Tuesday, February 9, 2010

never assume

it made me feel like an ass and its a mistake i will never make again.
mr ex man and i had gotten into a conversation about our first sexual experiences. this was an honest exchange of information between adults who were planning on getting married, not anything cheap or dirty.
i have a funny story how my then mother in law called the day after my wedding to check in on me. when i told her i was fine(not the complete truth, but what the heck do you say to your mother in law?)she told me how relieved she was because the soldier of fortune men were notorious for being "well endowed" as she put it. that story always gets a big laugh when i tell it, but it fell flat with mr ex man. i was kind of confused. we were being open and honest. he had told me a few intimate details that i could have gone my whole life without knowing, but i didnt protest because i know it was in the spirit of sharing. all it gave me was a way too vivid picture of him with his ex wife.
so why would he shut down and withdraw when i told him about my mother in law calling me in the honeymoon suite the day after my wedding? it took a few days for him to finally confess why he was grumpy and uncommunicative: my story about my well hung ex husband made him feel inadequate. his ex wife had told him that his manhood was too diminutive to satisfy her and that was one of the reasons she had stepped outside their marriage.
imagine me slapping the palm of my hand against my forehead. i felt like such an idiot. i had never considered the size of the wand when feeling the magic between mr ex man and myself. if i had, i would have mistakenly assumed that as the 6'4", football player type guy he was, that he was hung just fine. what he wouldnt believe is that i didnt care. not at all. i knew we would be fine and since his ex wife was the only opinion he was basing his feelings of inadequacy on, i figured there was a good chance she was just being a bitch and lying to him to make him feel like shit in an attempt to justify her unforgivable actions.
i wouldnt say this alone caused our break up, but it certainly did not help. i will never tell that story again until AFTER i am married and praised my husband for the well hung stud that he is.
do all men worry about this? was mr ex man just being overly sensitive or was i the idiot for bringing it up?

14 comments:

  1. Every guy is sensitive about that. I mean, we really have nothing to compare to. Plus, what is "well endowed" to one may be "diminutive" to another. I think he was being a bit of a baby. After all, you certainly didn't make any comments about his size. It also doesn't seem like you were implying that "well endowed" was the only way to satisfy you.

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  2. I don't worry about size, etc, because the real beauty of sex is the emotional connection that is created. I know that I am bigger than some, smaller than some, but it matters absolutely nothing because no one else has with my wife what I do. Granted, when there has been past experience with other bodies, I am sure the tendency to compare is real and something to be careful about. But I really feel that when you embrace your partner (and yourself, for that matter) for who they are and not what you want them to be, that is real intimacy.

    Size shouldn't matter, but for some, they think it does. This might stem back to middle school days in the locker room seeing guys who went through puberty like at age 10 and were years ahead of everyone else.

    My $0.02

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  3. Men are sensitive (in more ways that the obvious) about that area. Are women as sensitive about the size of our boobs - I don't think so and why is that?

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  4. It's something people are sensitive about, just like breast size, height, weight, etc. I'd be cautious about comparisons with anyone in your past unless it's to comment on how much better this is than that was, and I'd be a little hesitant to even go there at all. I don't think anybody wants to dwell on people from our pasts.

    And yes, women are sensitive about breast size. There wouldn't be over 100k breast enhancements done each year otherwise. Not every woman is sensitive about this, but neither is every man sensitive about penis size.

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  5. i get men being sensitive about it. i understand the adolescent comparisons and the male fear of not satisfying.
    i wish i hadnt said anything to him, but i think it was quite a leap from my ridiculous story meant to highlight my crazy mother in law not put a spot light on my ex husbands man hood.
    i think he was being a baby. if he thought for 2 seconds he would realize that even if it was a story about penis size that i have no basis for comparison.
    just like the guys were saying, its all relative. i dont have a photographic memory so its not like i will comparing length and girth measurements. the emotional connection is what matters and at the time, ours was so strong i knew that the sex would be out of this world.
    i never really got the breast thing. i realize some women are so sensitive to being small busted that they are willing to endure painful surgery and recovery to get bigger boobs. i think its a fair comparison to the penis size issue, but i think the need for bigger breasts stems from men constantly being focused on them and saying how they love the fake boob look. women rarely complain about penis size. its rarely an issue because we know its not the size of the wand, but the magic created. so cheesy, but i love that line.

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  6. But a difference with breast size and penis size is that breast size is obvious before you take clothes off. Penis size is a more private thing. And the terms used to describe it have a lot of emotional impact, like "your manhood." Feelings aren't about what makes sense, and having them second-guessed or written off as "just being sensitive" isn't very impressive.

    This is something he was emotionally abused with -- of course it's a sensitive matter. There's nothing particularly wrong with what you said, but it turns out that it hurt him a lot due to this sensitivity that neither of you created. People who have been sexually abused often have difficulty with sexual practices and activities considered normal. What is a pebble to some is a bounder to others. I see no reason to think that his pain was anything but legitimate here. And accepting his pain as legitimate is not a condemnation of you or what you did.

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  7. blain-as is the norm, you brought up some finer points, but this is probably one of the rare times that i think i handled it(at the time)almost perfectly. i was beyond sensitive. my heart hurt that the man i loved was hurting and that it all started with cruel comments from his ex wife. i sincerely apologized and we really talked about the whole situation. when the subject came up again, i was completely supportive and never once diminished his feelings on the subject. where i think he was a baby, in retrospect, is that he would not let it go. no matter how much we are hurt, we have to find a way to heal and move on so that it will not negatively impact your life. i would have never teased him about it or used it as a weapon. not my style. not that you were insinuating that-just being a little more thorough :)

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  8. eek eek eek. I agree with the comment that it just sounds like he was way sensitive. Maybe he needs a bit more healing from his marriage before he is ready for a relationship?

    I don't think you did anything wrong at all or that most med would be bothered by that story! Sheesh, what a mother-in-law... how awkward can you get?

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  9. as mormon guys go, he should have been a brand new man! at the time we met, he had been divorced 5 years. that is almost unheard of in the lds world. at the time, i thought i was blessed with a rare gem of a man, but now i think more along the lines of what you said-he needs a lot more healing.
    my ex mother in law was definitely different. i think he heart was in the right place, but it was incredibly awkward. so glad it was over the phone. i would have died if it had been a face to face conversation. ick.

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  10. I've worked enough with abuse survivors that it doesn't sound like his response is "too" anything, although I would agree that it sounds like he needed more healing before he was ready to be in a relationship. But healing isn't so simple as "I think I'll do some healing now.... All done!" It can take years of hard work that nobody can see on the outside. I'm not a fan of second-guessing someone else's process, although, again, it's fair to judge if the healing has reached a level where taking time away from it for romantic relationships makes sense.

    Disproportionate responses are almost always a sign that there is something relevant that you don't know. It doesn't sound like he was somebody who was banking on his use of the victim card to get him things he wanted -- it doesn't sound like he got anything he wanted out of his response -- so I don't think this was being played up for effect. I think it was legitimate pain played reasonably straight.

    Again, I'm not second-guessing anything you did at the time that you described. I'm just challenging how you're trying to frame it after the fact.

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  11. i dont think he played it up for effect, but he certainly wasnt proactive about getting through this particular issue. healing does not happen on a schedule, however it rarely, if ever, happens spontaneously, without a conscious decision to make a change. i wasnt his first relationship after his divorce and though he did not specifically say it, i am sure they were impacted by this issue. how many relationships have to been thrown under the proverbial bus for someone to finally take notice and start to change behavior that is negatively impacting them? maybe on the surface, calling him a baby seemed rash or even immature on my part, but dont you think his behavior, as i described(from my perfectly objective point of view), lacks maturity?

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  12. It sounds to me like somebody trying to run away from the problem. Maturity isn't relevant to the question. Were I talking to him, I'd be raising the same questions and suggesting he be seeking some help in healing.

    But I also know how difficult it is for men to admit to having been abused, and how difficult it is to have that accepted, and how few resources there are available for support for them (none to speak of). It takes several layers of bravery to walk that path, and it's just a lot easier to live in denial and say that there is no problem.

    Which is why, when I bring up the topic of abused men to dv agencies, they tell me "nobody asks for help, so we can't create resources that nobody wants," and I can't be any too sure that, if they build them, they will come.

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  13. i never really considered him as abused, but we would certainly say a woman was verbally and mentally abused if her husband spoke to her in such a demeaning way. it is one of the saddest double standards ever.
    do you remember the judith light made for tv movie where she was an abusive wife? it was years ago, but it spoke to the stigma that a man feels being abused. its really a 1-2 punch for him.

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  14. I didn't see that one, but I'm glad there's something out there about it. It's unfortunate that the DV movement has been gender-politicized enough that many well-meaning feminist advocates unintentionally shove abused men back toward their closets whenever the topic of abused men comes up by insisting that abused men are rare, and that most abuse is men abusing women.

    I appreciate your willingness to see this in a new light. I hope that new light has helped make this make a little more sense. I also appreciate you hearing my not criticizing how you handled the situation -- it's very common that this kind of conversation involves defensiveness, and I don't ever enjoy that.

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