I miss Bloody Good Chap!

I’m surprised to find myself missing him way more than I expected –

when he first left I felt like I needed him here to look after me. Of course I didn’t, but I’d spent the two weeks of our holiday together softening my hard shell of stubborn independence and letting him take charge. Because, fascinatingly enough, my sex coach showed me that I like it that way!

I don’t mean sexually,

but actually, yes, that as well. Most of us do, once we find the right person to let go with, let’s not beat around the bush.

Once BGC went back to Aus it was odd having to put my independent shell back on again. Until we’re back together and I’ll have to work out how to take it off again.

I’ve always been super independent, sometimes to my detriment – my Mum tells me that when I’d hurt myself when I was little I’d run away from her and anyone who tried to help. For the most part, I still do.

I prefer to solve problems on my own and only hang out with people when everything is radiating sequins.

This tendency possibly comes from my perfectionism; trying to prove to everyone that I always have everything under control (so I can never show anyone when I don’t).

But lately I’ve been trying to change this.

With friends, I realised that if I’m not vulnerable enough to show them my weaknesses, they can’t connect with me, and they won’t feel they can lean on me for help either.

This leads to very surface relationships, which I’ve had with most of my friends most of my life. Only a few really persistent, absolute gold friends have hung in there with me and got beneath my protective turtle shell.

This includes my previous boyfriends to a large extent. As a control freak, I always maintained my independence and control.

Which lead to me taking charge and getting irritable and snappy with them.

I didn’t understand this until I did Kim Anami’s Well F%ked Woman course a couple of years ago. In it I learnt about masculine/feminine polarity. I learnt how common it is for women to crave a safe space to let go of control, both sexually and in life, and how us pant-wearing power women are now controlling most things in our relationships and often stomping on our partner’s ability to take charge. Because if he does take charge and then does the “wrong” thing, we both know there will be hell to pay.

We’ve swung the poles, and many a boyfriend ends up having to zip it while we run the show. I always noticed myself doing this in relationships, and I knew that it caused problems, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

Because many of us take over in relationships, we’ve created a space where the dude has to be a crazy strong personality to stand up to us. Which is usually found in the asshole jock guy. He’ll stand up to us because he doesn’t give a damn.

This makes us sexually attracted to the bad guy, but it doesn’t make him a good partner.

This is why we can get so confused.

We want the nice gentleman guy and the macho-alpha-take-control guy all in one.

But when we get the asshole he treats us badly, and when we get the nice guy we walk all over him and then wonder why the sexual attraction isn’t there.

But there is something we can do about this.

Bloody Good Chap is by all accounts Probably the Nicest Guy in the World (BGC = PNGW = MC squared). But he’s also got balls, he stands up for himself, and he’s happy to take control. When I un-stubborn myself enough to let him.

This is something he brought to the table – but I also had to bring my newly learnt A game to the table – my ability to stand the f down and not always try to take charge, so that we can keep the polarity alive.

It’s a fine balance; a play between two magnets.

At first I felt that the masculine/ feminine polarity thing was anti-feminist, as though “needing” a man to look after me was going back to the Middle Ages. But it’s not about needing, it’s about wanting.

This is surely the reason why so many women got all up in a shemozzle over 50 Shades despite the terribly written storyline. We maintain strict control in our lives, but what we actually want is to let go for once and have someone else take the reins. Or the leather strap, or fluffy pink handcuffs, or whatever.

We want some of that masculine/ feminine polarity back, at least in the bedroom.

If I want strong sexual attraction and trust in a partner, I need NOT to feel like I’m the one with all the power. I need to be sure that in putting my control-freak tendencies on the backburner I can trust the dude to take charge; be decisive and be sure. And I’ve had to learn how to not criticise him at every step, which I know I did in past relationships. There’s no quicker way to push someone off balance than to watch with hawk eyes and say UHhh! every time they nearly misstep.

All partners are capable of taking the lead, we just don’t often give them half a chance. If we always take the wheel, our other half quickly learns to take the back seat, because anything else will make us snappy. But then we get snappy that they’re in the backseat anyway, they can’t win!

I now realise that despite my extreme ENFP independence and feminist ideologies, I actually love being with a partner who can take charge so that I can relax my white-knuckled grip on the handlebars of my life.

It’s all about letting go and embracing uncertainty; the joys (and freak outs) of letting another human into your life.

Because sometimes I just want to let someone else steer my scooter.

To that unknown world where I’m not always in control.