by Chris
When it came to relationships and intimacy, I was a late starter. I might have made more progress in high school if it hadn’t been for my father’s relentless teasing. I had a female friend over one day, and in front of her, my dad starting to sing, “Chris has a girlfriend!” t was like he was the teen and I the adult. I was so ashamed, that I more or less gave up on women altogether for years. I went to a technology and science-oriented university, where the undergraduate ratio was 7.82 men to every woman. The fact that I remember that exact number tells you a lot about how frustrated I was!
I came to OM years later, in Austin. I’ll be honest: I was looking for a way to meet women. I seemed to lack the game and the skill that other men had. I thought that OM would give me an insight into how women worked, perhaps a secret code to unlock the mystery. I figured it must be quite a mystery! I had heard from a friend that in OM, you didn't have to be in a relationship with the opposite gender in order to OM and it wasn’t about having sex. Whatever it was that made women feel secure and safe enough to OM with someone they weren't in a relationship with, and whatever it was that made men content with not being stimulated themselves, logic said that had to be pretty damn powerful.
When I first OMed, I didn’t feel as much as I thought I would. I didn’t feel a sudden rush of warmth or arousal. Mostly, I was focused on how my back hurt and how my legs were falling asleep. But partway in, I did begin to feel various sensations in my body.
I spent a lot of time early on wondering why the practice wasn’t more reciprocal. Why don’t women do something for men as part of the OM? I realized that I was still conditioned to see this as somehow like foreplay rather than something that was an end in itself. It still seems a mystery that it works, and I accept that it does.
For a long time after I started OMing, I was celibate. That was not what I intended. I had joined to meet women and have more sex, not less. The thing was, the more involved I got with OM, the more I realized that a lot of ideas I had about sex and romance weren’t working for me. At first, I thought it was because I was getting fulfilled by being so close to women during the OM. Later, I realized that what I needed to do most was reset and rethink everything I thought I knew about women. I’m still in that process.
I came looking for a relationship, and so far, that hasn’t happened for me, but not every success needs to end in a relationship, either. I have made friends, enjoyed myself, and learned a lot about women. I’ve learned, too, where I need to grow. I’ve also taken a lot of the pressure off of myself. I may not have a relationship yet, but I have a forum where I can grow close to and have intimate connections. That’s a win in my book.
