The Sting of Hindsight

March 21, 2006 | Category: Sexblogs

Is it me, or is hindsight one of the curses of the aging process?

True, the ability to look back and analyse the routes we’ve taken in the past is vital in assisting us to navigate safe paths through the future. But it can also be a torturous faculty. Is there anything like a glance over your shoulder at the missed opportunities of yesterday for turning the knife in your stomach? And it seems to me that the older we get, the sharper (perhaps that ought to be ‘blunter’) the knife becomes. Consider it a twisted bonus that no matter how poor your eyesight is in the here and now, every one of us has twenty-twenty vision when it comes to our powers of retrospection.

I used to have a girlfriend who, if I’m brutally honest, I always suspected of being a bit of a slut. That sounds awful, even to me. Especially to me. This was a girl I loved, after all. And I did love her, as surely as I’m sat here typing these words.

She was the one with the greater familiarity with the art of sexual congress. In fact, her experience outweighed mine by some margin. Though I’d had a couple of girlfriends, I’d only slept with one woman before we began dating. I’d known my girlfriend for a while before we became involved, so I already knew that she’d had a number of other boyfriends. Over time, I realised that she’d slept with five or six of them. I never asked for an exact figure. I’d like to leave you with the ambiguity of not knowing whether that was because I was a balanced gentleman who didn’t care or need to know, or because I was a coward who was too frightened to. Unfortunately, I suspect the remainder of this piece will prove a bit of a giveaway.

At that time in my life - eighteen, nineteen - I was still bothered with archetypal teenaged male insecurities: my desirability to the opposite sex, my capability to retain the interest of a woman, my aptitude as a lover. My girlfriend’s past didn’t help. That was my problem, I know, but when your girlfriend’s old beaus pop-up everywhere you go, most making it clear that they’d be happy to renew their association with her, if only for the chance of a little Auld Lang’s Sine bump-and-grind, it does very little for your sang-froid.

There were times when she told me how she regretted her past, how she felt she’d been too casual with her favours. Mostly, this was done in implicit terms, but I recall at least one occasion when she was explicit in her self-condemnation. Now, more seasoned, with a less judgmental outlook, I have a much different mindset to the one I had back then. But back then, I silently agreed with her self-condemnation, even though I loved her. I never wanted to feel that way. I just came to hate how every time we went out together, every time I kissed her or touched her, I felt as though I was competing with all the ghosts of her past.

My girlfriend’s desire for love-making that skipped the stereotype of the bedroom only fuelled my anxiety. Sex was still new for me, and I was more than happy to earn my spurs in the privacy of her room, or mine. But sex confined to the bedroom was pass� for her. This was a woman who’d taken advantage of dark, secluded alleyways if the distance from the nightclub to the most convenient bed was likely to take the edge off her desire. Telephone boxes, train toilets, the back seats of late-night buses, they were all adrenalin feasts for her. She once described how she’d persuaded a boyfriend to fuck her as she lay naked in a snow-covered field, because she found the idea of the cold arousing.

Car sex was another of her favoured varieties. Automobiles make convenient boudoir-substitutes when you don’t have your own place, and your parents don’t approve of pre-marital sex, or your current partner. But her taste for automotive coitus went beyond mere necessity. So much so, that for a very long time I resisted all her attempts to get me to fuck her in the passenger seat of her father’s Citroen. I wasn’t sure if she were trying to exorcise her ghosts, or if she were seeking a catharsis by blending exciting memories of the past with the physicality of the present.

Of course, I look back now and see the opportunities I allowed to slip by. I was a naïve pup; ignorant, judgmental, scarcely aware of my potential, let alone the many sexual delights that are on offer to an open mind. And this was a woman with a serious appetite for sex (I was once urged on to bring her to fourteen orgasms in a single love-making session in my room at university - a figure that I don’t believe I’ve ever exceeded). My inexperience and my insecurities stopped me from going with the flow, from availing myself of my girlfriend’s sexual savoir faire. I think of all the exploits I’ve had since we parted, all the ones I’ve fantasised of having, and I can’t help but wonder what she would have made of them, which of them would have aroused her. I find myself wondering what adventures we might have dreamt up - and explored - together.

Not that our relationship was solely a case of missed opportunities. We had lots of exhilarating, energetic sex, not all of it restricted to the bedroom. In time, I overcame my automotive hang-up and allowed her to break my duck; one dark night, parked in the overgrown entrance to a little-used field in Middle England, she revealed to me the excitement of stripping naked with your lover somewhere other than in a house or hotel. There was the time we ate a picnic in Scottish woodland, and then made raucous love across a rumpled car blanket, oblivious to the possibility of being observed. She even enticed me into taking her standing in the window of an office block one rainy night, lights blazing behind us, so that anyone who happened to glance upwards would see our coupled silhouettes.

But sadly, I now realise that I was more repelled than aroused by her sexual history, intimidated rather than inspired by her greater experience. Ironic, given my now rather more expansive tastes, attitudes and repertoire.

The impetuousness and artlessness of youth blinded me to glorious possibilities, perhaps even held me back from fulfilling my - our - potential. And though I might be judging my former self harshly, sometimes forgetting that the man I am now owes a sizeable debt to the callow youth I was then, I can’t stop myself from wanting to give him a sharp slap across the head from time to time, together with a timely lesson in making the most of a given situation.


 
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8 Comments

  1. Suze on March 21st, 2006
    1

    These experiences make us who we are. To change things then, would be altering your path through life. The butterfly effect.

    We should never look back with regret. ;)

    Suze, you’re absolutely right - I think that learning not to look back at the past with regret is one of the keys to a contented life. That said, it’s not a faculty that comes naturally to all. There are those who are naturally “glass half full” types, and those who will always tend to view the same vessel as being half-empty. Personally, I tend to be a bit of a swing voter. I’d prefer to subscribe to your philosophy full time, but there are always likely to be those quiet moments of introspection, when you can’t help but think “what if?”

    ~EA

  2. ohseegirl on March 21st, 2006
    2

    I think it’s impossible to erase all past regret. That being said, I am a firm believer in timing being everything. When I look back upon myself at 18, I was far less concerned with the means than I was with the end. As I’ve gotten older, so much of the sensuality, the fantastically erotic, exists in the minutes, hours, days, even years that lead up to that one crescendoing moment. The art of flirtation and seduction is something I think few of us were concerned with in our early sexuality.

    Also, I think we were programmed to think certain behaviours were reprobate or abnormal. When I was 18, I passed up an opportunity to spend a night with my glorious Greek boyfriend and his best friend because I was convinced that only a slut would do that. I most certainly look back on that with regret. Who knows what doors would have opened for me/him/us? I made up for it a year later in the club life of West Hollywood, but still, it’s hard to not wonder what if….

    Sorry for the length of this comment.

    First off, no need to apologise for the comment length, OC. Rather, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

    I do agree that no matter how positive or forward looking you are, there’s likely to be a residue of past regret stashed somewhere in your psyche, ready to gnaw at you whenever you find yourself at a low ebb.

    Just as you do, I recall myself at eighteen being far more concerned with the end results, rather than with enjoying the journey. Fortunately, that mindset has long since turned to ash. I’m not sure whether or not we’re actually programmed to find certain sexual activities abhorrent. I do remember a girlfriend offering me my first opportunity to go down on a woman when I was around sixteen. I baulked; I couldn’t conceive of bringing my mouth into contact with her pudenda. Fingers: yes. Penis: yes. Lips and tongue: no way, José. Pre-programming, or naivety? I cringe when I think of that moment, partly because of the opportunity I passed up (yet more regrets), but primarily because of my schoolboyish rejection of her. And she was gorgeous to boot, pudenda and all. The ‘now’ me certainly doesn’t blame her for ditching me shortly afterwards.

    ~EA

  3. Ellie on March 21st, 2006
    3

    Ah, this age thing is a double edged sword. It helps you recognise (possibly regret / rue/ kick yourself) when you were a jackass (or just immature) but its also with the wisdom of age that you can now comfortably screw in a car, in the park, or in your very own bed in your very own house because you’re an adult with a place of your own! :P

    True enough, Ellie. Age does provide benefits, not least of which is the opportunity to get up to whatever deviancies you care to within the privacy of your own home…

    ~EA

  4. Anastasia on March 24th, 2006
    4

    I’ve been on both sides of this torturous path. With other people, who would feel intimidated (and therefore turn the sexual experience issue toward me as ammunition, for the understandable reason of naivete) I’d come off feeling, not guilty of my sexual past per se, but frustrated with their reaction, regardless of the assurances I’d give but I also experience naive moments, from time to time, where I’d be with males who’d need to validate their prowess, and at the end of it all, feel like I’d have to compete with every morsel of competition there was (and feel quite dejected, exhausted, and quite angry in the same breath, only to walk away).

    Sometimes I wish I had foresight, but the majority of the time I think that every experience is the ‘right’ experience that one experiences on their own individual journey, and that’s the thing about it, it’s unique/individual.

    I’ve thought along similar lines, Ana - that life is a river of experiences, each appropriate to that point in our life, and that we ought to accept each one for what it is, and not worry unduly what it might have been if things were different…

    ~EA

  5. Lea on March 24th, 2006
    5

    Ah.. misspent Youth.. if only .. then what!!
    I had what I now know I need in my first husband, but at 20, could not see it.
    Now.. later.. I wonder why i could not see what i had. Well .. He was not nice to me, didn’t love me, etc.
    So… current SO is wonderful .. but does not have exactly what I need at times.
    I look back and sigh.. but the time and the man were not right long ago!!

    Such is life!!
    :roll:

    Those last three words, Lea … so well used, and yet still so very true…

    ~EA

  6. kimmie on November 9th, 2007
    6

    a little harsh on yourself i think? …age plays a major part in our confidence, especially sexually…don’t look back with regrets…your past got you to where you are today..made you who you are today and will take you to wherever your future has planned for you…. i like to think i have done more good than bad in my life..but either way i don’t regret xxx

    And I think that’s the sensible, healthy way to be, Kimmie - learn from your past, but don’t regret it. That said, I think it’s inevitable that at some points in your life, you’re going to look back with something of a wistful sigh…

    ~EA

  7. kimmie on November 10th, 2007
    7

    maybe , but they were just not meant to be..? there is surely more adventure ahead ?x

    That’s what I live for - the prospect of new and more exciting adventures…

    ~EA

  8. TJ on November 20th, 2007
    8

    Ah I used to be bothered by many girlfriends and their pasts. Bothered, and at the same time aroused. My best bud revealed revealed to me that he’d ask his girl about her past cause it turned him on big time. I decided to try this with my current girlfriend and just focus on the arousal part and WHAM!

    I just get hard hearing about all the things she’s done. I ask her to be as descriptive as possible, to the point where she’s uncomfy with talking about it lol. I cant believe I missed out on these opportunities in my past relationship. Far from making me feel inadequate or tearing us apart, it has just brought us closer and she tells me that this is the best relationship she’s been in,

    I have tried to look for this fantasy on-line but all I find about “girlfriend’s past” is many guys seeking help for getting over their partner’s past. Guys always have problem’s with their women’s past relationships and sexual experiences. I used to be like that…and I feel like I’ve been set free.

    Who knows, maybe I’ll get my gf to act out her call girl fantasy (which she wouldnt have told me about if we werent this close) lol

    Sorry for length of comment ;)

    Not a problem, TJ. It’s good that you can share your girlfriend’s past in a sexually positive way…

    ~EA

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