appreciate the pacing, the spiritual sharing, that the tapestry memorializes.
Sex that overrates orgasm degenerates to a mere score card: it cannot nurture because it values completion more than sustenance.
When both of my parents died five years ago, I found in their papers a note which my grandmother had written to her daughter-in-law, who was to become my mother. He tells me that the two of you will marry. I wish you well. Please consider a bit of friendly advice. Get yourself two pairs of glasses, one to magnify his merits, another to diminish his faults.
Women have often given other women such advice about men: it's high time we men heeded it too.
In some ways, I suspect that as a straight male you will have a tougher time unlearning bad habits than Ernest and I have had, since our culture did not teach Ernest and me to expect the servitude it teaches males to expect of women. But selfishness is no respecter of sexual orientation. Thank the Goddess that Ernest and I occasionally move beyond our selfishness. That occasional grace has brought far more vitality to our relationship than has the delightful sexual juice of the past fourteen years.
We're still beginners. Still vulnerable. Still trying to love each other past limits. Still forgiving when we fail, as we often do.
Blessings attend you as you try.
Love, with a big hug, Lutibelle.
Louie Crew, gay activist, taught for the past four years in China and Hong Kong. Newly returned to the United States, he received a letter from a former student: "My girl friend complains that there is little mental communication between we two.... And she also says what I usually want from her is sex and she reckons there is little left in our relationship beside sex. These sort of problems trouble me too. Even I cannot be sure whether I love the person or having sex with her; in other words, I do not know whether I love her or not. I think I mix sex and love. Can you tell me how to distinguish them? Also, I do not know what kind of mental communication she wants..... What should I do? I really treasure this relationship and certainly do not want to lose her." In the above we share Crew's response.
For more stories by Louie Crew, click here.
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