Thankful for Love and Orgasms

Well, it took about an hour of checking facebook, twitter, my email, and my bank accounts, but my heart rate has slowed back down to normal, and I no longer have waves of pleasure moving through my body.

(If you hadn’t already guessed, this blog post will be a little more… explicit, than usual).

Thanksgiving has always been a special holiday. A time for family, for food, for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (in which I danced my senior year of high school, thankyouverymuch), and for reflecting on what really matters.

After last year, however, Thanksgiving is no longer just one of many holidays during which I eat yummy food with loved ones, but it has elevated to a sort of anniversary for the boyfriend and me.

I spent both this and last Thanksgiving with the boyfriend and his family. Last year, in bed, after only the second of many sexi times to cum,* the boyfriend told me he loved me for the very first time.

I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since then. We’ve gone from seeing each other every three weeks if we were lucky, and every three months if we were not, to spending every weekend (and occasional weekdays) together. I’ve gone from googling “how to give a blow job” to making the boyfriend moan within seconds. My once-quiet, rather pleasant orgasms are now accompanied by gasps and moans as my entire body spasms in pleasure. I’ve stopped secretly daydreaming about our wedding—we now openly discuss the details.

So much has changed, yet the most important aspect of our relationship remains the same.

We are still completely, head over heels, in love with each other.

This week has been a difficult one for me. My car broke down on the way to work Monday. On Tuesday, I found out the repair would cost approximately $4,430, aka well more than my car is worth. I spent most of Wednesday sobbing uncontrollably.

But I’ve learned a few things this week.

• I don’t have to do everything on my own.
• I can depend on others and still be independent.
• Accepting help is not a sign of weakness.
• Neither is crying.
• My boyfriend still loves me even after ignoring his calls, being passive-aggressive, and looking like a hot-teary-mess.

I also had to remind myself that, in the grand scheme of things, not having my own car is a minor problem. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the major things.

• My twin brother no longer has a brain tumor.
• My Crohn’s is still in remission, and I’m only taking pentasa.
• My little brother is having an amazing experience in Australia, where he’s started dating his first real girlfriend—from Mexico.
• I have a job. That I can mostly do from home.
• I have a good boss and good co-workers.
• I am surrounded by friends and family who love me, including my amazing twitter/blog friends.
• And did I mention that I have a boyfriend who loves me, who respects me, who understands me, who spoils me, who finds me sexy, who turns me on, who makes me laugh, who wants to marry me?

Not having a car is just a minor roadblock along an otherwise pretty amazing journey. This Thanksgiving, more than anything, I’m just thankful to have the boyfriend by my side.

*I can't resist a good pun.

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Blogoversary: One Year of Anonymity

A year ago today, I composed my inaugural blog post, clad only in my favorite lingerie, with a fuzzy blanket wrapped around me. As I write my sixtieth post, I’m completely naked in bed, the same set of French lingerie somewhere on the floor from when the boyfriend removed it last night. I’m back in the same city where my blog was born, but instead of being a few weeks away from the end of my internship, I’m starting the next chapter of my life. Moving here is my last big move, until either the boyfriend & I get married (fingers crossed!) or until I move back to France to recover from my heartbreak (not bad for a contingency plan, right?).

It’s been a good year for Confessions of a Virgin.

I wrote a guest post for Therese at How to Lose Your Virginity… and then the boyfriend & I ended up doing an interview for her documentary.

I wrote an article under my own name at Curvy Girl Guide after having connected with Meredith on twitter as @belle_vierge.

I’ve made some blogger friends, like Lauren at Our Crazy Ever After and Ashley at Chickadette. I’ve made some twitter friends, like my #bookends, @MrsJGatsby and @theycallmeivy. I’ve even made some twitter/blog crossover friends, like @Classy_in_KC

I joined Twithouse, a twitter organization of ambitious co-ed and post-grad women.  Even after the recent scandal, I’m still proud to be a member, and I still love the other women in the group.

I’ve received comments, emails, and DMs from virgins who relate to my posts. I’ve received comments, emails, and DMs from non-virgins who have admitted my blog has changed their perspective on virgins and virginity.

My pseudo-anonymous identity has given me the freedom to be raw and honest. To admit I’m a sexual being, even if I’m not engaging in coitus. To share my thoughts on sex and virginity. To write without fear of judgment. To open up about my sexual assaults. To advocate for women’s rights.

Writing a (mostly) anonymous blog has resulted in some of the most personal writing I’ve ever done. It’s so much realer than any of my previous work.

And yet it has only been a half-truth, at best.

 

May 4, 2011, I sat in a train station in London with my best friend Mark,* as we waited for our train to take us back to Paris. At this point, he and I had already had many heart-to-hearts, not just in our few days together in Europe, but over the course of three years of best-friendship.

In that moment, for whatever reason, my last deep, dark secret spilled out.

Something I had kept buried since I was 17.

A secret I just pretended didn’t exist.

I guess after two years in France, during which I changed more than I did in eight years of high school and university, I couldn’t lie anymore. At least, not to Mark.

Over the past year, I’ve told my cousin/best friend Nick, my best friends Rose, Lauren, Hardy, James, Ali, Jane, Christa, Brittany, and Sarah. Annnnnnd I think that’s it. Oh, and Ron, the guy I sorta dated in France.*

That’s it.

Until now.

Because I’m tired of hiding. Telling half-truths. Worrying. Denying who I am.

I’m bisexual.

And my family will probably never know.

“I’m also a unicorn. Or maybe a bicorn … Anyway, I’m starting to believe in my own magic.” —Brittany, Glee 

I end up in tears at least once every time I go home. Somehow homosexuality or bisexuality or gay marriage or whatever comes up when I’m home. I’m from a highly-educated, very passionate, sorta southern family, and we enjoy discussing politics, literature, current events, religion, films, everything.

Too bad both my mother and kid brother have explicitly said they don’t believe bisexuality is real.

Too bad my father and kid brother have only recently come to terms with same-sex marriages being okay.

Too bad my home church denomination has recently reaffirmed its stance that marriage is between one man and one woman.

Too bad I can’t trust my twin brother with a secret to save my life. At least he’s totally accepting of all sexualities, to the best of my knowledge.

A few weeks ago, we were discussing my church’s recent statements, not just on marriage, but also on the Bible. My parents both kept interrupting me, and I raised my voice to be heard, and my mother told me not to yell. I stormed off to my room and promptly burst into tears.

I know they all think I overreacted.

I don’t give a fuck.

I have the good fortune of being in love with a man who is everything I ever wanted and more.

It doesn’t erase the doubt deep down that if I had brought home a woman, my family wouldn’t accept me anymore.

A well-timed confession via postsecret.com

So I’m anonymous. Mostly. I think about twenty of my friends IRL now know about my blog. Friends I trust knowing the most intimate details of my life. I’m sure these friends also know that if they ever out me to anyone from high school, or university, or basically anyone in the South, we will never speak again. But if I thought there was a chance of them doing that, I never would have sent them the link to my blog. I know all my secrets are safe with them.

It’s been a good year for Confessions of a Virgin. I’m looking forward to an even better second year, a more honest year.

Bisous.

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Your Choice to Make: A Guest Post

I didn't want to abandon my blog, though, so I put out a call for guest posts, and I've had several volunteers! 

Classy in K.C. is one of my online friends, via both blogging and tweeting. We've had some pretty different adventures in dating, but I still find it so easy to relate to her blog posts. Also, if you need further proof of her awesomeness, she is one of only fourteen people my boyfriend follows on twitter. High praise indeed. So, I think it goes without saying, I was thrilled when she approached me to write a guest post!  

Classy is a 21-year-old college student living her dream life in Kansas City. Her major is Public Relations, and she hopes either to work in an art museum (love this goal!!) or for a non-profit that benefits children (so maybe we have more in common than I thought). In her free time she teaches swim lessons, reads, and, of course, writes!! We hope you enjoy her guest post.

We all know that we can say no anytime we want, but what about saying yes? What happens when somebody takes away the choice to decide when we want to have sex?

In my first “grown-up” relationship with my ex-boyfriend, that choice was in a way taken from me. But probably not the way you think. My ex had decided that he was waiting until marriage, so I respected his choice and, at the time, I thought that meant I wouldn’t be having sex until marriage either.

The problems started when our relationship ended, and I was 20 years old with no hard and fast feelings on when I wanted to have sex. And let me tell you, being in a college setting with no real sexual boundaries set is NOT a good idea.

I remember hearing in all my sex-ed classes that you have to have boundaries set with a guy before anything. The problem is: it’s college. Usually there isn’t some sort of lengthy courtside where these boundaries are set.

So pretty much, these lack of boundaries led to me losing my virginity to a guy I sort of liked, but with whom I had no real emotional connection. I didn’t know him very well, and it turned out he had a girlfriend he forgot to mention, but that’s another story.

That’s not at all how I pictured it happening. I had envisioned my first time being with someone that I loved and of course there would be fireworks and candles and a harp playing softly in the background. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the picture. My first time wasn’t magical.

Now, I believe in living with no regrets, and I can’t change the past so what’s done is done. I am now happily in a relationship with someone I love, someone with whom I know sex will mean much more when it happens.

But all that being said, I think it’s really important to decide for yourself what YOU want to do with your sex life. If you don’t set your own boundaries, regardless of the situation you are in, single or taken you can end up making a decision you will regret.

The person you are with shouldn’t dictate your boundaries even if that means you would consider having sex when they don’t want to. That’s something you need to know in case you ever find yourself in… compromising situations.

If I could take it back and choose a different person to lose my virginity to, I probably would, but since I can’t, I hope that I can help others make better choices for themselves than what I did!

Classy with her sister

XO,

Classy 

Edit 09/27/2012: My twin brother's tumor is completely gone, by some miraculous surgery.

Hi, friends. By now, most of y'all know how crazy my life has gotten. My twin brother has a brain tumor, I just moved back home July 6 from Toronto, and my kid brother left for Melbourne, Australia July 11. Oh, and I'm moving to the Midwest July 29. Let's just say that blogging has been the furthest thing from my mind at the moment.

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Joyeux Anniversaire à Moi... (le 8 juin)

Last Friday was my birthday, last weekend was my birthday weekend, and June is my birthday month. Let the celebrations continue!

My birthday weekend was practically perfect, despite almost nothing going according to plan. (And I LOVE to plan things very precisely).

The plan: Spend Friday at the pool with the boyfriend, and after school, the kids too. After dinner, go to the cool adult after-hours event at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) with the boyfriend. Drink champagne. Go to the nude beach on Saturday, head home to shower, get my tattoo, and go somewhere nice for dinner. Spend Sunday at Casa Loma.

What happened: The only event that went according to plan was getting my tattoo. But the weekend was still awesome. :)

The boyfriend left work early Thursday and drove to Toronto so I could wake up with him on my birthday. He brought me this beautiful cake.
 

I used Paint to hide my real name (in M&Ms!) and age

Friday morning my kids "surprised" me with cards and presents. Sam* had made a lot of very pointed comments during the previous week about how happy I would be to receive a gift card to Indigo (like Barnes & Noble, but Canadian). Amy* had been working on her card for me after school, where I could see it... Annie* had asked if pink was my favorite color, if I liked pink roses, and if I liked bows.

Clearly I went to Indigo immediately

So when Sam and Amy presented me with homemade cards and a gift card to Indigo, I acted surprised, but I had expected it. (Technically the giftcard was from my bosses, but semantics). To an extent, Annie did surprise me when she gave me bow earrings and a rose hair accessory. I thought she was hinting about real roses with a bow tied around them.
 

My favorite things: Starbucks, Diet Coke with Lime, the boyfriend, my kids

She loves me as big as the moon.

After we took the kids to school, the boyfriend and I returned home to make one of my all-time favorite breakfasts: Eggs Benedict. He's so precious. I had asked him months ago to learn how to poach eggs and fry bacon (I usually under-cook it or burn it) for this exact reason. (I already know how to cook many many complicated things, so I figure he can learn a few cooking techniques I haven't mastered). I made the Hollandaise sauce (from scratch!) and toasted the English muffins while he poached our eggs and fried the bacon. It. Was. DELICIOUS. We ate it so quickly I completely forgot to snap a photo.

After some, ahem, alone time, we hit up the mall so I could buy some new shorts from H&M and spend my gift card at Indigo. I bought the next Phillipa Gregory novel, another by Tracy Chevalier, and a nerdy book full of advice from the smartest people in the world.**

After dinner, the boyfriend, the kids, and I skyped with my parents, my brothers, my twin brother's girlfriend, my best guy friend Joe,* and his girlfriend. I then opened my presents my parents had mailed to me.

My mom is hit or miss with books

The books are "token" presents. The real gift is getting my pearl & diamond ring repaired when I'm home this summer. One of the pearls fell off in January, and I really want it replaced.

When I got off work, the boyfriend and I went into the city. The line for the ROM was ridiculous, so we gave that up and searched for a bar with champagne, to no avail. Eventually we gave up and went home, to my disappointment. But the boyfriend promised we could get champagne Saturday night.

Annnnnnd this is a really long post. I'll sum up Saturday & Sunday in another one.

*Fake names. As always.

**Still confused as to why I wasn't consulted... Maybe they also had an age requirement?

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The Five Love Languages, Or Why I Need You to Tell Me How Brilliant I Am

Quality Time ♥ Words of Affirmation

Gifts ♥ Acts of Service ♥ Physical Touch

Many many moons ago, I briefly mentioned The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman. My college roommate and bestie for life, Rose,* first introduced me to this book our junior year. She and her then boyfriend (now fiancé!) had made an agreement for Valentine's Day. Rose would pick out a relationship book that she thought Landon* would like, and he would pick out a pornographic film he thought she would enjoy.

Confession: Whenever my friends ask me for relationship advice (which is bizarrely often, considering I'm only six months into my first relationship), I usually think to myself WWRaLD or “What would Rose and Landon do?” They are one of the most mature, most thoughtful, most respectful couples I've ever met. I'm so honored to be a bridesmaid in their wedding next year!

Being the readers that we are, of course Rose and I had to read the introductory chapter first before she could wrap her gift. Then we each took the quiz, and we each read the chapter on our own love language. (My primary love language is fairly obvious—Words of Affirmation. Rose's is Gifts.) Until this week, though, that was as much as I had experienced from the book.

Just that little bit, though, completely changed how I viewed my relationships with my friends and family. Rose and I had been inseparable since spring semester our freshman year. Junior year was our first time living together, and we got along perfectly as roommates. But after discovering our primary love languages, we became even closer. Suddenly Rose was thanking me when it was my turn to clean the apartment, pointing out what a good job I had done. When I went grocery-shopping alone, I started adding her favorite candy to my cart to give to her later. We were expressing our love for each other in a whole new way.

My family hasn't taken the quiz, but I'm pretty sure their love languages are as follows. Mom, Physical Touch; Daddy, Quality Time; H, Physical Touch; J, Quality Time (possibly Physical Touch). I didn't need to change much in my behavior with Daddy and with J, but I did with Mom and H. They both want to be hugged about a million times a day, and that's only a slight exaggeration. I used to get impatient sometimes with their endless need for physical affection. But now I make more of an effort to initiate hugging them when I'm home, or resting my head on H's shoulder on the couch, or cuddling with Mom on the oversized chair.

Last week, I finally read the book in its entirety after discovering it on my bosses' bookshelf. I couldn't put it down. Although Chapman writes from a Christian perspective, he is not at all preachy, and the majority of his advice is mostly secular.

Chapman explains how the heady, dizzy, obsessive “in love” feeling doesn't last forever. On average, it lasts two years. During this time, people think of nothing but their significant other, who is, of course, flawless. But not everyone is dating a flawless woman (except my boyfriend—lucky gent), so eventually people realize their significant other is imperfect.

“Little by little, the illusion of intimacy evaporates, 

and the individual desires, emotions, thoughts, 

and behavior patterns exert themselves. 

They are two individuals.”

At this point, love is a commitment. It takes work. It takes a genuine effort to pursue real love.

“Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love, but to 
be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that 
grows out of reason and choice, not instinct.”

Learning your significant other's love language is possibly the best way to accomplish this. The boyfriend is fairly adept in all the languages (yes, I'm a lucky lady), but I really wanted to know his primary one. Out of his love for me, he took the quiz included at the back of the book, which I had retaken when I finished reading it. The highest you can score in any category is 12. Our results were as follows (me, him):

Words of Affirmation: 11, 7. Quality Time: 7, 8. Gifts: 3, 2.

Acts of Service: 1, 3. Physical Touch: 8, 10.

I thought his primary love language would be Gifts (the darling boyfriend likes to pay for our outings, and he surprises me with little gifts, like my micro SD card and Girl Scout cookies), but at the same time, I wasn't surprised to discover it was Physical Touch. When we're together, we're holding hands almost nonstop. If we're not holding hands, his arm is around me, or I'm scratching his back, or I'm leaning my head against his chest, or he's running his fingers through my hair, or... You get the picture. :) We're just very very affectionate.

We agree we both need to retake the quiz once we're no longer doing long-distance. When you only have a few days together, every three weeks to three months, you can't keep your hands off each other.

I want to be proactive in our relationship, and I love that the boyfriend feels the same way. I haven't spent this many years single and picky to squander away my first real shot at my own fairy tale ending. Yes, we're very much still in the early, “in love” phase of our relationship, but by learning everything we can about each other, including our love languages, we can take one more step towards longevity.

*Once again, not their real names. Also, it's weird for me to create aliases for my brothers, so they're just H & J.

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