I don’t understand what’s so broken in me that small moments of intimacy can cause me to spiral.

On Friday I went out with an engineer I had previously gone on dates with but with whom nothing long term seemed viable. We still touched base every once in a while when I was in Long Beach and now that I’ve been living here we’ve chatted but hadn’t met up. We had talked about why I didn’t seem interested in hooking up and I guess that’ll be open ended because sometimes NSA fun can be had, but going out for dinner seemed pretty low stakes. The conversation was good and we ended up going for drinks too.

I think we chatted for about five hours straight catching up on our lives since last we met, fairly surface level though. I guess he wanted to work up the courage for it, but after the first beer he asked, “So what about your love life?” I was so irritated to be asked because I knew there was nothing great to talk about. I let him know that I was bitter and disillusioned from my last relationship and that it was difficult right now to put myself in a situation where I might get hurt again. Perhaps I said it differently to cushion it a bit, but in a short summary that’s where I’m at emotionally. I explained what had happened with my ex and answered his follow up questions for a while and then asked him about his love life.

He reminded me that he wasn’t out to his parents yet and was waiting until he had a boyfriend. I didn’t let him know, but I recalled that being one of the reasons I thought I wouldn’t end up dating him. I asked some probing questions of his decision to wait. No, he wasn’t financially dependent on them. No, not all his siblings knew, although they likely suspected. No, he didn’t think it would be too much pressure to put on the other guy, although he understood what I meant. The topic shifted to some difficulties I’ve been having and how I’d like to go back to therapy and get that sorted, possibly diagnosed, in part so I can tell future potential partners that I process feelings differently for specific reasons. He questioned that reasoning, saying he liked to let his dates discover him and he wasn’t so worried about telling them about himself. When he told me later in the evening that he had commitment issues I asked him if he didn’t think those two behaviors were linked. It honestly was a nice night.

The problem is that on the way home I was crying after the intimacy of our conversation. It wasn’t even that it was that deep, it’s just that I haven’t been that open with anyone in a while. I have moved away from my closest friends and while I still chat with them often, it isn’t the same as being in the same space as the person you’re showing your heart to. And maybe it wouldn’t come as such a shock if I was more open in my day to day life or made more time for others instead of prioritizing solo activities.

The next morning in fact, I was out by Mt. Wilson with two close friends. They too had had a recent death in the family and at different times in the hike we teared up telling our stories. Maybe that didn’t bother me as much because it was familiar territory. It’s true we hadn’t had deaths in our families before, but as friends we didn’t shy away from difficult conversations and had had lots of emotionally charged encounters and yet, we’re still all friends and we’re still in each other’s lives.

For meeting new people, it’s been difficult to be that intimate, because I’m not sure that they will still be there later on. So I close myself off, letting my nurtured aversion to intimacy lead.

It isn’t just new people either. Yesterday my brother in law pressed his head into my shoulder to read a restaurant menu off my phone. I imagine he could feel me tense up and he has called out our family for being too frigid. He grew up with a family that is more physically affectionate than we are, maludjusted in their own way. I had left home thinking it was just me that couldn’t deal with physically being close to people, but have since learned it’s all of us siblings too. For those moments his head was resting on my shoulder, I felt a warmth inside of me and it made me uncomfortable, not the warmth itself but that it originated from my brother in law and that intimacy felt stolen, as if I was crossing a line in feeling anything from the physical touch of my sister’s husband.

That awkwardness around physical intimacy even carries into sex. During foreplay I am actively engaged in physical affection and haven’t ever had a problem with it in the moment. But last Thursday I hooked up with a guy I had been with in the past and had really great sex. The sex this time was awesome too, but there was a moment in between, when he had finished inside me, that I felt uncomfortable laying beside him. I told him my stomach felt a little bubbly and that I needed a moment. While it’s true that I felt a pressure inside that hadn’t been there before, when I got to the bathroom I took some time to just collect myself emotionally. He had been trying to cuddle and spoon me affectionately and I just couldn’t handle that. I went back to his bedroom and we continued for some time, but I noted how, for a time anyway, my mind had detached and wandered, removing my heart from the sex and it was just my body performing a penetration.

I have known what it’s like to not worry so much about these types of things, to not be shocked by intimacy because it’s more normal. Although there is some degree of this that is related to the pandemic, as touching strangers still seems like such a charged event, the awkwardness is not new and had gone away. I think, as I described to the engineer, I’m still reacting to my breakup, to the sudden loss of emotional support. Although I want that, I’m so scared of losing the support suddenly that I’d rather not build it with anyone new.

That’s why, instead, I’m just scribbling into the void, letting these out onto the internet, to fester online.