From January 2009.
Below this January 14 post on experience and numbers, bmmg39 writes:
…my view is that, often, people with little or no experience in a certain thing — it CAN be sex but it could also mean romantic love, or kissing, or slow-dancing, or whatever — often seek others with the same low level or non-level of experience. Someone who’s never “soul-kissed†someone else might not feel comfortable with someone who’s done that with a hundred people already. That doesn’t mean the first person thinks that there’s something wrong with the second; it means that the first person would like to be remembered fondly as someone else’s first experience in that department — with all the wonderful awkwardness and nervousness that is said to come with it.
The bold emphasis is mine. What bmmg writes sounds innocent and sweet enough. But the problem is clear: when one of our chief longings is “to be remembered fondly”, to be “someone else’s first”, we’re placing our own desires ahead of our partner’s. We’re using sex as a way of leaving a mark on another person’s body or heart, hoping — as humans tend to hope — that we won’t be forgotten. There’s no question that most of us would like to leave an impression on other people; perhaps it’s the historian in me, but there are few worse fears I have, to be honest, than that I will be completely forgotten! But bmmg makes the mistake of assuming that “first” equals “most memorable.” Ask around. Legions of people, particularly women, would rather forget their first experience of heterosexual intercourse. There’s not infrequently a world of difference between, say, the first partner with whom you had intercourse and the first partner with whom you truly felt close and safe.
When my wife and I were planning our wedding, she was hardly unaware that this was to be my fourth marriage — and her first. (Indeed, I have been the first husband to four different women.) A friend of ours did ask her, on one occasion, if it bothered her that she was doing something for the first time that I had done several times before. My fiancee, sensible as ever, said, “No, because this is the first time he’s doing it with me.” She was focused, bless her, on the marriage we were building together. She didn’t deny the reality of what had come before, but she rightly saw no reason to believe that prior experience on my part would diminish the unique intensity of what we were creating as a team. She knew better than to see me as a three-time loser and a has-been. So when we talked about rings and dresses and bands and caterers, she was aware — on some level — that I had had all those conversations before. But she was also clear that passion is not automatically killed by repetition; she knew enough to know that past behavior isn’t always the best indicator of future action. Above all, she believed that most of the time, the axiom of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” holds true: my ability to be a great husband in my fourth marriage was in no small degree a consequence of all the mistakes I had made in the previous three. Some folks hit a home run on their first at bat. Others… need to be sent down to the minors a time or three.
When a good relationship grows and endures, it does so in its own memorable ways. There is very little, from a purely physically sexual standpoint, that my wife and I could possibly do together that we haven’t each separately done with other people in the past. But that has damn all to do with the memories we create together and the marks we leave on each other. For heaven’s sakes, when I kiss my wife, I’m not comparing her tongue to that of umpteen other women; I’m fairly certain that she isn’t comparing my touch to that of her previous lovers! The tapes of what was are stored away. Why on earth would it matter that I’m not the first to make the woman I love call on the name of God in a moment of pleasure? It would only matter if I allowed my ego to trump my love, if the need to be the first was more important than the need to be the now.
When I was in high school, I lost my virginity to my first serious girlfriend. I was not her first, not by a long shot. She was a year younger than me, but with considerably more experience. But when I first had sex with her, tenderly and awkwardly, I was not thinking “Damn, I wonder if she’s thinking about Joe or Bob or Brutus and if they were better than me.” Even as a teenager, I had enough sense to stay focused on what we were doing in the moment. And as the relationship progressed, and we fell more deeply in love, I knew and trusted that she loved no one else as she loved me. I wanted exclusivity very badly, and honest-to-God, spent very little time wondering about what she had done with other boys and men before me. I knew exclusivity and novelty are two radically different things. To ask for the first is reasonable; to wish to be the provider of the second for another is a function of ego and insecurity. As messed up a kid as I was in many ways, I somehow was lucky enough to grasp that at seventeen.
It is right and good to want to leave a mark upon the world. It is right and good to want to be remembered for the love we shared with others, both the intimate erotic love with certain partners and the more platonic, filial, or agape love we share with our families, friends, and the creatures around us. It’s abundantly obvious I’ve got a healthy ego, and I like to leave that mark in people’s lives! But from the time that I was a geeky, earnest teenage virgin, I’ve understood that an obsession with wanting to be first had nothing to do with love. It’s about control and insecurity. And while the young and inexperienced are often naturally insecure, we never have the right to project our own fears onto others by demanding — or even vocally wishing — that they had not had the past they have had.
And in the end, there are always new firsts. My wife and I will soon be parents — what a first that will be! My wife and I have been to all seven continents together, have ridden century rides together, have buried our fathers together. Those were firsts, bitter and sweet alike. There will always be more. In the face of these wonders, what possible meaning could there be to a history of other people’s skin on our skin?
UPDATE: After writing this post, I drove to the gym. The first song I heard on the car radio was Roberta Flack’s famed cover of the Ewan MacColl classic “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” It’s a perfect song to capture what I’m talking about — it’s all about the joy of firsts, but only the firsts one makes in a relationship, not the firsts one might ever had had with another person. There’s a healthy way and an unhealthy way to think about firsts, and this is the healthy way.
The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and stars were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the empty skies, my love,
To the dark and the empty skies.
The first time ever I kissed your mouth
And felt your heart beat close to mine
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command, my love
That was there at my command.
And the first time ever I lay with you
I felt your heart so close to mine
And I knew our joy would fill the earth
And last till the end of time my love
It would last till the end of time my love
The first time ever I saw your face, your face,
your face, your face
There’s no suggestion that either person in this song is a virgin — the magic is only that created by these two people, unaffected in the slightest by what might have come before. I’ve always loved the song, but never thought of it in this context. Now I like the song even more.
“There will always be new firsts”–good point. And the idea of being frst in order to make a mark on someone or something is not a healthy one; better to focus on what first times are really about, which is discovery, coming into a new world, pushing back the edge of the unknown. A subset of that most wonderful human activity, namely learning.
Since childhood I’ve sensed that there was some mystery about first times, but the culture I grew up in, equally obsessed in different ways, did not help me understand. The culture itself did not well understand the abstract essence behind various sorts of firsts–this is still hard to put into words–and had only various stories of mountaineering, scientists/inventors, various record-breakers (and those horrid stories where people get hurt and bleed when they first start having sex–which set me back a few thousand years!) I had to venture into that unknown by myself. And one of the peripheral knowledge-bits that I brought back was a sense that the cultural fuss about virginity is a bad thing because it makes a person do an idea’s job. You have this concept about a transition from one state to another, and then you have this big preconception of what the previous state ought to be, and you expect a person to conform to that, and that just isn’t going to come to a good end. I am the original more-into-ideas-and-things-than-people person, and even I can tell that shoehorning a person into this or that mental whatsit of your own isn’t going to be good for them, and in the long run might bite you in the rear.
And the image of making some sort of impression or mark on them is all too easy to distort into sadism. I’m a celibate, but I imagine I would be more concerned with what sort of an impression they’d make on ME, and how could I make sure it’s a good one without hurting them. [That is, keeping my own potential for cruelty/exploitation in check.]
Making a person do an idea’s job, making them responsible for a concept not chosen by them–and worse yet, understood so little to begin with–is not going to be good for either the person or the idea. And I’m glad people like you are helping clear stuff like this up.
I may have missed this one the original time it came up, or at lest the part about you becoming a father. So HCRS’s arrival [or is it HRCS? haven't had breakfast yet] caught me by surprise. Let me say huge thanks now for sparing us the details then, and add that I do the secrecy thing myself when on the way with a project, not telling anyone but whoever is helping me with it, until it is complete.
(That part of the song about a partner’s heartbeat likened to a captive bird “there at my command” squicks me out.)
I recently had the honor of helping a high school physics class build trebuchets. My hope was/is that I helped their first venture into this be a happy one (some of these kids had never even picked up a hammer before)–that the impression I made on them was a positive one. They seemed grateful for my help, as did the teacher, so I must have done *something* right. I don’t think any of them were as happy as I was the moment my first treb got off its first launch–but I like to think I may have helped them find wonder in something they hadn’t known about before.
Hats off to all those who help others find wonder and joy, in first times and all other times to come.
I know that we’ve been over this before, but a whole lot of relationship preferences are rooted in insecurity and anxiety. Women who won’t date anyone taller than they are or need a man to be bigger than they are (and vice versa). Men who won’t date a woman with gray hair . . . etc. You get the idea.
Then there are relationships that challenge and upset people. Some people condemn interracial relationships. Some people condemn relationships with age disparities. Some people condemn gay relationships. Now personally, I say “live and let live.” If someone’s doing something wrong he/she can work that out with “fear and trembling” in the presence of God. I would love to see your intellectual powers focused on the great societal problem of shallowness.
Hey, it’s the allegedly “egomaniacal,” “insecure,” “controlling” poster here. (I mean, hey, thanks for calling me those things again! I DO appreciate it.)
My original post that prompted this one over a year ago had nothing really to do with being “compared” to others, and certainly wasn’t some gender-specific phallocentric desire to “control” women. The post written about my words would hold actual weight if I were talking about an experienced person who was looking to add notches (of inexperienced people) to his bedpost. Since I wasn’t, this was just gross misrepresentation of what my meaning was. But I guess you always need to have a villain, Hugo, and will concoct one if there’s not actually one around.
Of course (and this is in no way a slam), it’s probably going to be a tall task for someone who’s dated umpteen people and has been married four times to understand or to express accurately the views of those who are starting to get gray hairs before experiencing their first romances. Again, whether we’re discussing sex or love or what-have-you, people with much experience tend to become rather jaded and blasé over time, and there are simply some people who would rather not hear that they are #62 when the other person is #1 to them.
If I couldn’t handle being number 1,234,567,890 in any sequence, rather than number 1, I’d not bring the subject up in the first place. If I’m intimidated by being in the presence of experts on something I am new at, I will admit this and then [try to] shut up and learn.
There is a difference between simply being intimidated by someone with a vastly greater experience so you wish they were more at your own level, and on the other hand simply being resentful that you think you can’t “make a mark on them”. To me, part of maturity is being less concerned with just making a mark or impression, and more concerned that it be a good one for all concerned.
I don’t think Hugo was in fact setting you up as a villain, bmmg39, I suspect he just prefers to start of posts that bring up a past topic by quoting someone rather than saying “A while back someone said…” But he can defend himself, so onward.
The insecure and ignorant worry about being able to make a mark, and likely neither understand the true significance of first times nor recall how many other different firsts they will have accumulated, with others or alone. People who become secure and knowledgeable might eventually find they are a little less subject to jadedness or blase-itude, but that’s one for a whole nother thread.
As an asexual and introvert, I figure my role is to provide an outsider’s, and possibly more abstract/general viewpoint. But I join davev in hoping that great intellects, including Hugo’s, will take on the problem of shallowness in all its forms.
bmmg, and what if I’m the #61 who wants to be my partner’s #1? What you’re talking about, I think, is wanting to be the first for one another; for them to be your first as well as your being theirs, because you want to discover things together, not having your partner thinking ‘been there, done that’ to things that are wholly new and exciting to you. That’s a very different attitude than wanting to “make my mark” or “I want him to remember me”.
There’s also a great difference between inexperience and virginity. When I was in college I knew a fellow who slept around and did “everything but” vaginal intercourse, because he believed that he would someday get married and then he would have this new, special thing with his wife. Maybe I’m wrong but I suspect that a virginal, inexperience partner was not going to be thinking “Okay, he’s had his face in fifty different women’s laps, but at least he never penetrated them vaginally! He’s all mine!”
And of course there are people whose first sexual experience was rape or abuse. YMMV, but I don’t think I’d put somebody who lost his virginity to a childhood abuser as in the same category as a sexually experienced adult.
I understand where you’re coming from bmmg, but I don’t think a person’s number takes away from their worth or their experience with you whether they are number one or a hundred. I think it’s a sign of insecurity and inexperience to be concerned about firsts. Just have a little more faith in yourself.
“Since I wasn’t, this was just gross misrepresentation of what my meaning was.”
While I cannot speak for Hugo, at least here, he obviously couldn’t relate to your experience and his blog is about him and his experience, not yours. It may or may not be due to differences in communication styles and one’s ability to articulate period. And for what it is worth, I’m not suggesting that you are a poor communicator either. Then again, people cannot always empathize with someone’s feelings when it is not their experience. Most people are very focused on their own experiences and feelings, not those of other people.
I tend to agree with mythago’s observations and the example she provided of a first sexual experience—someone who lost his/her virginity to a childhood abuser and their first experience was rape or abuse would be very different and in a completely different category of firsts than a sexually experienced adult, etc. A good many people who never had that kind of experience—the first type would never be able to empathize with someone whose experiences were the former, rather than the latter.
Also many people go through life unable to relate too or connect with others, because they are so focused on their own needs and feelings. I mean no disrespect here when I say that it’s wise to consider the source.
I’m sometimes shocked that there are people who WANT to be someone’s first. I don’t want to be anyone’s first — I don’t even think I really wanted that when I was a PIVirgin.
http://www.memyselfmusicandmysteries.com/?p=1846
mythago: “bmmg, and what if I’m the #61 who wants to be my partner’s #1? What you’re talking about, I think, is wanting to be the first for one another; for them to be your first as well as your being theirs, because you want to discover things together, not having your partner thinking ‘been there, done that’ to things that are wholly new and exciting to you.”
Yes, mythago: you alone seem to have grasped my point. Whether it’s love or sex or something else, many crave to “discover” these things together. It’s not about domination, as some here seem to have alleged.
“That’s a very different attitude than wanting to ‘make my mark’ or ‘I want him to remember me’.”
I don’t think it’s so wrong for one to wish to be remembered. Wanting to “make one’s mark” in a physical, notch-on-a-bedpost way is one thing; wanting to leave an impression on a person as to what kind of human being you are or the memories you’ve shared is quite another.
“There’s also a great difference between inexperience and virginity. When I was in college I knew a fellow who slept around and did ‘everything but’ vaginal intercourse, because he believed that he would someday get married and then he would have this new, special thing with his wife. Maybe I’m wrong but I suspect that a virginal, inexperience partner was not going to be thinking ‘Okay, he’s had his face in fifty different women’s laps, but at least he never penetrated them vaginally! He’s all mine!’”
I’ll go along with that. An asexual such as myself isn’t at all the “everything but” type.
“And of course there are people whose first sexual experience was rape or abuse. YMMV, but I don’t think I’d put somebody who lost his virginity to a childhood abuser as in the same category as a sexually experienced adult.”
Neither would I; the two are worlds apart.