The conundrum of sexuality

I have always been a bit of an amateur cultural and sexual anthropologist, I study the history, cultural themes and variations in sexual pleasure, desire, and action.  I find comfort in the commonality that sex, and in a similar vein, death, provide for every living thing. If we have nothing in common in this life, we can at least say that our lives will be affected by both sex and death at some point.

The choice to abstain, indulge, experience, or limit ones sexual proclivities are the result of a conscious decision and the complete inability to keep sex out of ones life. We are all born of sex and will at one point make a choice about the role sex will play in our lives.

I catch myself often wondering what it is that defines sexuality, is there a board of directors somewhere that assigns sexual orientation around puberty? Does it come in the mail at some point, a notarized certificate to hang in your bedroom, signed sealed and confirmed?

Is sexuality fluid? does a person go through their lives in various states of attraction or disinterest, ebbing and flowing as the years go on? Will what turned me on at 15 turn me on at 30? at 60?  If not, what it is that changes in a person as they age? At 20, do you realize that its leather and whips you need to get off, or does it take some sort of introduction, an eye opening "Ah-Ha Moment" if you will?

I've considered myself some version of queer for most of my adult life, whether you call it greedy, experimental, or trendy, the long and short of it is that i have had equally significant relationships with both men and women in my life.

I have often reflected on what led me to this conclusion, most would probably have guessed that it was a need for attention, or a need to stand out in a world that kind of overlooked brown haired brown eyed chubby white teenagers. Maybe there is some truth to that, I was never a person that liked to blend in and I was always looking to understand the world around me and ask for it to prove its love to me. But is that the final answer? I don't think so, I don't know that finding an answer is really that important, but it doesn't stop me from ruminating on it, I am a naturally analytical person that needs to over think everything I do anyway so thinking on my sexuality is inevitable.

The first woman i truly dated lasted for three or four years off an on,  starting when I had just turned 18.  We met through friends and got to know each other over the Internet, eventually meeting and hooking up pretty quickly.

I was completely enamored with her, intoxicated by the novelty of the relationship, I had never known these feelings, and though I had often suspected, and even orated on the flexibility of sexuality, I had never experienced anything outside of the male, female relationship outside of the occasional kiss with a female friend.

This woman, I am fairly confident that I wasn't in love with her, but I was, at the very least, in love with the idea of her, and the politics that came along with our relationship. Reality or not, she did indeed break my heart.

During this 4 year span I was with other men, most in a casual capacity, and at some point another woman as well, each relationship was complicated and fulfilling in its own way, culminating in my eventual pregnancy and marriage very shortly after my college graduation.

Is Steve my idealized perfect mate? Probably not, do I have an idealized perfect mate? I don't know that I ever gave myself an opportunity to develop that ideal. When I found out I was pregnant, whatever love Steve and I had for each other took a backseat to the reality of our situation and the need to develop a life for our child as quickly as possible.

Do I love him? absolutely. It isn't a question really, the love I have for my husband has grown immeasurably over the last 5 years we have been together and I find that I miss him more when he's away and love him in a more real and simple way than I did back when we were first together and desperately trying to figure out how to make a family out of two mutually exclusive people with only two months of romantic interaction.

I think its this comfort and security in my marriage that has brought me back to my queer leanings, questioning the definition of my own sexuality and what that means for my life and in a larger sense, what sexuality looks like in society today.

Because I am married, and happily monogamous, at least for the time being,  does that mean I'm no longer queer? Does it mean I'm on hiatus? Can a person be queer, in a straight relationship, and maintain a sense of their sexual identify, does that identity change once you make the commitment to spend the rest of your life with one person, regardless of gender?

Where does the line between a desire for pleasure and love and a need for normalcy and stability blur; creating a new reality?

I don't have an answer.  But these things I do know for sure, I love my husband, I love my daughter and my life, and I am queer, whatever that means.

Sexuality...expect this to be a common theme in my writing as its a common theme in my thoughts and musings, and really, what is a blog for but to get those thoughts an musings out into the world so that anyone else who muses on these themes can know they are not alone.