After much deliberation I made the decision to much across the country.  Along with this comes the decision to change what I do for a living. It just took me 3 minutes to type that second sentence and I’m near tears from it. WT-effing-F?

One of my biggest struggles in life is asking for what I want. I have a tendency to wait for people to notice that I need things. Wait for employers to notice what I’m good at, wait for partners to notice that I cringe every time they touch me that way. I even do it with illness, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ended up furious at people because I think it’s obvious that I am about to keel over and they’re like “I had no idea-  you never said anything!”

“What do we want?!” “We’d rather not say.” “When do we want it?!” “Whenever you get around to it, no rush.”

Growing up it always seemed that the worst thing you could be was self-absorbed and the worst thing you could do was burden someone else. So I learned that my individual needs weren’t that important, if they were someone would notice them without me having to bother them. For all of you out there, trying to get your needs met, let me just tell you, this does not work. (See, I’m awesome at telling you this stuff!) Over the years my patented “let’s not disturb anyone, I’ll just send up a small unobtrusive signal and if this is actually important they will notice and interpret it exactly as I need them to” approach has yielded results ranging from comical:

– In a piece called Stuck in a Moment that I recently cross-posted from Good Vibes I mentioned what happened when I tried to subtly signal to a partner that their method of stimulation wasn’t working for (or, you know, was inflicting pain on) me – the phrase “clitorally-focused velociraptor” is involved.

to sad

– It is so hard for me to let people know I care about them. It seems people frequently drift out of my life because I don’t know how to let them know they are wanted there.  I recently admitted to someone that I wanted to spend time with them and for me it felt like an admission of “Luke, I am your father” proportions.

to frightening

– Clinical depression is something I’ve dealt with at various points for the last 8 years. At some point I came up with an analogy for how things go down when I slip towards a depressive state but am too afraid to ask anyone for help: It feels like I’m in the water and everyone else is on the shore. I keep trying to signal to them but I’m doing it in my meek, unobtrusive way so, they think I’m waving and they wave back. This goes on and on and the whole time what no one gets is that I’m not waving, I’m drowning.

In all of this, I rarely accomplish getting my needs met.

The worst part is, that as much as none of this worked it all reinforced my desire to not ask anyone for anything. Everything I was taught told me that folks would help me if the situation warranted it, people would stick around if they actually cared, partners would stop trying to rip my clit off if it mattered and when none of that happened what I took away from it is that I didn’t warrant help, that folks didn’t care and that my pleasure wasn’t at all a priority. My take-away was that I didn’t deserve to ask for what I wanted.

So, what does this have to do with me moving and changing careers, etc? I have been having the hardest time even admitting to myself what I want my next steps to be. I am finding the idea of acknowledging that I have weighed what is important to me and based on that made decisions about what I want from life and what I’m going to do to get it terrifying. The degree to which this process calls for exposing oneself and leaving oneself open for rejection and failure is a bit more than I can handle, apparently. Why? Because I don’t think I deserve to ask for what I want. It’s the same issue.

I know (partially from intuition and partially from my inbox) that a lot of you struggle with this same idea in your relationships and in your bedrooms. While I know it seems like a big leap from my career path to your sexual fantasies, hear me out: I hear from a lot of folks who want to make their sex better but are afraid to say anything that will insult their partner. Or who want to try new things but are afraid they will be judged when they acknowledge their desires. Or whose relationships aren’t what they want and they don’t want to be “demanding” (seriously, that word comes up a lot!) and the thing is folks, we all need to cut this shit out.

The only way this gets better is if we day by day, choice by choice tackle it. The first step is just to remember, as hokey self-help book as it sounds, you are worth making the effort to ask for what you need. You have to prioritize yourself which, I know, is hard for a lot of people but no matter how much other people care about you they will never be able to see what you need without a lot of help. You will almost always have to ask. My best friend is fond of saying. “I love you but also I am dumb”

I know I’ve already stopped letting people mandhandle my nether regions (also, if you’ve been following the naked-with-socks debate you know I’ve started being vocal about my need for naked people to not be wearing socks- come on people!) and I’m still struggling really hard with reaching out to other folks.  It’s all a work in progress. Trust me though, once you start communicating your needs and wants, it does get infinitely easier. I’ll keep working on it if you will. Deal?

XOXO

-RHBH