Having sex vs. making love

Today I was practicing online for my exams. I am so disheartened. I stumbled upon exercises about idiomatic expressions, phrasal verbs, binomials, and many other things I do not have a clue about. It is not that I do not know anything about it, it is just that I am very weak and I notice that I still need a lot of practice. My only hope is being very good at speaking and writing, to compensate a listening comprehension which is likely to be a disaster and the rest which is likely to be sufficient if everything goes as it should go. I remember the times I went mad if I was not the best! Now I am happy if I am sufficient and come through my exams even if with the lower grade. 

To change topic, in an e-mail, a dear friend of mine brought to my attention a very particular difference which made me think over my past: the difference between having sex  and making love. Having sex is just a matter of joining two body parts for pleasure, or maybe not even for the pleasure of both (or more) people involved; making love implies an emotional involvement, implies affection and in the best case even love. How many times did I have sex, and how many times did I make love? 

I had a boyfriend, in fact, the first boy who saw me naked, who loved me. I did not love him. He had insisted on a relationship and I wanted some normality in my life, so that I had eventually agreed to try and see what happens. I know that he was sincere. Maybe the only man who sincerely loved me… even if I will never know if he loved me or the fact of having a girl to show at his side. Anyway, we never had sex nor made love or whatever. It was a time in which I still had some sex drive, so that I would have not disliked to try to make love with him, but he was much too scared of it. He was the kind of person who worried about "not being good enough in bed", so that, eventually, he ended up never having the chance to show me how he is. 

I lost my virginity at 22 to Horny Boy, my first real boyfriend, and this was absolutely no making love. It was merely having sex. It was painful and coarse, vulgar and rough. Horny Boy was convinced to be an excellent lover, whereas he was a terrible one. He would not even listen to what I said about what I like or not; he would claim all the time that he knew better, since he had more experience than me. I don’t know how I could bear all this for more than two years. Maybe I was so scared of loneliness that I accepted even that sex in order to hear those three words, may they have been sincere or not…: I love you….

I had an affair with a woman I knew from hospital. She, Kerstin and I shared the same room. She was my first woman. As far as I am concerned, I was emotionally involved, but she was not; she had many affairs at the same time. I remember that the day after we slept together we went together to a shop, where a young gay man worked; she said to me she was going to sleep with him that very evening. I was quite surprised, because I thought that that guy would not be interested in a woman; she replied that she just wanted to show him straight sex and he had agreed. 

And then, Marvin. He has always been different from all the others. He saved me from Horny Boy. I could find the strength to discontinue my relationship to that tyrant just because Marvin showed me that love could be much more fulfilling. At the beginning he was distant, lost in his own world, and I fancied him from far away – I have always had crushes on middle-aged men. We became closer a while after knowing each other. We kissed for the first time the very evening he wanted to ask me about my wedding with Horny Boy. Because yes, Horny Boy was my fiancé. Marvin opened my eyes on my situation and about what I was going to do. Thank God. Marvin and I had a short relationship, but we never called each other boyfriend and girlfriend. I am sure, however, that with him I made love. It was so very different from all my past experiences. I am thankful to this man, because he gave me what I never got from anybody: affection without asking nothing in return. 

Marvin and I pondered the idea of marrying, four or five years ago. But he said to me that he feels too old for that. I replied that I don’t care if he is older than me, but he added that in the future he might need special care as an old person while I am still young and full of life. I would take care of him, but he replied that he does not want to have a wife-nurse for his old age, and I should find a husband my age. Well, I don’t know what to do with babies my age – no offense, but I like older men. And if I have to find a husband, I hope he will be like Marvin… with a pure soul. And a good heart. 

Just a last note about Ulrich: he has been transferred today to a hospice in Basel for terminally ill patients. Marvin told me that in a first moment the doctors did not want to transfer Ulrich there, since people who are there usually want to die while Ulrich is fighting for life like a lion; but eventually this decision was taken, and now I am waiting for Marvin’s phone call to be informed how things are going and how the remaining time of that poor soul will be. 

Thank you for your prayers and thoughts, and may the Fire of Enthusiasm be with you. Take gentle care of yourselves!