I searched around, and the main definitions of “Voyeurism” that I could find either had to do with the practice of spying on others during sex, the act of observing others during intimate encounters/acts and achieving sexual gratification from it, or someone that often looks for stimulation by visual means. Voyeurism doesn’t only cover watching people have sex, but also includes watching people undress, or engage in a private activity. Voyeurism is mainly considered to be spying, or when someone watches an individual or couple without their knowledge. Only a few countries consider non-consensual Voyeurism to be a crime.

I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a people watcher. When I sit and wait in a public area, I will sometimes watch people walk by or interact. I try to read them and their actions at times. When I sit in the passenger seat of a car, sometimes I watch the people in the cars that pass me. That’s just the simple and innocent part of it. The part that is weird for me is that sometimes, from time to time, I do enjoy the visual stimulation of seeing other people engage in sexual encounters. I have never once spied on anyone, and I don’t ever plan on doing so. The most I have ever done is looked at pictures or watched videos, from time to time, by myself or with my partner. I would never watch someone without their consent, and if it was ever given – I am not sure I would even take the chance to do so. Sure, I have the fantasy of enjoying sex with my partner in the same room that others are doing the same. I don’t feel like I need that fantasy to become a reality, because I greatly value my privacy, and I value other’s privacy as well. I wanted to be sure to mention that, so you don’t assume that I am some weird pervert and start to worry that I will be peeking in your windows. That’s never going to happen.

Why did I choose to write about this? I did so because when I figured out that I had these tendencies, I felt that I was some completely strange pervert. Before I met my partner – when I would fantasize, it would usually be about two completely random people that my mind made up, or characters from something I watched or read. In high school, I began to read and enjoy erotica as well, and I still love to read and enjoy erotica. I always liked to be able to picture what was going on in my head, and now I enjoy it even more because it gives me ideas for things to try out with my partner. I really like erotic photography, because it looks so artful as well as erotic. I’m not really into porn, because it’s hard to find anything that really turns me on. I like something that seems erotic, and that the people in the video seem to have some kind of connection with one another. I don’t like seeing a bunch of fake people having what seem to be fake and empty sexual encounters. It bores me more than anything.

At the same time I feel like my tendencies make me feel dirty. I don’t know why, I don’t feel as if I am really doing anything really truly wrong – like spying on someone. I guess it’s because it’s not very accepted at times. It’s hard for me to embrace these tendencies and feel okay. I mean, I have gotten instructional videos and erotica books to watch and read with my partner, so the both of us can enjoy it together. Another reason is because when my partner and I first began dating, I did get upset with my partner over porn. It made me feel inadequate and stupid, like I couldn’t do it for him so he needed something else. It also made me feel awkward, because I really couldn’t get into a lot of it when we tried watching it together. Especially the really hardcore stuff, I really don’t get it, and I’m just not all that into it. Plus, the idea of my partner needing to watch another woman to get off didn’t really do much for my self-confidence. Though I was willing to open up a little and start looking for things that I felt comfortable to watch with my partner. That was when I realized that I was a little voyeuristic. I’ve always been more of an erotica person, so I am glad that he has opened up to reading the stories with me as well.

Now, I’m just a small mild case, and I know there are people with bigger tendencies than I have. I know that I am not the only one, because porn is so widely searched on the internet. I just wanted to write this, and get it out there, so I don’t feel so ashamed for enjoying what I do. And that I shouldn’t have to feel like a dirty pervert for it.

So this year, I have been a bit of a “bah humbug” towards Valentine’s Day. I just haven’t felt the need to place any importance on it. In the past two years that my partner and I have been together, we have always been too busy with work or studies to really fully celebrate it. Sure, we have given each other gifts but that is about it. This year will be the same, because I have an evening class on the night of Feb. 14th and I work all day, so that leaves very little time for us to celebrate the day. If we do anything for Valentine’s, it will have to be on the day before. My partner wasn’t too thrilled with my “bah humbug” attitude this year. He could understand about me not wanting to get each other gifts, but he really wanted for us to spend time together. My main argument was “We can spend time as a couple any other time of the year – so we don’t need to do it on that exact day.” When I repeated this conversation to a friend, she simply replied “Well, do you?”, and I thought about her question. Do I take the time to set aside time, to spend with my partner? Well, we’re both so busy. So, we may not even get a chance to make time, sometimes. So, my answer was “No, we don’t often make time for each other.” I then realized that she had a point. Darn.

My partner and I are both busy most of the year. We both work most of the day, and at the same time we are full time college students. So unfortunately, studies get the top priority a lot of the time, because we need good grades. We also both take summer classes so we can get through our degrees a lot faster, this leaves little time throughout the year to have full fledged free time. Now, I am not saying we never spend time together, we do – but it’s not always the quality time I would hope for. We have a roommate as well, so we do have someone else home from time to time. So there isn’t always “us” time when we are at home. Though, he believes we do a good job of making time for each other, I disagree. We can be too willing to put our plans off if family wants to visit, or friends we haven’t seen in a while want to visit. I’m very easy going, and if we need to put the plans off because of that, I’m willing to, because I know we will do it another day. It just doesn’t work out, though, if you don’t have time to save it for another day.

So, I see my friend’s point. We need to take the time to spend some quality time together. It’s important! And it’s a New Year’s Resolution that I made. I decided to make it one of my New Year’s Resolutions this year because I was becoming more and more disappointed that we haven’t been able to spend time together like we used to when we first started dating. The bad thing is that this class semester, I feel like our weekday schedule pretty much sucks. On Mondays, by the time we both are home from work, I only get to see him for 15 or 20 minutes before I have to leave for my evening class that lasts until 10:00 at night. Wednesdays, he has to leave later for a late evening class as well. And Thursdays, we don’t really get to see each other the whole day until 8:00. So I really need to try my best to figure out a way to work this around my schedule.

One thing I have had to learn how to do, is have proper time management. So, each semester I work out a schedule of how I want to use my time each week. I use this schedule for the entire semester, though I don’t always stick to it a lot of the time, and that is something that I need to learn to do. On this schedule, I have decided to do my best to fit in time with my partner at least every other week. It is very important to me to make sure I do this. Why is it so important? Well, it’s bonding time; it’s good to take the time to reinforce your bonds with your partner. He and I don’t always get a chance to have a good conversation with one another. So why not sit down and really talk to one another? Whether it’s over a dinner, or if we take the time to walk through the park, I enjoy actually getting to talk to my partner. It gives me a chance to get things off my mind, whether it is about class, work, and so forth.

So, make the time to spend some quality time with your partner. You don’t want to take anyone for granted either. I realized that with my loved ones, I always expect them to be there when I need them – but if something were to happen and I lose one of them, I would regret not having spent time with them. The same goes with my partner; I would greatly regret not spending time with him.

My friend told me there is nothing wrong with Valentine’s Day, because at least it serves as a reminder to couples to spend time with each other. I now can see her logic. If you live a busy life, why not try your best to spend time with the partner? If I couldn’t spend much time with my partner, where would the bonding be? Whether it’s mentally or physically – he and I need that reinforcement to keep our relationship stable. So, think about Valentine’s Day as your reminder, and do something with each other that makes you both happy, whether it’s sitting and watching a movie, going to dinner, or having that long walk on the beach everyone talks about.

I did something recently that I never thought that I would ever have to do. I found myself waiting nervously as my partner called the nearest pharmacy to ask if they carried the Plan B pill. This was a new learning experience and I was embarrassed as heck to have to even ask the person if they had it, hence the reason my partner had to ask for it. It all started because I was forced off of my birth control pill. I was annoyed enough because I was forced to go into the GYN for my Women’s Wellness exam or else they refused to refill my birth control prescription because I was apparently overdue for an exam. Sure, there is nothing wrong with that – all women should try their best to keep up the wellness exam….but when you don’t have a whole lot of money in your pocket it’s a different story. I had to go in and see a physician’s assistant that I had never even seen before, she seemed as if she was new to the office and she was a little gruff and bossy. I became even more annoyed when I asked her if getting an IUD device would be a possible option for me, she asked me why I wanted it. I thought it would be a good idea; I would be out of insurance by my next birthday because I will then be too old to be covered by my parents insurance. Then I won’t have to worry about paying full price for the pills after my birthday comes. She then asks me if I have had any children, I told her “No” and she just looks at me and frankly tells me “You can’t have an IUD because you have never had children.” That was it, I could not argue. I am sure I gave her a funny look because I was confused – I had never heard that before. (Sure, there are reasons behind her saying “no” – but still) So I left with a prescription for a 90 day at a time birth control prescription, making sure to tell them to make sure I can get a generic prescription.

I go to the pharmacy and turn it in and say again “I would like the generic prescription, please” and then left. Later when I go to pick it up, the pharmacist tells me that it’s going to cost me “$100” and I say “Why does it cost so much?” she shrugs and tells me to call my insurance company. I ask “$100, for a generic!?” and find out that it’s not the generic because I can’t get a generic on the prescription I turned in because the way the physician wrote it there is no generic prescription. I told her that I want it changed because there was no way I was going to pay that. She faxed in a new prescription and I was on my way. Only it took a while to finally get my prescription because the doctor’s office took a while to send it in (despite my badgering) and I had to be off the pill for a while. That didn’t really stop my partner and I at all and then we had an accident – the condom broke. I wasn’t worried at first but I could tell my partner was a little nervous about it. Then he wasn’t and I became increasingly nervous, I do not want a baby right now at all. I felt like I would have to get it aborted if something happened because I couldn’t stand the thought of having to put the baby up for adoption and abortion was something I didn’t want my body to have to experience. So there I was in the shower and I just started crying, I didn’t want to be forced into either of those choices. Sure, I feel like I would want to have at least one child someday, but that someday is a long way off – not right now.

I then expressed my nervousness to my partner, and he suggested that we might try to get the Plan B pill. I shook my head and told him that I felt a little silly and embarrassed to even ask anyone about it. I felt that I would be looked down upon because I had to even ask for it. I certainly wouldn’t look down upon anyone for it if they ever had to ask me about it. Looking back on it, I feel like I was being smart, I know there is no way I could take care of a child right now. I praise my friends that have children and are trying to make their way through college – but I certainly couldn’t do it. I mean I am a full time student and I work 2 jobs. I could never provide for a child or give them the time that they need. In a world that has unfit parents, I would never want to add myself to the mix. I want to be smart about it and have children whenever I am ready – if ever I am ready. When I know I can fully provide for them; when I feel as if I have grown enough as a person to be a fit parent and so on.

The G-spot (or the fun spot as I like to call it) is something that I am learning how to work with. The first time I had ever really heard that much about it was in high school. One of my good friends sat behind me in class and we were passing notes back in forth in class, like we did sometimes. One day she gave me a note that said “I think I found my G-spot” – and I didn’t know exactly where it was located or what it was at the time but I felt that I had an idea. I thought it was just a spot anywhere on your body that made you feel really good – like a sweet spot or something. Thank goodness I didn’t voice that thought at the time or else I know I would have been laughed at. I mean, when I masturbated in high school I liked to stroke my breasts and nipples – that made me feel really good. So think about how my friends would have laughed at me if I assumed my G-spot was on my breasts.

So for those of you that wants to know a little more about the g-spot: The G-spot or the Grafenburg Spot is said to be located 2 to 3 inches up the anterior vaginal wall. This spot is known to give women various levels of pleasure and can even bring them to experience female ejaculation. Now, I want to get this out now – if you haven’t found your G-spot don’t worry! I also want to say that some women may not enjoy G-spot stimulation. It can cause you to feel like you are going to urinate and some women may not always like that sensation. I admit at first that I did not like it at all. I wanted to tell my partner to stop because I felt like I was going to wet myself. I just want to get that out because I don’t want any of you feeling like you have failed because you have yet to experience your G-spot. I even read that some women will undergo “G-Spot amplification” surgery just because they feel like they can’t find it. I definitely don’t want you to feel that you need to get surgery just to make yourself “normal”.

I want to tell you that I have been there and you don’t need to be there. We all have different bodies and they all work different ways, that doesn’t mean that it makes any one of us not “normal”. The first time I had ever even heard that women could ejaculate was when I started dating my partner. He asked me if I could “squirt” and I looked at him like he had lost his mind. I really didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know women could do that and I was torn between wanting to say something that would make him happy and being honest. Let me tell you that my partner and I are very open with each other about what we want and need from each other sexually. I’ll admit though that in the beginning, I wasn’t 100% that way with him. I was new to being in a serious relationship, I met the guy of my dreams and started dating him, I wanted to do things that I felt would make him happy because I was afraid that I would lose him if I didn’t. Yeah, I was wrong and I’ll admit that – but that was my frame of thinking at the time.

So after that, I began to feel pressured to learn how to ejaculate – not by my partner at all but by me. I knew he liked it and that he wanted me to do it too, so I felt that I had to. I read things online and watched videos that talked about it and I just couldn’t figure it out. I never felt that I was having an intense feeling of pleasure at all and I just couldn’t figure it out. I wanted to kick myself in the rear if I could because I couldn’t get my body to do what I wanted it to. First off, I know it was the pressure getting in the way – I mean no one can really enjoy what they are doing if they are pressuring themselves or someone else is pressuring them to do so. After I gave up on it, things were better and much easier.

That’s when it became known to me as the “Fun Spot” – because after a while I began to be able to notice it get stimulated during intercourse with my partner. It felt great and I absolutely loved it. I’ll also say that I have experienced ejaculation twice now and I didn’t orgasm when it happened and I didn’t squirt copious amounts of fluid. They were both small dribbles of fluid and that’s it, I know what I did because I could feel it when it happened. The first time was during sex and the second time was when I was trying out one of my new G-spot sex toys. You don’ t know how thrilled I was when I read an article that Nina Hartley wrote on female ejaculation and she said that women may only let out a little dribble and it doesn’t always happen during an orgasm. It helped me to realize that I wasn’t just plain weird.

Since then, I have wanted to experiment more and more with my G-spot. I’d really like to be able to experience an orgasm from it someday. I recently have gotten a kegel ball to see if that helps me out any. I currently own one G-spot toy but I am looking into getting others to try. I know now that it is not something you should try to force your body to do – just take your time and let it happen when it wants to happen. I also need to practice and get used to the feeling, sometimes the feeling can be a little too intense for me. I also am not always thrilled with the feeling that I need to urinate – it causes me to clench up my muscles big time and I focus more on trying to keep things in that let things out. It also completely ruins the feeling of pleasure that I may get from it because I am too focused on clenching my muscles.

So for me, it’s journey of learning and discovery and I hope that if you are trying to learn how to work with your own G-spot that it will be the same for you. Just remember that we are all different and our bodies don’t work the same. If I had realized that in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have pressured myself nearly as much.

In light of my partner and my upcoming 2 year dating anniversary, I decided to write a post on us and love. Though we have only been together for 2 years, it seems so much longer that we have been together. I still love reminiscing about how we were when we first met each other. We both had our own growing to do ourselves and with each other. I find it amazing that as two people fall in love, it causes certain chemicals to release in your brain. Such as pheromones, dopamine, nor epinephrine, and serotonin and they go on to stimulate the “pleasure center” of your brain. This can cause changes in your body such as loss of appetite and/or sleep, increased heart rate, and feelings of excitement. It can even cause an extreme attachment to the other person almost like an addiction. I have read that researchers believe that this can last anywhere from one and a half to three years.

I went with my partner to a “Body Worlds” exhibit last year, and they had a huge sign up that talked about love and the effects that it can have on the brain and body. I really liked what I read and it explained a whole lot to both me and my partner, we both agreed that we had a loss of appetite around the time we first met. I lost a bunch of weight although part of it had to do with the stressful situations I was going through and part of it was due to not having a huge appetite. I never really remember having a loss of sleep, but I do remember that occasionally I would wake up in the middle of the night and roll over expecting my partner to be there and put his arms around me as I slept. I only woke up to be disappointed that he wasn’t there. I felt an extreme attachment to my partner and I still do to this very day. I loved and still love being around him and still do, we make a point to spend time together even if we are just going out to do grocery shopping. I went through a bit of stress when he and I started dating because my Mom used to give me a hard time thinking that I was taking diet pills because I was losing weight and I was torn between wanting to spend time with my boyfriend and feeling obligated to spend time with family and friends because they felt that I was spending too much time with my boyfriend and wanted time to hang out with me too.

I think it’s important to understand these things about love too and understand your body as well. If my Mom understood that maybe she wouldn’t have hassled me as much, and if my friends understood that at the time I was going through a huge change in my life and felt an extreme attachment to my boyfriend at the time, maybe they wouldn’t have given me such a hard time. I feel like you have to be there to understand it. I know one of my friends who had been dating her partner for almost 6 years understood what I was going through because she knew how it was when she first started dating him. I notice the same thing with one of my siblings who would give me a hard time as well. Now that she has started dating she seems to want to spend all of her time with him. One of my friends that hassled me as well, I remember her having a bit of a disappearance when she became infatuated with a guy that she knew. It’s just how it goes and I understand that now, you can’t always fight what your body is telling you to do. I can understand why my friends suddenly disappeared when they started dating as I was growing up. I mean, sure no one is happy when it happens but I’ll accept it.

I still have that extreme attachment to my partner to the point where the thought of having to spend one night away from him gets me down. I am so used to having him near me when I go to sleep now that I feel like I would have a lot of trouble even getting to sleep without him. I was thinking about this the other day – I truly believe that my partner is my perfect match. Sure, I love him and I love being around him but I also view him as my safe place. My one place I can go to when I am hurt or scared and not have to worry about being hurt further or even judged at all. So I believe that is part of the reason I need him so much, he’s the one person I feel that I can trust to be open-minded and unbiased with me. I definitely feel that he is my better half and I always tell him that he is the sexier one of the two of us, though if you asked him I know he’d disagree. If anything, I definitely feel that I hit it off very lucky with my partner. My first serious relationship and I managed to meet someone that I mesh with so well. I’m also lucky to have someone that truly enjoys my body the way he does. I mean, it’s sad that I could even ever feel self-conscious around him with the way he treats me.

I know that from now on I can get by as long as I have him to help me and support me and I’ll always be there to do the same for him. The same goes for my friends and family, I care deeply about them and will always be there to lend a helping hand. I truly know that love is all I will ever need to get by in my life. If I can never have that fancy car, sparkling jewelry, awesome looking digital camera, or gorgeous dress that I have been drooling over, so be it. Sure I may pout from time to time, but I’ll get by as long as I have my partner and my family.

After reading a few posts here on Eden Café that involved the writer talking about learning of their own sexuality growing up, I became inspired to write about my own. I’ll admit going through puberty was an embarrassing and extremely awkward time for me. So why would I want to talk about it? I don’t know… I was just inspired to talk about my own blossoming. Let’s see where to start, well… how about what my parents taught me about puberty and sexuality. Well, my Mom taught me pretty much nothing and my Dad just eventually helped to pad the belief that all guys were dirty perverts. So, there I was with no idea what my body was going through and why it was changing. I pretty much loathed the weird hairs popping up on my body out of nowhere – it did nothing but make me feel disgusting and dirty. I also was the first girl in my 3rd grade class to begin growing breasts, sure they were extremely small but they were there, enough for all the other girls to notice and scold me for it. One girl came over to me at recess and said “You’re not supposed to be growing breasts yet!” I was shocked and extremely embarrassed, no wonder I ended up becoming the shy wallflower throughout the rest of my school career with how awkward with myself I was becoming. I was already blossoming before all the other girls, what was wrong with me?

When I was in the 4th grade, my period came to me in the middle of the night and I awoke the next day with messy underwear and a bunch of confusion. I ran into the bath room and sat in the tub for over an hour hoping that it would stop soon. My mother’s reaction was to have a relative take me to the library and check out a book to tell me all about it. Not a single one of them talked to me or explained anything to me; it was just “read the book that will help you”. I remember how frustrated I was because I didn’t want to read a book, just tell me what was going on with me – of coarse eventually I was able to get my Mom to talk to me about it but it was short and sweet. Now the whole sex talk business, yeah I learned about sex from the school nurse. During the 4th grade, we had to bring home a form for our parents to sign so the school could teach us about puberty. The boys split up and went off with someone and we went off with the school nurse. Sure, we were just supposed to learn about our bodies and our periods – but when asked a question regarding sex, she answered honestly. So that’s how I learned about sex, nope no memory of my Mom sitting down and talking to me. The only memory I have is that of the school nurse standing in front of us saying “and the penis hardens and fills with blood.” Ha, and I’ll admit it didn’t weird me out or shock me one bit. I’ll admit I’ve seemed to always have had a bit of a curiosity when it came to sex though being an “early bloomer” when it came to puberty probably helped that fact.

I was pretty embarrassed about it all, especially the new found curiosity about the opposite gender and sex. I never ever tried asking my Mom a question I felt she would beat around the bush, of course maybe her buying me a certain teen magazine was her way of answering those questions that I may have had. There was a certain one geared towards high school girls but she got it for me anyways despite me being a middle school student. That’s where I learned about masturbation and teen sex, etc. I did sneak and rummage through my Mom’s Cosmopolitan magazines from time to time and learned a few things from there. Of course neither are the best sources for sexual information – but being at a time where we didn’t own a computer and the internet was starting to get big via AOL, etc. I didn’t even want to try looking at the library for any of the information because I always felt a little wrong about my newfound curiosity. By the time I was in the 8th grade I was already able to get myself off, of course it was just by using forms of friction on my crotch to get myself there. I never really fully masturbated until I was in high school. The odd thing is that no matter what guy I had a crush on, I never once fantasized about any of them. I always fantasized about other people being together, just random people I made up in my head or maybe characters from a book I was reading. Though part of it may have to do with me not being happy with myself or reality growing up and then part of it may be due to voyeuristic fetishes. I joke now that maybe I just had too much sexual energy and the only one that was able to tap into it is my current partner. I mean, he was the first guy that I met that I actually felt good fantasizing about. My current partner is actually the one that bought me my first vibrator and how I wish that I thought about buying myself a sex toy earlier because it would have proved very useful to me.

As far as learning about my sexuality went, well that would make me feel even dirtier sometimes. As I said, I was curious so I did eventually learn what I did and didn’t like over time through the internet and my fantasies. I fantasized about bondage, two women/men being together (like I said I never fantasized about myself), cross-dressing men, etc. So I feel like I eventually have been able to work out my kinks, and I know what I like and what I want from my partner. Due to one of my family members being a bit of a porn addict (to the point that he had his own website of collected porn), I had an issue with it growing up. So I never would watch porn ever, if I needed something visual at times I would grab one of my R rated movies with close to soft-core sex scenes in them and watch those. I mostly read erotic stories that I found on the internet so I could use my imagination.

Thinking back on it all, I don’t know why I am so embarrassed. I mean, everyone goes through the journey. I also believe that it’s an important one to take as well. If anyone has any enlightening or embarrassing puberty stories that they would like to share please do, it can help to have someone to relate to.

Let me remind you about what I wrote about Anxiety in the first post:
GAD stands for “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” – it’s something that causes someone to worry or become anxious uncontrollably, usually it’s taken out of proportion and the situations are made worse than they seem. It gets so bad that the anxiety begins to dominate a person’s thoughts. Some symptoms may include: ongoing worry, tension, trouble with sleep, trembling, irritability, nausea, sweating, and so on. I’ve been doing a little research on it and it says that it affects 4 million people and tends to affect women more than men.

Job Stress going on at the time padded my stress level, keeping it high. I remember how drained I was becoming from it all – to the point that I would go over to my boyfriend’s house and want to do nothing but lay down and take a nap. I worked as a work study in an office under a supervisor that was often accused of being disrespectful, racist, and prejudiced against women. My fellow work study began to become uncomfortable around him, and it turned out that she was feeling harassed. I even overheard him make a comment to her about what she was wearing one day. She also felt like he would stare at her closely as she would walk away. Things got worse when she wrote a formal letter of complaint to the head of our office. Things were not taken care of properly and he ended up harassing her worse and taking it out on me as well. I actually had him come and raise his voice at me and ridicule me because he felt that I wasn’t working fast enough on a project. I became stressed and very demotivated, at the end of the semester I was graduating and I would be unable to keep my job after that (to work as a work study you have to be taking classes on the campus you are working on). My plan was to take a break for the summer and recuperate- but that didn’t happen, that’s when I hit my breaking point.

My boyfriend and I still lived with our parents at the time, and his Dad met a new woman and decided to propose (after 3 months!). So he had to move in with his dad, the fiancée, and the fiancée’s mother. They were all moving to a different city, which wasn’t far away but still a longer drive. I would usually stay back and forth between my house and his house and he would do the same. I always got along very well with his family and I felt like I was being accepted into the family as well. By the summer, we had been together for at least a year – which to me because I truly feel that my partner (boyfriend) is my soul mate. I always got along with his father’s fiancée as well. I feared that my partner would get pulled into the middle of another failing relationship when his father and the fiancée’ began to have relationship trouble. Little did I know, that I would fall victim to it as well in the process. The fiancée’ began to have issues with me after they had only been moved in for 3 weeks. She made inaccurate assumptions of me, and nitpicked at me, and made false excuses why she had issues with me. She tried to say that I would make my boyfriend wait on me hand a foot – but that’s untrue we would do things for each other. She even witnessed him and me cooking together one night. I had trouble understanding why she ended up being so harsh to me. Everyone had their own excuses; maybe she was bipolar, “she nitpicks at everyone”, and so on. After all this, I have not been allowed over at the family home. (It will be a year at the end of this month since I have been unable to visit with my partner’s father or half brothers.) This is when I hit my breaking point, I fell into depression, and I began to contemplate severing my relationship with them.

My thoughts spiraled out of control again; I felt that I was no longer special to my partner. I asked him if he out of the relationship because I felt so guilty for causing him and his father extra trouble that they didn’t need. Even though nothing was truly my fault – I had dream after dream about the things going on with the fiancée. I even had one where we were all having dinner and she ended up shoving my partner against a wall because he wouldn’t side with her and leave me. I felt that I was being pushed out of that side of his family, and I was heartbroken over it all. I felt as if I lost a part of my family that I care so much about. Around Christmas time I had my first panic attack, I had a dream of being in the hospital and I ended up bleeding out all over the place. I woke up and panicked to the point that I passed out. At the time I was having to deal with the fact that I wouldn’t be able to spend a holiday with my partner because I couldn’t visit with his family like I did the year before. So it was rough – I felt as if I was going through the stages of coping over not being able to see his family anymore. You know those stages: anger, denial, resentment, bargaining, etc.

I decided to start going to counseling – it was a New Year’s Resolution of mine. Unfortunately since then my stress has gone in and out of control. Like I mentioned in the last post – I had another panic attack about a month or so ago. Counseling has begun my way of coping with the issues. As you can see part of anxiety is that a person will exaggerate the situation and make it worse. I’m sure you can see that I have done that from what I have written. One main thing my counselor presses upon me is that I need to pinpoint my thoughts; anxiety is fueled by fear, so I need to find out what my fears are. I have talked to him about everything that as went on as well as things from my past. I’ve had to speak about issues from my childhood that I have never told anyone. This has been very hard for me, but I have realized that one of my main fears is losing everyone that I care about. So I have a fear about losing people I care about, okay… and on top of that it seems that I have a fear of abandonment. That’s what I learned in my last counseling session and to me it makes sense. My counselor feels that it may have stemmed from my parent’s failing relationship – sure they never spoke of divorce but off and on my Mom would walk into my bedroom and say “Pack your bags, we may be leaving your father soon”. So he feels that may have caused my fear of loss and even abandonment because I felt that I was being abandoned by my father in the process.

All of my out of control thoughts stemmed from a fear that I was losing or have lost someone. With my Mom – I feared that we were alienating each other, in the beginning with my boyfriend – I feared that I was losing him. Then at my job – I had no moral support so I may have felt abandoned. Then onto the situation with the father and the fiancée; I felt that I had lost family and that maybe my boyfriend’s father was turning his back on me. So that’s both there a fear of losing someone and I’m sure that fueled the fear of abandonment. This has really helped me in the long run because now I have had to think more along the lines of “They won’t leave me over this” if something comes along that may cause me to think otherwise. My counselor has also given me cd that covers Progressive Relaxation and Autogenic Training – I recommend them. He has also been having me do positive reaffirmation to help deal with my body image issues and to keep me from feeling weak like I had been.

It’s been rough dealing with Anxiety, and it’s severely messed up my sleep – but I am determined to get through it and put anxiety behind me for good. After all, I refuse to end up having to be put on medication for the rest of my life. Getting all of this off my chest has helped as well – thanks for reading. I’ll try to write again about it once I get a handle on it all – that way maybe I can give better advice to those who need to cope with it as well.

Well, here’s a little information of Anxiety Disorder for you:
GAD stands for “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” – it’s something that causes someone to worry or become anxious uncontrollably, usually it’s taken out of proportion and the situations are made worse than they seem. It gets so bad that the anxiety begins to dominate a person’s thoughts. Some symptoms may include: ongoing worry, tension, trouble with sleep, trembling, irritability, nausea, sweating, and so on. I’ve been doing a little research on it and it says that it affects 4 million people and tends to affect women more than men.

I woke up in the middle of the night about a month ago and suffered from a panic attack. It was about 1:15 in the morning – I sat up and panicked, my heart was racing and I had a hard time relaxing. I ended up asking my partner to take me to the hospital. I couldn’t figure out what was going on with my body and it was scary. It’s the second panic attack that I have had since last year, when I got to the hospital – I told them that and they proceeded to admit me and then they did a blood test, urine test, chest x-ray, and a CAT scan on me to rule out anything being wrong with my heart, circulatory system or anything else. Nothing was wrong so they discharged me from the hospital and gave me papers that told me that I was suffering from “Anxiety Disorder”.

I’m very embarrassed by it all and I have kept it secret ever since I began to suffer from anxiety. I don’t feel that it is something that is easily understood by everyone. It’s not really easy for me to talk about, especially because I feel that it will change how people I know view me. At times, I even feel like I am crazy and far from normal because of it. I feel that now it would be best if I get it out in the open and get a strong support network started – after all how can I get past it if I can’t even be open about it.

I feel like I can pin point the beginning of when my stress began to become overwhelming. It began during Hurricane Ike – we didn’t evacuate, we stayed behind and I stayed with my partner and his dad to help out. The hurricane left us without power – which gave us very little cold beverages and cold food to eat. We had to work and ration things out – I remember walking around with my partner. We walked around to see what stores were open and which were not. I remember walking back to the apartment and I had to lie down because I was feeling small heart palpitations. I shook it off and didn’t really worry about it.

After that, I began to go through a lot of stress – stress because I was out of my classes for 2 weeks and I had to struggle to make sure I passed everything, I was also at odds with my parents. I never dated much in my life, and when I met someone – I never was really open about it with my parents. I just didn’t feel comfortable about it. Which I felt was for the better because they turned out to be jerks anyways. When I met my partner – I was finally open about it, maybe it was because I just got such good vibes about it. I even called my Mom to tell her about the great date that I had on the way home from it.

Unfortunately, my Mom wasn’t nearly as supportive of my dating as I thought she would be. My Mom made a lot of mistakes growing up. One involved her getting pregnant at a young age – though she eventually miscarried. I don’t know as much about my parents past as my sister does – but I am sure part of it had to do with her and my dad partying and doing drugs in the young years of their relationship together. My parents weren’t necessarily smart at times, not with themselves, each other, or the friends that they made. So when I started dating – my Mom projected all of that onto me: According to her I was taking diet pills because at the time I was losing weight, and I often got lectured about how I shouldn’t take them. When I wasn’t there, my sister would tell me that my Mom would often talk behind my back and call me irresponsible, talk about how all guys are only good at first, and suggest that I may be taking pills or something. See it was tough being a 22 year old (on the verge of becoming a 23 year old) at the time and still living with your parents. It’s even tougher when they still want to view you as a child. It was so bad that my parents wouldn’t even let me close the door to my bedroom if my partner and I were going to be in there alone. I became frustrated, see I’ve always been a good girl, maybe a little rebellious growing up – but it never involved crazy sex escapades, drugs, alcohol, or anything else. I can’t even stand to be near someone smoking a cigarette. My Mom was just so convinced that I wasn’t going to be smart and I would make all of the same mistakes she did. It eventually led to my Mom and I fighting with each other through an e-mail. I ended up having to leave work because I was in tears, I couldn’t handle it and I feared that my Mom and I were beginning to alienate ourselves from each other .

Also at the time, I was having a little bit of a hard time getting used to being a relationship with such a great guy. I was used to receiving some form of emotional scarring in one way or another – so unfortunately I expected that same thing from my new partner. Neither of us had been in a good serious relationship before – so the both of us had to change and get used to it. I had to learn to drop my barriers and fears about men and being in a relationship and he had to drop the habits he developed from being a single man. I had a lot of trouble dealing with him not being able to filter out that he wasn’t supposed to scope out other women anymore. I normally would catch him looking at other women right in front of me and this caused my thoughts to spin out of control. I admit that I had never had good confidence in my looks and body and I made it worse. I began to compare myself to other women that fit that skewed form of beauty that I felt I needed to be. I worried that he would find someone else and leave me, or that he would get bored with the way I looked and go looking for someone else, or that I even had do things like threesomes just to keep him interested (that idea just came from knowing that it was something that all guys fantasized about). When my Mom and Dad’s marriage began to get rocky it was apparent to everyone that he started looking at other women. When I was 11 I found porn on our family computer and if there was anything on TV showing skimpy women he always wanted to watch it. So unfortunately I began to associate wandering eyes with unhappiness in the relationship. Which I realize now isn’t always the case and I know there is not anything wrong with it. This was just my thinking at the time.

This is part 1, in part 2, I’ll finish up the rest of the story and tell you how I am handling it all.

When given the chance to write an article for kink week, I thought “well, I really don’t have a lot to write about, we’re still new.” So I thought that I would write about just that, everyone is a beginner at something one time or another. So if you enjoy it, that’s when you want to get in there – do your research and get advice from those that are more practiced. At least, that’s what I have been doing when I can – it really helps me that I have made friends with people online that are involved with a kinky lifestyle in one way or another.

How I got into it & what I like to do or rather what my partner and I are experimenting with. The first thing I tried with my partner was bondage, it was simple I just tied his hands above his head. I still remember it, and I loved it and I pretty much itched for the chance to have him try the same on me. Which he did eventually at my request and I was never one to go straight out and make a request at the time – I would just pretty much hint at it. How I got into bondage, well – that pretty much started my real life experiences. Now, my partner and I now own our own tether restraint system for the bed, a sash to tie, handcuffs, and some comfy cute pink ankle restraints. Now the handcuffs actually came with a police officer costume that I wore one Halloween – and you really shouldn’t use those in the act of hot passionate sex, because they could hurt or become very uncomfortable.

The reason I like bondage is because it’s empowering when I am in control and I love the feeling of not being in control at all when my partner is in control. When I am in control I love the fact that I can completely spoil him if I feel that he needs spoiling or I can tease him completely when I am in a naughtier mood. I love every minute of it and I admit that it’s a huge turn on for me. At the same time, when my partner is in control – it’s either about me performing an act on him that he is wanting or the moment completely revolves on making sure I am receiving as much pleasure as possible. That’s how my partner and my sexual relationship works – we always like to make sure the other is pleasured, sure it doesn’t always work out that way, I may be getting all of the attention or sometimes he may be getting all of the attention – but we still enjoy it. I love that I can pleasure him completely when I am in bondage in a way that he strictly asks me for.

Another thing that I have been trying out is spanking – I feel that’s an easy place to start out for us when it comes to adding that sensation in for us as well. I became intrigued by it when my partner smacked my butt when we were in the midst of love making. I was surprised because I really liked it; I never thought it was something that I would ever be into. It was usually something people made fun of or cringed at the idea of while I was growing up. Since then I’ve asked him to try it out more and he’s even let me do the same to him. I’ve even been thinking about purchasing a paddle to use and eventually moving my way up to a riding crop and flogger. So we’ll see how that ends up going! I also learned recently why some women like having nipple stimulation – sure I’ve liked a little, but I recently asked my partner to pinch my nipples hard and I loved having that extra sensation added to other ones that he was giving me. So he suggested that we might try looking into nipple clamps as well.

I never thought that I would actually ever participate in anything kinky before. Bondage was pretty much my only kinky fantasy of mine while I was growing up. I think something about it just intrigued me – like I read on one of my twitter buddies’ info pages on a blog that she felt she was into it ever since she was young. When she first saw Princess Jasmine become slave to Jafar in Aladdin. I feel that maybe it was inevitable for me as well – when I was 5, I decided that I wanted to be Catwoman when I grew up. She dressed in a cat suit and had a whip, I think from then on – I have always wanted to have my own whip. I’m sure it didn’t help that in my favorite movie series as a child – which the main female ended up becoming a slave as well. She pretty much had the neatest collar and leash ever and I want a metal one now too. At times I even want to assume the slave role now to see what it’s like and at times I want to assume the dominant role to see what it’s like and let things fall into place depending on what our preferences turn out to be.

I usually fall into the role of being submissive, but that’s just because I’m a little shy about being dominant for some reason. I feel bad that at times I can’t go through with what I tell my partner that I’m going to do to him, if it involves me being dominant. I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I usually always put others before myself that I’m not used to the idea of forcing some one to be below me. I’m happy though, and I love the sexual relationship my partner and I have. I love that he and I are both up to experimenting and trying new things too.