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Published May 25, 2009
Pages from Dell's Book of Life
Most human beings have their own private places, places to hide, places to conceal their most tender feelings, places to dream, cry, nurse wounds and heal, undisturbed by casual public scrutiny, uncaring passersby. I visualize my private place as a big, leafy-green bramble bush, full of protective thorns. These thorns are long and sharp, to be sure, but they are not poisonous. They are there to protect my private place and keep intruders away - - unless I decide to invite them in - - and they do provide safe, secure perches for visitors . . . like you. “I think of my life as a book. It has a beginning and an end, with a finite number of pages in between. Across the years, there have been certain moments, certain feelings and moods, certain experiences and observations, certain days - - good and bad - - that linger in memory, bookmarks in a commonplace life. I am not an artist but I try to paint my sketches and pictures with words, brush stroke word by brush stroke word.”
Excerpt
Excerpt from Page 127
Notes of No Great Interest To Anyone
1987
Looking back, and I have, at sixty-one, a loonng way to look back, I have seldom had any trouble getting along with and pleasing the men I have encountered, whether on an intimate or superficial level. I have never been “dumped” by any man, but it has been me who walked away from relationships. Maybe that’s because I was sensitive enough to perceive the ending and protected myself by leaving first.
My need for male companionship / friendship / company is an overwhelming force in my life. Platonic is fine with me - - I just feel filled, complete and happy in the company of males. I never feel threatened, but rather I feel protected, taken care of and secure. I feel “right.”
My first five years with my father must be the key to this characteristic. And, he too is responsible for the fear of desertion that causes me to leave a relationship before I am left. This does not mean I like every male I meet. Some of them I find obnoxious, others loathsome.
I make an excellent, tolerant, undemanding, accepting girlfriend, if I may use this term, but I have strong opinions about the duties and obligations somehow tied up in the marriage vows. I suddenly develop “expectations” of a certain kind of behavior.
Perhaps this is because for me, in my frame of references, I have made a commitment, pledged loyalty and support and feel deeply that, in all fairness, I am entitled to the same. But, life, and most of the people therein, is seldom “fair.” I have trouble with this and I am forever asking “why?”
About the secure and protected feeling some males give me – perhaps I broadcast that feeling to them and their normal male instincts to protect a female are satisfied. Just as I feel “right,” they too feel “right” and some sort of instinctive need is satisfied for both of us. It is NOT a consciously sexual reaction, but it is based on male / female relationships.
If I get that gut response to a man, we usually go on to be friends, both of us giving and getting some nearly intangible satisfaction from the association. A few times in my life it has gone on to a sexual relationship, more often it has not - - as though something valuable might be lost by becoming sexually involved; something would change.
Sexual attractions are easily satisfied. They come and go, wax and wane. Performance and expectations enter the relationship, tensions develop. I can see a great deal of logic when a man deeply loves his wife, but has affairs here and there during the years. However, the wife should have the same privilege, should she not? Sex and love do not necessarily coexist.
Women love attention, as do men. So many wives complain about how their husbands shower attention on other women and ignore them.
One could laugh and say that these “other women” are just wives garnering the needed attention that they don’t get from their own husbands, who are busy giving attention to someone else’s wife . . .
. . . in an endless cycle.
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