Haunted by ExSex

By Peter Ehrlich

I’m haunted by my Ex Katherine. Not by that went wrong with our relationship, but what went right with our relationship – our love life.

After being laid naked, fetal-positioned, paralyzed, and wanting by our breakup, I want to attempt a sequel with my Ex. I am willing to work harder on our vertical life together for the sake of getting back to our spectacular horizontal life together. How much harder? I am willing to change.

But am I being naïve? Or is a fulfilling love life worth fighting extra hard for? Should I be happy with what I had, count my blessings and move on?

Katherine and I were two completely different people with two completely different sets of values. Katherine was whimsical, perky and light-hearted defined by a Martha Stuart palette of powder blues, pinks and floral arrangements.

Until Katherine came along, I didn’t know what the word whimsical meant. The word came up when she tried to tell me what kind of stuff she liked in her home. I actually had to ask her to explain the word whimsical to me.

Once I understood its meaning, I knew that I was the Anti-Christ of whimsical. I gravitate towards mute colours and images that were popular in the Middle Ages –gentle brown tones of mud mixed in with a dollop of existential or “*Eeyorian” angst. (*Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh)

I am more “whimsi-bleak” or “whimsi- the world is a *charnel house” kind of guy. (*Reference = Samual Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.)

I suppose if I asked Katherine what a charnel house was, she would reply, “Oh goody, I’m in the mood for a barbeque.”

Her Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock-type film choices represented somewhat of a counterpoint to my Stalingrad, The Wehrmacht in Russia, Sin City or Gladiator preferences.

And finally, she loved her two cats the way I love my son, but my attitude towards pets (or people) is; if you can’t flush the toilet, get the hell out!

And so, you would think that breaking up with this woman would be a simple matter. Once broken up, I wouldn’t have to worry about my testicles being slashed by her jealous cats and I could watch whatever movie I wanted in my brown living room.

But it hasn’t been a simple matter. In fact, it’s been living hell. Sometimes I lay on the floor, unable to focus on much. Well, I can do this; Face flattened on the floor, I try to differentiate between the carpet fibres and carpet mites.

Why so f***ed up? My Ex and I may not have been soul mates (whatever the hell that is) but we sure as hell were once-in-a-lifetime sexmates.

Together Katherine and I had a wonderful, unabashed, deeply connected love life that was framed by a natural and mutual caring and trust.

Horizontal we were a match made in heaven and the relationship was effortless. Unfortunately, vertically, we were at odds and the relationship took work. We had a lot of fun together, a lot of laughs, and travelled well together, but our relationship, like many, could only succeed if you “checked in” a lot because we were very different kinds of people, defined by a different set of values.

But I didn’t check in a lot and we dissolved.

Here’s the conundrum. In any relationship, there is always something “qualitative” about the nature of your union. Consequently, there is always room for a sense of doubt. For example, “she does this well, but doesn’t do that well. He makes me happy this way, but not in that way”, etc. etc.

However, when you have a great love life together, that’s not qualitative, it’s absolute! And isn’t absoluteness exactly what we crave in our relationships? Extreme pleasure is absolute and addictive and life seems too short to live without it. Try harder I say.

So here’s the question-how far should we go to try to make a relationship work because you have a great sex life with your partner?

If you’re waiting for me to come up with an answer, forget it.

I haven’t a clue right now. I’m still talking to carpet mites.

How much do I miss sex with the Ex? Let me put it this way; “Katherine darling, it’s done. I’ve piled up all my brown furniture in the backyard together with my testosterone/war-themed DVDs. Got a match?”

Yes, I’m willing to compromise and try to have another go at our relationship, because a day doesn’t pass when I don’t think of my Ex, the road trips, the laughs and of course, our love life.

“Never give up on someone you can’t go a day without thinking about.” I read that from a stranger’s page on Facebook that was devoted to the millions of us suffering from a broken heart.

There’s another reason why I’m thinking of making contact with my Ex again. These words drifted into my head after I made a half-hearted effort to spend time with someone else; “After he kissed someone new, he found himself unintentionally whispering his Ex’s name, out loud, as if he were accepting the moment as a penance for his sins, rather than the celebration of life it was supposed to be.”

Just because I lie on the carpet floor, talk to mites and hear voices in my head doesn’t mean I’m haunted by my Ex does it?

Of course it does.

Feel free to contact Peter at peter@geronimocode.com

to tell him your own haunting story.

Peter Ehrlich’s New Bedtime Fantasy

By Peter Ehrlich
 I want to talk about my newest, ongoing, “driving me forward” sexual fantasy. This twisted new fantasy is the new fuel that has launched me to join yet another dating site and contact virtually every single woman between the ages of 42 and 52. I can go to any dating site now and know the bio of most Toronto women right down to their astrological sign. That’s how passionate I feel about doing whatever needs to be done to live my out this perverted dream.

Are you curious to know what the fantasy is?

I thought so, so with no further ado, here it is: A good woman, lying beside me in bed, in flannel pajamas, toes touching, heads propped up – reading together in silence.

(Ah yes, to be comfortable in your silence together. There is no better barometer for your relationship. The wonderful, kind and insightful Michael Kaufman once told me that – www.michaelkaufman.com.)

Nothing these days is turning me on more than that image. I don’t “take care of myself” to the vision of the image, rather, I may let out a sigh, exhaled under the cool abyss of my blankets. After the sigh, I turn on my side to embrace the only thing I can embrace – my pillow.

Sick eh? I’m a young baby-boomer. My sexual formative years happened during the golden age, a time before HIV, when every girl and they were just girls back then, was on the pill. Evolutionarily speaking, that time came and went in the blink of an eye. But I was in smack in the middle of it, acting out my fantasies like I was a young Caligula, but with a good heart. Back then, my penis made almost all of my life-decisions for me. I’m still playing catch-up.

What happened? I got older. I did. Two of The Beatles have long since passed and there’s no need for another notch on my bed.

A long time ago, I watched lonely, divorced, isolated detective Al Pacino pull up beside a hooker and ask her to get in. She then asked him what he had in mind. “I just want you to sleep with me”, and he handed her one hundred dollars. She was dumbfounded of course, but CUT TO: the hooker awake, spooning Al, who was fast asleep in a fetal position.

I remember what did Commodus told Lucilla in Gladiator when he was watching her son sleep; “He sleeps well, because he knows he is loved”. I never forgot that moment. And so, Al Pacino could finally sleep well. It mattered not that it was a hooker, all women, and I mean all women have a serious nurturing side that begs to be appreciated.

I’m in the mood to sleep well too now. I didn’t care back then. I do now.

My son Noah, nineteen, not only left the nest, but he’s trekking around in Chile and Costa Rica with his girlfriend. The bedroom I built for him stares back to me in mocking silence. His only presence is manifested by the maps of Chile on the wall so I can follow his wanderings from 5,000 miles away.

I never understood why the elderly fed pigeons. I do now.

I never understood the notion that as you got older, “companionship” becomes more important. I do now. It’s the stuff that we who have trod so many miles deserve and require to be happy.

I can go no further with this column without puffing out my chest to remind you, and myself, that when the primal calls for it, this Satyr is still enthusiastic about answering the siren call, to gallop on to fulfill said equestrian duty. But my “performance menu” for an evening’s festivities and frolicking must now include “comfortable in silence” moments and that’s new.

There was a time in my single fatherhood where I could revel in my celibacy. That era is over with now.

Now it’s time to revel and live out my new bedtime fantasy – lying in bed with a “partner”, in flannel pajamas, toes touching, heads propped up, reading a good book, comfortable in our silence.

I feel so human today.

Feel free to contact  Peter at   peter@geronimocode.com

What Do Teens Need Anyway? Just Ask Them.

By: Ben Murphy, TheFatherLife.com

Seriously! What do teenagers need, anyway?

Parents are told to stand by their teens but also let them be independent. We’re told to be real about sex and drugs, but… we probably know more than we want them to know at this stage of their lives. There are so many conflicting messages from the experts, what’s a parent to do?

The best experts on being a teenager are teenagers themselves, so I dug around for feedback that teens have given on what they need from their parents. And, as much as folks may perceive teens as hormonal maniacs texting their lives away, the reality is that teens are full of hope and energy while still being very vulnerable (despite the outward façade).

In fact, the vast majority of teens (71%) cite their parents as their chief role model, with teachers coming in a far second at 40%. Although they may not tell you what they need from you, their parent, they have lots of hopes and ideas. Here, in a nutshell, is a list of some of what teens need from us as parents:

BE FRANK ABOUT SEX: Even though, in the grand scheme of things, there are far worse things that
could happen (like imprisonment), I think every parent’s worst nightmare is having their teenager
unwittingly become a parent. While teens probably know more about sex than we did as kids, our
perception that they know everything about sex is far from the truth. What our teens need from us is our
experience and wisdom that comes with our own experience with sex. Teens may have the book
knowledge, but lack the life context and practical advice to comfortably make wise sexual choices. And
they will either learn from us or learn from outside influences. So, if you want your teen learning about sex
in a healthy way, create an environment (regardless of how uncomfortable it initially makes you) where
they can always ask you anything they want about sex. Period. Otherwise, they’ll get their pointers
somewhere else.

STOP NITPICKING: A study by the University of Illinois found that, “parent’s conversations with their
teens too often focus on chores that need to be done, schedules that need to be kept, hair that needs to be
combed, and other topics that teens consider dull and monotonous or fault-finding.” But when the lead
psychologist on the study, Tore Hayden, asked several hundred teenagers what they really wished they
could talk about with their parents, the response included: Family Matters, Taboo Issues, ‘The Big Why’s,
The Future, Current Affairs, and their own Parents as Teens. Those are broad, far-reaching topics, but teens
want their parents to engage them in these discussions because it gives them grounding and meaning and
identity. And the interaction with you on more than just the day-to-day helps them decipher how to make
their own choices in life.

BE FRANK ABOUT DRUGS: Teens know academically (because they’ve been told) that drugs ruin
lives. Parents, on the other hand, have experienced the reality of drugs wreaking havoc in someone’s life.
Teens need to know what you’ve experienced. It’s one thing to say, “Don’t do drugs because they’re bad,”
but teens need proof. Share your stories of what you’ve seen in your life around drug use (even if it
involves you at one point in time). The best argument to not do drugs is to have seen someone’s life ruined
by drugs. Expose your teen to that reality as you’ve experienced it.

IDENTITY AND AMBITION: All the research and feedback I found pointed to a teen’s need for
identity. We all need an identity, don’t we? It’s just that in a teen’s world everything is magnified and
identity is the crux of their existence. One of the quotes that stuck with me was, “Teens want to create, to
change the world, to be older than they are… and as a driving force they want to do this now!” Give your
teen the opportunity and leeway to get their feet wet in things that interest them. Give them room to explore
their identity and ambitions and allow them to involve their friends as well as friends is a key source of a
teen’s identity.

Writing this month’s column really drove home the point that if you’re wondering what your teen needs,
just ask them. Understand that, if you haven’t had a great relationship with your teen, they may not give
you a straight answer right away. But if you’re consistent and truly authentic, they’ll tell you. And that
honesty is the beginning of a great relationship with your teen!

Ben Murphy is the Founder of TheFatherLife.com, the men’s magazine for dads. He lives in New York
State with his wife and three daughters

Photo courtesy of yellowblade67