Things My Ex Used to Say: “He f*cks like a drunk redneck.”

““He fucks like a drunk redneck,” my ex used to brag to our friends. In front of me. And he wasn’t wrong.

By the time we got down to business, I was usually pretty lit. And you can take the boy out of Texas, but... well, you know. So he was raggin’ and braggin’ at the same time, and I took it as a sideways compliment.

I was shameless. Dirty. Greedy. And it was hot.

Seeing the pattern repeat only brought more shame.

For a moment, we both got what we wanted. Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that. But somewhere along the way, the performance became my identity - at least in our relationship. I knew how to be that guy, and I knew how to turn it on. But performing intimacy left me empty, and the drunk redneck didn’t have the words to say how he felt.

By the end, he hated the man I had become. Honestly? So did I.

I used to think my wild side was the problem, but that part of me was real. It gave my appetite, my nerve, and the parts I’d decided were dirty or unworthy somewhere to go. The mask kept him from seeing how vulnerable I really was, and it kept me “safe” from rejection. I could get naked without ever letting him actually see me.

The drunk redneck wasn’t a character I invented from thin air. My father modeled that role, and I repeated it without realizing what I was doing. He showed me drunken rage followed by a coerced apology, and I learned a narrow range of ways to express what I felt. I didn’t set out to be like him. In fact, I always thought, “I’ll never be like him.” But alcohol gave me permission to express things I didn’t know how to own in the clear light of day, so I used the tools I had.

Seeing the pattern repeat only brought more shame.

The first step in my recovery was telling the truth: the desire and untamed passion were real. Alcohol didn’t create them. It let me express them while giving me somewhere to hide from the possibility of being judged.

Outside the bedroom, I felt numb to my life. Beneath that numbness, I felt a loneliness I couldn’t quite name and a yearning I didn’t know what to do with. Life had cornered me in a trap of my own design: if I left, my world ended. If I stayed, I’d only get more of the same.

It didn’t feel like a choice. It felt like two different ways to lose.

Make it stand out

If I change anything, I’ll lose everything.

That was the myth I was living inside: change would destroy my world. It made me feel like a victim, even when I knew how much of my situation I had helped create. Admitting my part brought up so much shame that I couldn’t yet see the other side of it: if I had a part in the pattern, I might also have a part in changing it. I thought my personality was fixed, so leaving felt like giving up everything I’d built, and staying felt like a slow death.

Leaving wasn’t easy, and it didn’t solve anything quickly. I carried the same problems out with me. But getting sober taught me to identify my feelings and talk about them instead of bottling them up. And when I decided to trust myself enough to tell the truth about my experience - especially when it made me uncomfortable - something began to open.

I’m lonely. I want to be seen. I’m scared that if I change anything, I’ll lose everything.

Those truths didn’t fix the relationship, but they gave me solid ground to build a new life on.

Make an agreement.

Keep it.

Notice when I didn’t, and tell the truth about that, too.

Then came the less dramatic work of becoming someone I could trust. Make an agreement. Keep it. Notice when I didn’t, and tell the truth about that, too. Then try again. Each agreement I kept gave me a small piece of evidence that I could choose a response instead of repeating the role. I had spent years gathering evidence for the story that I was trapped, and now I was gathering evidence for a new story.

I don’t say any of this to make playtime less playful. I want the heat, the mess, and the parts of us that don’t behave politely. But I also want to choose them rather than disappear into them. These days I’m skeptical of the high of “love at first sight.” The rush can be wonderful, but it can also blind me to the facts on the ground. When I’m trying to keep that feeling going, it’s easy to tolerate things early on that may grate years later.

I think real intimacy grows more slowly. It’s less cinematic, and I earn it in moments when I share something vulnerable and find care in the response. The drunk redneck held parts of me I’d decided were unworthy, but he also became the only one who could speak boldly and without fear. The rest of me went quiet, and eventually he took over - in life and in the bedroom.

So the questions I ask myself now aren’t about how to get rid of him.

Can I be strong without dominating?

Can I surrender without disappearing?

Can I let myself be wanted without letting it define my worth?