Distant Lovers

Last month marked a milestone that I've now traveled on 6 of 7 continents. I've dated women on 5 continents, had sex on 4 continents, and received road head on just as many. One of my more memorable experiences was driving 5+ hours in Brasil on a getaway. As the sun set and it had officially been 3 hours since our last session prior to leaving, I started eyeing this woman in the glow of sunset colors so she decided out of safety that I not pull off the road. I tore into her and suddenly she was half over the stick shift, swallowing me. I was taken aback when, in between moans, she abruptly jumped back to her seat while I rubbed and fingered her, until she came. Talk about some serious multi-tasking!

As that story goes, we finally made it back to the city and it being late with few hotel vacancies, she introduced me to the culture of love motels. Being 11 years older and a psychologist, she taught me many things about working towards a greater level of understanding and being able to accept myself, reconciling my inner conflicts to embrace my full potential. We barely spoke the same language, but shared a connection and understanding that transcended reason. This was aided by my immersion in her passionate culture, where my logical mind could no longer guard me from embracing my passionate nature, a side few people really see. After all, logical people don't travel the world, ride motorcycles, and go skydiving more than once. So as logical as I can be, I'm equally as passionate, a point which seems to be the biggest misunderstanding about me. Ultimately, my time with the Brasilian was profound regardless of distance and circumstance.

I'm an advocate of long distance relationships. They don't require an all day every day time commitment, allowing me to focus a lot of time on myself yet maintain a relationship that can be intense and passionate in discrete moments. Besides, I know they're into me and their head and heart are in the right place because it's much easier to walk away than put in the effort needed to build an effective level of communication across the distance. I have also found it works best to encapsulate feelings because I cannot do anything about the emotional distance created by the physical distance. There’s no point going crazy to be with her night and day, counting the time until I see her next because it's just not possible so restraint is necessary. I believe long distance relationships can work, but you do need to be with each other in the beginning to achieve true understanding and be able to form a lasting bond that can endure.

Furthermore, with today's technology it's easier than ever to get involved over distance. International phone sex can get pricey, so a few amazing Europeans invented skype. There's nothing like skype dates and having skype sex. Who said technological progress is bad? Call me crazy, but I believe the true measure of love is its ability to evolve over any distance, any situation, or any obstacle. Distance poses a number of challenges, but the passion shared when you finally are together can be pure bliss. The in-between sucks, but I always argue the value of long distance relationships is that the time spent together is worth more than time spent apart or with anyone else.

I realized something else about my involvement in long distance relationships: I go for unavailable women. I think I partially do this because I'm not willing or able to give myself freely and fully. Often, I think this is because I am still emotionally hurt from failing in love with someone else and being unable to acknowledge it, admit it, or move on. While I can't love fully, I can love safely. I can't get attached because we eventually have to separate and leave, so I know precisely when things will end so I can prepare myself and it won't hurt as much.

I think people confuse conditional relationships with being conditionally in love. Real love doesn't have conditions. The expression, the construct, the relationship does have conditions. In my long distance encounters, I didn't need to know if they were involved with others because I just wanted to experience them during our brief moments together. Rationale went out the window and things become pure, raw, unbridled passion - the heart wants what it wants when it wants it. Things got complicated when we tried turning our encounters into a relationship and conditions were placed on what was acceptable behavior. In relationships, love quite simply isn't always enough. You don't stop loving someone when they hurt you or it ends, you just decide to move on from the relationship and the love eventually fades with time. Personally, I still have love for many of the women I’ve been involved with and I hope they find the happiness they desire, but we learned we’re not the ones for each other.

However, lately I seem to have evolved and not only attract but want to involve myself with the kind of unavailable women that have a pre-existing boyfriend condition. God only knows what kind of psychoses I may have developed now.

War of the Sexes

Now that women are empowering themselves and their voices are starting to be truly heard, the battle of the sexes is no more. Now it's a war. Both sides are equal adversaries and casualties strew the battlefield. On New Year's Eve, for the first time in my life I had a girl storm out and leave me standing there dumbfounded. For the record, I did talk and dance with another girl who had a non-present boyfriend, yet my date decided to show up at 2 AM to this New Year's Eve party. I admit I've done some heinous stuff in my day, but there's a first time for everything.

My low was when I cussed out my first love after I broke up with her. Naturally, she was very protective of me. One day she tried to fight a girl who kept climbing into my bed naked after parties but later grew mad that we'd actually done something in my bed. My ex would have utterly destroyed her, trust me, and I couldn't allow her to face university disciplinary action. So I said what I had to, to prevent her from doing what I knew she wanted to since she couldn't hate me. I have made selfish and selfless decisions from time to time concerning women I was involved with, but as any man will argue: not all women deserve our mercy.

I can't stand when women say how they're choosing to be like a man. They won't return calls, won't show up, won't be forthright or honest, will date other men, sleep with who they want to sleep with and the list goes on. Women are not men. No matter what you cannot be a man so it is not your place to tell us how a man is supposed to act or behave. That is what fathers and other male role models are to us. When men care we show up, we return calls, we even initiate them, and are willing to go to whatever lengths we must to win her over. But we focus on other things because we've learned not to make just any woman the center of our world. Our mothers taught us that. Many women won't appreciate us, only want to use us to get what they want, or can't provide what we are looking for – selfless, unconditional love and support. Women teach this lesson to their sons because they see their sons as becoming great men, but then can't show this same consideration to other women's sons.

That is why I'm sorry to report from the front lines, that women acting like men doesn't work. Like it or not, it is a man's world. Besides, I question how many women saying they'll act like men actually end up with the really great man they ultimately want? I think all they do is find a better way of dealing with the assholes who come along, forever dating around and not finding great because they prepared themselves to deal with shit. Hey, if you treat them like leftovers, don't be surprised if you're left holding trash.

Dating is a female concept. After all they're the ones who need to biologically court to decide which prospectives can stay and which should go. Simple men like what they like, when they like it. Complex men are different. They have goals, dreams, passions, and a plan that their woman needs to support and embrace as if it were her own. But men are fundamentally simple in one way:
      The more attractive we find you, the more of your shit we will tolerate.
      The more shit you make us tolerate, the more we'll look for someone better.
      The more we look, the more open we are to someone else.
      The more open we are, the more likely we'll do something with someone else.
      The more we do with someone else, the more of your shit we can tolerate.

I think the trick on both sides is to focus on what you want and accept nothing less, never settling. Although, compromise is crucial. Who you find may not be perfect, but do they have enough of what you want and are looking for to be happy AND can accept their negatives and flaws to work together to build something great? We can't change someone, but we can help and support them become better if they so choose. Have patience and don't be afraid to be single for a long time. If you are tired of being single and uninvolved, well then this is the war, tread carefully because it might seem like you aren't holding out for something great.

But remember this: it's still a man's world because men chase the box women have allowing women to set the rules of the game. This means a man becomes a player in this game and can choose to follow the rules, break the rules, ignore the rules, cheat, or do as he sees fit. Because when men set the rules, women behave the exact same way.