Judgement

Judgement, being judged, weighed and found wanting. I've felt judged all my life, and yes, I always felt wanting.

I never felt I was a good enough daughter, sister, student, employee, wife, mother, aunt, friend: you name it. And some people came out and said those things to me. Sometimes I could laugh about it, other times it hurt me. People telling me I was a bad wife for not using my husband's last name? That was worth a chuckle at most. People telling me I was a bad mother for not being a SAHM? That hurt.
At some point you find out that you can't please everybody anyway, and it gets a bit easier, hopefully.

When I was young, there was no such thing as the pill, and it wasn't freely available until the time I started university. Up until that time, being engaged in sex meant having a large probability of a pregnancy. And since it's the girl that gets pregnant, and not the boy, it was on her to behave correctly. That was the message all of our society let me know. Sex was only for married couples, it led to babies, and unmarried girls who had sex were sluts and not very smart. Or as my father would say: "She is a nice enough girl, but I don't want her as the mother of my children." Oh, the irony. Men can have fun with girls like that and still be good enough to become a father, but the girl isn't good enough to be a mother.
But yeah, the pill and penicillin meant I could have sex without worrying about pregnancies or STD's, and I did, and I loved it! And I felt guilty for loving it without even being married, and learned to love it even more.

I met my loved one, we clicked, sexually as well, and were happy. He loved that I was enthusiastic about sex, until he didn't any more.
He changed the rules. And I scrambled to find out what the new rules were. I asked him: got no answer, started to improvise: no success, suggested therapy: big failure. I wanted this to work so bad, I loved him so much, I needed him so.
I felt judged as I never had before. When I saw him looking at me, I thought I heard him think: "Too old, too fat, too eager." And still I wanted to work it out, and still I was met only by silence and denial, no matter how much I asked, begged, cried or, yes, screamed.
So I ended it. I had no options left: either I ended it or I would be miserable for ever. Enough was enough.

So growing up I learned to never be promiscuous, in my marriage I learned that wanting sex too much was wrong: is it any wonder that I don't like being called a slut? That word has so many negative connotations for me.

Only I now do behave like what I would call a slut, and I'm embarrassed about it. This isn't me! I never did this, this is wrong, I must stop. But I don't want to stop, and I'm not hurting anyone, and I would not judge others who behave like this, but I do judge myself. And I find myself wanting. Always harder on myself than on others.

In the meantime the two guys I'm involved with call me a slut, and like me for it. They want me to feel proud to be a slut. I want to feel proud as well, but it's so hard. A life time of conditioning can't be swept away in weeks or even months.

I'm working on it.