I had always wanted my first kiss, my first anything and everything to be special and at the right time. But none of my firsts have been special – some at my fault, but mostly not.
My first sexual experience, with my first boyfriend in high school, was brought upon me with coercion. This sexual experience did not happen on my own terms. This doesn’t mean I didn’t eventually enjoy it or that I didn’t still fall head-over-heels for him, but this wasn’t how or when I had wanted it to happen.
My first time having sex was on my own terms in college, but that does not automatically equate to an amazing experience. It was pretty much a one-night-stand, a fling, with a woman I wasn’t particularly into. For some reason I thought I didn’t want my first time to be special. I can’t justify it and I’m not one for regrets, but it isn’t something I look back on fondly. At least I learned quickly that I couldn’t do hook-ups.
Eventually, I met someone that I felt was good and nice. By this time I had realized that I needed to wait longer and be careful to make sure any sexual interaction with a person was special and at the right time. Well, to start off, this guy brought up sex way too early – I wasn’t impressed. But we were still in that awkward, shy beginning phase of the relationship so I felt I couldn’t express myself fully. However I do remember telling him that I wasn’t ready yet.
The next thing I remember is after a tiring night spent with him and his friends, he took me back to his apartment and started setting up his room as if there was some script I hadn’t been given. Whenever I think about it I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t say anything. I had felt too confused to speak up, and now I feel guilty for questioning myself because he is the one who should have listened to me when I had said I wasn’t ready. Needless to say, that night was bad. I wasn’t comfortable, I wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t willing… and he didn’t even notice. I know that regrets are bad but, with the bad memories of that night, I can’t help but wish I had said “no I’m not ready” a second time, and louder.
And even though I’m a feminist and had developed a more feminist relationship with him after that, I somehow regressed into a long relationship of old-school obligatory sex that I didn’t necessarily want or enjoy. At the beginning of our relationship, after we had first started communicating properly about sex, my partner and I invested a lot of time and effort into making sure the sex was “special”. We both invested a lot of time into working with my PTSD symptoms that came up during sex. It all seemed so sweet and so feminist, but it was all under the assumption that I wanted to have sex. And after a while I realized that I didn’t really.
I still can’t tell if it was just him I didn’t want to have sex with because I wasn’t that attracted to him, or if I will be just as sexually apathetic with anyone else. I feel like I was socialized to believe that I wanted this fairytale-type sex life, but maybe I don’t, or at least not yet. And maybe it’s because of the experiences I’ve had with sex, or maybe it’s just my personality – I’m admitting I’m not a romantic person!
This realization has caused me to majorly rethink my sex life and whether I actually want one right now. It seems like a lot (or some?) of queer people, at least at my age, assume that sex will come after dating, but I want to challenge myself to go a different route and abstain for a while.
I know that it isn’t right or true to say that queer people are hypersexual or that our existence is centered around our sex lives, but I think it is harder to justify celibacy to queer people than it is to straight people. Why is that? My emotional, intellectual and spiritual attractions to queer women… my emotional, intellectual, spiritual, political and social investment in queerness… it can still be there without having sex. Being sexual is not the sole aspect of the queer identity, but sometimes we forget the other aspects.
Aside from retaining or enforcing my identity as queer, I would hope that abstaining from sex would help me gain confidence in saying “no” – to myself or other people. I feel that I will be more compelled to say “no” given my pact with myself to abstain. And in terms of interacting with another person, I feel that they may take me more seriously (yeah I know they should take me seriously anyway!), and I may feel less guilty (sigh, I know I shouldn’t feel guilty anyway…), if I say I am abstaining rather than that I just don’t feel like it. Ugh.
Mainly, I just don’t want sex to be expected of me in a relationship and I think this could be empowering in that aspect. It is interesting because we often associate celibacy with sexual repression, but I now feel that it could be quite empowering.
On a side-note, I wonder if abstaining from sex will lead me to abstain from dating completely, or middle-school-style dating. Heehee.
Thoughts? Is this whole idea entirely unrealistic? … idealistic? … ridiculous?
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It’s an interesting experiment. Maybe, you’ll just end up in a relationship where you’ll have sex because you *want* to with that particular person and not just because it’s what’s expected of you. Good luck handling the pressure.
The idea, rather i should say, hypothesis is fine..I just am not sure of the testability of it?? You probably want to define it in a more testable form than holding off sex, while dating. and wait for ‘special ‘ feeling.
I do not believe that queer peoples life is centered around sex lives. True for GLB but not necessarily for T, A(asexual) and other folks who remain a minority within the Q community. This is not to say the non-GLB folks hate sex which would be just preposterous. I do believe that sex is a manifestation of love but I decline to agree that it is the only and the ultimate one. And I think it just depends on the compatibility of the 2 or more individuals.
Nice write up Anurag!
You could go with 2 options – have fuckbuddies (like a lot of gay/trans people do) or have people that you spend wonderful hours of mental and physical intercourse with – I have both and know the advantages of them.
There is a point when either of them do become closer, and end up either as friends, or there’s that one person who wiggles his/her way through to make it to a partner. I’ve probably become more choosy in my ‘partner’s’ profiling, so it’s harder to have a teenie dating love scene at 28, but yeah, why not?
We’re still evolving as sexual beings and need to realize that somewhere down there, we all have this need for companionship – in any form, sexual or not. And sometimes, you don’t need to define this companionship. Simple.
Very true Rashmi, thanks for pointing that out!
I totally empathize with you. My first sexual experience was also a coerced encounter. My first sexual encounter with a woman, although life-changing in a way, was a one-night stand in the back of her car outside a bar where we met. I have since then also had sexual encounters where I’ve never been exactly ready but I’ve gone along with it anyway. And I’ve never had special ‘firsts’. And I think that very first encounter has left its psychological scars–scars that I”m still trying to find a way to heal. I don’t think that whar you’re planning is idealistic or unrealistic. I think it’s a very natural way to want to protect yourself from further hurt and to make sure that sex, when it does happen, is as wonderful as it is supposed to be and that can only happen when you have sex on your own terms. Doing things the way you are seems to be a very functional way to wanting to reassert power and control in an area of your life where power and control has been taken away from you in the past.
I think it’s totally realistic, and probably really healthy for you to abstain for a bit if that’s what you want to do…and I think the best way to achieve that would be to communicate it really early on that sex is not on your menu right now. If that’s a deal-breaker for your intended, then they probably weren’t worth keeping around. After all, someone who can’t respect clearly stated wishes at the onset of a relationship probably wouldn’t be the best at respecting your boundaries when it comes to intimacy, if you were to decide to head in that direction. I think you’re on to something good though – a relationship where sex is an expectation as opposed to a privilege would suck
It’s your life, your heart, your body, your mind. Nothing is more important than that peace within and just as there are those who may not be able to handle your ideas, there will be some who can so go with your intuition and never sell short.
AC, misszero, S: Thank you for understanding! It means a lot
totally on board with misszero! sex is a privilege and its important never to sell yourself short … be it a heterosexual or a homosexual relationship of any form. I think its more important for LGBT folks to be conscious of these in their daily shenanigans because of the highly sexualised nature of gay relationships as they are potrayed. Almost as if the be all , end all is to be able to fuck of an alternative gender.
Anurag – Abstainment works wonders. It truly does and lets you know what you want and what you are willing to give. You gonna wear a ring?
Lol whatever QC, don’t front! Promise rings are the new slap bracelets. But no offense to Jessica Simpson, engagement rings creep me out enough right now- a promise ring would take it to a whole different level.
awesome. lets wear promise rings
… masquerading as purity rings. we’ll be the new IT thing!
Is it called a promise ring? you know what I’m talking about, purity ring is what I meant I think..