The old gypsy curse: may you get what you want

previous line excerpted from the film Thirteen Conversations about One Thing

According to Susan Scarf, the author of Intimate Partners ( Oh you know you can link to amazon and do your own damn book search, you lazy bums) what an individual first finds attractive about his or her mate is exactly what will become the most problematic trait. (She links this theory to the concept of projective identification-in other words we seek out others who express feelings, drives, and behaviors that we wish to express, but are too conflicted about to do so-initially our mates fulfill our desire by expressing these desires for us, but of course most of the time the conflict comes from the fact we were raised to believe such behavior is "unloveable"-ie a boy being taught that crying is not "manly" and will result in the suspension of fatherly love-and eventually we will find the very behavior which we sought out to be "unloveable"-the boy will find an "emotional" woman who will express his depression and upset for him-initially he will find her sensitivity touching, but eventually he will find it annoying and disgraceful-he will begin to wonder why she can't act "more like a man"-all of this info courtesy of the "psychology of marriage" course I took in undergrad)

Have you ever wanted something so badly it possessed your body and your soul through the night and through the day?
excerpted from the song "True Happiness This Way Lies" off the album Dusk by The The (An album my very first boyfriend turned me onto.)

According the character of Gene English in Thirteen Conversations About One Thing the greatest curse is actually getting what you want. Of course, in the film the premise of the curse is that what a person thinks he or she wants is very different from what he or she actually wants. Of course no one actually realizes that until he or she gets the theoretical desire and has the revelation "Wait, I wanted something ELSE.". Case and point, me.

You all have long been witness to my diatribes against men who just want to use me for my body. Often I have longed for the relationship I had in high school where my boyfriend and I could lie in my bed for hours and just kiss. I wondered why I couldn't go back to that, find some guy who just wants to kiss me.

And then said guy walked into my life. If I customed ordered a man, I probably couldn't find a better man. Although I have issues with his working hours at the moment ( he worked through the entire weekend-although he still hung out with me on friday and is going to have coffee with me tomorrow night) I know this is not a serious issue...yet ( my old therapist used to call this living three weeks in the future-I told her I was closer to living ten years in the future). He is a non practicing Jew. He is slender, attractive, smart, funny, charming. He knows how to treat a woman without being all macho and ridiculous. He calls me two to three times a day. He calls me princess and sweetie and baby, but doesn't condescend to me. In fact, he puts a far higher premium on my intellegence than I do. He takes me to dinner and puts up with my ridiculousness.

And all he wants to do is kiss me.

And this is exactly what is driving me crazy. Because it seems that I totally don't know what to do with a man who doesn't want to rush me to bed. There is an element of suspicion-a feeling of he doesn't want me. Of course the counter argument is that he respects me. ( what are the odds?)

There are, of course, other options. One is that he understands how I work and he knows that by resisting my seductive impulses that he has hooked me even more ( when I own a guy in under fifteen minutes ie Luke Duke you can say good bye to the respect). There is always the suspicion that he wants to use me for something else, something that I am not seeing ( not for a lack of looking).

My friends are no doubt feeding my fear. Although they initially were very encouraging of his restraint, now their attitude is closer to "What the hell is wrong with this guy?" I'm not sure if there is anything wrong with him ( I mean in the big huge, skins of young children drying in the attic or dressing up as mother before stabbing the resident of cabin one to death sense of the word). It seems that perhaps I have bought into the new york way of thinking-that not rushing into someone's bed the first month of dating is indicative of some major psychological illness. Trust me I am a big believer in premarital sex (you test drive a car before you buy it right? you check out an apartment before you rent it? Well, why not test a guy's sexual ability before marrying him-I'm not saying it's a make or break proposition, I'm just saying that I want to make an informed decision), but that doesn't mean that it has to be an upfront thing.

Still, it makes a girl ponder.