I sincerely hope that your quest to learn to love yourself continues, and that that, in turns, attracts the kind of partners who will love you sincerely, just as you are. I have seen some of your other posts, and I know from them your life journey hasn't been an easy one.

Most of us have eyes, but how well do we see, truly? Do we just see the skin, and not the blood that lives beneath it? Everyone (and I mean everyone) needs and deserves love. It's joy is our birth-right, and the cruel and selfish among us exploit that.

You have nothing to be ashamed of. You took the hard road, may the wisdom it gave you lead you to peace and your heart's desire.

@Deveno Thank you so much for saying this. I really appreciate it.

Great. Now I'm crying. I feel your pain though, and understand completely. Here's to us! Loving ourselves no matter what!

Ah, you have seen through my evil plan! Mwahaha!

In all seriousness, though....you're not THAT far off. But I do not seek such a tawdry thing such as a "hookup" (Damn, you make it sound as if love-making involved electric cables or something...). I will not conceal the fact that I like women. Yet I seek the greatest of treasures, not some spurt in the night. And if I seek such a rare thing truly...it behooves me to UNDERSTAND women. Their hopes, their fears, their secret feelings, the textures of their lives.

For how can I treat a woman with kindness and compassion, if I do not know these things? If I am ignorant of the unspoken, if I am guided only by my own selfish interests? Perhaps I might be "merely satisfactory", but for me, that is not enough. I'll stay alone. I have, I think, only enough life for one more great love. My step must be sure.

And beyond that....I desire to be good. Nay, I desire to be GREAT. I am monogamous by nature (something that surprises me, given my youthful indiscretions), so in the end, I will be with one at most. But there are women EVERYWHERE...they are half the human world. Just because I love only one...surely it is not right that I just ignore all the others. I would rather be friends than enemies. And to be such a friend...surely understanding and knowledge has to be part and parcel of that.

This site is not my hunting grounds. Long-distance is not the way to go: intimacy requires proximity. Everyone understands this. Some things only act over very short distances. I post here, to express (in what I hope is a safe venue), and to learn. Knowledge isn't wisdom, but it's the first step on the path.

@Deveno Yes. A man can understand women if he chooses to.

A man can have a desire to learn about and understand a woman. I wish more men did. We get so cynical sometimes.

@Wildflower It's sad, right, but such cynicism is made, not in-born. Our minds are wonderful things....they try so hard to protect us, even when the cost is high. Blind faith is foolish, for the wolves ARE out there. I think maybe more men should learn to back off, and just see what happens if they exercise some inner discipline, and let things ripen in due time.

@Deveno Yes

I've got 2 daughters and I always encouraged them to love themselves and was very frank in my answers to their questions about sex. They have much higher opinions of themselves than I ever did. At least I did one thing right!

Fair is fair, right?

My hope for you is that find someone you trust enough to be able to talk about it with. It need not be a lover, perhaps a close friend who has traveled some of your path might be better. It sounds to me like you have deep psychic scars, and we are strangers who have not earned the kind of trust I think it would take for you to write it here.

Take heart from the sure knowledge you are not alone. Millions of women know your pain.

@Deveno Well you're correct on all counts. Thank you for recognizing that. And your words of encouragement. Sometimes it's very difficult to deal with....

@irascible I need an explanation of your reply.

@irascible Thanks for enlightening me....I had seen it before but was unaware of its meaning,

@irascible, @daylily Yes, I didn’t have a lot of partners, you are correct. I suppose there may be a cultural difference but I really was very discerning in my sexual partners....always had to feel a saposexual connection. Lost my virginity at about seventeen and had two or three sexual partners before I got engaged in my early twenties and that took me out of the market. Then after he sadly died I only had one or two prior to meeting my husband when I was twenty six....then monogamous for 37 years. Not a lot of scope or desire to have sex with any others since he died eight years ago...that meeting of minds being absent with most of the men who are interested in me.

"why do men think they know better?" Re: Pubic hair trimming, waxing, shaving, etc. As a male, I don't care. But relative to how women paint their faces, shape their eyebrows, etc. They seem to be responding to peer pressure (other women), rather than pressure from men...how would shaving the monkey be any different other than it is usually kept covered? Ask'en for a friend.

@dahermit I don’t paint my face or do anything else to please others...men or women. I know women are being pressured by men to shave their pubic areas because they have told me. Tell your friend to ask any questions himself!

@irascible Takes all sorts....some men like to be confrontational, especially when their views are challenged. I’ve been around long enough to know how to deal with them.

@Marionville Madam, I applaud your inner strength. I can tell at once you are a remarkable woman, smart enough to see through a great deal of the bullshit. Good on you!

I suspect porn is not entirely to blame for this shift towards hairlessness...that there is something far darker at work. To whit: it mimics the appearance of prepubescence, and anyone that thinks we do not have a society-wide problem with older men robbing the innocence of too-young-girls hasn't been watching the news, lately. The Lolita complex is a real thing, and far more wide-spread than people like to talk about.

And, please, those of you with daughters....prepare them. Sex can be beautiful, but never with children!

@Deveno I also have thought that about the desire some men have for the prepubescent look of a shaved pubendum....! Yes, I am fully aware of the proclivities of certain men with a Lolita complexes. I worked for an International charity for a number of years prior to my retirement and we worked with girls in India and Nepal who had been sold by their families, either into marriages with much older men, or into prostitution under the subterfuge of an apprenticeship into a trade. The lucky ones ran away and were taken in by a refuge which our charity helped found. They got the education and training for a proper job, most of them were just school age anyway. That was overseas, but it goes on closer to home too, we had the series of grooming gang trials over the past two or three years, and they were horrendous, preying on vulnerable young girls in our cities. I know it’s just a very small number of men who want to have sex with children, and it’s good that other men such as yourself recognise that it’s unnatural.

@Marionville Very cool that you worked to help those girls. You are quite remarkable! Words are, after all, so cheap...actions like yours make a real difference.

@irascible Don’t be too sorry. It took me 3 seconds to figure out what ^^^ ^^^ means (the first time I saw it) and I’m not brilliant.

@jorj That's a good point, very relevant to the conversation.

@irascible The trouble is some of them are downright ugly. What to do then?

@brentan yes but why is it ugly...social conditioning?

@Freespirit64 I really don't know but one of the things about growing up in Catholic Ireland was that you got no sexual conditioning at all. It might be objectively true that some labiae are aesthetically unpleasant. Certainly, some women think so, getting trimming operations, but we can't be sure they all do for that reason. Maybe there are stats on it.

Do you have any suggestions for improving this? I feel like there's a substantial onus on men, because we seem to be the beneficiaries of this unfortunate state of affairs....

@Deveno A large part of change is teaching the next generation. Allowing our girls to be who they are and permit them to be sexual beings. We need to teach our boys how to communicate and respect females.

Ditto!