Too personal?

The other day, while having a Facebook conversation with my boyfriend while his phone was blocked, I happened to mention a comment that a fellow blogger had made on this post. I followed that up with “And now you know I blogged about you. But I suppose you guessed that already :-P”. The response was “No, I hadn’t guessed that :S”. “Is that bad?” I asked, thinking the :S face didn’t look positive. The rest of the conversation went like this:

J: Well, it is a bit of a private matter, don’t you think?
Me: I didn’t go into detail. But I can make those posts private now if you want.
Me: What do you think I blog about usually?
J: Not me?
Me: But you know I blog about you. I’ve told you I do.
J: Yes, sometimes. But I assume it’s not usually about my health or similarly private matters.
(At this point I should probably add that, while he knows all about my blog – including what it’s called and where it’s hosted – he chooses not to read it)
Me: I blog about my life. The fact that my boyfriend is in hospital in Turkey and I’m worried kind of has to do with my life.
J: Well yeah, it depends on how much detail you’d be divulging about me
Me: So I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all? I don’t know what you consider too much detail.
Me: You know I write about our relationship as well, right?
J: Well, I would say health is generally a sensitive area. So anything beyond “appendectomy” is pretty private I would think.

Ah. Well, I can’t say I did stop at the word appendectomy, to be honest After I’d explained what I wrote (basically that he’d called me at work to tell me he was getting his appendix out and then sent a text later to say the op had gone well), he responded with “well, that’s not too detailed then”. He then changed the subject, before saying that his colleague had arrived and he was going outside for a bit. He never did respond to the “You know I write about our relationship as well, right?” question. But the whole conversation got me thinking.

Am I too open on my blog? As I mentioned, Jan knows exactly how to find it and I’ve told him before that he’s welcome to read it. I believe that anyone I write this much about should have the opportunity to see what I’m saying about them. He’s never taken me up on it though – he says it’s my blog and he doesn’t want to censor it. And also that he assumes I “know how to handle it”, whatever that means, but he didn’t expect there to be anything about his operation on there. The fact that he then said what I had written is not too detailed wasn’t very reassuring. What did he think I had written, if not what I actually did? How much more detail would I have had to go into for it to be bad? And if he ever does decide to read my blog, what will he think of all the other posts that mention him? I mean, I’ve written about our sex life! And that wasn’t the first time I’d mentioned it either. I’ve also written about his utter inability to commit – to anything, not just me, and before that about the fact that he didn’t want to move in with me (which, of course, he since has).

Now I’m left wondering if any of the posts that mention him are not too personal. Or did he not respond to my pointing out that I blog about our relationship because he doesn’t care what I write about that? He knows I use my blog to get my feelings out and that my readers give me advice (because I have told him!). But does he realise how much detail I go into? And, the most important question, where do I go from here? Perhaps from now on I should stick to more generic posts, about baking and travel and the weirdness of Germans. But then what would I do to keep myself sane? Aargh, it’s a dilemma!

Over to you readers. Do you think my blog is too personal? Do I divulge too much about Jan? What next for Confuzzledom? Once again, I need your advice…

In which I overshare about my sex life

NOTE: If you have a problem with the whole sex-before-marriage thing (sorry, but I’ve been with my boyfriend nearly 9 years, living together for almost 3. You really think we don’t do it?!) or just don’t want to read about other people’s sex lives please feel free to click away now. Consider yourself forewarned – and don’t blame me if you get to the end and feel offended! For the rest of you… read on (I promise not to get into too much detail…)

So, over the course of our relationship, the boyfriend and I haven’t always had sex as much as I would like.

No Sex (Photo credit: djwingsia)

Obviously during our two year long distance relationship, not much of anything was happening, but after I moved to Germany I expected things to pick up. Which they did, at first but gradually “it” happened less and less often. Then at some point we would talk fight about it, things would improve for a while, then it would dwindle again until we were doing it maybe once a month.

So, a few weeks before Christmas, after getting nothing for almost two months, I told Jan I was thinking about coming off the pill once all the ones I still had were used up – after all, what was the point in protecting against immaculate conception? (Of course I was going to finish the packets I had left – I pay good money for those suckers! Welcome to any country that’s not in the UK…). Not the best start to that conversation, I admit. Inevitably it ended in a fight (you can’t make start a conversation with those words and not hurt your man’s feelings..), I cried, then I had to go to work. Yes… I have great timing.

The next day, I sat down and wrote a letter explaining everything I wanted to say. It had to be a better option than blurting things out without thinking about what I wanted to say, right? I left the letter for Jan to read and (again) went to work – I wanted him to read it when I wasn’t there, so he would have time to recover from his first reaction and really think about what I was trying to say, rather than getting defensive in the heat of the moment. Later, he thanked me for writing the letter. Then we each agreed to work on what was bothering the other person (basically, he says he’s sick of always being the one to initiate things, while I say whenever I try to initiate anything he doesn’t seem interested, and even things that have worked before never seem to work a second time. Like I said, oversharing…). We then went away for Christmas, sleeping in beds at other people’s houses, and I started my period, which didn’t help… so still no sex.

Then, 2 weeks ago, while in bed, I asked him what I would have to do to turn him on. Unbelievably, his first response was that he didn’t know! (How am I supposed to know if he doesn’t?). He then countered by asking what I’d been trying. Apparantly I was too subtle though – he hadn’t even noticed me doing those things!! In the end I did get a few ideas. But the next time we did it, he was the initiator again… so on Friday night I decided to take the bull by the horns (oo-er, I’ve just realised how dirty that sound in this context!).

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Jan got home, I was finishing off the white sauce for the lasagne while the washing machine beeped furiously. Stress! He immediately offered to hang the washing, allowing me to finish tea. I finished preparing the lasagne, stuck it in the oven, and went to the living room, where I found Jan hanging the last item of washing on the airer. Excellent! I saw my chance and started kissing him. Passionately. After a few minutes of this (plus a bit of neck kissing and… other stuff), he asked “Is there anything you would like”. My response “Well… we have half an hour…” I’ll leave the next bit up to your imagination…

… we finished just in time for the lasagne to come out of the oven. I guess I do still have an affect on him after all…

Why am I telling you this? I know I’ve complained on here before about being sexually frustrtaed and worried that my boyfriend no longer finds me attractive… so I thought for once I would tell you something positive… plus I wanted to tell someone, and I don’t really have anyone other than my blog to discuss my sex life with. (HA, I won’t tell my friends, but the Internet is fair game? I’m so not normal…). And if you’ve got this far and are offended/bored/amazed at my stupidity, well, all I can say is I did warn you at the beginning. I make no apologies… I’ve felt happy and confident all day today, and that was something I wanted to share. 🙂 (But I sincerely hope neither my mother nor any of my colleagues ever comes across this blog…)

p.s. One of the suggested tags from Zemanta for this post is “human sexual activity”. Well, yes I should hope so! As far as I’m aware neither of us are dogs. Or aliens…