Singled Out

I haven't written anything so far this week because I have been so distracted by moving, for one, and also by the way my life is starting to shape up now that I am single. I must be throwing it off in some new way because everyone seems to want to set me up with their guy friends. I have never had this happen before, but to be fair, I have never been single to most of my friends and I have also never looked this vulnerable. I am being set up on dates with guys I have never seen, being asked out by men I have known for years as just friends, and all the while feeling as though I am doing something wrong. Every drink I have with another man, every time one of these boys makes me laugh, or smile, or feel just a little tiny flutter in my heart, I behave as if my ex is watching me. Worse than that, I feel as if his whole family is watching, judging me unfairly for making the best of a terrible situation. I know it's wrong, but it is hard to train your knee to jerk in the other direction, and my knee-jerk is to suppress any attraction I feel for anyone who is not Gino. I suppressed attraction to other people for years, as I am sure most people do while in a relationship. Sometimes, a relationship can feel like nothing more than denying oneself what the heart wants, and the heart is a stupid organ. It is like being on a diet- you are doing something good for yourself by not partaking in things that you want.
I have been on a diet for years with Gino, a Spartan diet with not many indulgences, and now that the metaphorical buffet is open I have trouble taking more than just a few bites before I feel that I have had enough. My appetite is coming back, but not as quickly as I thought it would. I imagined I would throw myself into this, just grab handfuls of what life had to give with complete abandon, but I am, as always, conservative.
I am having more trouble than I need to over practical things, such as how to be sexually responsible versus how to not ruin the moment. That was never a concern with Gino. Gino did not want to get me pregnant any more than I wanted to get pregnant, so we were always responsible. Even if we had a slip-up, I was at the pharmacy the next day when they opened for Plan B just to be safest. When we first got together, I was on NuvaRing, then the pill, and then when I had to stop taking the pill because of migraines, we went back to condoms. We both got tested early on and took care of ourselves, and I never worried. Now, I am worried because public school health class fogged up my perception of what sex is like outside of a committed relationship. I came away from all of that education really believing that all men were out to get me pregnant and simultaneously give me crabherpegonorrheasyphilis. Another factor of this trepidation is the fact that I had a near-miss pregnancy scare with the only other guy I slept with before I met Gino. This might have been the reason why I waited until I was 21 to have sex with a man, and that I have only been with two. If I had met Gino first, I have to admit, it would be only one.
Somehow, this fact came to light in a conversation I had recently with one of the guys I hang out with, and I think it changed the way he sees me now. The look that came over his face was somewhere between admiration and fear. Now, I am not just the female friend of his who is newly single and available, but I am also, seemingly, unschooled. My sister told me I should have gone out and explored more before settling on one man, but I felt no need to explore. I imagined I would do all of the exploring I needed to with my husband, locked within the confines of my marriage. The sexual risk-taking ended around the time he must have decided that he didn't have to impress me. I do like the idea of knowing someone else, some other body that is not Gino's, but it's an abstract. I have no idea what to expect, how to respond to anyone else because marriage had me so trained to respond to my husband. Sex between two people who have been together that long is more like a choreographed dance than anything else- they are the steps you follow to get to where you need to go. I worry that I won't know the steps with someone else, or that they will want to improvise and I'll be just tap-dancing on the sidelines like a dork.
These things concern me, but I know where to focus my energy for the time-being. I have to make my tiny apartment feel like a home first, and then I can think about all of these other, less-important things. I expect I will know when the time is right for working these things out, so for now I am just going to watch everyone else destroy the buffet.