Sunday, November 5, 2017

100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren, #27



Photo is of me and my friend Lisa in NYC - looks sort of "Thelma & Louise" doesn't it. It was around this time I thought sex was a tool for fixing my low self-esteem. Turns out it did just the opposite.

Sex won’t fix what is wrong with your head or your heart.

Epiphanies come from the unlikeliest places sometimes. This one came to me through a movie - nothing artsy or classic, but rather from the movie “City Slickers” – and no, it’s not the “just one thing” thing.

In the movie, Patricia Wetting, who plays Billy Crystal’s wife, is talking about a friend of theirs who is having an affair, and she says, “I’m not happy here,” (pointing to her head), “or here” (pointing to her heart), “So I’ll just be happy here,” (pointing to her pelvis). I remember momentarily slipping into a parallel universe as I reflected on my own brief, albeit intense period of sexual promiscuity and low-self-esteem. And in that moment, one thing became perfectly clear; the worst decisions of my life were all made when my self-esteem was at its lowest.

Unfortunately, some of those bad decisions involved looking for someone else to make me feel better about myself, i.e., they want to have sex with me so I must be better than I think I am (or better than someone else thinks I am). And sometimes the sex was so great I mistook it for love. But when the sexual attraction leveled off - and it always does - I was right back where I started – but with the added guilt. Too many mistakes later, I finally learned that although other people can stroke your ego, the only reliable way to avoid the pitfalls of low-self-esteem is by becoming a lovable person – lovable to yourself. 

So, the lesson I’m hoping to convey is that although sex may make you feel better about yourself for a while, unless your heart and your head also feel good, it won’t fix anything, and the damage could last a lifetime. So, become the person you can love, and chances are others will love you too, and if they don’t, then that is their problem, not yours.

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