There's a lot to be said for lust.

Jake and I were never that sexual a couple. Sex was good, sometimes great. There's definitely something to be said about having one long-term partner, everything being the first for both of you. Learning about sex was never uncomfortable or awkward, there were no early experiences that would need hashing out in therapy later. But we never really had a can't-keep-my-hands-off-you stage.

I thought that this was because we knew each other so well. I thought it was because we had been together so long, that we had just shifted into that comfy, everyday kind of relationship. I thought maybe I just wasn't that interested in sex in general.

Hindsight, of course, says a lot. Ultimately, I just don't think we were that attracted to each other. But we fell in love way, way too young to know that.

Even when our marriage was pretty solid, there was a part of me that would see movies, read books, see other people, and feel cheated. I'd console myself with the things I did have — I had trust, and friendship, and humor, and safety. Surely one can't expect it all, I thought.

Well, why not?

There's a lot to be said for passion. There's a lot to be said for being thrown against a wall, for barely being able to make it through the apartment door, for leaving a party early. It's kind of terrifying that I could very well have lived out my adult life without having experienced that.

It's hard to imagine this stage can possibly last, but then I look at Lindsay and Jesse, who have been married four years and still feel that way. I think back to just a year ago, when I thought the love bit and the lust bit were mutually exclusive. I've been wrong before. And am determined to figure out a way to keep this part.

I was re-reading Ursula Hegi's Stones From the River and came across this:

"She thought about him when she was not with him. Sometimes too much, she worried. What if he turned away from her greed for his love?"

It's comforting to know that's common enough, universal enough, to pop up in a novel.

It's funny how you can be secure, for all intents and purposes, in a relationship but still monitor your own behavior. When you feel so much for someone, you constantly worry: Is it too much? Will this frighten him away? Will this bother him?

When you've spent years in a relationship in which the other party is weary of your affection, you learn to hide it. You learn to hold back. You become reluctant to show things. At the same time, you live in constant anticipation, constant wanting.

The worst feeling in the world is knowing you love someone more than they love you. Feeling you're always trailing after them, hoping for a word, a hug, a gesture. Hating your need, hating the kind of woman you're turning into.

When you're with someone who gives affection freely, that greed doesn't stop.

Adopted feral cats and strays can't be left to monitor their own food intake. Apparently, if you keep their bowl full, they'll eat themselves to death. Since, out on their own, they never knew when they might eat again, when they're presented with food they'll eat it all - never confident they'll eat again any time soon.

I feel like that, a lot of the time.

Mike says my relationship-expectation bar is absurdly low, that I should start taking him more for granted.

I wonder how long that will take?

I spent much of the flight from San Francisco to Vienna analyzing the difference between setting out on this trip and heading to Wales.

Leaving for Wales had a strange feeling to it. I was headed across the world, and there was nothing, really, tying me to home. I felt strangely adrift, without a tether — just this little floating dot. After having been a half of a whole for so long, it was just me. No one was waiting for me to come back. No one needed to know I had landed safely. It wasn't a bad feeling, it was just strange.

I didn't feel that way this time. The floating-in-my-bubble sense was gone completely. Why? Was it because I had already done this, and so knew I could? Or was it because I'm in a relationship, so that tether is back?

I had always chafed at the idea of being back in a relationship. I didn't want the responsibility, the ties, the obligations. I wanted to be free to go where I wanted, to do what I wanted, to not have to answer to anyone.

Surprisingly, that tether wasn't chafing. It didn't feel like an obligation. It wasn't even a strong enough feeling to really register, just an, "Oh, this is different."

Going to Wales was largely an act of defiance. Maybe now I've gotten past that.

Like me, Mike doesn't sleep well. When he's in town, he tends to wake up around four. He works for a while, then comes back to bed just before my alarm goes off.

We were parking the car when he said, "How much does it bother you that I get up in the middle of the night?" My loft doesn't have any walls, but putting a pillow over my head takes care of any noise. "No," he said, "not just the noise. I can tell you don't like it."

And it's true, I don't, although I hadn't really thought about it. Jake used to work all night, and he rarely went to bed or woke up with me. The fact that Mike almost always comes back up makes all the difference, though.

"Well," he said, "I want you to tell me the stuff that you don't like, even if you don't think it's big. Like this, if it turns out to matter, I can, I don't know, try to work on changing my sleep patterns."

This is where I, always impressive and graceful, bolted from the car and took off down the street, saying I was running to the corner store. Instead, I crossed the street to the park, sat on a bench, lit a cigarette, and tried not to cry, completely overwhelmed by this person.

I had always assumed that you learned about a partner's habits as you went, found out about the stuff that bothered you, and decided if you could live with it or not. It never once occurred to me that there were people out there willing to adjust.

In my marriage, those little things that bothered me were scoffed at and called petty often enough to make me shut up about them. I thought that was just how it was. You got over it. You lived with it.

I didn't know that you could be with someone who wanted to know. I didn't know that a relationship could be like this.

Maybe it's all going to turn out okay.

I tend to think that sex is pretty crucial in a relationship. I mean, there has to be a reason sex is one of the first things to go when a relationship is falling apart. When Jake and I were at our lowest points we couldn't even get it together enough to kiss.

The idea that communication happens through sex — there's validity to that. A lot can be expressed physically, there are connections that can be built.

But there's also communication about sex. A couple that can talk about their physical relationship — and a surprising number of couples can't, if the friends I've talked about this with are a fair indicator — is going to have better sex, right?

You don't know what someone likes and doesn't, not for sure, unless you ask, unless they tell. This current relationship is absolutely, hands-down, the best sex I have ever had — and it's also the one in which I've done the most talking. There's got to be a correlation.

To cite the failing marriage again, Jake, at the end, didn't want to say a word about adjustments or changes or "I don't like that" when we were having sex. "Don't give me directions," he'd say, "I'm not one of your students." I found this appalling, even then. Not only because we hadn't used to be like that, but because a partner who doesn't want to know what you like is just not a good partner.

It's hard for me to talk about things, specifically. I get embarrassed. No doubt some of that is carry over. But I'm working on it, and one of the reasons I know this current relationship is working is because this is someone I don't feel awkward around, and because this is someone who wants to know.

read more »

I feel as though many women have issues with their "number" — worrying it's too high, feeling that they're not "allowed" to sleep around. While there's a very real need for caution, in light of health and safety risks (and, please, just insert "Safe! Safe! Use condoms!" before the word "sex" in this post from here on out, okay?), I hate that this kind of thinking is out there.

Whether I've slept with 2, 5, or 40 men doesn't compromise anything about me, as long as each encounter was what I wanted.

I'm troubled when I read that women regret their number. Not being proud of particular choices or individuals, that's one thing, but merely the number — a number is just a number. It's not something to be proud or ashamed of.

And, of course, I have to ask — despite the fact that it's been said so many times before — why is ok for men and not for women? As long as it's what we wanted, why do we care that some of us are well into double digits and some of us can count on one hand?

If you've only slept with one person, or with no one, because that's your choice — morally, personally, whatever — I applaud you. If you've slept with dozens, because that's your choice — as long as you're safe about it — I applaud you.

The man in the longest lasting casual relationship after I got divorced didn't care that he was way more experienced that I was. My current guy doesn't care that I did some sleeping around over the past year. Anyone who would care, really care, about my number being too high or too low isn't the kind of person I'd want to be in a relationship with.

It's just a number. It has as much to do with situation and circumstance as it does anything else. In terms of morality, in terms of being a decent person, in terms of your potential to kick ass in bed, it doesn't mean anything.

read more »

Several of February's "Sex With the Bloggers" posts got me thinking. I started to leave comments on several of them, but found I was going on and on, like this one in response to "What's With All the Emphasis on Sex?" by Akillah Wali.

Like Randie, I wasn't having a lot of sex the last several years of my marriage. Having no-commitment, no-baggage, nothing-but-casual sex during that first year of being single was fantastic. I don't think there's a thing wrong with casual encounters and largely sex-based relationships, even after (maybe especially after) a divorce. If that's what you want. I think the key word Akillah uses that we should focus on is "prematurely." We all have to figure out what we're ready for and when. For me, it was a "real" relationship that I wasn't ready for. Sex, on the other hand, I was ready for pretty soon.

There are women for whom casual sex is disappointing, not worth it, not for them. However, there are women for whom casual sex is just that - and there's no reason to not go ahead and have it. Sex for the wrong reasons is going to lead to disappointment and regret. But sex because you want to — I don't see a problem there.

Akillah also talks about self-knowledge. She wrote in a previous post about sex being something that she knows will distract her from where she is now. I so admire that self-awareness, and I absolutely, again, agree with the idea that we need to do what's right for us.

read more »

Beth and Leo were together for years before I knew her. He had been married before, she had not. He did not want to marry her. They lived together, they shared a bank account, they were in it for the long haul — but he didn't want to make it legal, because he did not want to marry again. This devastated her.

At the time, I was furious with him. What was his problem? He loved her, he wanted to spend his life with her — how could he let what had happened in his past hurt this woman so badly?

Now, though, I know exactly how Leo felt. I will, no doubt, behave the same way should this situation ever come up.

The idea of causing that much pain to someone I care about — that horrifies me. What if someday I'm with someone who wants to marry me? What if I end up breaking their heart a little every day, the way Beth's broke every day?

I want to hand out disclaimers. I want to end things before they go too far. I want to say, "Don't love me, because, no matter how much I love you, I'll never want to take that step."

It's hard for me to decide if I am more afraid of being hurt or of the potential to inflict that hurt on someone I love.

My friend Sam, on the edge of divorce himself, has a theory that our first marriages are our practice round and it's the second ones that stick. He cites our parents, and it's true: my dad's second marriage is all kinds of idyllic. Both Sam's parents are on their second, super successful marriages.

In all, my happily-ever fantasies — the ones I don't really allow myself, the ones in which I think about what-might-be without the pessimism — marriage never plays a role. Whether I'm sneaking in a wishful think about The Boy or dwelling on some faceless future, this is one event that never, ever features. Ever.

I love weddings. I'm at the age when friends are marrying off all around me, and I am delighted all through the ceremony. I never feel cynical at a wedding. If I imagine myself in that place, though — and who doesn't, when there? — it makes me all dizzy and out of breath, and not in a good way.

This belief that there's no avoiding the eventual growing apart, this inability to think in terms of "forever" — I don't know that I'll ever get past that. I don't think I'll ever be able to take that particular leap of faith again.

Sometimes, a very rare sometimes, I allow myself fantasies that are both foolish and hopeful — happily-ever-after kinds of things. Rarely, rarely, because it's not safe. That kind of thing involves letting too much guard down.

It occurs to me that I'm living this relationship in constant anticipation of its end. Every bit of happiness carries that shadow of "one-more-thing-to-miss" once it has ended.

"Good morning sweetheart," he says, and each time it's the loveliest thing I've ever heard. Each time, I wonder what it will be like when that stops.

When we went to bed, Jake would ask, "Don't I even get a kiss goodnight?" Our own little code, he said it every night. One night he didn't, and I laid awake wondering why. He never said it again.

The emptiness that's left in the space of these words and rituals and little things you love — that let you know you're loved — this is the worst part, I think, of watching a relationship end.

Each day, each text, each call, each gesture this person makes, means it will just be that much harder when they're gone.

I am assured, by friends and books and life, that this — this giddy, happy, I-can't-breathe-when-I-think-of-you — is temporary. "This is the best part," they say. "Enjoy it while it lasts. It won't."

It won't last, and one of us will go. And where does that leave me?

Commitment, he says, is knowing that you have the ability to hurt each other.

I can't merely be, because there's always: If I am prepared, if I don't fantasize, if I don't relax into this, maybe that will that keep me from bleeding to death when it ends.