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November 2009 
What Love Looks Like For Me
Posted on Jul 9th, 2009
by 
Fearless
Fearless
THIS MORNING, as I lay in bed, contemplating life and love, I thought it might be a worthwhile exercise to reflect on what love has looked like in my life.
My most shocking realisation is that I don't think I've ever had a loving relationship with my parents. When people say, "Oh, we're a really close family", I just can't identity with that. Close? My family? Mmmmm ... I don't think that's possible when the main focus of the family is just one person - my father.
I've been fond of my parents. Every financial advantage I've had in life has come from them, but I can't think of a loving legacy that I would have wanted to pass on to any children of mine. Maybe that's why my brother, sister and I have not had children.
My mother was a lovely woman - kind, patient, loving and caring. My sister and I came to the conclusion some time ago that she never really got to love her children the way she would have wanted to, because my father demanded that all attention in the family was on him. No one else mattered. Only him.
I know I'm being harsh, because of course there must have been, times when I did feel their love; it's just that nothing stands out as, "I remember the day my father loved me so much he ..." Maybe my mother sacrificed what might have been an otherwise happy life, to give her children a good provider. I don't know.
I hope I'm not the sort of person who doesn't feel they are loved unless the other person gives them a kidney. Maybe I am - maybe I'm the sort of person who doesn't know what love is. All I know is that the love I experienced with others, later, is much stronger and meaningful to me.
I know when I hear people say, "My father gave me a deep love of the outdoors", or "My mother shared her love of literature with me" that I feel a pang. A pang of what, I'm not sure. Just a pang of, "Oh, I never had that."
My legacy has been one of self-doubt and an inability to see my value. We were all decimated because of my father's over-arching ego. How to get past that kind of damage? I'm embarrassed to be 56 years old and still wondering how I get over it.
I just didn't have anything in common with my parents. I came home one night to find my mother and brother watching, "The Slim Dusty Story" and I still remember thinking, "Oh my god, can I be related to these people?!"
My interests were make believe, literature, writing, being an archeologist. I lived in a Hollywood fantasy world of glamorous movie stars and gorgeous satin gowns.
I'm sure love was there in our family home, in some form, but there is still no particular occasion which I can warmly look back on and think with satisfaction, "Oh, they loved me so much." There was just no joyous celebration of love or connection or 'family'.
I've always said, "I had a good technical upbringing - I was fed, housed, clothed and educated - but I can't remember a single circumstance where I felt LOVED and valued.
Having decided to give birth to myself at my last birthday in April, I want to put 'all that' (my childhood and their influence on me), behind me, never to be mentioned again. Not because it was so particularly devastating, but because I'm sick of weeping and wailing at the wall of, "I'm like this because my parents did that."
I like the idea of giving birth to myself and creating the kind of nurturing I would have liked to have had. My companions on this journey are my beloved David, Paul, and trusted members of our Second Life community.
It was easy to put my 'old' childhood behind me recently when I asked my father to think back and tell me what memories he had of me as a child. "I don't know!" he answered testily. "You were a kid! You went to school. You played with the other kids. There were three of you." I just burst out laughing. That's the sum total of your memories of me as a child? That I went to school and played with other kids and had a brother and a sister! What an absolute lack of involvement or interest from the man who gave me life.
So it's not surprising that when I think of love, I don't automatically think 'family'.
Several months ago, at a family function, when my father was boasting about how much money he had, my uncle (who has never had much, lived in a housing commission house and brought up five daughters on a chauffeur's wage), pointed to the wall of family photographs and said, "There's my treasure over there Jack. That's all that's ever been important to me."
Again, the pang of, "I've never had that."
First Love:
Oh my beautiful first love - Tim. We met at a local fete dance when I was about 15 or 16 and were both immediately smitten. I was such an innocent! As we snuggled up to one another dancing, I remember saying to him, "Ooooh, can you please take your cigarettes out of your pocket, they're poking into me." I had no idea boys got erections! I didn't even know what an erection was! A product of a Catholic school education, I was absolutely terrified of getting pregnant and there was just no way I was going to tempt the fires of hell by exploring sexuality.
We were both so lovelorn though. Those loooooooooooong telephone calls where you stay on the phone line, content just to hear the other person breathe on the other end of the line. And the reluctance of either one to hang up first. "You hang up", "No, you hang up", "No, you." The sweet desire of youth. The laying together in parks, in friend's cars, when no one else was home - but still, no sex! The lusty kisses, the lovebites, the hands down pants and up tops. "Everything but".
When he got a job away from where we lived, I thought I would die of heartache. He wrote of course and those love letters were my most cherished possessions. Under my pillow. Kissed each night. We wanted to run away together and get married, but we were so young. I don't remember why we broke up, but most likely it had something to do with him wanting sex and me being terrified of getting pregnant. In those days, 16 year old girls didn't go to the doctor and get the pill (even if it existed then).
I was broken-hearted and cried for months. Losing love is the most devastating experience of a young life. All is lost. I would stand at the window where I worked in the city and look yearningly outwards, searching for just a glimpse of him if he walked by. In my desperation, I thought that if I relented and did have sex with him, he would come back to me (vain hope of course), so we arranged to meet at my place when my parents were out and I was quite determined to 'give him' my virginity.
We went to bed and fumbled and tried - two totally inexperienced and clueless virgins - and then when his mates pulled up the front and beeped the horn for him, he gave up in frustration and drove off with them. I felt completely destroyed. I had failed to 'seduce' him and felt 'thrown away' because he would rather be with his friends than in my hot little loving embrace. As he left, I fell down, wailing, at the door. I honestly thought I would die of heartbreak.
Marriage:
When Graham came into my life, I'd had crushes and boyfriends and frustrated relationships of various shades. It was obvious that Graham was head over heels in love with me and I felt safe with him. Eventually I came to the conclusion that he was someone I felt safe enough to lose my virginity to. A friend of his shared a grand old mansion with several others in Kew, a leafy suburb of Melbourne and so it was, that on a mattress on the floor of a beautiful old mansion, I 'gave' my virginity to the man I would eventually marry.
It's funny because of all the relationships I've had, the one with Graham is perhaps the fuzziest - the least memorable. My first experience of sex, left me with the memory of me responding with, "What? Is that it?" No fireworks. No violins. Just a grunting and heaving and a very satisfied Graham at the end, and a less than impressed me.
It's terrible to say, but life with Graham hasn't left me with any memories of love. Domestic frustrations, yes. I was 21 and my interpretation of love was that when I served him dinner, I gave him the biggest sausage or best looking potato.
I had no idea of what love was all about. And I certainly didn't know about married life, so I just copied what my parents did. Graham was 'head of the household', even though I was the one who did all the work in it.
We were married for all of 11 months and frustratingly so for me. We both had office jobs, with his being closer to home than mine, so he would get home sooner. Yet, he would sit and read the newspaper or watch television and wait for me to get home to cook the dinner, clean, wash, iron, make the bed - every single domestic duty fell to me. His only responsibility was putting the rubbish out each week, and even that I had to remind him endlessly.
So I definitely don't equate the 'marriage' chapter of my life with love. Graham and I shouldn't have married. I now know that I used getting married as an excuse - a 'legitimate' way of leaving home. I didn't love Graham. In fact, I told him that I'd changed my mind and didn't want to get married, but he cried and 'begged' and so I thought, "Well, how can I hurt his feelings?" and so I went through with it.
In the end, he met a 16 year old at a party and ran off with her and I travelled overseas. We returned wedding gifts to those who'd given them and there was no harm done.
Miscellaneous:
When my marriage ended, I travelled overseas for a year or two and then settled in Noosa Heads as a hippy, living on the beach. It was the days of "make love, not war" and I was an enthusiastic peacenik. Men and boys came and went - plenty of sex, but not much love. It's so true, that adage - "Men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love." I gave a lot of sex! Didn't find much love though.
At one stage I was quite promiscuous. Don't know why, because I've never really been satisifed by sex. It has always been my desire to experience love which has motivated me to be physical with a man. A 'need' to be close and intimate. Eventually though you realise, you could lie down on the footpath at a city's main train station and have sex with every man who walked past and never find love.
There is one man who stood out though in all these years - Bern. Bern is one of two men I've ever wanted to have a child with. He had long blonde hair and gorgeous blue eyes and a lovely heart. I think we were all in love with Bern. All us hippy chicks, with our long, flowing hair and bouncing breasts (hippies didn't wear a bra). For a glorious few months, Bern and I were an item and I was in seventh heaven.
I don't know how much love was expressed in those days ... perhaps more a lovingness, than actual love. Nothing was too serious. It was easy to get stoned and just snuggle up to a convenient body. We experimented and explored and had open hearts. With someone one day, and someone else, the next. No hard feelings. Just a desire to spread 'love', when really I think it was more a case of wandering attention.
Friends became lovers and lovers became friends.
The Love Of My Life:
I met Mark at an "Alice In Wonderland" party. I'd never even read the story and went dressed as a wood nymph. I'd gone there specifically to meet someone else, but they hadn't arrived. Mark and I had chatted for awhile and I drifted off to get a drink. But I kept finding him in front of me, obviously keen on more conversation. "I wish this guy would get out of the way, so I could see if Andrew has arrived," I remember thinking. Ironically, it was Mark who was 'the one'.
I was in a relationship at the time, with Rod, a very steady and safe partner. He was reliable and faithful, but ultimately, I was bored. I'd convinced Rod that I just needed 'a fling' to blow away the cobwebs on our relationship. Instead, what I found was Mark, who turned out to be 'the love of my life'.
... Next post ... What is was all about and other expressions of that great desiring ... love.
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