I recently had the misguided notion to read “no sex for me” stories to a room full of strangers at the Hugo House.

Fortunately for me, they were a receptive audience. Not only did they laugh and commiserate at the appropriate times, and not vice versa, but several of them, including the emcee, David Schmader, said, “Oh honey, it will so happen for you.”

And they’re right, it has happened for me. But, it was and continues to be a long and twisted road to my bed, and that still surprises me.

To recap briefly, there was the two-week fling that quickly refused to be my booty call followed by the Greek/Latino man who talked about sex for hours but refused to kiss me when I asked. For more details on these horrors, check out "Contemplating Roofies."

Then there was the witty, intelligent man who hugged me after each of our dates. When I finally asked, “Are we just friends?” he laughed and said no.
“Then why do you only hug me good bye and refuse to come over to my house?” I asked.

A five-minute monologue about needing to feel comfortable and to go slow followed. I hung in there for a few more weeks, you heard me, weeks, and tried to dismiss all thoughts of, “My seventh-grade boyfriend moved faster than this guy.”

A year or so later, OK slight exaggeration, he finally kissed me. A month or so later, he spent the night. Halleluiah, I sang. We finally crossed that bridge.

But. I was wrong. Whereas I like to cross that bridge a few times a week, it appeared that he only wanted to cross it once a month. That did not work for me.

I eventually followed my therapist’s advice to start dating younger men. “They’re not as scared as men your age,” she advised.

“Ewww,” I shuddered. “You mean I need to start cruising the UW campus and hit on backward baseball cap-wearing guys who are going to call me dude and invite me to a kegger?”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “But, maybe you could start with a 24-year-old? Someone young enough to be willing to be your booty call, but old enough to sort of have a life.”

I was dubious of her recommendation until she started to explain how men my age are cautious and need to know where they stand before they become intimate and have been hurt in the past, so they are most likely to be guarded.

“They sound like women,” I said.

“Exactly.”

Suddenly, an uncomplicated 24-year-old sounded pretty good.

Sure enough, within a few days I met a 26-year-old. He never called me dude and didn’t make any references to keggers, so I agreed to go out with him.

Sex quickly followed (finally!), but so did many “I can’t do this” statements.

I was quite familiar with the “I can’t do this” statement by then, but never understood what “this” was. I assumed it was sex, seeing as I hadn’t known the person for long enough for it to be anything else.

But over the months of “not doing this” while doing it all night long with the young guy, I started to understand that his reluctance to “do this” was about fear.

He wanted to fall in love but with a childless woman his own age, so whenever he felt love for me, he freaked. I wanted passion, excitement, good conversation and sex, so I did not share his fear.

I liked what we had, knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, but figured we’d enjoy it while it lasted.

I continued to see him, but dated other men as well in hopes of finding one who wasn’t obsessed with “this.”

I varied my approach to include divorced men, who usually started to obsessively talk about their ex by date number two, which is when I’d say, “Check please,” and to men of various ages and relationship experience.

Some were good, some were awful and most ended before they began.

Then I met articulate man. Although we both claimed we were looking for something causal and were seeing other people, articulate man admitted to “liking to dive in deep quickly.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t usually work out too well for me,” I said. “Guys say they want that, but then they freak out and the whole thing blows up.”

I limited our dates to once a week or less and then went on book tour for a month, solving any yearnings I may have for diving in deep. Or so I thought.

Somehow, I got sucked into the deep waters and wasn’t aware of it until I felt the first tremor. Tremors serve as the warning sign that the “I can’t do this” quake is coming.

It took a while, but once the “I can’t do this” talks began, they lasted for a month. I changed my tactic this time and didn’t say, ‘Fine, fuck you!” as I had done in the past or try to convince him that it wasn’t complicated and doomed, when he was clearly convinced that the apocalypse was coming.

This time, I listened and asked a lot of clarifying, but hopefully non-threatening, questions.

Articulate man was able to answer them in a way that finally explained the “I can’t do this,” phenomena.

“When things were good with us, for me it felt like a big meadow full of daisies and wildflowers," I said. "The sun was shining, and I liked running around this meadow. I didn’t know how long I’d be there or where I was going, but I didn’t care, because I was happy. And from what you’re saying, I’m gathering that there is no happy meadow for you and instead, having strong feelings for me feels analogous to a dark room with electrical currents zapping all over the place.”

“Exactly.” He nodded his head and then apologized.

“No, I’m sorry that it’s so tortured for you” I said. “Sure the happy meadow means I’m open and vulnerable and therefore could get hurt. But, I’d still choose that over confining myself to the dungeon.”

Corbin Lewars (www.corbinlewars.com) is the founder of Reality Mom (www.realitymomzine.blogspot.com) and author of "Creating a Life" (Catalyst Book Press, 2010). She lives in Ballard with her two children where she is currently working on her next memoir, "After Glow."