Movin' on out.

Finally. More About Getting the Heck Outta Dodge, and How it May Affect Your Relationship.

Alrighty, folks. Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Reports of my extended absence…less so. But never you mind about that. The fact is- SEX WITH ME IS RAD is BACK. And it should be more or less back on schedule.   

When last we spoke, we digressed a bit, talkin’ ‘bout CAUSAL SEX, as opposed to “Casual Sex,” and I must say it was a discussion worth discussing. And it is a discussion that warrants further discussing indeed.

But, we’re back in the realms of the heart, rather than the realms of the crotch, where anything and everything can, and will, happen.

As you may or may not remember, we are back in the company of our two archetypal lovers, who are now dealing with the reality that the land of GRAD SCHOOL beckons- and the land of GRAD SCHOOL is far, far away from the land in which the relationship has existed thus far. It’s a confusing, heartwrenching crossroads for our friends to be at, to be sure.

And what exactly is at this crossroads, besides perhaps the Devil and Bizzy Bone and Robert Johnson and maybe Bobby Frost and a million two bit high school commencement speakers arguing about which road is in fact “less travelled?”

(Hint: it’s usually the one on the left)

At this crossroads, there are mostly a lot of logistical questions. Obviously, first and foremost, the couple will need to figure out exactly how much they like each other and how well they function as a couple-y unit/team-y thing. Ostensibly, a couple that has been together longer and has lived together is far more likely to pick up and move together. The patterns of co-habitation have already been established and will be actually be much harder to break than they will be to simply pick up and move to another location. A couple that isn’t living together will be more likely to split in this situation, unless they happen to be REALLY ready to “take the next step” in their relationship, simply because if both parties move together, then, shit, they’re suddenly LIVING together- if they move separately, that’s twice as much apartment finding, and ultimately, moving, that needs to be done.

The second major set of questions relates to work and to the social environment our potential re-locators will be facing. In this situation, party A, the one going to grad school, is at a distinct advantage over party B. More so than the world of actual work, academia, obviously, is a pretty hermetically sealed environment- it’s a lifestyle. So, Party A, our resident egghead, is moving to his or her new town with a social network, workplace, and possibly even a living situation ready and waiting for him/her. Party B may be moving to this new place empty handed. This disadvantage can be offset if Party B is an innately social, outgoing creature, or if Party B has already found a job and/or has friends in the city the couple is moving to.

If B is a wallflower and a homebody, I strongly recommend against the couple uprooting and moving together. In this case, the two parties will simply become unnecessarily co-dependent and will likely resent each other, unless B is truly content and happy in her solitude, something I believe can only come with age and experience- so younger couples (read: anyone under 30) should be especially wary of this particular caveat.        

And of course, if the relationship as a whole isn’t healthy, or simply isn’t suited for the new environment that the pair is moving to, it’s best to bite the bullet and take steps towards breaking up. Heck, the two parties can use the big move as an excuse to extricate themselves from the whole crappy affair!     

If our couple should choose to BREAK UP, they will become subject to the Long Term Relationship Mourning Process, which I seem to remember describing in detail at some point in the increasing long, dark history of this here blog.

The only major kink that distance throws into the LTRMP is that it, in some way removes, or at least greatly modifies, the second stage of the process, which is THE FIGHT.

If distance is the ONLY reason our couple is calling it quits, then THE FIGHT will be less a “fight” than it is a teary, extended discussion.

But, seriously. What kind of honest to goodness pair of real human animal creatures would have such a simple relationship that they could break up after a significant period of time for only one simple little reason…regardless of how much debt one may incur as a result of that simple little reason?

IT’S A FACT: Breakups are never as “clean” as they ought to be. So, what can our couple expect if they choose to break up in the face of impending theses, long term separation and the heavy handed eroticism of the latest bodice ripping “adult fantasy” series appearing on the television set?

Essentially, what they can expect is a mild, yet protracted, period of second guessing- questions like “did we do the ‘right’ thing?” and “did I just completely waste those X number of years of my life with that jerk?” will likely arise during this period. The only advice I can give here is: try to think of these things during the day, while you are nice and sober and not near a telephone or implement of text messaging.

Trust me on that one.        

So, there we have it. My first set of words in a couple of weeks. I think that, for the time being, I’ll just be doing the blog every Monday, rather than both Monday and Friday, though I’m sure that will all change as well. Next time, we’ll talk about what happens when our happy couple opts to stay together in the face of impending higher education…a risky option if ever there was one, but not one without its merits.

But until that time, I wish you a fond farewell from SEX WITH ME IS RAD “The Love Blog that simply Can’t Live [With Or] Without You.”   

   

  

BLUE MONDAY:CAUSAL SEX

BLUE MONDAY:  CAUSAL SEX.

Hey, all you kids out there in the land of SEX WITH ME IS RAD. What is UP? Like, a lot? A little? A moderate amount? Good to hear.

Anyway, remember last week, when we started talking about how to deal with the prospect of one member of a couple leaving town? Good, because we are totally going to continue talking about that. On Friday, that is. Today, however, is Monday, and I want to try keeping things Blue. This is partially because my mind is currently, as they say, “In the gutter,” and partially because I thought of a really neat phrase to coin, and, if you know me, you know that I FUCKING LOVE coining phrases. It doesn’t even matter if they get used by others. I just like, you know, coming up with names for things…

Manufacturers of future SEX WITH ME IS RAD related talking dolls, I hope you are taking detailed notes. (Bonus points if you are using a Newton… )

At any rate, I am finding more and more that SWMIR is not your typical sexual advisement column, in that, I don’t really find myself fielding direct questions from people so much as I find myself, well, talking to friends and colleagues and identifying patterns in the concerns that they raise with me. If you are interested in fancier talk, you can even refer to these patterns as “motifs” as you will- and I must say I will like it if you will, because I often like to think of things in terms of aesthetics, and calling the patterns that evolve in my friends’ assorted neuroses “motifs” casts me in the role of “emotional aesthetician,” which is way more dignified sounding than plain old “sex talk dude.”

And one thing I’ve been noticing recently is that people are kind of lousy at Casual Sex. It’s not that they can’t do it- it’s more that the practice of so called “Casual Sex” seems to have this way of blowing up in people’s faces.

As is the case with many things, this is all the fault of the damn hippies. Sure, moralists, mostly of the religious sort, have plenty of blame to shoulder in this particular regard, but few people take them seriously in this age of post post post Madonnaness and Snooki Whatsherface-itude and the Trojan Man, and let’s be honest here- the few that do are well beyond the reach of this here blog…for the time being…

(insert ominous laughter here.)

So, yeah, the hippies introduced this idea of “FREE LOVE,” and it got them laid and made them all a ton of money, and now we’re stuck with it. I mean, it started out as “free love,” then it evolved to “casual sex (read “free love plus cocaine),” and now it’s so deeply normalized that it doesn’t even really have a name. It’s like the sexual revolution was televised and now it’s in syndication and on Hulu and in awkwardly truncated segments on YourTube and no one even thinks about it anymore, except maybe the aforementioned religious types and your perhaps even more overzealous guidance counselor who’s doing that thing with the banana that you really don’t want to look at ever.

And, the thing is, we should be thinking about it. Because people seem to still be fucking each other in various fashions, and people definitely still get feelings and diseases and babies and such as a result, so there we have it.

Sex has, will, and will continue to happen.

Hence, the brilliant title of this brilliant installment of this brilliant blog. No, it wasn’t a typo, dude- it was  an… intentional thing! A coinage if you will.

I propose “CAUSAL  SEX” as the new, more responsible, alternative to old fashioned CASUAL SEX.

Havers of CAUSAL SEX embrace their sexuality, while cultivating a less cavalier attitude in regards to the potential repercussions of sexual activity, and also while refraining from being all sanctimonious and doing silly crap like wearing promise rings and putting it in their girlfriends’ bee-hinds because they think that God hasn’t closed that particular loophole already.

CAUSAL SEXERS are aware of these potential “repercussions,” not simply in the medical sense- but also in the emotional sense.

Honestly, in this day and age, “safer” sex (a term which I nominate for “stupidest term ever,” btw), should almost be a given, (note the italics on the word almost) but few people give much thought to the emotional repercussions of sex outside of a lasting, monogamous relationship.

To whit- sex is a great little pastime, but sexual freedom, much like regular freedom according to that bumper sticker I saw on that guy’s truck that one time, “is not free.”

Part of the reason for this is the act of sex is so inextricably connected with the feeling of love. Say what you will about enculturation and practiced morality or whatever- sex and love are linked , deep down in our unconscious minds. There’s a reason why people often refer to sex as “lovemaking…” and it’s not simply part of a carefully orchestrated global conspiracy to make me throw up in my mouth.

It’s because, for a myriad of reasons, over the years, humans developed an emotional response to sex. And this response can be either pleasurable or painful, or both- or first one, then the other. It’s not so crazy of a notion- if you think about it, we have emotional responses to everything we do, be it drunken bathroom fellatio, “courtesy” telephone calls, or miniature golf. IT’S A FACT.

So, those of us who choose to have CAUSAL sex keep these things in mind. In the Future, I shall discuss this principle in less armchair sociological and more armchair concrete terms. Hell, I might even do that next Monday…

But until then, expect more about the problem of LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIPS on Friday here at SEX WITH ME IS RAD: “The Sex Blog That Sometimes Actually Sorta Gets Around to Talking ‘Bout Sex…Baby”

            

Distance

Hello and a most April-ly and Foolish April Fool’s Day to all of you Hot Hot Big Hot Big SEX WITH ME IS RAD girls and boys!

Can I tell you how tempted I was to write some sort of stupid “April Fool’s” type column?

Well, I was absolutely a little bit tempted. But then I thought, “Hey, there are so many gosh darned jokes in your average bi-weekly installation of this damn fool blog…why make it any jokier? That would be like putting a comical sweater on an adorable kitten!”

And, more importantly, SEXTOWN, USA is a real place, inasmuch as a blog can be a “real” place…and we here in SEXTOWN are for real. We talk about REAL SHIT. SHIT THAT MATTERS. And, also, I would hate to give you all some false advice. That would be lying. And kind of mean. And mean lying is totally not OK, dude.

So, what I shall give you is another multi part entry. This one is about DISTANCE, and what it does to a relationship. Like, physical, geographical, distance- not emotional distance, aka ALOOFNESS…that is a totally different topic, although I suppose the two are hardly mutually exclusive. 

The obvious thing to say about geographical distance is that it very often keeps people apart. And, being something that keeps people apart, distance is very often the reason that love-type relationships end. And the problem with GEODISTANCE as a catalyst for the ending of relationships is that it makes the whole process of breaking up seem a lot easier than it is.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the couple who has to break up because one or both parties is “headed to Box Elder, MO” is actually in many ways worse off than the couple that goes down in flames over Lothario McPoolBoy or just kind of fizzles out.

If the couple is actually “in love,” that is. If it’s a reasonably casual relationship, then the prospect of “geodistance” can function as a “get out of jail free” card. However, that is even more rarely the case than we all might care to believe. So, where does that leave us?

Well, it leaves us right back with our nice little archetypal couple. Remember them? White, good natured, kinda inty-lectually inclined, nurturing a nice little white, good natured intellectual-ish relationship that is so CLEARLY DOOMED? Yeah? Good.

Well, let’s say that one of the parties is going to grad school. Why? Uh, well, ‘cause that’s what people do these days when they realize just how paint peelingly, toe curlingly, ass chafingly empty their lives are and they’ve already watched “Lost” AND “Dexter” all the way through on DVD a couple times.

Our leaving party is going to grad school  somewhere in. And the staying party is getting ready to finally sit down and commit to “The Wire.”

Well, the first problem here, and this seems to often be the case, is the apparent disparity in the trajectories our respective partners lives are taking. The first thing the couple is going to “talk” about is how their lives are “going in different directions” emotionally and professionally as well as geographically.

I would like to interject here and say that our couple should earnestly and thoroughly address the possibility that this line of thinking is total bullshit.  

For starters, closer examination of this situation reveals, not only that graduate school is almost as much of an exercise in cash hemorrhaging futility as starting up a dot-com lesbian puppy delivery service in the Bay Area in the summer of 2000, but that respected television critics and stoned frat boys alike have nothing but very good things to say about “The Wire.”

Also, they are so completely looking down their collective nose at you for not having watched it yet. 

More importantly, however, there is the fact that, to a certain extent, True Love has the ability to transcend several obstacles. TO A CERTAIN EXTENT.

The trick, then, for our friends here, is to figure out what that “certain extent” is.

And this is quite the trick. It’s going to take a lot of talking, and even more of that “listening” stuff I yammer on about from time to time. More unpleasantly still- as much as what I just proposed might sound to you like a very “romantic” notion, these discussions are actually going to have to be way more about logistics than they are about sexy, tear jerky, chair throw-y,  abstract-y things like “feelings.”

So, our friends have some thinkin’ to do. And they have multiple options…

Hence, a “multiple part” entry, the next part of which I will present to you on Monday, hopefully in a timely sort of fashion.

Until then, all the best from SEX WITH ME IS RAD: “The Love Blog That May or May Not be Leavin’ On A Jetplane-It Hasn’t Decided Yet.”

And don’t believe everything you read on the Internet today. Particularly from that “Onion” website all you kids seem to rely on for your news. I always suspected those fellas weren’t exactly “on the level” (read: I think they are Pinkos).