How will I be remembered?

One thing that I always wondered, and actually have never known, is how women have really perceived me for having the fetish. It is amazing, after 22 years of relationships, that this is still completely unknown to me. It partly has to do with the simple fact that we never really know what anyone thinks of us. We never know what people say about us to others. We don't know. And even if I ask you, and you tell me, it does little to convince me. We do know that women will discuss each others' sex lives. We certainly know that men will discuss them as well. Generally speaking, the more intimate the detail, the fewer people will know. And also, generally speaking, the fewer the problems in the relationship, the fewer discussions will be had with people outside the relationship. Right?

So, one thing I have always wondered, and actually have ever known, I repeat, is how women have really perceived me for having the fetish. I am resisting the urge to put a smiley face, since that was supposed to be funny, but using emoticons sort of takes away the right to call oneself a serious writer, I think.

The reality is, you just can't think about it. You can't. Because if you do, you'll go crazy. If the girl who likes to wear a leash and be walked around the bedroom floor, while barking, had to think about whether all of her guy's friends know about this, every time she hangs out with them, it would be mortifying. Much the same, if I had to think about the fact that some of my girlfriend's friends might know that I am completely mesmerized by smoking, I would probably crawl under a rock from embarrassment. I could construct these paranoid fantasies where I walk in the room at a party, and everyone is putting their hands over their mouths and pointing at me, and giggling, and girls are pretending to take a drag on an invisible cigarette and then rolling their eyes at me. Surprisingly I have never had such dreams. Instead, I have dreams that I can't find the building for a class on my college campus (I haven't been in college for years), or that all of my teeth are crumbling.

But it is still interesting to me to know, when it comes to a fetish, are special rules applied? Do partners take respectful caution about discussing it with their friends? Or is it no different than discussions of impotency, or premature ejaculation, or any other issue that might be present in a relationship, i.e. they're going to talk about it with their friends, and you just have to accept it.

I used to tell girlfriends, "Please don't tell anyone about this", but I pretty much have stopped doing that, for a few reasons. First, I think it's an unrealistic promise to make them keep. And second, because if they try to keep that promise, they're depriving themselves of what may be much needed support and advice. We need our friends to help us. And while it is best to deal with relationship problems within the relationship, it often does require an outside ear to see things objectively. In my most recent relationship, in fact (though I am a long way from getting to talking about that one), I have explicitly said, "I understand and respect that you may find you want to talk about this with your closest friend(s), and I only ask that you use your own best judgment and discretion". I think that's the right way to go, because it avoids the need for them to deceive you, and it also gives them permission to do what they might need to do.

Nobody has ever told me that I am weird, when I told them I had the fetish. They may have thought it, but they never said it. Nobody ever told me that I was perverted. Maybe one or two people said it was unusual. Most, surprisingly, thought it was at least moderately interesting. I think for many, also, it became slightly less interesting when they realized how much of my psyche could, potentially, become obsessed with the topic. It can get tedious. And in relationships where things were not as good, I think it may have slid further and further into the foreground, because there was not much else left to hold onto.

And I do wonder, when those relationships were ending, if lots of beans got spilled, and if I got ridiculed behind my back, or if my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriends' friends, in reassuring tones, reminded these various girls that I was a freak, or odd, or that they didn't need to put up with that crap, or that I clearly had some issues. The kinds of things you say to your friend when you're trying to help them get over someone.

But the reality is, if it were not the fetish, there would have been other topics about which the same discussions would have occurred. The fetish may be an obvious "trait" of mine, that might even set me aside from other people that they've dated. But for all I know, the fetish may not be the thing that these women remember most, when they think back about that difficult or unsuccessful relationship they had with me, three, five, ten, or twenty years ago. It may be far more likely that it was my moodiness, or my self-absorption, or my temper, or my manipulation, or my big mouth, or my insensitivity, or my inability to commit. Who knows?

Nonetheless, all that aside, I wonder still, years later, whether these women will think, when asked to say the first thing that comes to mind about that guy that they dated so long ago, would they say "Oh yeah... I remember him... he had that funny fetish with smoking... that was so ridiculous... I don't know what I was thinking when I dated him".

Sigh... the mind never sits quietly.