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Love is fun! Love is powerful. Love is... not enough. A relationship requires more than love alone to be sustainable in the longterm. Middle Age Erika Moen clears up some of her misconceptions about love with freshly-dumped 20-Year-Old Erika Moen in this comic from the archive.

Full transcript: ohjoysextoy.com/loveisnotenoug…
#Bisexual #Autobio #Comic

The comic starts with a younger Erika and her first girlfriend soaring through the air together with large angel wings on their backs. Young Erika is caressing her girlfriend’s face as her girlfriend embraces her from behind. Erika narrates, “The first time I fell in Real Love, I was flying high on a cloud of euphoria. It was my first Real Relationship and I knew I had found my Forever Soulmate.” “Until.” “Suddenly.” With a serene expression, Erika’s first girlfriend snips off Young Erika’s wings with a pair of shears. The next frame shows Young Erika right before she hits the ground, frozen in shock and disbelief. “She dumped me.” In anguish, Young Erika curls up into a ball on the floor. “The heartbreak made me physically ill, I had never experienced pain like this before.” Our current Erika steps into the frame to stand next to her past self, who has started crying alone. Erika puts her hands on her hips and looks at Young Erika with an understanding expression. “Aw, kid,” she says.
Young Erika sobs out, “All I did was love her and then she threw me away for no reason!” Erika reaches over to pat her younger self. “Well, honestly, you were kind of a dick.” “WHAT!” Young Erika yells back defensively. She angrily pushes herself up to glare at her older self, before pointing a finger at her. “Hey, who are you, anyway?!” Erika shrugs reassuringly. “I’m you. About 20 years in the future. Listen, you weren’t a dick on purpose, you’re not a bad person (and neither is she!). You’re just… young, you’re inexperienced with being a partner, and you’ve got some pretty unrealistic ideas about love.” Young Erika grumbles, “...Unrealistic ideas about love…? Love is love! What more do you need to know?” Erika takes Young Erika’s hand to help her get up. “C’mon,” Erika says. “Let’s you n’ me go down a trip down the River of Love.” Young Erika strikes a “Woe is Me” pose as the two make their way over to an inflatable raft with a paddle. She cries out, “What we had was MAGIC! Two souls combined! Such a pure connection can never be replicated!” “Go home, Erika, you’re drunk,” her older self responds. “ExCUSE you?!” Erika says, “Seriously! When you first fall in love, your brain is flooded with neurochemicals that make you high as balls.” An illustration shows a watering can pouring out a stream of neurochemicals including Dopamine, Serotonin, and Norepinephrine over a brain.
The stream from the brain continues to flow down to form a river that the two Erikas start to ride down in their raft. Young Erika leans over the side of the raft to run her hand through the flowing neurochemicals. She starts to cry. “What, so ‘love’ is just a buncha chemicals? LOVE IS A LIE!!!” (A note says, “Actual thing I actually said.”) Erika continues to paddle the boat. She replies, “Love is real, you’re just not in a sober mindset about it early-on.” “You think being in love with someone is this stationary state…” An illustration shows two people holding hands while enclosed in a glass cloche labeled “LOVE” with a heart for the O. “... When really it’s this living entity that’s constantly in motion.” The raft the two Erikas are in splashes around as they ride out a sudden wave. Erika calls out, “It never stops changing!” The water starts to calm. “Sometimes in ways that make you happier.” The water suddenly rushes down, dropping their raft down and forcing Young Erika to cling onto her older self. “Sometimes in ways that make you sadder.”
At this, Young Erika finally turns and looks back up at her. Erika leans in closer to face her younger self. “Two people can really love each other and still not be good partners together. Love by itself is not enough to keep a relationship afloat long term. A healthy partnership needs mutual support, mental and emotional nourishment, communication, negotiation, acceptance, boundaries, forgiveness… Love can’t fill all those roles itself. Sometimes the most loving thing to do is end a relationship before the things that don’t work rot into something dysfunctional or toxic later.” Young Erika angrily blows up at this. “... ‘loving thing to do’?! She HURT ME!!!” Young Erika flails about with spirals in her eyes as she continues to vent. “She betrayed me! She used me! She didn’t try hard enough! She never REALLY loved me! She threw me away! She’s a BAD PERSON! I hate her!” She sobs, holding her head in her hands. Erika moves over to comfort her. “Getting dumped sucks,” Erika says. “I’m sorry.” She brings her younger self in for a hug.

Love Is Not Enough

Erika's sick in bed today (Monday as I write this), so I'm doing all the prep work for today's comic. Usually, I'd write all kinds of thing-a-ma-bobs, but since I know Erika will want to fill this blog post up with all kinds of helpful stuff.
Oh Joy Sex Toy
#comic #bisexual #autobio
This entry was edited (4 months ago)
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