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This post, I’m Gonna Get Gay Married!, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 08/12/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: I’m Gonna Get Gay Married!. Thanks for visiting!
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To my wife

I love you so much. We have experienced so much together over the past four years. We met, we fucked, we became good friends, and eventually we admitted our feelings for one another. Once the feelings were released it all went pretty fast. We fell in love, moved in together, got engaged, and married. Not every moment in our lives has been perfect, but I could not have picked a more perfect partner to share my life with. In some ways we are the same person and in others we are polar opposites, but that is what keeps life interesting. But even though we don’t always understand each other, we always try to and that is what is more important.

You are my snuggle monster, my carrier of heavy things, my 1 day of relief from cooking dinner- even though you hate to cook, my provider of warmth or cold depending on what is needed, my pedicurist, my tailor, my therapist, my sounding board, my protector, my Russian nesting doll of crazy, my proofreader, my cheerleader, my toughguy butch who is really just a squishy soft warm loving person on the inside, and so much more. You always strive to make my life easier, more comfortable, and happier and you have made my life richer in so many ways.

Every day I am surprised that I was able to land such a funny, intelligent, interesting, person who shares so many of my values in life. I am so proud of you and your accomplishments. You are going to do great things in life and I’m really looking forward to being able to see them firsthand.

The past four years have been amazing and I cannot wait to see what the next four years bring. I am really looking forward to the next chapter in our life. I cannot wait to embark upon this next adventure with you.

I love you honey. Happy Birthday.

Also, there will be a special birthday dinner :)

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This post, Love Letter to My Wife, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 08/03/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: Love Letter to My Wife. Thanks for visiting!
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So I’m curious, how do you identify? What makes up your sexuality? Do you just choose to use simple words or do you feel that your sexuality is more complex and maybe even fluid? Have you not given it a whole lot of thought? Why not?

Leave me a comment letting me know exactly how you currently identify and maybe even the path in which you’ve traveled to reach your sexual identity. To make the deal a little sweeter I’ll throw in a copy of Fluid: Women Redefining Sexuality. One of you will be chosen at random to win this sexy DVD which I reviewed a couple months ago. The DVD is provided by Good Vibrations, but unfortunately does not have the DVD case, just a paper sleeve. But really, you just want the porn anyway. Who needs a case?

You know what? Lets make this deal even sweeter. The second runner up will receive a free hour of video on demand porn from HotMoviesForHer. Yeah, I just decided that right now. That’s how I roll.

For more ways to enter check out Mistress Kay’s blog. She’s the one who motivated me to throw together this contest anyway. In her contest post she also explores what her sexual identity is and what it means to her. So what are you waiting for? Enter!

Or stick around and read about how I define my sexuality and then enter. Either way.

Like I said earlier, sexuality is complex and mine is no different. In fact my sexuality has often frustrated me. You see I’m more physically attracted to women, but more emotionally attracted to men. This has often made relationships difficult for me since I often fell in love with men, but was more attracted to women. At one point I was completely madly in love with a man but when we’d have sex I’d sometimes lick his perineum like it was  a clit and finger his asshole like it was a vagina. He never seemed to mind, but I don’t think he really knew what was going through my head anyway.

Don’t get me wrong though. I love having sex with both men and women. And in fact, often enjoyed having sex with men more. I blame this on the fact that I just had so many more male partners than female ones. When you have a bigger pot you’re picking from you’ll probably get more fantastic lovers … as well as awful ones.

For a very long time I was only attracted to people with pretty standard gender presentations. I didn’t really understand being attracted to people who defied gender norms until a)I became a gender and women’s studies major and b)I met my wife. Both opened my mind a whole bunch and led me to change my orientation label from bisexual to queer. I love the word queer because it is all encompassing. Now I tend to be attracted to a lot of different gender representations. I even often find that when people play with gender it’s fucking hot. I’m really only not attracted to douchebags and sorority girls. And yes, I actually think of those as gender identities even if they don’t. It makes sense to me.

On the spectrum of monogamy and non-monogamy I’m not really sure where I’m at. I’ve always tended towards monogamy in my serious relationships, but my relationships have often been very short lived. Now I find myself in a marriage with a woman I have been with for almost 4 years. That’s a long time. So we plan to explore. I figure that infidelity ruins a lot of relationships and I don’t want it to ruin mine. It just seems so unlikely to expect someone to be able to remain completely faithful for such a long time. I prefer to avoid that all together by opening things up and creating that trust.

My turn ons are things that I am not supposed to be turned on by. That’s what really gets me going. I like inappropriateness. If I’m supposed to be somewhere else, if I should be doing something else, if the location is all wrong, if it’s really really bad porn, or a stranger I don’t even find attractive whose body is pressed up against mine in a crowded train. All of these things make my genitals tingle probably because I keep yelling at them in my head to stop.

I’m also really turned on by seeing other people turned on. It doesn’t tend to matter who it is. I just love to see the look of ecstasy on people’s faces. Mix this with inappropriateness and we have a whole new game of awful things to be turned on by. You have no idea.

I’m turned on by sex toys, Old Spice deodorant, necking, big round booties, suggestive visuals, laughing, feeling powerful, the way different fabrics feel on my naked body, intelligence, longing, playfulness, flirting with cute strangers, being seduced, dorkyness, trashy boys, and androgyny.

I don’t tend to consider myself to be kinky, but am open to kinkiness in general and have participated in many acts that are far from vanilla. I have no interest in group sex as I prefer to focus my attention on one person at a time.

I have chronic pain that interferes with my sex life a great deal. At the top of that list is having arthritis in my hands and wrists. This can make sex very difficult especially on days with lots of pain. Luckily for me, I have a very understanding partner who doesn’t need a whole lot of warming up and doesn’t mind finishing herself off.

So that’s just the tip of the iceberg with me. How about you? You don’t have to go into the detail that I did if you don’t want to.

Oh and the rules:

• contest ends at 11:59PM CST on 6/6/10
• winners will be picked at random
• leave a comment here telling me how you define your sexuality
• leave a comment on Mistress Kay’s blog telling her why you want the DVD
• Tweet up to twice per week (on different days) mentioning the contest with a link to either mine or Mistress Kay’s blog as well as an @ on one of us (I’m GarnetJoyce and she’s mistress_kay). If you tweet more than this you will have points deducted for being annoying.

Get crackin!

EDIT: Apparently comments have been getting caught by my spam filter. If this happens, just send me an email with your comment and I’ll post it myself. I will look into fixing this, but it may be difficult since I get a TON of spam and I don’t want to turn anything off.

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This post, How Do You Define Your Sexuality? Contest!, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 05/23/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: How Do You Define Your Sexuality? Contest!. Thanks for visiting!
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A: Marriage isn’t for everyone so don’t assume that just because a certain amount of time has passed you need to feel the marriage bug. Or if you do think you want to get married, but it scares you a lot then don’t jump into it just because you think you should. Jumping into marriage is never a good idea. But if it concerns you, sit down and talk to your girlfriend and discuss it. Maybe she doesn’t even want to get married.

For me, it was actually something I decided before I even met my wife. This may sound odd, but it felt totally normal for me. A lot of it had to do with what happened before we met and how my attitude about relationships changed. Story time!

Most of my romantic life has been a series of awful relationships one after another. They were all intensely felt and extremely short. Part of the problem was that I suffered from major paranoia. My brain always went off on its own tangents about what my significant other was doing in the time we were away which pretty much led me to be that crazy girlfriend who is always calling and crying. But it didn’t help that most of the people I dated seriously were jerks or completely immature. At 23 I was starting to think that I’d never have a real longterm relationship.

Then I started dating a coworker. In the beginning we tried to take it slow because we worked together and didn’t want to start any sort of office drama. But it really didn’t work. We had a whirlwind romance and fell in love really quickly. We spent all of our time together and life was fantastic. He was the first person I had ever been with that I wanted something more with. I seriously started having fantasies about moving in together.

But then he became busy … all the time. These were real issues he was dealing with; he wasn’t just blowing me off. He was a genuinely nice guy. He found out he had a daughter from a one night stand 5 years ago, he had decided to go back to school, and he was trying to fix the life that he had fucked up in his 20s. It was all too much and he became less and less available. The paranoia started and would NOT stop no matter how much he tried to console me.

Eventually I had to break it off with him. We were still madly in love, but I couldn’t live so unhappily. The end of that relationship was the biggest heartbreak I ever went through. I was used to breaking up with people for being assholes, not because it just wasn’t working. I tried sex with other people and I hated it. I’d drink and then call him. This led me to basically becoming a hermit for the next 8 months where all I did was eat, watch tv, work, and go to school. I stopped socializing, I stopped drinking, and I stopped dating. Eight months is the longest period of time that I have EVER gone without sex or dating. I was seriously distraught.

But the truth of the matter is, I never actually saw a real future with this guy. I loved him and I wanted to move in with him, but the next step in my head was breaking up. I thought our relationship would probably last maybe a year or two. I loved him so much and yet I knew that we wouldn’t work in the longterm.

Moving in with someone and then breaking up with them after a year or two was actually the next step for a relationship in my head. I thought that was how it was supposed to be. Just another relationship casualty on the path of life.

So during that 8 months of deep depression I reassessed what I wanted. I also started going to a therapist to help me get over the devastation I was feeling. I decided that I couldn’t go through that again. I did not want to relive this breakup, so what was the point of moving in with someone and then breaking up? That started to sound like a horrible plan. So I decided that the next relationship I got in would be for keeps. Keep in mind though that I don’t commit to just anyone who happens along. I date awhile first before I decide anything.

The first person I had sex with after that 8 months was a total disaster. The paranoia attacked way earlier than it normally does and I had to break it off. But soon I would meet my wife and that relationship started off pretty much the only way I can imagine a relationship of mine starting and actually being successful. She was more screwed up than me. She’d just gotten out of a 4 year relationship and was completely destructive. We became friends and we had sex, but I was so not interested in a relationship with her.

This went on for 2.5 months before we admitted to each other that we had feelings for each other. After 3 months we had a talk about commitment and what we both needed from the relationship and the other person. It was then a bit of a whirlwind relationship where we quickly fell in love as we both healed as people. And the most important thing of all was that I didn’t suffer from paranoia. She texted me all the time. I never asked her to. She just did it. I always knew where she was, who she was with, and what she was doing. It turned out that that was exactly what I needed to quiet the thoughts. It was never an issue of trust for me, but an issue of not knowing what was going on. I’m a control freak with an overly active imagination.

The weirdest thing about our relationship though was that we planned our wedding before we ever decided to get married. It wasn’t scary or anything. We knew that all we were really doing was comparing our likes and dislikes in a way that most people don’t do. It was a lot of fun! We actually started planning our wedding before we even moved in together.

After we had moved in together and discussed the wedding more like it might actually happen we both started thinking that big scary thought: “spending the rest of my life with this person.” Yikes! We realized that we both weren’t ready just yet. While we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with each other pretty early on in the relationship, it was still a scary idea to actually commit to forever.

And then one day, I wasn’t scared anymore. It just seemed right. So we went ring shopping and I put her in charge of proposing.

My story is probably very different than a lot of people’s stories. I’m sure that if you have a story, it will be different than mine. Just remember that marriage isn’t for everyone and that there is no need to rush into it if you don’t want it or aren’t ready. Talk it over. It always freaks me out that in a lot of heterosexual relationships the man just pops the question. Deciding to get married should be a discussion, not a surprise.

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This post, When is the Right Time to Get Married?, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 03/09/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: When is the Right Time to Get Married?. Thanks for visiting!
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In all the time I’ve known her no matter how much we were or weren’t in touch with each other, I always cared deeply for her. And I probably always will. She’s just the kind of person that people tend to be drawn to. People want to be around her. She’s always been a good person with a big loving heart.

Things have changed for her recently. She has been very vulnerable. Her bff broke her trust severely in ways you can’t even imagine. And that was hardly the only thing that took a turn for the worse at this point in her life. She was going through hell. She tried to kill herself. And since then she has been slowly rebuilding her life. When people go through these crazy things and are really vulnerable they’re more susceptible to finding different ways to find happiness. Its kind of like trying to start from scratch. A lot of times, this is when people turn to god. This is what she has done.

Now, I want to say that I have never had and never will have a problem with religion. You can believe whatever you want to believe and do whatever you want to do as long as you’re not hurting anyone else. But when I say “hurt” I also include hate in that. When anyone teaches hate, they hurt themselves and others. That has always been my mantra. I am an atheist, but I’ve never been one to push my beliefs (or lack of belief) on anyone else and I prefer others to not push theirs on me either.

This friend of mine recently posted on her public blog that she no longer supports same-sex marriage. She now believes in marriage between one man and one woman. She has also decided to denounce her queer identity. To see her say such things hurt and angered me. I had to hear it from her directly so I messaged her asking if she did not support my relationship. She responded by saying that while she did not support same-sex marriage (notice how she refuses to make it personal), she supports my happiness.

I have to ask, how can someone possibly support my happiness without supporting my relationship? That’s like saying that you want someone to have a nourished, healthy body, but then saying that you think it is wrong of them to use their teeth to chew their food. Sure, there are things that you could eat that don’t require chewing, but its going to be pretty difficult eating healthfully if you can’t chew. I love my wife. She is an enormous part of my life. Could I live with out her? Yeah, probably. Could I be happy? Not for a very long time and I’m not sure that I would ever find that kind of happiness again. It would be different if our relationship turned sour, but at least for right now and for the past several years, she has been an amazing addition to my life. I do not want to imagine a life without her.

I wanted to say all of this to her and more, but the thing is that she used to be queer. She knows all the arguments. She knows that I’ll bring up the hospital visitation rights and the ability to care for each other easily. She knows all that stuff because she used to be on our side. And yet, it doesn’t matter to her apparently. But I needed to say it somewhere so I’m saying it here. Its a cathartic release for me.

She also said that she does not support most straight marriages just as she didn’t before. I’m not sure that she realizes the hypocrisy in this statement. Heterosexual marriages get to be judged on a case by case basis, but my marriage, no matter how loving and healthy, gets tossed out immediately because we’re both women.

I’ve been spending the past few days just going through so many emotions because of her change. And not being even that close means that most people don’t really understand why I’m so upset about it. Luckily, I’ve had several mutual friends/acquaintances to commiserate with. She touched a lot of us in the community I met her through. And we’re all left wondering if she is going to demand a removal from that community (the religious tend to not like porn).

Last night when talking with a mutual friend he said something along the lines of “Its just such a shock. She seemed like the kind of girl who would give up breathing rather than become anti-gay and turn straight.” So true.

The hurt, anger, and sadness are all there. I’ve always felt that I cannot be friends with anyone who does not support my relationship. I don’t want to give up on her, but I don’t know what to do.

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This post, The Pain of Losing a Friend, originally appeared on Ask Garnet on 02/18/2010. Click over to leave a comment or ask a question: The Pain of Losing a Friend. Thanks for visiting!
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