Let's talk about sex, baby

One of the issues that seems to inevitably come up in marriage counselling is S.E.X. No surprise there, I guess.

My wife happens to think that there might be a good possibility that I'm gay. Why? Well, the fact that she's found some gay porn might have something to do with it.

Am I gay? True answer - it isn't important.

What is important is that I'm looking for, craving, love from a man that I didn't get as a child. Not sex. The problem is that sex can substitute for love. And nothing gets simple when you've been sexually abused.

Honestly, how do men show that they love each other? How can a man love a man as much as he loves a woman and express it? Without sex?

I don't go in for the male-female, two halves, missing piece theory that basically puts men and women together to become a whole. It's people I want to love first and whether they are male or female is a separate issue. But that still doesn't answer my question about how a man can love another man.

unfucking myself

Sometimes I wonder how long it takes to unfuck yourself? All the money and time I've spent on personal development ... which I thought was worth it ... and now I'm in therapy! Fuck, fuck, fuck. Maybe I should have just started with the therapy and saved myself time and trouble.

So, why am I in therapy? Because my marriage was about to fall apart. Turns out my wife, me and our relationship all need therapy, separately. Time consuming and expensive.

Also worth it. I hope. At least now I can really feel angry about being sexually abused as a kid. I'm paying enough to!

Just not sure that I'm any happier, yet.

Defining Intimacy

My godfather died last week. I went to his funeral today. He was a lawyer, a solicitor. The church was packed with lawyers. I was very uncomfortable being around so many lawyers - people whose profession trains them to put argument above caring. The lack of intimacy made the church seem refrigerated, even on a muggy Brisbane day. But for those who judge, it was a 'good' funeral, a 'proper' send-off.

Even though he was my godfather, I didn't know him at all. Made me think about my own two godchildren - I know them well enough, see them several times a month now that I live closer, but I could do better. Ask them out to lunch once in a while. Just on their own. Show a real and consistent interest in them as individuals and not just the children of friends.

I don't think my godfather really was interested in my like that. When I was a teenager and my family was going through shit, he never called me. But then no one else did either. Would have meant a lot for just one of those lawyers (and believe me, I was surrounded by them) to once ask a simple, decent human question like "How are you going through all this shit?". Just because I looked fine didn't mean I was. I was feeling like dying.

My godfather spoke at my 21st. He spoke well. It was that good he could have been speaking at my funeral. I can still remember the gist, unsurprisingly I suppose, as it was in my honour. How I had distinguished myself in three areas - Spiritually, Socially and Scholastically. The alliteration also made it easy to remember.

It's more than 21 years since I was 21. I can remember seeing my godfather only 2 times subsequently. Once by chance in Queen Street and then again at my father's 70th birthday. He was a lawyer so we weren't intimate. Or perhaps by a lawyer's definition we were.