Living In Sin

Living In Sin: Scared Soft

Dear Jen,
I read your column sometimes on laist.com, and my question isn't as racy as some of the other ones you answer, but then that's the problem. I'm dating this new girl who's a bunch of the things that I like in girls: smart, cute, has her shit together, open minded, emotionally available and kinda slutty in bed. Maybe not the love of my life, but the right girl to have around for right now.

We just started sleeping together, after about a month, because I didn't want just another conquest, and the sex is incredibly disappointing! I'm not that into it, and am having a hard time, well, staying hard. I come maybe every 3rd time we do it, and generally that's only if we have sex in the morning. I don't get it. I'm 29, so I should be able to still get it up for whomever I want, right? It's making sex more of a chore when it should be a really good time. She wants to play around and do more kinky things, but I'm struggling just to get myself off, let alone give her an orgasm. HELP!
- Lacking in the Sack

Dear Lacking,
I had a great friend from college staying with me all last week who, as visitors are wont to do, brought a suitcase with her. There was nothing special about this suitcase, it was just a black thing with wheels, but according to my cat, it was not to be trusted. His first glance at it sent him straight up in the air as if he was on springs. I didn't even see his little kitty knees bend - he just popped up like a cork. All 20 pounds of him. Boing! I nearly had a heart attack right alongside him - I haven't laughed that hard since he got his face stuck in a paper bag. Whew! Good times over here folks. Anyway, he was so freaked out that even after giving it a good sniffing, he walked around it in wide circles and shot it a terrified look whenever he heard a strange noise. It was, in his mind, The Thing To Fear.

Cats are trippers, yes, but so are we. We do the same thing all the time - some of us have decided airplanes are scary, success is scary, loving who we are is scary - meanwhile, in reality, all these things are just banal black suitcases with wheels, blinking stupidly at us while we project three headed monsters onto them.

Silly, ain't we?

I'm going to go ahead and suggest that this is what you've done to your sex life with this girl. I don't know enough about your situation to figure out where it's coming from - maybe she intimidates you? Maybe your intimacy issues are leaking out through your wiener? Maybe waiting that whole month psyched you out? Or perhaps you're drinking too much, on anti-depressants, not as into her as you think, exhausted, gay, crippled by anxiety....whatever it is, you're making it worse by obsessing over it. Remember, what you focus on you will get. If you constantly focus on the fact that you have no money, you will continue to have none. If you focus on how tired you are, you'll always be tired. Same goes for disobedient wieners. So set it free and see if it comes back to you.

There are a lot of things you can do in bed that don't involve the ole sausage dunk. Try playing around with toys, fingers, mouths, feathers, paddle tennis rackets, police uniforms and phone sex. Make it so that if you do rise to the occasion, it'll be more of a bonus than the whole enchilada. This will take the pressure off of you, allow you to please yourself and your girlfriend and hopefully, inspire the one-eyed weasel to eventually go pop.

If it doesn't, get yourself to a doctor (both the mind and the body kind). At 29 you should be having fun, not worrying about how you're going to pay for all that Viagra.

Living In Sin: Checking Out the Checkout

Dear Jen,
There are many times when I'm buying a cup of coffee or a sandwich or something, and the girl at the cash register has some stunningly beautiful feature -- eyes usually -- and I feel compelled to compliment her. I never say anything though, because I don't know if that would be awkward. So I'm wondering, am I right in keeping it to myself? Would most women be flattered or creeped out, and what does it depend on?
- The Sound of Silence

Dear Silence,
I am pleased to report that I am friends with The Funniest Person in the World (as well as about 100 runners-up). I can't be in his house for more than ten minutes without finding myself clinging helplessly to furniture, banging my head against the wall or doubled over as if I'm begging for someone to kick me. He's been happily married to the same woman for over 15 years, and although she is sweet as pie, the woman has the sense of humor of a bowl of pudding. While the rest of us are teary-eyed, red-faced and stumbling around screaming for help, she sits there, nervously smiling as if she just sat in something wet.

"Oh the waste!" I think as I drive away. All that precious hilarity that goes soaring over her head only to land in a stinking, rotting heap in the corner when they're alone! It kills me, it really does. So many people starving for laughter in the world and there they are, feeding caviar to the flies. I can't stand it. I really just can't.

I feel much the same way about undelivered compliments - the ones we don't give to each other or to ourselves. We are on this planet but once as the we that is we, and to spend it thinking we are anything less than fabulous is a shameful waste. Our purpose is to make ourselves and everyone around us happy, and believe me, getting a compliment, even if you need a cooty shot afterwards, is still a compliment. She'll simply think, "that guy was weird, but oh yeah, I'm hot". And you should feel good about making someone feel hot, and also that you had the cojones to do it, regardless of her response, because you know you were coming from a genuine place.

But since we're all still learning how to not live our lives according to other people's opinions of us, here are some pointers:

Uncreepy: Complimenting her while looking in her eyes and smiling.
Creepy: Complimenting her while staring at her chest.

Uncreepy: Smiling, no big dealing, and walking away.
Creepy: Lingering, staring, wiggling your fingers, wanting something in return.

Uncreepy: Following up with a lovely chat.
Creepy: Touching her.

It's about how you say it, not what you say, so be light and fun and happy about it, and so will she. And practice makes perfect, so do it as much as you can. And lastly, to sort of quote Eleanor Roosevelt, "No one can make you feel like a sweaty-palmed pervert without your permission," so give yourself a break.

Living In Sin: Eat my Lesbian Dust

Dear Jen,
I saw your book, "The Straight Girl's Guide To Sleeping With Chicks" in Borders about a year ago but hesitated.......and that seems to be the story of my life right now.

I'm 36 and have been with my husband since I was 19. About a year and a half ago I started seeing a life coach because my relationship with him wasn't much fun. In that process I fell deeply into infatuation/lust/love with my female coach. I didn't realize I was into women so it was a surprise! She said she liked me too but didn't want to get involved as that would be unprofessional, she didn't "do" kids plus she had just re-kindled with an old flame.

So my plan right now is to split from my husband because he doesn't meet my needs. I've been his housekeeper with occasional benefits for too long. I long for real communing and cuddling and passion but haven't moved out yet because I'm scared I'm making a mistake.

I don't know if the lesbian thing is real or fantasy. I've never actually done anything with a woman. I'm so scared I'm going to regret leaving my husband, so I'm stuck in inactive limbo. Any words of wisdom?
- Wanting a Woman's Care

Dear Wanting,
If I was married to someone for 17 years who didn't meet my needs, I could fall into infatuation/lust/love with a bag of sand, let alone some nice lady whose sole purpose in my life was to furrow her brow, look deep into my eyes and ask me how I feel. Not to say that you couldn't turn out to be Lesbianicus Grandicum, but it sounds like this is more about your half-assed feelings for your husband than an unquenchable desire to roll with the ladies.

What I want to know is what you did in a past life to warrant getting stuck with the same guy from the time you were 19? I'm all for deep, long-term relationships and growing old together and stuff, but staying with the same person from freshman year till death do you part? What kind of sick joke is that? If I had to stick with all the choices I made when I was 19, I'd still be tripping my ass off in a filthy peasant skirt trying to get everyone I came into contact with to do a beer bong and rock out to AC/DC with me. * I would like to take this moment to thank my parents for filling my mouth with braces and providing me with a spindly, undeveloped body that loomed several feet above everyone in my high school and all those in surrounding areas, thereby exempting me from such a fate.

I do realize that just because the concept gives me hives, there are people who've made it work. I think staying with your husband because you're scared to leave is a terrible idea, but leaving him without giving it the old college try is no good either, so here's what I suggest:
Get some couple's therapy and see if you can't shed new light on your relationship. Count the ways that you love him. Go on dates. Try new things in bed. Take a vacation with a friend so you can miss him a little. Be very clear about your needs and ask him to do the same. Try it all, and if it still ain't happening, at least you'll know you tried, and will be less fearful about watching him disappear in your rearview mirror as you and your hot new girlfriend take off for Mexico.

Living In Sin: Love Junker

Dear Jen,
I've been in a relationship with a man 11 years my senior for the better half of the past decade. We started dating when I was 19 and he was 30. I use the term "dating" politely, but what I really mean is that I've been fucking his brains out for all of this time without any sort of commitment. We have the most healthy sex life I could have ever imagined.

I'm in love with him and he tells me he cares about me, but never uses the "L word." He does all of the things you would expect from a boyfriend: takes me out, pays for things, does man-shit around my house, takes me on trips, etc. He insists that we don't define our relationship in conventional terms, because my position is that I would love to shout from the rooftops that he's my guy.

I guess the meat and potatoes of my question is this: does the commitmentphobe ever turn around? I've built a life around this man and wonder if he will ever marry me. I've gone through several boyfriends and even came very close to marrying one, but it always go back to my "Mr. Wonderful." Will he ever come through or should I give up?
-Waiting and Wondering

Dear Waiting,
When I first moved to Los Angeles seven years ago I was a train wreck. I was paralyzed by a broken-heart, knew no one, was totally broke and had zero idea what the hell to do with my life - my plans of being a rock star hadn't quite panned out and I'd sorta neglected to get a Plan B together.

At the time, part of my morning routine included spending 30 seconds on the rear bumper of my car, hopping up and down like an ape. Apparently the fuel pump on my beloved ‘87 VW Golf had bitten the big one, and in order to get it to start I had to "slosh the gas around a bit, help it into the engine somehow." Or so said Jason, the genius I worked with, after I barked at his initial suggestion of a four hundred dollar trip to his mechanic’s. My car had no grill (the automotive equivalent to no front teeth), one working door handle, two hubcaps, a hundred and ninety eight thousand miles and was found more than once in someone’s front lawn when the parking brake just couldn’t take it anymore. So even though I loved my car more than I loved most people, it seemed a little high-falutin to go out and buy it a brandy new fuel pump, especially when I hadn’t chewed on the right side of my mouth for nine days due to a cavity that I was too broke to fill.

My mornings with my car, one hand clinging to my hatch back while the other waved my neighbors off to work, seemed par for the course. My neighbors would chime in with clever witticisms like “you sure know how to go for a car ride!” and I'd laugh and laugh and cry and think to myself, car, I understand why, even after a good solid humping, you still sometimes don’t feel like starting. Why bother? What's the point? Where do we have to go anyway? It wasn’t until it began stalling out in traffic that I decided I had to do something. Neighbors were one thing, but a rush hour’s worth of drivers screaming at me to move my fucking car while I frantically performed sexual acts on its rear end, in flip flops, in my thirties, was my rock bottom. I knew there were plenty of ways to earn four hundred bucks that would be equally, if not less, humiliating.

So I got the fuel pump fixed. And then tied the bumper on with a tow rope, stuffed a beer cozy in the sunroof to keep it from leaking and headed out to Utah for my annual backpacking trip. We made it all the way, problem free, but when I pulled up next to my friends who are two of the biggest hippies to ever Grateful Dead their way across the planet - the kind who re-use the same plastic bag 47 times - they took one look at my car and shook their heads. "Jen, it's time."

Nobody likes hearing that it's time to get rid of the thing they love, but if it's not working, it's not working. You deserve someone who's going to scream your name from the rooftops, not who's going to constantly validate your feelings of unworthiness.

If this guy wanted to be with you, he'd be with you - otherwise why didn't he come and steal your hand away when you almost married someone else? Humping him until he comes to and realizes you're the one for him may work, but it also may not. And since you can't predict what someone else is going to do, you can only give them the heave ho when they're not doing what you want, it's time to cut the brother loose and get on with it. Life's too precious to live it on someone else's terms. And too short to be humping the wrong guy.