Vol. 1, Post #35 Doubtfully Devoted To You

How about we NOT talk about it? My ongoing sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A modern dating odyssey for Young Olds, AKA, people with readers.

( ^^^I wanted an opening photo still of Vincent Gardenia as Cosmo in Moonstruck from all the times the character gestures and says, “I don’t wanna talk about it!” but no such luck. Let’s face it; this is just as good.)

Last week, I wrote that I thought a nice juicy post on lube/lubrication was precisely what the doctor ordered, and I dispatched a few willing Young Olds to sample a variety of them and report in. As for this Young Old, I’m one of those Lucky Duckies who emerged fairly unscathed from menopause, so while no issues around dryness here (did you hear that thud? That was my son fainting as he simultaneously unsubscribed from my Substack), I am intrigued by some of the CBD and THC lubes on the market, so I’ve also dropped trous and joined the fun. HOWEVER…my principal Lady Tester, who says her vagina is so dry, it could etch glass, came down with COVID. Feel better, Sweet Potato! We’ll circle back to this topic when she’s in the pink again. In the meantime, let’s go to our Mailbag (better than a Douchebag!) and see if any of the lovely emails I get from my Dear Readers will provide some food for thought.

(Also, sorry for the later-in-the-day post. I got home after the VP debate last night and wanted to rewatch it this morning. Then I spent a few hours stomping around indignantly, wondering how the fuck this race is so close when one candidate is a liar along the lines of “Don’t worry, I won’t come in your mouth.” But anyway. Here we are. It’s still Wednesday.)

But on the topics of politics, by the way, if you want to throw up a little, how about this:

As noted, life is anything but simple, especially right now in this nail-biting pre-election cycle when tempers are flaring and emotions are pouring out of us like a spigot on so many levels – today is also Erev Rosh Hashanah, the night before the Jewish New Year and there is not a Jew alive (including me) who isn’t watching the war in the Middle East with a sense of held breath and dread. And since I’ve now managed to loop both politics and Rosh Hashanah into a post on a sex, dating, and love Substack, let’s go even more far afield; today is the new moon annular solar eclipse in Libra, a time when astrologers say relationship truths are underscored, a time to put away what does not serve and embrace the new, or at least, be open to a shift in relationship dynamics that may actually make you happier and healthier (talk about “new year, new you!”)

What that in mind, here’s the reader’s question that I’m going to chew on with you:

“I like how matter of fact you are, so, if you were me, how would you handle this? I’m 51 and dating a guy for nearly a year. It’s a good relationship, even though he’s not been out of his marriage very long. No big red flags and he and his ex- seem to get along well enough. Recently, he told me that he’s having some doubts about us. We are obviously getting serious although neither of us want to fast forward to next steps quite yet. At the news that he was having ‘doubts,’ I’ll admit that I got very nervous and probably pressed him for more information, so much so that now he’s totally gone silent on the subject. What would you do? Leave it alone or insist on another conversation? And how can I even believe him at this point when he tells me something like, ‘it’s all good’ or similar, which has been the latest response to me on this? Feels like he’s now lying to me about something. I wish that at my age, I didn’t feel so shaky on this. Seems like either I’m too nervous to bring it up again or too aggressive if I do, get it?”

Ok, so first and foremost, my reader is not dating JD Vance or his King Shithead running mate, #notmypresidentever (I don’t say or write that name), so I have no idea if her guy will or will not tell her a bunch of lies pertaining to the doubts he’s having. But here is what I DO know.

Dear Reader, you know yourself better than anyone else at this point and hopefully you trust your intuition. So, if you think your boyfriend is having doubts and then lying to you about it, you’re probably correct. But I don’t even care about that, his doubts or his potential lies. You know what I care about? That you can’t just stay in the zone of Que Sera, Sera on this without pushing for conclusions or proclamations from him that everything is OK. I wish you could, because if that’s possible, you will be giving yourself a gift that will outlast this relationship, or any other relationship. That’s the gift of centering yourself in the name of inner peace, patience, and a very under-utilized rationale that I’ll get to at the end of this post.

What I’ve come to realize in situations like this is that even when the unknown is scary, even when those truths are still boxed up like a present and you don’t know if you’re unwrapping a diamond bracelet or a rattlesnake, accepting what you cannot control, along with The Four Agreements, which I wrote about on this post, will help quiet that nerve-ridden inner voice and the dialogue you are having with yourself, almost instantly.

So, to my Dear Reader with concerns about your boyfriend’s fears, along with his now sort of dismissive answer about discussing them any further with you: Can you think about these things without your own feelings in the mix? Your boyfriend may have fears, and those fears most likely have very little to do with you and a lot to do with the situation that he finds himself in – out of a marriage and now into another serious relationship with little time in between the two. There’s nothing you can do about that. There’s also nothing you can do about any decisions he might make (good, bad, or indifferent) about sharing those fears with you. I suspect that the reason he mentioned he had some fears was to get you to give him a little bit of room to navigate them. Give him that. I don’t think this is one of those “I need space” things but rather, I THINK that in this moment, he has a lot of voices in his head that are telling him what he needs to do next. Don’t be another of those voices. And if that makes you shaky, or nervous? That is for you to manage, My Lady Love. Your agenda, or your ideas of what will work best for him in this scenario, will only add to the buzzing in his head. It’s taken me a long time to realize this myself, but sometimes when someone tells you they are having doubts about a relationship, the best thing you can do for both of you is to let them have those doubts.

Yes, I know what some of you are thinking. What if her boyfriend needs her help in clarifying his feelings because women are better at this, more emotionally open, than men? He doesn’t need her help. What if giving her boyfriend some room to suss out these fears make him think he wants to be single, and her discussing it with him shows him the errors of his thinking before he makes a bad choice? Believe me, the space to think it through won’t drive him away unless he wants to be driven away, in which case all the talking in the world won’t save this relationship. And what about what’s REALLY going on here, which is that my 51 year old reader, like so many of us, is afraid that the relationship she has cultivated and worked hard at for nearly a year might be in peril, in which case she will be single again, possibly looking at dating with some dread, potentially feeling like she devoted a lot of her time to a “failed” commitment or that her boyfriend is a baby. All of those things could be true.

One thing that we Young Olds know with each passing day is that there are no guarantees and what can nourish and sustain you can also sadly evaporate into thin air. In this instance, there would be heartbreak for my reader if her guy’s doubts take over and I’m not here to tell her or anyone else to find a silver lining in that. It’s kind of like those assholes who say, “They’re in a better place” when someone dies. No, they’re not. So, I get it when I say that I know you want your Beloved right here with you, not somewhere else in their silent doubting corner, or, worse, getting over their doubts with another lover.

Dear Reader, I’m inviting you to step back into your own power with this, to coin a tired phrase. Your boyfriend will have doubts again, similar to these or different ones. You’ll have doubts too. Foundations crumble and new ones get built in their place, sometimes even stronger ones. Take a breath. I speak from experience.

As I look back on the last eighteen years of my life, from the time of my first divorce till now, I see an unsettling pattern of my often-bringing conversations to the forefront before it was actually time to talk. There are specific instances with all of my former partners when I was feeling, like my Dear Reader, shaky and nervous, afraid of what my partner might be thinking if I felt them pulling back in some way, but unable to just “leave it alone.” Therapy most definitely helped with self-regulation on this, but just as important was giving up the control of the narrative. That meant trusting that what might happen was out of my hands and while I am eminently powerful in my own mind, ha, and in my own life, I now regret the times I insisted on conversations “for clarity” when all that meant was I needed the clarity to calm my own fears, and what might have been a more loving move would’ve been to patiently and quietly wait until my partner was ready to share.

Before I sign off this week, I wrote that I was going to end this post with a very under-utilized rationale to which I don’t think we give enough headspace. Let’s say my Dear Reader understands that it’s her anxiety that needs to be managed better in this scenario, and let’s say she does a good job of it. Next up for her? Some quiet time of her own, to consider if her partner’s way of managing stress or doubts works in this relationship. Works for HER. We women spend an inordinate amount of time morphing and bending to make a relationship work better. We’re good at it, and usually not afraid of the effort.

So Dear Reader, will your partner do the same? Once you’ve passed this particular hurdle, will he in turn try to work with you on ways he can still have room to think and yet not inadvertently hurt you with a deafening silence or lies of omission? Keep us posted and, since it’s now just now turning 5785 on the solar/lunar Jewish calendar as I post SEND, a happy, healthy, heartfelt New Year to all, especially those of us who are still learning to shut the fuck up sometimes.