Words by: Anna Leupardo
Graphic by: Jada Milazzo
When we meet someone who we feel is going to hold a significant place in our lives, it is hard to decide when you should grant them the keys to your vault – when and to what degree you choose to open up your heart. Sometimes, we choose to open up slowly, gradually allowing time to teach us how much we trust this new relationship. But other times we open up all at once, as if we were a library and whomever this person is could simply pick out any volume of their choosing to uncover an element of who we are.
But when a control freak of my nature chooses the “open book” approach, that means two things. The first thing is that it means that for some reason I feel completely and utterly safe with you. The second thing is that despite me feeling safe with you, the control freak inside me, that is scared to trust this gut feeling, will still somehow find a loophole. Any time this happens I try to convince myself that whatever loophole I conjure up, will prove to my doubtful side that I can truly trust this new person I am letting into my life.
I got the idea from the movie Friends with Benefits. Mila Kunas’s character, with the help of her situationship, started going out with this guy who seemed to be exactly what she was looking for. So, before she got ahead of herself, she told him right off the bat, she had a rule – a five date rule. Her rule was that she had to go on five consecutive dates with the same person before she could allow herself to get into bed with them. A self-restraint tasked to our natural human temptation – her own personal loophole. It was her character’s way of maintaining what she thought was control over the situation – a way to make sure she could trust this guy who seemed just too good to be true.
So the next time I went out with a guy, it wasn’t just one rule that I gave. Instead, I gave him three. Three rules regarding our intimacy, my expectations, and the use of my sex toys. I knew he was important, but whether he was going to become a lesson, a friendship, or more was beyond my control. But did I want to try and control it because I feared what would happen if I didn’t, absolutely! So, in that moment my three rules seemed like the “sexiest” way to challenge him. The rules would reveal his true character, entice us both, but most importantly keep me in control, or so I wanted to believe.
As it turns out, that was a load of bullshit. Being a control freak does not come with the benefit of being able to protect you from the choices of others nor from your very own feelings. Feelings for anyone are not something you can control, even if you try and use sex toys to cover up your tracks. And even if someone passes all your tests and makes it through your loopholes of protection, they still may not turn out to be what you expected. Relationships are not tamable with rules, but that is what makes them so beautiful. They may not always have a happy ending, but a broken heart still means you had something real, something we should all be so lucky to experience.