I Wanna Know What Love Is...

In high school, I imagined losing my virginity with the Foreignor song playing in the background, while the man I was with made soft sweet love to me and whispered in my ear "I love you" and held me close.

Mix a big dumb third-string football player with a naive college freshman and it's a far cry from the fantasy I'd held just a few weeks earlier when I left for school.

Eventually, I met my soon-to-be ex-husband and it was a bit better than my first time had been. Some moments were more romantic than others, and there were one or two of those that even brought me to tears. But I never had that "Foreignor/soft sweet making love" experience with him or anyone else since our divorce five years ago...until last night.

He and I were definitely not having a great night - I'm not sure if he realized it or not, but I fought back tears most of the evening. He was too self-conscious to let me know he wasn't feeling well, so I took it personally when he wouldn't taste my cooking, and even more personally when he'd rebuffed my advances.

Everyone has their baggage and their hot buttons. Mine is being rejected by the man I'm with...my ex-husband had rejected my sexual advances over and over, during the course of our 11 years together. The men I've gotten close to, since my divorce, have all had extremely large sexual appetites - probably why I favored them. So even now, I'm still very sensitive to that kind of rejection, as I discovered last night.

A couple of hours of my quietly suffering emotionally and his quietly panicking at my distance, I finally opened up and let him in. He tried to explain why he'd rejected me, but I interrupted to let him know that it wasn't necessary - this was my insecurity. He volunteered his own worries and insecurities and we tried to assuage each other's fears by sharing our feelings. He promised to always taste my cooking; and I promised that I'd never leave him for a pretty boy.

And then he made love to me. He held me close, whispered "I love you" and I returned the sentiment. "I love you so much," he said, barely audible. I thought back to that dream, that wish of how it would be my first time. "I have waited for you for so long," I told him. I heard Foreignor playing that song in my mind, as they'd played it in my fantasies so many years ago. It wasn't quite the "first time," but it was truly my first time and it was so much better than I'd ever imagined.