Love Smudged: Can we forgive?

Is anyone else sick and tired of hearing about K Stew’s nasty cheating scandal? I mean, yeah, we live in a culture where stars’ lives seem to be intertwined with our own (just count the number of celeb gossip sites that are out there), but how long can one incident of cheating be dragged out?

But if anything, the longevity of both our curiosity in and devastation over the not so snow white incident says one important thing – lies and hidden secrets in a relationship cause damage that lasts way into the relationship. In fact, I would argue that most of the time, despite forgiveness, it’s just too damn hard to forget.

Now, I’m not naïve. I realize that when you’re in a long term relationship, people screw up. It’s impossible to be perfect. But the occasional fuck-up like forgetting to call or missing an anniversary is way different than flirting/dating/sleeping with the opposite (or same) sex. That type of betrayal just breeds a shaky trust foundation, some level of paranoia and occasionally self-esteem woes.

I’m no stranger to the whole getting cheated on thing. My first love, and we’re talking puppy dog romance, false promises of staying together forever, make your friends sick kind of love, broke my heart six months into the relationship. After snooping through his MySpace (flashback anyone?), I found a disturbing message from a girl who seemed hell-bent on continuing their sexual rendezvous.

How’d I react? Well, after punching him and cursing him out on the street – a slight stray from my usual classy behavior – and some serious crying in bed, I took him back. Problem? I couldn’t forgive him. Despite how crazy stupid in love I was with him, the thought of him in bed with another girl took over my thoughts. Result? Our relationship totally crumbled, and six months later he cheated again with a different girl.

And now, years later, when I thought the whole being dishonest in a relationship thing was a part of my distant past, I find myself in a similar situation. While my boyfriend and I have never cheated, we’ve both been guilty of texting members of the opposite sex. Innocent? Yes, definitely, but does that really make it any better? Neither of us should have been sneaking cell phone conversations, and in the end, we both got caught.

So now, over a year into our relationship, we still struggle with some serious trust issues. Although I believe that my beau does love me unconditionally, the fear that he might find someone else still lurks in the back of my mind, and a big part of my insecurities can be attributed to my first heartbreak. Will I ever truly get over getting cheated on and having my heart chewed up, spit out and chewed back up again?

I’m still waiting to find someone who has been cheated on in a healthy relationship, free of any weird trust issues. Maybe if I did, it would give me hope that there is such a thing as truly getting over the feeling of being not quite good enough. Until then, I guess I’ll join the rest of the population and wait to see how things turn out with the Twilight lovers. Part of me hopes they’ll make it work, but part of me things that might just be impossible.

LOVE SMUDGED: A Silenced Subject

People are so uncomfortable speaking about sex. Considering how natural (and, well, amazing) the act is, it seems to me that people should be more open about the topic and more willing to share their own sexual experiences. The truth is we could all learn a little from one another or at least get some good laughs out of those inevitable embarrassing bedroom moments.

What made me ponder the subject of silenced sexuality? Well, in June of this summer I moved to New York to live out my fantasy of being an intern at a big magazine, and along with that dream came three roommates. At first, I was hesitant to get too close – I was used to my roomies at home and wasn’t sure if I would click with these new girls in the same way. Luckily, I had nothing to worry about.

The instant we got settled in our cramped two-bedroom dorm, we became unnaturally comfortable with one another. And in the past ten weeks, I’ve heard their most memorable sexual escapades or lack of them (one of my roomies is a virgin), and I’ve told my own best and worst of tales.

But as my one new live-in BFF and I laughed out loud at the new Brooklyn man she was seeing who had an obsession with her pheromones – he actually licked her armpit – I realized something unsettling: my Philly based roommates never openly speak about sex.

So what’s the deal? Are some people just way too sensitive about the subject? Am I a little too open for comfort? Someone please help me understand what the big deal is about opening up about our bedroom antics! I find my stories of the two-pump chump (yes, I went there) or the hot-sauce disaster incident (don’t ask) to be quite amusing conversation starters. And I think my roomies can agree that giving each other suggestions on the most enticing dirty talk is fascinating, not humiliating.

And while we obsess over hauntingly scary movies that feature body parts being cut off, cut open or sewn together – let’s take a moment to vom-dot-come over the atrocity that is the Human Centipede – we find sex scenes that show some skin to be taboo. Now maybe it’s due to idiotic politicians who portray sex as something dirty or perhaps it’s because too many of our parents either don’t know how to or don’t want to speak to us about sex, but either way, you’re missing out if you don’t open up, share your own erotic accounts and ask those questions that have been floating around in your brain (like if anal sex is now accepted or how to tell your boyfriend that he totally sucks at oral).

Listen ladies – we’re not doing anything for ourselves by keeping quiet about our in-between-the-sheets action. Seriously, if you shy away from the subject, you’re A.) missing out on an opportunity to bond over a universally interesting act B.) not getting any great advice from your friends C.) losing the chance to laugh hysterically at some high intensity stories and D.) making sex even more of a forbidden subject than it already is.

New to all of this? Confused? Startled? I’ll give you a couple of my own comical anecdotes and weird sexual questions to warm you up for opening up yourself.

I’ve always wondered what was wrong with me down there. No, I don’t have some funky rash or weird smell – I just can’t have an orgasm from penetration alone. I used to think that there was some dysfunction or weird emotional issue preventing me from having the big O without clitoral stimulation. Finally, I worked up the courage to ask my Mom about it. You may be thinking that your Mom is the absolute last person you would ever open up to about sex, but I promise you, she’s the one person in your life who has the most bedroom knowledge.

And my own Mom totally made me feel better. Turns out that a lot of women have trouble finishing from sex. And you know why? Because all of our bodies are different. So now my friends and me can totally dish over the best way to have a killer orgasm without my cheeks turning bright red.

Now, because I know you’re still wondering about the whole hot sauce incident I mentioned earlier, I guess I’ll be nice and fill you in.

Just this past weekend, since me and my current sweetie finally had the time and privacy to do our thing, we decided to spice things up a bit. He tied me up with some shoelaces and we got to business. But suddenly as he was touching me, I began to felt a slight burning sensation. Then it wasn’t so slight. Next thing I know, he’s frantically untying me from his bedpost and carrying me butt naked to the bathroom to put me in the tub and frantically pour water over my lady parts.

Turns out, my lovely, lovely and sometimes forgetful boyfriend failed to mention that he had earlier put some deathly hot sauce on his fingers to sniff in order to clear up his nose. Well, he forgot to wash his hands, leaving me in agonizing pain. Sounds really, really awful right? But it was hilarious after-the-fact, and my roomies got a serious laugh out of the true tale. I don’t think I’ll ever look at spicy condiments the same.

So are you ready? Do you think you can handle to share your own sex chronicles? I hope so! It’s so totally not a big deal. But, hey, I understand some are more conservative than others. Just at least give it some thought. I promise you, your own hot sauce related stories will totally give your own friends a good giggle and make the oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-that-just-happened moments seem a little less weird.

LOVE SMUDGED: Defining Differences

You hear it all of the time – opposites attract and therefore, make the best couples. But recently, I’ve been debating whether or not this is accurate. Why? Well, because my boyfriend and I are so extremely different from one another that it often times causes little (and sometimes big) bumps in our relationship.

I grew up with the mentality that to get where you want to go, in my case hopefully a national magazine, you need to work. Not just get done your homework on time, pass all of your classes and make sure your room is clean work. No, I mean straight A’s in Advanced Placement classes, leader of at least one organization and too-busy-to-even-breathe work.

I’m the type of overly obsessive perfectionist who never leaves her planner at home. I leave, breathe and sleep organization to make sure I can go above and beyond my set goals. I’ve had three internships, I’ve been dancing for the past 18 years, I hold a high GPA and I drive my friends completely insane with my planning for the future. In high school, I was outside of AP biology an hour before class and stayed an hour late, refusing to get anything other than a five on my test. And in college, I gave up sleep to make sure I could conquer eighteen credits, an internship, a job and several writing gigs.

On the other hand, my boyfriend started out early with the mentality that living life carefree held precedence over any sort of stressful concerns regarding grades, money or unappealing commitments. Now, I promise you, he is one of the most intelligent men I have ever met. He sees the world more clearly than I ever could and understands relationships, people and feelings better than most people I know. But junior year of high school, he made the decision to drop out.

With a group of friends more interested in pills than chemistry formulas, he fell into a life full of drugs and depression. Fortunately, he pulled himself out of the mess, cleaned up his act, got his GED and started working two jobs. That’s around the time I came into his life, bursting with ambition as my junior year of college began.

With my annoying motivational speeches and my consistent reminders that he could use his passion for music to better his life, he enrolled in community college. But, still, his living-for-today attitude shines through, as he doesn’t concern himself with grades or anything close to perfect attendance.

I now find myself debating the longevity of our relationship. I have a year until graduation, and I plan on immediately moving to New York (where I currently reside), and he will still be at the starting line of his education run.

Could we really make it work when I have a full-time job, and he’s waking up at twelve? I’m not sure, and the closer that time gets, the more I find myself nagging him about getting his act together, taking on more classes and learning to wake up to the ringing of the alarm clock rather than twenty calls in a row from me and his Mom.

The problem is, after 21 years, you tend to get pretty stuck in your ways. No matter how many times he tells me to lighten up or to not be too hard on myself, I still beat myself up over the fact that I don’t have a perfect 4.0. And despite my regular complaints about his irresponsibility, he still will sleep through a class or wait until the morning of an exam to open up his textbook.

In the beginning of our romance, we both learned from each other, adoring one another’s opposing characteristics. But have we reached our breaking point? Is what once attracted us to one another now becoming our fatal flaw? I’m not sure. All I know is that I only have one year until I’m thrown into the real world, and I want my love to be on the same playing field of me, gearing up for adulthood.

On the flipside, I might be putting too much emphasis on the success of my partner. This could just be another incident of me trying to control things that are eternally out of my control. And from my experience, guys who have the same ambition as me tend to be assholes – self-obsessed, preoccupied and unaware of the people affected by their actions. Not quite sure what that says about me.

I still don’t have the answer, and I’m not sure if I will. I guess I should take some advice from my beau and take things one day at a time.

– Cary Carr

Introducing Love Smudged

Hello to all my fellow romance addicts. My name’s Cary Carr, and this is Love Smudged – a column full of relationship and sex advice as well as my own memorable (and sometimes slightly embarrassing) stories. I feel that it’s only necessary for me to give you a tiny introduction first, and I will do so by chronicling my own history with love and sex through my most important milestones.

Milestone #1 (Age 15): My first boyfriend

Up until I was 15, I was your normal teenage girl with a crush on that kid who sat behind me in class, daydreaming about the slightest bit of affection or mutual “likeness” going on in my life. But then I got my first boyfriend, Frank. He was your typical metal-head – chain necklace, cut off t-shirts, guitarist for a band. We engaged in the whole making-out in the back of a car, sneaking around, holding hands while walking around the mall. But what I realized was that he wasn’t right for me; in fact, I didn’t really have romantic feelings for him at all. I was simply attracted to the whole idea of having a boyfriend, someone that made me feel more special than the next girl. We broke things off after about eight months, and I came to the conclusion that I wanted the right guy, not just any guy.

Milestone #2 (Age 17): My first heartbreak

Before you get it in your head that you can never possibly get over your first love and start believing that the prospect of finding someone else won’t ever happen, please believe me when I say that every wounded heart truly does heal with time. My first true love hit me like a ten-pound brick right in the face. I couldn’t help it. He was romantic, funny, friends with my friends and just had the certain “it” factor that is impossible to define. But, like most first love stories, it came to a screeching halt when I discovered six months into our relationship that he was cheating on me (ouch x 10). I took him back time and time again, terrified at the prospect of losing him and never receiving that amazingly glorious feeling of love again. But, eventually, he moved on, and I was forced to as well. And now, looking back, I am beyond happy for the experience. I’m stronger, smarter and choosier when it comes to love. And, ladies, we all should be.

Milestone #3 (Age 19): My first time giving in

Ah, freshman year. Keg stands, beer pong, dirty basements and mysterious jungle juice. And, of course, random hook ups. I have no shame in admitting that I’ve slept with more than one person in my lifetime, and why should I? It’s part of being an adult – getting to make your own, personal choices about what you want to do in the bedroom. But we young adults also make our mistakes. I was utterly obsessed with a rising senior (gorgeous, hilarious and clearly way-too-smooth), and I had endlessly tried to receive just a smidge of his attention. Eventually, it worked and oh, did he charm me. Next thing I knew, we were making out on the floor in my dorm-room, and he was working on persuading me to go into the bathroom for a little one-on-one action. Problem: I didn’t really think I was ready to have sex with someone without any sort of commitment. But his sweet words flowed into my ear and next thing I knew, my clothes were on the floor. He promised me that I was “the perfect girl for him” and that he “couldn’t wait to take me on a date.” Unfortunately, those were only words, and next thing I knew, I was crying on the subway reading his (quite cowardly) rejection text messages. So what could I possibly learn? Well, for one not to fall for the guy that swoons every girl at the party, but also that any guy that doesn’t understand the word no the first time isn’t worth it.

Milestone #4 (Age 20): My first time breaking someone else’s heart

My next boyfriend was amazing. To this day, I still think he is by far one of the sweetest, most genuine and down-to-earth men I have ever met. He had his head on straight, treated me like a princess – even when I didn’t deserve it – and deep down loved me with all of his heart. But a year into our relationship, I started having doubts. The love I felt during the honeymoon phase, if it was love, had faded, and I simply wasn’t attracted to him anymore. My dilemma? I had never broken up with someone before, and I was clueless on how to do it in an adult manner. Instead, I started fights with him, put him down and began texting other guys on the down low. In the end, after wearing us both down with the back-and-forth behavior and terrible attitude, I publicly humiliated him by screaming “I just don’t love you anymore” in the middle of the street. The result? I broke his heart just like my first love broke mine, and any possibility of a post-breakup friendship vanished. I still believe that is way harder to break someone else’s heart than have your own broken, but I will never handle the situation in the same way. And hopefully, no one will treat me the way I treated him.

Milestone #5 (Age 21): My first long-distance love

As a self-proclaimed romance addict, it shouldn’t surprise you that I am once again in love. Head-over-heels, jump-up-and-down, butterflies-in-your-tummy love. And not only am I in love, but I am having the all-time best sex of my life (seriously, I was missing out before, but you’ll get more details/advice on under-the-covers shenanigans later). Only problem? I’m now living in New York while my sweetie is still in Philadelphia. However, this distance is only temporary – my internship ends mid August – but it’s still been an uphill struggle for the both of us. See, we’re best friends. Like, we hang out on a daily basis, laugh our asses off together and even work at the same club. And that makes it even harder because the whole seeing each other maybe once a week thing is completely foreign to us. We’ve been arguing more than ever, and we now get zero privacy (I have three roomies), which means zero sex. So what’s this mean? What have I learned? Well, I’m not really sure yet. You’ll be reading about our journey each week, and I guess we’ll both have to see how it plays out.

Intrigued? Have similar stories? Concerns? Well, I’d love to hear all about them, and maybe I can even address some of your own problems with my own similar situations. Just shoot me a message! Like many of you, I am also a compulsive e-mail checker.

Cary Carr
cary.carr@temple.edu

P.S. Love Smudged is a biweekly column, so come back Tuesday, July 24 for the next installment.