sex talk and weekend update

viva · 22-04-14 02:35:10

Happy Easter my lovely IFM people! I hope everyone had a beautiful extended weekend,

Mine was charming and relaxed. I went with my housemates to one of their families' homes by the beach. Her family was away and we had the house to ourselves. After deciding to go 'unplugged' for the weekend (ie no facebook, no browsing, no texting, smartphones off limits!) we ended up having a lot of fun together - we jumped off bridges into the ocean, explored tide pools, made ukelele music videos, drew silly pictures and built a serious pillow fort inside of which we played a rousing game of Truth or Truth.

A lot of talk about sexuality came up during the evenings. One of my friends is 25 years old, but still a stranger to sexuality. She's not a virgin, but struggles to understand what sex is and what is expected of her in sexual situations. She craves love and connection over physicality and often feels that sex happens way too fast. She feels like a child, confused and uncomfortable, and hates feeling that way in an intimate adult space. Our discussions and advice started in the typical way - learn your own body, learn to relax, learn to explore the body of the other, speak up and say what you're feeling.... but the more we talked, the more I started to question our advice, and to wonder really about her experience, and the way our generation treats sex, intimacy and connection.

After all, we often have sex with people so quickly after feeling the spark of a connection, or their attention on us. Many people date, but people in my social groups really don't - instead, relationships are already well-established, or based on momentary attraction and sex is expected quickly.

When I was single, I always had sex almost immediately as soon as an attraction was evident. It made me uncomfortable not to - that feeling of playing guessing games, skirting the issue, giving it time to develop - was a weird in between place and I preferred always to just get naked and let our bodies sort things out. In retrospect, I used sex as a mask. I used it as a way to avoid letting people get to know me, or prove to me they liked me - I used it to be dominant in our relationship before they even had a chance to disappoint me.

In this, I experienced many sexual situations and some absolutely beautiful moments. I slept with people I still care for deeply. I made mistakes, and I don't regret my behaviour. Still, learning to properly respect myself and not base my self-worth on my ability to get men to want me - it took a long time. And all of the sex inbetween, while fun to look back on, was just a kind of stalling.

But what I did and do still, on occasion, is expected. The thing is that these days, at least in my social circles, it's not really normal to wait. Like, its very not normal to wait until marriage (this is considered actively unhealthy) but it's even not normal to wait, like, a week.

What's that all about? Is it totally every (wo)man for themselves, and when to have sex is completely individual, or is there something we can say about the depths of intimacy involved, and the wisdom (perhaps) of backing off, socially, from the idea of casual sex?

I'm not sure, but keen to discuss. Especially wanting to help my friend - so far, just talking about sexuality with us has done wonders for her. She had almost no education and being embarrassed about sex, struggled to talk about anything. She has so many questions, and it's good to answer them. I wonder though, if she should be having sex at all so quickly - if my advice to her should be about how to be more comfortable with sex with virtual strangers, or if my advice should be more along time lines of 'woah there, hold up, and wait to find love!' She wants experience, but is lots of sexual experience beneficial for everyone?

questions questions..

yohm42 · 22-04-14 14:32:20

Her sex life, her rules. She seems to be comfortable enough to discuss it at length with you, so that's a great thing to do, but maybe the goal should be to get a clearer view of her preferences rather than pick a particular path and steer her towards it (which is how I understood one of your questions, apologies if I misunderstood). There's no one-size-fits-all behaviour on that topic, even if there can be very real social pressure. Some people need to build a meaningful connection before sex happens, others find themselves happy without one, or with sex helping build that connection... and some people have no interest in sex at all.
In my view, sexual experience will be a lot more beneficial (and certainly less frustrating) if she finds out her rules first... and it sounds like potential partners might have to wait for her a bit, but hey, can't that make things even more interesting? ;)

Also the internet, blogs, videoblogs, webcomics can sometimes be a safe place to find out about various sex-related topics. Example: Erika Moen's wonderful OhJoySexToy, with a somewhat wider range than what the title suggests (even if it is the main focus).

viva · 23-04-14 01:07:11

I agree, it's better to just listen to her than to give advice. Which is why I've brought my little thoughts to the forum Thinking about her brought up all these questions in me. I am surrounded by people with lots and lots of sexual experiences and who are very open to sexuality in general. She looks up to people like this and desires to be more 'worldly'. Can you be sexually confident without a certain amount of experience under your belt?

I feel like the general message around me is and has been, not really. This is one of the the arguments against waiting for sex before marriage. That as with other things, practice makes perfect, and trying lots of flavors helps us know which kind we like best. A certain amount of demystification makes us more comfortable with sex and bodies both of which we are often brought up to believe to be 'secret' and 'sacred' things.

Which really just ends up leaving us embarrassed when we can't do sacred right, cause our brains are busy worrying about if we're touching those balls right and then getting ooked out by balls and then feeling bad because we should think they're beautiful - etc etc.

But I digress.

When you do get in a LTR, especially the monogamous kind, sex demystifies itself anyway. Yes of course, sometimes it's sacred, holy, deep, emotional, beautiful, etc - but sometimes it's quick-stick-it-in-me-before-I-go-brush-my-teeth-or-I'll-be-late-for-work and sometimes it's a blowjob while the credits roll and sometimes it's a sneaky wank in bed while she's asleep and sometimes it's tears in the shower because it's just not working. I mean, maybe that's just me - maybe most love couples are having epic, charming sex 5 times a week - but somehow I doubt it.

Being with a goodly amount of other folks before you settle down with your one-and-only is good... I think... confused.

more thoughts?

viva · 23-04-14 01:11:37

Wait, yes, I am being too black and white. Considering that there are people who don't want sex at all in general, it's too broad a spectrum, certainly, to say. But for people who desire a monogamous long term relationship with sex in it... them's who I'm meandering on about.

Aaronhalt · 23-04-14 03:38:06

I mean, I suspect you certainly can develop a screamingly hot sex life with your one true love who you waited until marriage to see naked. But it means accepting that all the awkward first time bullshit that most people go through as teenagers is instead going to happen over the first few months of your marriage and it's going to be stressful and hard.

I suppose it's a valid choice.

I think what it's very hard to get around is the idea that talking about sex is necessary. Monogamy and waiting until marriage, fine, if that's your position. Not being educated about sex and exposed to frank talk about it? Deeply unlikely to work. You can demystify sex without having it.

viva · 23-04-14 05:25:25

Aaronhalt wrote:

You can demystify sex without having it.

Can you really? I mean, talking about sex is fine and dandy and unquestionably healthy, but also bears almost no resemblance to actually having sex. I'm just being a bit of a devil's advocate... I know that every case is different. But I am honestly curious about the way society has sort of switched from supporting the chaste girl, to encouraging the wild girl, and how the truth is usually found somewhere in the middle. I think that if you are a sexual person, some variety in sexual experience is necessary for personal growth. I'm not sure that it is realistic to say that you can have a fabulous sex life if you've waited til marriage, with the exception of hitting a 1-in-a-million jackpot with your spouse.

Aaronhalt · 23-04-14 05:38:06

viva wrote:

Aaronhalt wrote:
You can demystify sex without having it.
Can you really? I mean, talking about sex is fine and dandy and unquestionably healthy, but also bears almost no resemblance to actually having sex. I'm just being a bit of a devil's advocate... I know that every case is different. But I am honestly curious about the way society has sort of switched from supporting the chaste girl, to encouraging the wild girl, and how the truth is usually found somewhere in the middle. I think that if you are a sexual person, some variety in sexual experience is necessary for personal growth. I'm not sure that it is realistic to say that you can have a fabulous sex life if you've waited til marriage, with the exception of hitting a 1-in-a-million jackpot with your spouse.

I suspect that if you connected with your spouse in enough other ways to have marrying them be a good idea then you can probably make it work with sex if you communicate well about it.

But we put such a stigma on communication in the first place. The fact that much sex is a bit shit but that if you put a bit of effort into it you can have a really great time is, I fear, not common knowledge. And this leads to all manner of problems. You can't learn to be good at sex without having it. But you can at least learn how your body works, explore what you might be into, and learn a bit about what sorts of things other people in the world are into. And I think that sex would be a lot easier for a lot of people if things like that weren't secretive, taboo topics.

morentex · 27-04-14 00:00:18

Your friend must of course stop listening to everyone else and trust herself ! Which is easy to say.

From my (male) point of view:
You are assuming that the amount, number of , depth of, sex you can have is just a choice. But this is seldom true i think.
If it i s not, you learn from the partners you hopefully meet and enjoy.
(And if these partners are few, then there is always internet...)
So sex before marriage becomes less of a strategic decision and more random thing.
This is true for me.

In general, i think that sex has brought me more pain than happiness so my vote is perhaps not so valid in this forum.

#1 22-04-14 02:35:10

sex talk and weekend update

#2 22-04-14 14:32:20

Re: sex talk and weekend update

#3 23-04-14 01:07:11

Re: sex talk and weekend update

#4 23-04-14 01:11:37

Re: sex talk and weekend update

#5 23-04-14 03:38:06

Re: sex talk and weekend update

#6 23-04-14 05:25:25

Re: sex talk and weekend update

#7 23-04-14 05:38:06

Re: sex talk and weekend update

#8 27-04-14 00:00:18

Re: sex talk and weekend update

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