I Wonder If My Ex Wants To Know I Still Think About Him In Bed

He was the sexiest of all the men I’ve dated. Is it shallow to say that’s why I loved him?

When you are on that level with someone it doesn’t seem shallow. It seems like a whole new universe of right. All the surface stuff seems deep, and maybe it is, because you’re connecting with another person in a way that is just… what you are meant to be doing in this lifetime.

People think sexual love is cheap, but they are wrong. You can be most at home in who you are with sexual love, since it is so primal, so ripped apart from all the ways you lie to yourself about who you are and what you want. When you are in this primordial relationship with someone, you see them as they really are and you show them you — as you really are. Couples go decades without seeing this ugly show and tell, and it’s healthy, to have it all out there like that.

What I think about these nights in bed when I want to be turned on is the curve of his jaw as his face lingered above mine. He liked to study me with strict attention as my body reacted to his.

I think about the nude photos he sent me. I don’t look at them anymore because they make me sad, but I’ve seen them all enough times to remember the details. There was nothing shameful or embarrassing about the photos, we weren’t like that. We were better than that. That’s what made it sexy. We were adults, nothing was embarrassing, nothing was out of bounds. We were each other’s playground.

Why did he make me feel like I was so delicious when with so many other men I’ve felt like a reluctant stage performer?

There were other men along the way that treated me like sex objects. There were ones who would suppose that we had a strictly sexual relationship but it was never that way. Those were obligations. The men were actually grown children who needed their egos stroked by me saying I liked one thing or another about them, and that’s why non of them lasted. This is why when I’m with one of them, when my back arches or my fingers grab at the sheets — it’s not them I’m thinking about. I’m as un-present as you can be while being present in the pleasure of your body. My mind is remembering him.

The thing that’s sad about an ex is the realization that they could have been the one — if you had been good enough for them at the time. To be fair, I wasn’t good enough for him. I just wasn’t. Maybe in the future, but not then, not even now probably. I feel this grief that’s not just about losing him but about losing the years where I could have been the better version of me. And it’s the draw of what could have been that propels me forward — and the hope of it’s realization, though I know it must be with someone new.