Every woman should experience waking in her own home, with her name on the lease or deed alone, to four separate good morning texts from four different people who are taking their breakfast with a side of thoughts of her. No one should have to worry about a man’s change in mood meaning their whole life must shift. My feeling unable to explore my sexuality safely and openly may have contributed to me being in monogamous, practically contractual relationships that consumed my time and kept me in a “we” mindset that still permeates my thinking.
In an alternate universe, I am still the college freshman wearing six inch platform leather boots and schoolgirl skirts to class. I still have a collection of vibrators in my dorm room. I still date, and have phone sex, and engage in meaningless relationships that are going nowhere. I do these things, I shake it off, and I get back to my Student Diversity meetings. I get home from a date with some dude I won’t call back, and I transfer a small chunk of money from checking to savings to go towards my personal goals. I’m not tempted by men promising to give me a good life, because nothing could take me away from my awesome retro goth inspired apartment or my erotic bakery business. I’m a selfish “slut”, and instead of coming and going out of other lives, I’m welcoming and excusing people out of mine. I’m calling shots. I can afford to do so.
When I found out that perhaps my decision to get married was yet another example of my destructive pattern, I won’t lie. I felt entitled to that phase. I was hit with the crushing realization that a woman can give up everything for a man, merge herself with him, and he has the capacity to take that grand gesture of loyalty, crush it down into what he actually needs, and to completely misappropriate what’s left behind. Why is the idea of experiencing, and living, and becoming an entire person without worrying about giving our time or our energy or our bodies to someone else so scary? Why is the goal always marriage? Why are we so crushed when we realize the one we love is capable of having hobbies or interests or even relationships outside of us? Why are young people so quick to pause working on themselves to take a risk building with someone who “likes” them? Why do we ridicule a 29 year old woman with a full time job who dates and travels but is not married, and applaud a woman when she stumbles into some dude, gets engaged, and, no matter how rosy you paint it, stops working on herself as an individual person? Why is marriage and monogamy not something done in middle age once one is a relatively established person? What is this rush to be owned? Why do our mothers encourage it? My reaction to his misappropriation was to declare an open polygamous relationship; One where I may explore relationship options as they come, accepting what I need and rejecting what I don’t. I am focused on saving my own money, rebuilding my own identity, and being open to whatever comes at me specifically, and I wish I’d taken on this mindset sooner. I am open to the idea of love in the future, but the focus this time is on the future, not the love.