The Vine: January 21, 2004
Sars,
I need clarification on your response to Wish, who had some ambivalent
feelings about having sex. In my experience, the majority of women wish they
had waited longer than they did, and it would seem that she would be better
off waiting until she didn’t have doubts. Could you just explain your
reasoning some more?
Confused
Dear Confused,
Sure.
Sex is a big deal in a lot of ways, physically and emotionally — and not just the first time you do it, either, so it’s appropriate to take it seriously, and it’s appropriate to have doubts.
But it’s also possible to take it too seriously — to wait for the perfect person, to put a lot of expectations on how it’s going to change your life — and if I recall correctly, when you’ve never done it before, a big part of the doubt you feel is actually apprehension because you’ve never done it before. And you can only get perspective on doing it by, you know, doing it.
I don’t mean that anyone who’s ambivalent about sex should just get it over with already — if you really don’t feel sure about having sex, you shouldn’t force yourself to do it, and certainly not on my say-so. Wait until you feel ready, wait for the right person. But if I’d waited until I felt completely ready, I would have waited forever, because most of my anxiety came from not knowing how it would go or what it would be like — and I knew that about myself, that the doubt came from the unknown. So, I did it, and I don’t regret it.
But that’s me, and again, my point to Wish isn’t that she should just damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. My point is that she’s mature enough to know sex is a big deal and to understand the issues sex might raise in her own life; she’s given the issue some thought, and she seems to know herself well enough to have a realistic attitude about the whole thing. Most of the women I know who wish they’d waited actually wish they’d waited for a different guy, not a different time; Wish’s guy sounds like a pretty good bet to me. No, she’s probably not going to marry him, but she genuinely likes him and trusts him, and I think that’s enough.
Waiting until you’re ready is a great strategy, but sometimes you have to just take the leap.
Okay…kinda strange problem; it’s kind of a compound question but I hope you
can make some sense of it.
First off…I’m a really driven and passionate person about pretty much
everything I do. Creative projects, sex, work, I am a pretty intense person
(although not in the “I smear the blood of cows on my walls because it’s a
political statement about war” creepy kind of flaky artist way)…I just
mean anything that’s worth doing is worth getting really intensely involved
in, blah blah ambition-cakes.
My problem is when I’m in a relationship (as I am now), after the initial
smitten phase (six months or so) is over, I start to get really antsy about
the other person, mainly because I’m usually just as passionate about things
as I made myself out to be originally, and the other person just gets
comfortable and stops making the effort. Not that they’re lazy or bad
partners in any way, but that conversation (on their part) dries up to “what
did you do today?” and they’re not always getting involved in exciting
projects anymore.
I’ve been in a lot of lengthy (year-plus) relationships, and I’m always the
breaker-upper…the thing is, I always still love the person, it’s never an
issue of fighting or huge problems, it’s always something like I meet
someone who seems better, or the thing just fades to nothing, or whatever.
The thing is that pretty much everyone falls ass-over-teakettle crazy when
meeting someone new that you really like, so it’s really hard to judge what
that person will mellow out to be in the long run.
I know that the intensity of relationships tends to fade after a while and
things get boring and comfortable. But I can’t get over the idea that if I’m
still so intense after this long, isn’t there someone out there who will be
too? It’s understandable that people will, for example, have sex three times a day
when they first get together and gradually it calms down to a more regular
pace. But what if I still want to have sex three times a day, I haven’t
mellowed out?
Is it okay to continue a long-term relationship for the time being if I’m
pretty sure it’s not going to go anywhere? (And of course I’ve never led on
any assumptions that we’ll get married or anything.) Or is it only fair to
tell the other person now? I still love them and think they’re great, and
maybe it is just my stupid hang-ups…
The main question, I think, that encompasses all this is, I know that there
are always doubts and cold feet in relationships, but at what point does it
become more than accepting another person’s defaults, and actually become
“settling for” something not exactly right?
And when people change so much from the initial giddy state anyways, how can
a sane person be in a relationship at all, knowing that the person you’re
originally meeting may turn out to be someone quite different once the
smittenness wears off?
Thanks so much for your divine wisdom,
Exhausted Just Trying to Put All That Into Words
Dear Exhausted,
Jeez. Well, on the one hand, you are who you are, and you shouldn’t settle, or think you have to settle, for a partner who isn’t doing it for you. If you don’t want someone mellow, you don’t.
But on the other hand, once the honeymoon period is over, both parties in a relationship have to make certain adjustments and accept certain realities — chief among them that, well, the honeymoon period is over, and now it’s time to see if the other person fits into your life in a more practical way. And if s/he doesn’t, s/he doesn’t, but I think you do have to have a realistic understanding of how these things work, namely that that level of initial passion doesn’t always endure, and that that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just different. Yeah, the “so, how was work?” thing can get pretty dull, but, you know, people have lives, and jobs, and not every single conversation is going to be the thrilling meeting of the minds you enjoyed in the beginning. If you never have fun, stimulating conversations, well, then you have a problem, but after a certain point, people aren’t bringing their A games every day.
I don’t know if you’ve tried to talk this out with your past partners, but if you haven’t already, tell your current partner how you feel. It’s not a fun conversation when one person has to tell the other that s/he’s getting kind of bored, but you should see if it’s something you can work out before you just decide that s/he can’t keep up with you and move on to the next thing.
Hey Sars.
Here’s my problem, with the usual background.
I attended a small, private, Catholic college for the first two years of my university life (I’m now entering my fourth). I got married, and because my husband was attending grad school at another university, I decided to transfer. That’s fine with me, and not the problem at all. I’m an English major, and the problem lies in my English classes.
At School #1, my professors were surprisingly unbiased (surprising, because most were Catholic, and I was expecting a bit of that to seep in to the lessons, but it didn’t. At all). At School #2, which is a huge public university, I am being bombarded, although not with religion. The school is ridiculously liberal. It’s not like I’m some crazy Ayn-Rand-wielding capitalist Bush-ite or anything, but I’m definitely not liberal.
Anyway, my professors clearly are, especially my literature professors. They’re very pleasant, for the most part, but it’s like most of them are trying to out-liberal themselves in each passing class. From the choice of books to the lectures to the location of class (I once had a literature class moved to the center of the campus for an anti-U.S. peace rally, which had absolutely nothing to do with the book we were reading, or with anything literary in general), I feel like their ideals are being thrust upon me. I find myself choosing topics for papers that I know the professor will agree with: Marxist interpretations of Shakespeare, the anti-white man approach for Native American Lit, et cetera. Although it may seem strange for politics to enter into lit classes, it happens often. I am very reluctant to offer my opinions during class discussions, and my pro-America and maybe-this-isn’t-a-feminist-novel papers have been met with less than outstanding grades.
I can’t go to the head of the department, as he is one of the aforementioned leftover hippies. Transferring again is not an option, and because the entire school is practically one big card-carrying socialist, I don’t think talking to the administration is the way to go. Have you ever been in a class like these? How the hell should I deal with this? Thank you so much.
She who looks bad in tie-dye
Dear Bad,
I had a few classes like that back in the day, and I wrote several papers on the gender continuum in King Lear, not because I truly believed that it dominated the text but because I knew spouting the party line would get me an A-minus. On the other hand, I also wrote a paper excoriating Valerie Solanas and calling the SCUM Manifesto a rhetorically feeble piece of crap, got a C-plus, and felt good about it.
If you can’t just stick to explicating the text, without bringing any particular politics to it, you’ll have to decide whether it’s more important to you to get good grades or to express your personal politics, and act accordingly.
Dear Sars,
I don’t want to be repetitive, but I couldn’t start
without saying how much I like your site. I love it,
I’ve been reading it for a few years, it’s über-cool.
Now, on to the question. I couldn’t help but notice,
in my college tunnel vision way, that you went to
Princeton. This is particularly pertinent to me
because I’m a junior in high school, and I’m starting
to panic.
I’ve spent my entire life as “the smart one.” From
second grade (or maybe even kindergarten) on, that’s
been my identity as far as others were concerned. I
was (and am) very ambitious, and I didn’t mind
working, but the ultimate goal in my mind was always
college and getting the hell out of Alabama. Now here
I am, a junior, and I have the right grades in the
most advanced courses offered (IB program). I haven’t
taken my SATs yet, but if my PSATs are any
indication, they’ll be pretty good (knock on wood).
But they changed the rules on me before I really
noticed — now we have to have extracurriculars too.
I’ve never been really interested in that kind of
stuff — I’m on math team and a few clubs that interest
me, but most of the clubs we have at school are the
kind heavy on elections and leadership and light on
actual community service or usefulness. A more
proactive person might have started her own club, but
to be honest, I’m pretty lazy in non-academic
subjects.
So here I am, trying to face the reality that I’m
probably not going to an Ivy school. Yeah, a lot of
it is hype and name recognition and I shouldn’t care
what other people think, blah blah blah, but at the same
time, I feel like I deserve something, some reward for
years of exclusion and hard work. I’m also at that
weird point where I’m trying to figure out my
identity, and being the smart one has always been
stable and comforting. It’s made me distinctive. Of
course, any good college will be filled with people as
smart and smarter than me, so I’ll have to figure
something else out anyway. But you know very well how
much high school sucks, and the payoff of going to a
prestigious college would makes the work and stupid
high school crap seem worth it. Plus, it just irks me
that I wouldn’t get in — not because of grades but
because I didn’t go to the Youth Leadership Conference
for Adorable Orphaned Puppies or whatever.
All right, exposition aside, I’ll get to the point.
You don’t seem like the type of person to pad your
résumé for the college admissions officer’s benefit —
were you one of those sports-clubs-academics
juggernauts, or did they (as I’m fervently hoping they
did) think you were just awesome and funny and accept
you on that? I realize that it has been a little
while since you applied to college, so things have
probably changed. Realistically, I’m looking for
advice — is it worth it to start trying to get into
more activities this year in a last ditch effort for
extra lines on my résumé? The thought of doing stuff
exclusively for the benefit of a longer résumé is
abhorrent to me, but I’m getting neurotic and
desperate (my mom doesn’t want to hear about it
anymore). From an adult’s perspective, how important
is the college you go to? Oh, and do you have any
coping tips for dealing with the interminable two
years I have left in high school?
Signed,
Ivy gives me a rash anyway
Dear Ivy,
I can’t prove it, but I think my essay got me in. I had top grades in a heavy courseload, but so does everyone who applies to Princeton; I don’t think anything else about my application really stood out. Yeah, I played sports, but at the JV level, and I didn’t have any extracurriculars a hundred other people didn’t have too. Maybe they liked the idea of a female Little League umpire (and you can bet I flogged that shit at application time). I applied early, too, which probably helped me, but I just don’t know.
I wouldn’t bother joining a bunch of clubs now; it’s transparent, for one thing, and for another, you can bet that most of the other applicants have Model UN and Glee Club and whatever else on their transcripts too. It doesn’t matter. What matters to Princeton is straight “A”s, strong recommendations from your teachers, proof that you can write, and general well-roundedness.
But most the other twenty thousand people applying for admission have those things in spades, so doing well in school and rocking the essay is no guarantee, and if you didn’t play Carnegie Hall or set a state scoring record in your sport, you don’t have a “hook,” and you might not get in. But that doesn’t matter either. I loved Princeton, but you know what the diploma has done for me in my career? Squat. Not one damn thing. Luck, good people giving me a break, and plain old busting my ass — that’s how I got here, and I don’t bust my ass because I went to Princeton. It’s how I was raised.
It depends on what you want to do with your life; if you want to go to law school, yeah, a Princeton degree will probably help. You know what will help more? Wanting to go to law school and busting your ass to get in no matter what it takes. Princeton is a great school and I had a great time there, don’t get me wrong, but it just doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. It seems like it does, but it doesn’t.
And that’s how you get through the odium of high school, too. Just keep telling yourself, “This seems like it matters, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t.” Apply to the schools you want to apply to; trust that your life will come together the way it’s supposed to, Ivy-league degree or not. It will. It always does.
Tags: sex
