“…it was an 8, or 9.”

Maybe I was asking to get hurt, but last night for some reason Mr. Intellectual and I got into a discussion about our former relationship over MSN. The crux of our conversation focused around our sex life after wandering around a few other avenues I was curious about- like when I packed on the pounds near the end of our relationship and I got “a little…big” as he phrased it. One very interesting revelation he brought forth of his own volition was that he finally took a cold hard look in the mirror and realized he was, in his words, a “conceited little twat” and is now trying to rectify the situation. Not an easy thing to do and I’m happy he finally acknowledged one of the main reasons why I had to leave, although I’m not sure he’s made that connection since he did not express that.

So, what precipitated the talk on our former love life? Curiousity finally got the better of me and in a moment where we were discussing things with a level of honesty we haven’t shared in quite some time I just flat out asked. While the answer was somewhat surprising to me, it wasn’t all that unexpected. Overall he rated our sex life an 8 or 9 out of 10, with one of the biggest problems being quantity over quality. We lived over an hour apart for the better part of 4 years and he rarely came up to see me at school, so that was always a major source of contention and an obvious damper on the frequency scale. He also stated that he would ideally like sex twice a day, everyday, which was a bit of a surprise since we rarely did that even when we had the entire weekend together with no interruptions.

There were two areas in what he called, ‘fundamentals’ that were lacking in order to make it a 9 or 10 all the time. What was it that would bump me up to a 9 or 10? Anal sex. While he includes this as part of the fundamentals of good sex, along with blowjobs and a multitude of positions I see it as more of an extra. I always knew he was extremely interested in trying this out, but whenever I tried to discuss it seriously with him he’d joke around and shy away from it. My basic stance on anal is that if my partner agrees to go first then I’ll gladly give it a shot. However, after a couple of years with him I was open to the idea, but it was one of those things that I wasn’t going to do without discussing it first and agreeing on a few things. He could never talk about it honestly with me, so it never happened. He described it as being quite amazing and a very intimate act, while I replied that it has an element of the dominant/subordinate relationship that I wasn’t all that into along with a measure of humility.

The second factor that prevented me from achieving that mythical 10 were my knees. I badly injured my knees at 16 while snowboarding in an ice storm and had trouble spending a lot of time on them. I don’t think it helped that shortly thereafter I started spending extended periods on me knees in his parents basement on a concrete floor covered with a cheap, high-traffic pile carpet with little to no padding. Don’t get me wrong it was fun at the time, but not the smartest thing for my poor knees. The consequence for my stupidity was that I had to be careful during sex so as not to cause more pain. Which meant that I couldn’t do woman on top, or the doggy position for too long before my knees would be in too much pain and I’d have to switch to something else. This was always a disappointment to him and I knew it, so that response came as no surprise. It didn’t help that my subsequent weight gain exacerbated the condition. Surprisingly my knees are doing a lot better these days. I lost the weight and I started working out and stretching to strengthen the muscles, tendons and ligaments in my knees and I rarely, if ever, experience the kind of pain I was in during our relationship.

Overall his answers were not all that unexpected in and of themselves. I knew that I was giving him what he wanted and unselfishly giving of myself to the point were it became a one way street, while he had no idea how unsatisfied I was at times. His selfishness spilled over into the bedroom and it affected how I felt and responded to him. I started to withdraw sexually months and even years prior to our break up because I wasn’t getting what I needed from him outside the bedroom to feel completely uninhibited when we were together. The natural giver in me started to die because it wasn’t being nurtured and appreciated. The reciprocation and consideration were missing and it led to a lot of hurt feelings and resentment, even to this day. The legacy of which has spilled over into my subsequent relationships, or lack thereof and cause me a great amount of concern.