Maybe I Am Lovable

The night I learned that my greatest fear wasn’t true

Podcaster and sex and relationship coach Leah Carey; photo by Dijana Szewczyk

I was emotionally exhausted and wanted nothing more than to collapse into someone’s arms. But I lived alone, had no lover, and my closest friends were spread out around the country, available for phone calls but not hugs. It was December 2016, and the first anniversary of my mother’s death had passed a few days earlier.

When my phone pinged with Christopher’s text, the timing was perfect.

Christopher Hey! I’m in town. Want to have dinner tonight?

We had met through a dating app a few years earlier and clicked immediately…as friends. It was obvious to both of us that our temperaments and life goals weren’t suited for a romantic relationship, but we laughed together a lot. We were naturally affectionate with each other: we hugged easily, draped our arms around each other, we even cuddled while watching movies, without it having to “mean something.”

Christopher moved out of state not long after we met, but still came back to northern New Hampshire to visit his family a couple times a year. We settled into a comfortable pattern of not talking much when he was gone, but always seeing each other at least once when he was in town.

Leah: Yes! But I don’t have energy to go out. How about ice cream at my place?

Christopher: Perfect. See you around 8.

Christopher perpetually ran late, so I wasn’t surprised when he showed up at nine. I pulled out a pint of Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, along with two spoons, and we got started on a serious case of brain freeze.

Christopher was fresh off a doomed romance and needed to vent. My furniture arrangement—him on a chaise, me in a recliner—was designed for side-by-side television viewing rather than long conversations. Before long I adjusted myself to face him with my legs draped over the recliner arm.

As he talked, his always-busy hands reached up to take off my socks and rub my feet. I sank further into the recliner, pulling a throw blanket over my lap to get even cozier, and let his voice wash over me. I could have happily sat there for hours listening to his relationship woes as long as he kept rubbing my feet.

Was it twenty minutes or two hours later? No idea. But having someone finally touching me after so much isolation woke a craving in the rest of my body, too.

The words popped into my head, then out of my mouth, with no intervention from my rational brain. “If you asked me to have sex tonight, I would say yes. One night only, no strings attached, still friends in the morning.”

WHAT?! Where the hell did that come from? Who gave my mouth permission to say those words?

In the long moment of silence following the proposition, I plunged into an icy bath of fear.

Surely he was about to stand up and walk out.

Or laugh in my face.

I’d broken the unspoken agreement.

What if I just ended our friendship?

When he finally answered, his voice was gentle and contemplative. “Well, I was thinking about it on my way over here. But I’m still so messed up over this breakup, I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

At least, I think that’s what he said.

My brain had skidded to a stop at, “I thought about it on the way over here.”

Christopher continued talking as if nothing awkward had happened, but I was deep underwater. I used his voice as a guide as I fought my way back to the surface, unable to understand the words he was saying but comforted by his consistent rhythms.

He hadn’t rejected me. We were still friends.

I had come on to someone and the world hadn’t ended.

But like that wiry little hair that keeps cropping up on my chin, I couldn’t stop worrying over that one sentence: “I thought about it on the way over here.”

What did he mean by that?

Surely he hadn’t been thinking about having sex with me?

I must have misunderstood him. People don’t think of me that way.

I could feel the words sitting on my tongue, straining to be released.

But every time I got close, the good girl inside me clamped my lips shut. I’d gotten past her once tonight; she wasn’t going to let that happen a second time.

Besides, the question I needed to ask was even more vulnerable and intimate than inviting him to have sex with me.

As the evening grew later, though, the filter between my brain and my mouth continued to weaken.

“I want to ask you something, but I can’t do it if we’re looking at each other. Would you mind laying down on my bed so we can cuddle and I don’t have to look at you while we talk?”

Without so much as a randy chuckle at the idea of “going into the bedroom,” Christopher got up and followed me into the adjoining room.

I settled in as the little spoon, comforted that I wouldn’t see his face when he delivered the awful truth that he was just being kind and, in truth, having sex with me would be cringey. “You said you were thinking about whether to have sex with me and I’m really confused. People don’t think about me that way. They never have, so you obviously didn’t mean what I thought you meant. Please explain so I can figure out what I misunderstood.”

Christopher’s response was immediate. He lifted his hand from where it had been resting on my arm and stroked my left hip. “Are you crazy? Look at these hips!”

He traced his hand up the curve of my body. “Look at the way your waist dips in!”

He cupped my breast with reverence. “Look at your amazing breasts!”

He nudged me onto my back so he could look at me, even as I avoided his eyes. “You’ve got a great body! Of course I think about you in a sexual way! Why would you think otherwise?”

There was no doubting his sincerity. This time there could be no mistaking what his words meant.

Tears washed my face as I repeated the things my father had said to me as a child: that I was unattractive, undesirable, unlovable.

Nobody will love you if you don’t have pretty legs.

This message was repeatedly reinforced by a string of emotionally abusive boyfriends who made sure I knew I was selfish, too much work.

Your father broke you, now it’s my job to fix you.

“Those people must have had some serious issues to say that to you,” he said. “You’re absolutely desirable.”

As we talked, our limbs intertwined in a deep cuddle.

For the first time since my mom died, I allowed someone to hold my heart in their hands ever-so-tenderly, and he needed nothing more from me than to be present. He listened as I talked, still not looking at him but feeling his care in every cell of my body.  

He checked his phone. “It’s two a.m. I should probably go.”

As we untangled our arms and legs, I rolled onto my back and he came to rest kneeling over me.

“I want to kiss you so much,” he said.

My voice settled somewhere between pleading and teasing. “I wish you would.”

He chuckled. “I know. But it’s still not a good idea. My head is too messed up.”

Christopher had just seen me at my most raw and vulnerable, and he still wanted to kiss me. A whisper began in my soul: Maybe there is beauty in me, and I just don’t see it.

Yet.

Leah Carey grew up in a home that left her sexually repressed into her early forties. At age 43, she had a profound experience of sexual healing during a six-month solo road trip around the United States. Today, Leah is a sex and relationship coach and host of the podcast Good Girls Talk About Sex. In a world filled with confusing and contradictory messages about sex, Leah helps sex make sense. As a result of her own experience of trauma and narcissistic abuse, Leah’s superpower is radical empathy. She is currently writing a memoir about her experience.