abandoned

see that’s great.

It made you feel uncomfortable. If you had been in this situation, the conversation would have been over the first time you refused your partner. If your partner felt similarly to how Ellen felt, she would have to stay silent and handle her feelings on her own for fear of pressuring you and making you uncomfortable. The scene where the two of you talk about how the two of you feel and the two of you eat breakfast while listening to the radio wouldn’t happen, and neither of you would get to have that moment of love and understanding with each other because every step that would lead to that moment would be unacceptable— it would mean that Ellen had crossed an unacceptable line by broaching the subject again, and could no longer be trusted.

But that’s you.

These people figured it out fine. Ellen was allowed to keep talking about the role of sex and connection in their relationship. She was allowed to share her feelings about the topic. Her partner was allowed to talk about how she felt about it and share where she was coming from. Ellen wasn’t abusive or cruel. Her partner didn’t punish Ellen for bringing up an uncomfortable subject or pressuring her for sex. The story didn’t even end with sex. The story ended with the two of them getting what both of them really wanted— a moment of safe and loving connection with each other. But to get there they had to talk about it without being triggered into silence, and Ellen’s feelings had to be just as worthy and important as her partner’s even if her partner was coming from a place of trauma— especially when her feelings could be cleared up so easily just by talking without either one of them feeling unacceptably threatened.

Totality

“This is my high definition photo of last night's total lunar eclipse, created by stacking a total of 200 images captured during the totality phase.”