We're Still Teenage Dirtbags

Sex, attachment types, immaturity, and re-entering the work we diminished from in youth

Photo by Michael LaRosa on Unsplash

End of summer. Are you on vacation? That sounds really nice. Here’s where I’ve been the last month or so: Moody. Bitchy. Want to sleep incessantly and listen to my songs on repeat. What’s going on with me lately? I feel like a teenager again. Not because I have all of my energy and drive back, but because I feel much more intense emotions: angst, yearning, craving, despair. Being at sea without sight of the shore. It’s stupefying, humbling, as I assumed myself to be too mature to go back to this phase mentally. Which shows how much I really know!

Perhaps the dam has finally broken. I’ve sacrificed my needs beyond what is considered healthy for years on end. A fitting metaphor, my shoes are embarrassingly worn, I’ve been rotating the same few seasonally for a long time. My ‘going out’ sandals with the little rhinestones just broke a strap after nine summers. Sigh, I’ll bust out the super glue. My dailies? Bought these bronze rubber flip flops on my honeymoon in Rivera Maya, Mexico in 2012, can you believe they held up? Gisele makes quality beachwear it seems. I rock them everywhere without thinking twice. But maybe I should…

Who inside me is having a tantrum about it and eating chocolate to cope with all problems? She used to own 50 pairs of shoes (which was still half as many shoes as my mother owned I am told). I can probably scrape 13 pairs together now, for better or worse. And none of them in great condition, besides my gym shoes. They are five years old, but I only started using them regularly in the last several months. I definitely could do better for myself materially, I am a woman after all! Yet it’s not easy/comfortable to dedicate time and resources toward ‘me’ anymore. Trying to get out of debt (I’m too practical). Meet the kids’ many needs (non-negotiable). Life has felt spinning-out-of-control in a lot of ways for years and this is just one telltale sign, my damn shoes.

Obviously, looking stylish is not a major value of mine at this time, but I also want to make a better impression when I think about it. I matter too, ya know? I used to feel attractive even. My family still has to be seen in public with me all ‘undone’, God bless them. I cherish being a helper to others (that’s my enneagram, what’s yours?), yet a part of me is crying out, “I, me, mine!” She feels younger, lonelier, hungrier for validation. There’s power (albeit limited) in generating superficial desire/attention, and that is most of what she understands.

So what’s this all about? Didn’t I do enough to revisit the inner child in therapy? I looked at the old photographs, I told the stories of feeling small, spoke love into her, I dredged up the emotions. I even purchased and dressed up some of the Barbie dolls on eBay that she had always wanted. I grew up with a sister and those things were life! I went overboard and uncharacteristically spent nearly $1,000 on them that year, (first-time postpartum psychosis?!) but that’s what she wanted! Wedding day Midge (with the bitchy tight lips) that was always my favorite, I could sense she didn’t take shit. But she needed friends, family, and dozens of authentic early 90’s skank-fab fashion. Vintage ain’t cheap!

Photo by Dare Artworks on Unsplash

But work with the inner child isn’t all pre-adolescent toys, teasing, and nightmares. We begin to play-act the role of ‘grown.’ The teenager is a child too, and the pivotal cusp of who we form as our adult selves. The ‘in-between time’ in life is often both humiliating and intoxicating: Scathing ruin. Boisterous fantasies. Sexual awakening. That’s very powerful energy. And a time of personal wounding and creating lifelong pattern repetition. So it makes sense to mentally re-visit with intention and figure out what went right and wrong.

The teen is supposed to represent the culmination of the id, urges manifested, experiments undertaken, authority rebelled against. If you did this phase properly, did you get it out of your system? Ha, I bet. I thought I made a pretty good show of it: reliable circle of friends, plenty of dating around, maintaining a stubborn code of ethics/boundaries/preferences, binge drinking, being dramatic, largely superficial, and pleasure seeking toward life.

Her: Remember that club when the DJ announced my name on the dance floor and I like, shimmied over to the bar, hands in the air, like I had a spotlight and a prize waiting? I was shown my missing handbag with a bottle of booze in it, and then the door? They didn’t give my vodka back! I still wanted to dance! We were so annoyed but then laughed, everything was a game. No damn documentation of who was doing what! Maybe some FB photo dumps later on, you could just untag that ish, or tell your friend to delete it. Your grandma wasn’t looking at it yet, but your secret crush might be. Gotta have some mystery...

What has socializing become? Good lord, I’m so, so sorry Gen Z & alpha. Like a libido muzzle.

Maybe I didn’t exhaust the allure of this phase, I was still stuck in fear much of the time. I continued to use alcohol, new relationship dopamine, and later, pot, to keep running away from my inner life for many years. I’ve been sober for 7 years now (save intentional K use (my story here) and the very odd glass of vino), which is the length of time I’ve been growing/raising kids. Lately it feels like I’m trying to pick up where I left off using a crutch at 16. Something is coming back to pull me, what is this nagging unfinished feeling? Independent expression that isn’t codependent? I was a serial monogamist for 90% of my youth. Does this qualify as the cliche midlife crisis, a review of all that was left behind in the pursuit of becoming a ‘real’ adult?

I believe many people are stuck in the teenage-dirtbag-phase mentally, if not even younger. It looks something like this: Seek connection (sex), struggle and fail at gaining or sustaining a bond, blame the other person, leave, self-medicate, repeat, possibly forever (or stay co-dependent with an unfulfilling relationship longterm, which tends to bring cheating into the picture). This failure to look inward, mature and learn new relational skills is deeply harming our ability to unite and commune fully to our romantic partners.

I’m not saying strong unions don’t exist (my own, while not perfect, has survived 14 years and a tumult of deep pain on numerous occasions) or that good relationships never dissolve (so many close calls here). But poor ones surely do and they are the rule, not the exception. But it doesn’t stop at the personal level. The ramifications of such mutual strife are the myriad and deep dysfunctions we see in society at large, embedded in the very foundation of the social fabric. Where specifically do we go wrong and what can we do?

I think I can divide us immature hopefuls into two camps. I’m residing in the one called stifled expression. Stuck in trauma responses, I couldn’t see or plan my future beyond the next man that was going to save me (I knew I wanted children, so I didn’t seriously consider being with a woman. Also, men had societal power, I wanted that). I was too malleable. I never really got to be ‘me,’ just ‘we.’ I thought everything would snap into place one day with the right person, that I would wake up having been made better, different, and whole, the old fading away with the promising end credits before the next chapter. Disney done did it.

How do we just move on from the desire to look through those rose-colored eyes again and fulfill our (non-deluded) youthful dreams? The people, the experiences, the self-mastery we had longed to find in the future. If we didn’t discover these jewels in time, the invitations came knocking again, eventually. Milestone birthdays seem to shake something loose. No amount of physical maturation can forever suppress the feelings we pave over, the way we wanted things to go; soul expression of who we know we really are. The feminine creative principles unleashed.

The other camp I will call stifled connection. There is longing for relation that fulfills our deepest needs. We all have it of course, but some haven’t come close to it or it was ripped away traumatically. To love and be loved with ease, touching the divine source we sprang from. When moving down to the core of our being we find our wounds driving this urge, the raw nerves of anger and sorrow looking to be addressed. It is helpful that they keep informing us of our ultimate goal, union, yet they can’t offer a solution, only a cry in the night to be soothed over. Can we use these signals as a path? Can we ever get close to others, close enough to feel truly seen and accepted? Experience deep love and live vulnerably, stretching our limited conditioning? What could we possibly still be running from? Trying to compensate for? Let our attachment patterns tell us.

There are four types of attachment as defined by the research of psychologist Mary Ainsworth starting in the 1960s. Here are my unofficial impressions: Secure attachment, a person who gives and receives love without complication, and expects love based on mutual intimacy, open communication, and respected boundaries. I read something great recently ‘boundaries are the area where I can love you and myself simultaneously.’ Anxious attachment, a person who gives affection but doesn’t receive it fully even if present, openly doubting its validity and creating pressure between themselves and the other to constantly verify and prove the love between them, clinging, running ‘too hot’.

Avoidant attachment, a person who hesitates to give affection because they can’t receive it fully, inwardly doubting it’s validity and creating distance between themselves and the other who is hurt at their tendency toward ‘coldness’. Mixed/disordered attachment, a person who has difficulty consistently giving and receiving affection because the doubts are coming from both sides of the equation, do I really love them, do they really love me? Fluctuations of giving both ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’ are experienced to confusing results. A study by Hazan and Shaver shows that 56% of respondents identify as secure, 25% as avoidant and 19% as anxious.

Granted, we can have different attachment styles with different people; I myself experienced different ones from each of my parents. There were relationships in my past that brought out more anxious or avoidant behaviors, adjusting for my partner and level of maturity. While I would say I generally experience secure attachment, when I’m really struggling, I tend to skew avoidant, retreating into myself. No one is 100% securely attached in life, that’s just not realistic.

Yet, patterns begin to emerge upon historical review. When it comes to romantic relationships, where are we smothering, where are we avoiding? Self-reflection is critical to growth. The head can be satiated in such a way. If I label the problem, it is closer to being solved. And yet, the corresponding feelings, the thought structures and stories of our emotions, need integrating. This is the ultimate challenge: breaking open the heart of the matter. Its fortress is protecting us from pain, yet blocking us from going deeper out of fear. There is a complexity in trying to navigate relationship with another and surely a vulnerability.

The best we can do is to start with ourselves. For better or worse, the way that we treat ourselves is the way that we treat others. When the ego collapse of new love (I can do anything because we are together!) inevitably reforms within 6 months to 2 years, we return to our singular voice to translate the action. We can begin to zero in and examine the voice that is directing us. What early influence shaped it? Is it highly critical, abusive even? When is the last time we’ve complemented ourselves, noticed all the things we did right? One of my heroes, self-love goddess Louise Hay, recommends mirror work, the strange, awkward, and sometimes difficult task of speaking love into ourselves through a mirror, looking at our own eyes. A simple and repeated ‘I love you’ is a great start. I dare you to try it a few times and see what comes up.

If we have lived behind a mask all our lives sooner or later-if we are lucky-that mask will be smashed. Then we will have to look in the mirror at our own reality

-Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin

If self-love doesn't feel like a challenge, the health of your body is already a gracious priority, perhaps you’re genuinely uncertain how to navigate life alongside another person. Most of us haven’t seen the best examples inside our homes. Even if there was love there, there was probably some dysfunction, sexism, suppression, old family issues. What if schools valued teaching healthier ways to have relationships? One of my favorite modern writers, Daniel Pinchbeck often sheds light on the disparity between the sexes from a perspective of consciousness shifting away from the cold disconnection of materialism/atheism to one where mind leads matter, our inner lives changing our outer world. His recent essay, Shamanism, Sex, Soul Retrieval, can be read here and I’ve pulled some excellent points about what we could be focusing on to create a more perfect union as described by an organization he recommends called ISTA (International School of Temple Arts):

One tool is the Wheel of Consent, which allows for clear delineation between taking and allowing, giving and receiving. Every teenager should learn this in school. 

Another straightforward tool is called “RBDSM” which stands for “Relationship (status), Boundaries, Desires, Sexual Health, and Meaning.” To summarize this (you can read more about it here), the idea is to have a check in with any potential sexual partner before engaging in any intimacy, on these five topics (plus a recommended sixth one, Aftercare). One problem, of course, is that it can be difficult to bring up these kinds of topics with people who haven’t gone through some level of training in conscious sexuality.

Personally, I’ve never gone through a training of conscious sexuality, but as a woman, I’m acutely aware of the need to reform cultural standards of sexual union. I don’t think men are actually satisfied by modern norms either, by leaning on porn to express their bodily desires, yet it becomes the most available outlet for so many. There’s a rift between the sexes the size of a chasm. I believe there’s a mutual yearning to make open communication, trust, respect, and loving kindness cornerstones of sex.

As an example of modern dysfunction, I remember when it blew my mind to hear the word sex refer to any sexual activity, what had been previously referred to as strictly ‘foreplay’ and not just intercourse, because everything I had absorbed through the culture, directly and indirectly, was about sex as that singular goal, a man entering a woman, a transfer of power, a point of no return in so many ways. Everything besides intercourse was lesser, almost besides the point, a sometimes necessary road to get to the destination. How limiting and twisted this becomes! Man dominates woman, woman concedes, the end. No wonder cheating and mate-hopping is rampant, where is the thrill after that? Few animals mate for pleasure, yet humans have been bestowed this gift. Why waste endless creative connection, a potential thing of beauty, in the doldrums of black and white? It shifts paradigms to allow sex to be a broad erotic energy interplay, a dance of varying intensity, mood, and acts, continued beyond a single encounter, decorating the very way we relate and move to and away from each other. But it probably is best re-birthed by grown-ass adults and not these immature teenage dirtbags we’ve remained. Who wants to be self-loving, generous, and creative already? Who’s prepared to grow the F up?!

(editors update: I’m actually feeling quite good and balanced, like myself again, after a few weeks of taking a women’s hormone balancing supplement, the one I used to recommend co-managing a vitamin store. Hurrah!)

Drop me a line with your thoughts on all this?