As a young girl I filled diaries with hearts, writing the names of boys I liked on walls in pencil because I always knew they would quickly change and those moments, just like the thoughts that accompanied them, would need to be erased.
“I love the way he holds my hand,” she quietly announced to the group.
I sat with a group of women between the ages of 25 and 65 as we talked about the reality of what really made women weak in the knees for love.
Many of us had been bored by 50 Shades of Grey as we searched for colors which vibrantly represented our sexual lives. We found our colors were far more fierce and passionate, full of reds, and bright oranges, peaceful purples, and graciously green hues as we discussed the topics of intimacy and sex further, we found ourselves vastly pulled from the tender, loving and gentle kisses that kind, soft-hearted and compassionate women as ourselves would have expected.
We found that we wanted intense, throw-me-up-against-the-wall kind of love.
We found we did not want to waste time, take time, or even feel that time existed in those moments. We did not want to think about the dishes that had to be done, the children that needed to be picked up or the outfits we would need to wear to accommodate the daily weather forecast. In our human-ness we found that we were all a bit more animalistic than we would ever like to admit to those closest to us. Despite any of this we found ourselves open, honest and fully flourishing in these very raw moments around the table.
Yet even with all the intensity and excitement which tingled off the tips of our tongues we also found that these moments were not the moments that had made us fall in love.
I thought about the ways we express love, and of The Five Love Languages as presented in the book by Gary Chapman. I reflected on the first time in third grade I felt someone sweep the hair away from my ear so he could whisper into it partially to keep it a secret, and partly because we did not want to receive nasty looks from our teacher. I remember the way it felt as he brushed my hair to the side, the way it fell, dividing into hundreds of pieces as if it hoped he would touch me over and over again until every strand lay tucked behind my earlobe. But he grazed my ear once and the story of what he told has long been forgotten.
I recounted other conversations with female friends:
I recounted other conversations with female friends:
“It was the way he grabbed my face and my chin.”
“It was the way she gracefully, and gently touched my leg.”
“It was the way he rested his hands between my thighs as if they decided they needed a warmer place to nap for the evening.”
“It was staring into each other’s eyes for hours on end.”
In all of these relationships I found other women all-consumed and frozen by those fleeting moments. Those seconds which their partners or lovers most likely never even remembered had occurred, yet palpable enough to be felt by the heart and mind far longer than their short existence of movement within one’s life. I thought about the first time someone pulled me closer into their body by sticking their thumbs into my belt loops and the way that feeling stuck with me over the years. The way I never understood why it affected me in the ways that it did and the fact it always felt so silly vocalizing my gratitude for such a subtle act.
Yet I realized that it was through those subtitles that we allowed ourselves to love these other beings in our lives.
It was through these often non-verbal communications that we felt comfortable enough to let our guards down just a little bit more. In rarer situations where someone could cover your mouth pressing their fingers against your lips and you would know that you were in fact wholly, and spiritually safe.
Around that table we continued to laugh, quieting ourselves at times when our voices bounced off of the walls and sexual conversations became too abrasive for conservative coffee shops. We talked about our likes and dislikes in our sexual lives, we agreed and argued, we found that our needs, wants, and desires were vastly different at times but we believed in the importance of intimacy in order to continue to develop loving, connected, and communicative relationships. Still, we knew that none of that was what held us together in any of those relationships. For it was the way his thumbs entered my belt loops, the ways I stood on my tip toes to concentrate as we kissed, the ways she sat my coffee down and brushed my shoulder telling me she supported me throughout my day.
It was the little, loving gestures which lingered and caused our hearts to get lost in between the lines created by strands of hair which longed to be touched one hundred times over and over again, never failing to find love within each small movement of his hand.
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