One of the weird quirks of language is that when we are first developing our understanding of this form of communication, we learn what words mean from context, associating a word with a meaning (or meanings) because of whatever is around you when you hear it uttered.

For a word like cookie or carrot, this is a relatively straightforward process. You can hold these things in your hands. You can taste them, smell them, see them, even eat them. There’s a total sensory experience that can be associated with the word.

But for abstract concepts, it’s more challenging: look, I’m a professional writer. People pay me money to put words out into the world. I still have to google the meanings of various words from time to time because I’m not always sure a word that sounds good means what I think.

You cannot, for instance, hold intransigent in your hands. You cannot taste it, smell it, see it, or eat it. Your understanding of “intransigent” relies on a relatively sophisticated conceptual framework, and as a result, it is very easy for you to misunderstand “intransigent.”

Anyway. This is a long run up to my real point, which is this:

I think that sex and love and many of the concepts associated with them are more like intransigent than they are like cookie.

And I wonder, sometimes, if I’ve associated certain words with the wrong meanings — or at least, a meaning that’s significantly different from what other people associate them with.

In my book ( #buymyboook), I wrote about how this process of word —> meaning can go awry re: orgasm if you have a vulva.

If you have a penis, the word —> meaning journey is relatively simple. https://www.sealpress.com/titles/lux-alptraum/faking-it/9781580057653/

Because ejaculation is often associated* with penile orgasm, there is a form of physical proof that flags that an orgasm has happened (often). You have a pleasurable feeling, and an ejaculation, and you build an association with that and “orgasm.”

* Though not the same thing as

If you have a vulva... whew. Is there a concept more abstract than the “female orgasm”? It’s so abstract that when I was growing up a number of people still claimed it didn’t exist!

I struggled for years with not understanding what this word meant, or if it was possible for me.

People treat it as a self explanatory end point to pleasure, but it was largely nonexistent for me. Complicating matters further was that when I *did* experience something that seemed potentially orgasmic, like rhythmic vaginal pulses, they didn’t feel earth shattering.

So, like, if you have this B- minus orgasm like feeling, is that orgasm? Do your orgasms just suck compared to everyone else’s? Or are you misidentifying what an orgasm is? What *is* everyone else feeling, exactly?

I should note here that @NicoleRPrause has done some really fascinating research on orgasm and the brain that indicates that I’m not quite alone here — that, despite our conviction that orgasm is self evident, it often isn’t for many people with vulvas.

Indeed, many people are associating the word with something other than the limited scientific definition of orgasm.

But. This isn’t my real point. My real point, the one I’ve been building to this whole time, is about love.

I’m thirty-eight, and I have, I think, been in love a number of times, but at the same time I often find myself wondering if I actually know what love is.

I mean, seriously, what is love? It’s not sad or happy, which — while not as straightforward as cookie — are pretty basic.

Love is —

I mean, we’ll start with an easy one, right? I love my family. I feel a deep connection to them, in part owing to their role in my formative years, and the idea of their absence causes me pain. I want to share special moments with them and give them gifts.

That is love, right?

It also feels relatively easy to figure out love in a friendship context — I mean, I say “I love you” to my friends a lot. Even friends I’m not particularly close to, sometimes. Love is a strong feeling of enjoying being around a person, right?

But then we get to romantic love and this is where I am completely at sea. This one is so hard because it is so *loaded*, because you’re simultaneously told your life is meaningless without it but also that you’re a total dumb dumb if you confuse lust with love.

I used to be the girl who would “fall in love” in like three days, in part because I’d grown up with this pop culture narrative that made me feel like rapidly developing feelings for someone was not just normal but aspirational. I regret that.

I don’t think I was in love with some of the people I swore unconditional passion for in my twenties. I think I liked the feeling I got when they gave me attention. I think I was terrified that without that attention I didn’t matter. I don’t know if my feelings were about them.

I mean I *liked* these people, sure. I wouldn’t have spent time with them if there wasn’t any *like* there. But *love*? I don’t know.

What’s more embarrassing is this sense of — did I love the men I dated in adulthood, or just the validation they gave me? I don’t know.

I think I loved my ex, insomuch as after years of living together, he felt like family to me. But is that love or familiarity?

Earlier this year, I had this big moment of coming out to myself as homoromantic — of realizing that, as sexually attracted as I might be to men, I think my heart truly lies with women, and maybe always has. That’s part of why I’m going through this reevaluation and reckoning.

Years ago, one of my female friends told me I have very romantic friendships, and I found myself reflecting recently on the way she has always made me feel, and I thought, “Fuck, have I been in love with her all these years? Is *that* what love is?”

To be clear, I don’t want to have a Romantic Relationship with this friend, I’m very clear eyed about the ways in which we would not be compatible, and she’s also partnered. But it still gave me pause, that thought. Is *that* what romantic love is?

Anyway. It’s hard, right? It’s hard especially if you’re trying to be intentional about your relationships, to make thoughtful commitments to people instead of just rushing towards whatever gives you a rush of oxytocin and adrenaline.

Earlier this year I went on some dates with a woman who, for a variety of reasons that are none of your business, I decided to be just friends with. And early on, in the swell of infatuation, my brain would just declare to me, “I love her.”

And I would push back, the way you learn to do when you have OCD, and say, “You don’t love her. You don’t know her!”

Which is both true and yet obscures more than it reveals, because if my brain telling me I love someone isn’t love, than what is love, anyway?

I like her. I want to do nice things for her. Is that love, or is that me getting off on the performance of kindness towards women, the same way I used to get off on the performance of kindness that men engaged in towards me?

Is it a narrative in my head? Or is it genuine feels?

I don’t know! And maybe at some point you just accept that these things are unknowable and go with the flow.

I think, a lot of the time, that that is really what other people do: that it’s not that they feel more intensely, or have better orgasms, than me.

It’s that they have confidence in what they feel, or at least a lack of a desire to *question* that confidence and conviction in the feeling.

I do it to myself, you know? But I do it because I’ve seen the bad places that *not* questioning, that rolling with it, can lead.

Anyway! Language, right? It’s a total mind fuck. What a dumb system we’ve come up with. Ugh.

I should just go eat a cookie.

PS A fun fact that just popped into my head is that Hebrew uses the same word for the concepts of like and love