A Message to my Younger and Sexier Self
Appreciate the lovers who come your way. Lighten up. Life is happening NOW. Taste it, enjoy it, bless where you are and look forward to what comes next.
I’m not going to get all regretful on you. Regret is a waste of time. But I am going to offer some advice to my younger self, to younger people who might be about as emotionally savvy as I was in my teenage years and early twenties.
Where’s this come from? Well, I was clearing out my bedroom at my parents house today when I stumbled across a box of letters (remember those? How quaint!) written back in the day.
Anyway, much as I’d like to brag that they were mostly love letters from my many amorous companions, far from it. A lot were from friends, and family when I was living abroad, most were letters from people who I was in love with, but for whom I was very much in the friend zone.
I had a few sweet letters from my first girlfriend Caroline who I was genuinely in love with, and the feeling was mutual. She was perfect!
And of course, I was on the receiving end of some letters from others who were in love with me but for some reason I didn’t reciprocate.
Looking back, I struggle to see why I acted as I did. I enjoyed the company of these girls, I was fond of them, but did nothing to seal the deal one way or another. But why? Intimacy issues? For sure.
As I said in my article Are you enjoying being single? There is a sense in many of needing to find the right person, ‘the one’ that can blind you from the very pretty vistas, and the fun destinations you could encounter along the way to your marriage partner.
These unconsummated lovers, the ones that got away, and there have been many, could just as easily have been fun, mind and heart opening relationships for both of us, but alas love is complicated.
Had I grown up in a family where unconditional love was the norm, I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the trepidation.
“If you show love to a woman , you’d better be damn sure that it’s the real deal, or you might hurt that person.” Is probably what I was thinking.
Really, I should have gone in selfishly seeking my own emotional gratification, but those who grow up with conditional love from their parents are not afforded such luxuries.
So instead we fear to tread, and we forego our own sexual and emotional exploration, and live a life filled with ‘what if?’s.
So what advice would I give to the younger me, one who tread the boards of love with concern for others’ feelings?
“Focus on yourself. Follow your own selfish desire, and find someone else for whom you are their own selfish desire.
Taste, experience, savour. Kiss the girl. Touch her in a tender way. Be kind, make love, and be honest. This is about your life, your pleasure and your emotional fulfilment. Throw yourself into relationships, gather data about what you like and what you dislike. Enjoy the process.
If you’re waiting to give your virginity to the right person, make it someone kind that really digs you a lot, get the ball rolling in a good way. Once you do, you won’t look back. Get naked and explore each other, have fun.”
And how can I help my children to have healthy and open sexual relationships with others? To experience all the good that these deeply personal and intimate relationships have to offer?
By being a role model of a healthy relationship to them, by allowing them to be who they are, and by owning my emotional responses to their behaviour.
When I hear some say,
“You made me feel X”, I naturally correct them.
“No”, I say, “They did what they did and you chose to feel the way you did about it.” I detach the emotion from the action. I remind them that their emotional response is their choice.
How young can these things start? Certainly younger than I experienced it, losing my virginity at 22. Though I have to say, Kelly, you were totally worth waiting for, but again I feel I treated you poorly and didn’t appreciate you as I should have. We could have had a long and satisfying relationship, but I had my hang ups.
And that’s the overriding message here, are you enjoying all that life throws at you? Perhaps I should write a book for my next incarnation to find?
Appreciate the positive attributes of those who come your way and want to get into your underpants. They will have some enduring qualities that you can get behind.
They may have a pretty face, a lovely pair of charlies, great arse, wicked sense of humour, or just be really, really fun to be around.
Ladies, he could have a great bum, lovely chest, washboard tummy, fairly sizeable you-know-what, be funny or just a bit of a hunk.
Whatever it is, If you’re a teenager or an early twenty something, you know those people in your life who you just know fancy you?
Take the time to sit down and write long lists of what you like about them.
Am I trying to get you together with them? No, but you might be lucky to have some fun exploring your relationship in a deeper and more intimate way, to have some fun, and that’s fine too.
No, what I want is for you to attract into your life more of what you like and less of what you don’t like.
You get what you focus upon, and appreciation is a good way to tune your dial to the radio stations of life that you like. Hint: most people do the opposite, complaining about their partner and wondering why the next has the same attributes.
What I want for you is the experience of tasting a hundred different meals and selecting from each what you like and so to help you to refine your palate and taste for your ideal lover.
There will never be days as wonderful as those early days of love. Intoxicatingly powerful, ripe with hormones and overflowing with lustful desire. That impulse comes directly from God.
Enjoy it. Stop worrying what anyone else thinks about your choice of lover. If they turn you on, they turn you on. Lighten up. It’s not marriage. Enjoy yourself. You know what to do.
So to Caroline, Jenny, Jennifer, Claire, Clare, Ruth, Angela, Beatriz, Daisy, Gina, Louise, Hannah, Sarah, Catherine, Gemma, and especially to Kimberley.
It wasn’t you, it was me.
You really were perfect for me at the time, but as I was brought up by critical parents, I couldn’t see anything but reasons why we shouldn’t have been together, instead of all the reasons we should have. My loss.
Now to write that book as a bread crumb for my next incarnation to find and resonate with. What’s a punchy title?
Let me know your thoughts below x
