Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places

If you missed the first part of this series on my control issues...you can read it here. 

"The child is grown.  The dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb."
Pink Floyd

 

Have you ever gotten a zipper stuck?  So what do you do?...you pull and pull some more...when that doesn't work, then you go backwards, right?...just a little...so that you can go forwards again.  You have to expose a little and then you hold the pieces of material together and scoot that zipper up little by little until it is up all the way.  I know some of you are concerned that I am going to dwell too long in the past, but I wanted to put your fears to rest...my zipper is stuck.  So I am just going back a little...pulling the pieces together so I can pull my zipper all the way up.

Here is the song for today:

Now we arrive in the teen years with Daddy issues. 

If you are male and you are reading this...please, please NEVER allow anyone to discount the importance your parenting role is in the life of your child, especially your daughters.  I cannot stress to you how important it is in ALL stages of your child's life.  Society will tell you that kids don't need dads.  Do not listen to that.  There are times that women and men have to go it alone...don't get me wrong, a mother's role is equally important, but if you think about it...no one is going around saying that kids don't need moms.  Ok, I will get off my soapbox now:)

Where were we...oh, yeah, teen years...Daddy issues...can you see where this is going?

This is the part where things get painful.  I am actually tearing up as I write this...why?  I forgave my parents their mistakes a long time ago, but forgiving your own is not so easy.  I wanted to be real somewhere safe so that I can be more real in real life.  I figure since this is making me extremely uncomfortable then I am headed in the right direction...

I lost my virginity at 14.  I am not proud of it.  In fact, it still brings me much shame when I think of it.  I was old enough that I should have known better.  If I could tell my young self one thing, it would be to wait.  That's it...and to impart that I was worth waiting for.  He paid attention to me...he wanted me...but, I was wrong.  He didn't want "me"...or not in the way that I thought.  Naivety plus Daddy issues is never a good idea.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't forced, it just did not make me feel the way that I thought it would and it was too late to take it back.  I didn't know it at the time, but I was looking for love and male attention that I missed growing up.  I did not know that this wasn't it. So I kept trying to find it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't end there.  I wish that it did, but I continually looked for love in ALL the wrong places.  A male friend told me that it was because I looked so innocent.  Thanks, what the hell is that supposed to mean.  What is funny is that I was usually the one that broke it off.  Probably because I realized that nope, that didn't fill my need either.  My parents could tell that something was wrong and it was more than just teenage angst, so being the great parents they were they sent me to therapy.  My therapist commented that he thought he should be seeing my Dad.  Anyone surprised? 

This is when things started to change.  My parents both began to pay attention to me and we would spend more quality time as a family.  If they hadn't cared, if they had ignored the mounting issues...I can imagine some awful turns my life could have taken.   We had always gone to church, but it took on more meaning now.  My dad quit smoking, and I would like to say that he quit drinking, but he did lessen it.  We started to eat dinner at the table together instead of in front of the television.

So, I somehow manage to graduate in the top 15% of my class and get accepted into college.  Considering that grades and school weren't all that important to me during high school...I was impressed.  I can't imagine what I could have done if I had actually tried.  Shaking head...c'est la vie.  So things were better at home and you would have thought that I would be over my Daddy issues.  I was really good at hiding...no one knew of the pain I carried...I wouldn't allow them to see.  I also now had the freedom to be stupid.  My parents had been so strict and worried over me in high school that I was quite sheltered.  (confusing since I was apparently able to get into some trouble) 

Now I can smoke and drink, and since I attended a school with 50,000+ students, I could find plenty of trouble.  I continued looking for love in all the wrong places.  I get very irritated with some (not all) of the Game blogs...the ones that basically call women sluts to conquer.  Should I have said no...yes.  Does it make me a slut?...I suppose it depends on your definition.  Did I have sex with some ridiculous number? No.  But any more than Levi makes me feel awful.  See, I read some of those blogs and think...they could be talking about me...I had somehow mixed up love and attention with sex.  And I feel sorry for the girls they are talking about...because maybe they are making those same mistakes that I made.  (I do realize that there may be some women and men out there who really feel like sex with whoever they want is fine...I am not speaking of those people...they make their choices based on something else)

I met Levi my senior year and fell in love...head over heels and fast...he was the same. We graduate, and a few years later we get married.  So, now I enter my marriage with semi-resolved Daddy issues and now I have sex issues...because of the enormous guilt and low self worth that I feel deep inside...and it is deep.  I have learned to hide things better than a dog with a bone.  It is so deep that the choices I begin to make are completely subconscious.  I have learned to say no....seriously, wth?  Now, I am married and saying no...freaking backwards...but now, I am getting into tomorrow's issues...

Tomorrow's post: The Results of Saying No, When I should be Saying Yes