Starting Over Again...

It's been eleven months and fifteen days since I broke up with my fiance and called off my wedding. I spent three years planning that wedding. I crafted. I bought. I planned. I saved inspiration photos. Sitting in a box in my bedroom back in America is a wedding dress for goodness sake. I was ready for that wedding. I was ready to get married. I wasn't ready to be married though.

When I look ahead to my future, I have no idea how I'm going to plan another wedding. I absolutely cannot manage another long ass engagement. I don't want to be engaged for more than a year, preferably less. At this moment, I can't imagine falling in love again. I can't imagine starting over a new relationship. I can't imagine learning how to make someone new happy. I just can't imagine how to start over.

I am not saying I wish I was with Ron anymore. I don't want to be with him. It's not about him and this is not some form of denial. I'm seriously over him as much as possible. He was my first love so a piece of my heart will always be his. I will always love who he was. Who he is though? I don't know who he is. I haven't spoken a word to him since May. I haven't kissed him since November 29th, 2011. When I think about kissing and I reminisce about it, he's not the one I think about.

It's just hard to imagine falling in love, starting all over. I'm not sure how planning my next wedding will go. Can I manage it without thinking about my failure of an engagement? Can I plan a future with someone else without hedging my bets? Without holding back because I got it wrong once before? Without remembering and comparing it to the last time I did this? How do you move on after something like this happens?

And yet, when it starts, when I'm flirting with... well whoever I'm flirting with (because yup this girl does have some secrets still), it's easy. I don't compare. I don't think about my ex. I don't think about the next step. I don't have to worry about how to move on to the next stage. It fits. It works.

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Sex and the Single Woman

When it comes to sex and the single woman, I feel like there are two types of women. There's Sex and the City types (even Charlotte is having sex, talking about sex, thinking about sex) and there's the "good girls". Now I hate this dichotomy. If I have it in my head, I'm sure others do too. If a woman is Christian, especially if she's "really Christian" then she has to fall into the "good girl" category. Good girls do not think about sex. They don't talk about sex except in that dreamy sort of "someday... when I'm married..." way. If they've had sex in the past, when it's discussed it needs to be apologized for. As in, "I obviously wish I hadn't now. I wish I had waited." And they cannot admit that they enjoyed it while they were doing it. (Can you enjoy a mistake? Of course not. And to admit that you enjoyed a sin? I think that's another sin.) Oh and these good girls? They can't even want to have sex. They can't think about it in concrete terms or look forward to it. They can't have a sex drive.

Do you know why I hate this dichotomy so much? Because I don't fit! I've had sex. It did cause me immense emotional pain when that relationship ended to know that I'd given up such a big piece of me. But do you know what else? I enjoyed it. I miss it. I think about it. Hell, last night I had a dream about it. (An unsatisfactory dream mind you...) Sex is something that comes up in my life. And it's no longer because I'm having it. (I'm not.) Or because, as one acquaintance said, I'm broken over it. I've taped myself back together.

I don't have a next step to get rid of this dichotomy. I don't have a plan to make people aware of it. I'm not trying to pull anything here.

But I notice it. And I don't like it.

I want to be a godly woman but if that means not talking about sex at all, not thinking about it, not enjoying it, not missing it, I don't know if I can be a godly woman. It may no longer be every third word out of my mouth but sex is still something I think about. Most of the other Christian women I know my age are also single and most haven't been kissed yet either (by choice. Mostly. Which I honestly can't understand.) When sex comes up, it's either in light of my past or in that dreamy sort of "someday" way. I honestly cannot remember the last time a Christian friend and I spoke about sex and I heard some sort of a sex drive hidden away in her. Except for one but she's weird like me. :) And she's already married. (Hi, hun.)

So as Christian women, HOW do we deal with this? What are the boundaries for honoring G-d, keeping our purity intact, respecting our brothers in Christ, and acknowledging that sometimes it would be nice to get a little less talk and a lot more action?

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