Selfies and Struggles

Okay. So. Mike and I are in the process of moving -- we have three weeks to get our current place packed up and whatnot, and last night we were looking through a plastic tote full of miscellaneous tech-bits. Alright, maybe he was going through it and I was half-paying-attention while binge-watching The Flash. Either way, as I said: miscellaneous tech-bits. Several keyboards, lots of Apple cords, some mice, and a bunch of old external hard drives.

Like...a bunch.

We weren't sure which ones still worked and which ones didn't (to say nothing of what was on any of them), so Mike plugged one into his computer for a bit of a look.

It was mine, one I purchased almost a decade ago when my iBook G3 started to go a little wonky. It was small, but apparently held some interesting things -- mostly pictures...and every episode of Star Trek you could ever want, provided you weren't looking for the original series.

Anyway. Mike started looking through the pictures, like one does. And there were a lot.

Like a good early-20s lady, I took a lot of photographs of myself. Most of them were in varying states of undress, and I can't even tell you who I was sending them to -- because I was, for sure, sending them to people. Most of them were taken in my bedroom at my mother's house before I moved out for good, and most of them have some kind of filter on them.

Move over, Instagram, let Ash show you how sexy selfies are done. I probably have more experience in this department than you. You might think of me as a bit of an artiste.

Except, it occurred to me: I don't take pictures of myself anymore.

I was single back then and actually got off on making myself appear attractive in photographs. In my head, that wasn't what I looked like in person, but damn if I wasn't able to ramp up the good-lookin' on the other end of a webcam (and later, the iPhone). It was so strange that people appeared to want me. My standards for partners (for both relationships and hookups) was much lower, and what I wanted was someone to find me so attractive that they would stop at nothing (relatively speaking) to have sex with me. Now I'm almost 31 and often walk out of the house without even so much as a glance in a mirror.

The selfies have gone by the wayside as well, except for the sporadic boob-shots taken in my office bathroom. I used to take more of these, sending them off to Mike's phone in the hopes of getting him hard at his desk or in a meeting with his coworkers. But that didn't really happen, so I gave it up after a while. Understanding Mike's sexual nature (that is to say, some flavor of asexual) was hard, and it took a long time to come to terms with it. I started to feel like I was assaulting him with naked pictures and explicit text messages, all of which received little feedback.

It was hard to understand that I was essentially doing the thing that guys online have done to me and every other woman online for years -- sending unrequested pictures of their junk to an unreceptive recipient. Like them, I wanted a reaction. I wanted to turn someone on. I wanted encouragement, appreciation...anything. Instead, most of the time Mike  responded politely, other times he said nothing. While he appreciated the thought, it was more common for the pictures to show up at the worst times possible, making him feel neglectful for not being able to respond the way I wanted, to say nothing of the fact that he wasn't in the mood in the first place and wouldn't necessarily be turned on by some bare skin.

Now, several years in, sexuality doesn't stress our relationship to the same level that it did toward the beginning. Maybe knowing I'm not bound to Mike exclusively allowed my sex drive to cool its heels. Maybe stress and life have made me too tired to even want sex in the first place. Maybe it's just a defense mechanism so I don't spend more time disappointed in something that won't change. Whatever the reason, though -- things aren't perfect, but none of this seems as imminently problematic as it did previously. It took time, it takes work, and sometimes issues STILL come up. It's normal, it's expected, and it's all possible to be dealt with.

Just, you know...be prepared to work your ass off for it. Hopefully it'll be worth it.