But how do I, as a LL and a woman, and a human person who occupies this body and lives in it, who calls it home - how do I reconcile this claim against my experience of men for whom sex was not a representation of love for me (by their own admission later), but who claimed that it was? How do I know the difference? Honestly, what's more cliched than a man telling a woman a bunch of lies about love/commitment/whatever, just to get into her pants? I'd really like to believe that most men aren't like that, but I assure you that most men that women deal with are like that. And it happens when you're young and still learning. So you learn.

So now I'm left with wounded men in relationships with me, who are hurt when I don't understand their sex drives, who have physical needs that I don't even understand. And I stand here after decades of sexual approach by men who didn't mean well by me, and I don't know how to reconcile these things. Old men that had known me since I was five years old started making sexual remarks and touching me inappropriately when I was 12; I can't be naked for a moment around my live-in boyfriend without being well aware that he wants sex, is turned on by me, loves my body. There's nothing wrong with that, he's not doing anything wrong - but how do I live in this body? When I don't want sex that much? I like sex, but I don't want it every time he does - I don't always want 30-60 minutes of sweat, spit, physical work, someone in my space, my body, of pretending I feel something I might not, watching to make sure I have the right expression my face so as not to ruin the moment, being generous, being present...Being a good lover. Being the kind of lover that I'm supposed to be, who makes people feel good, who loves them and makes them feel loved - there's no end to their need for it, though.

I literally have to hide my body from men. Because if I don't, if I make them want sex from me and then I deny them it, I'm doing something wrong. If I don't give it as often as they want it, I'm doing something wrong. If I give it too often, then they become dependent on that amount and if it lessens I'm punishing them. Isn't that how people here feel? And I've tried to do everything right. I'm polyamorous - I've honestly worked on the causes of the problem as I understand them.