recently i said no to my boyfriend when he wanted to have sex.
not because i was mad at him or because i wanted to get something from him. not to make or break any kind of point. not because i’ve suddenly decided that i have no feelings for him and not entirely because i wasn’t in the mood.
although i no longer was.
i said no because it was two o’clock in the morning and i needed to be up at 8:30; and i said no because i had been up since 5:45 that morning and now it was two am; and i said no because the mood had been broken by the heavy conversation that had broken out in the middle of sex play.
i don’t like those conversations, they’re never fun and they’re always interrupting something that *is* fun and furthermore they tend to leave you exhausted and drained.
i like even less when they happen late at night and i’m exhausted because i absolutely believe that going to bed angry is a mistake. i really and truly think that when you aren’t happy with each other it’s a terrible idea to sleep on it.
i know this because i’ve woken up after going to bed angry and found all my little grievances lines up in a row. neatly dressed and waiting like little soldiers carrying bayonets of rage and just waiting to stab away at whoever their victim might be. solidified somehow where they had been nebulous and easy to let drop away in the shadows of the night.
so there you are at one in the morning and all you want from the universe is the eight hours of sleep you might have had if you had gone to bed an hour ago and here you are embroiled in some conversation involving heaviness and hard thinking.
and then finally, mercifully, at two am or four am or dawn, it ends. it ends and you’re exhausted and your partner (who woke up many hours later than you AND can sleep for at least an hour longer in the morning) wants to have sex now.
wants to make love and re-affirm your connection to each other and feels somehow that you need to do that because it will be good for y’all.
and all you want is to let your eyes close and your brain stop spinning.
well that and a time machine so you can go somewhere and sleep for two days before returning to the now.
so the the question of how to say no in such a way that your partner knows, and not just knows, BELIEVES that you are simply saying ‘not tonight love, i’m too tired’ rather than ‘i am making you pay for the heavy discussion’ or ‘i don’t love you anymore’ or anything.
how? how not to make him wake up in the morning feeling rejected or not welcome or somehow less?
how to keep your sex life alive and thriving in the face of this kind of crap?
how not to turn into the cliched old married couple that never fucks and rarely talks?
how do you have a night like that and not turn it into a series of nights like that? a pattern of them if you will?
is the right answer to let him have his way even in the face of every fiber of your being shouting ‘no please… so tired and really… don’t want to!’ even though that feels utterly against your own needs and desires?
where, in a healthy relationship, do your desires become more or less important than your partners? at what point do you say ‘okay this is what i need but they need it more?’
how do you draw those lines and not grow them into walls?
