On Friday night, during our third date, I was fucked into double digits.
What makes this most recent partner numerically significant for me goes beyond the ten notches on my bedpost. It is that, in the last year, the number of people I've had sex with is equal to the number I had sex with in the previous 29.
How did I get here? I put some blame on my exboyfriend and my disillusionment in love and trust that happened when that relationship ended. I became less vulnerable, more open to sex because I can take it emotionally. If I sleep with someone who never calls me again, I'm not hurt because I was never invested to begin with. I can take sexual opportunities without emotional risk.
This change, though, is more than the consequence of a bad breakup. In talking with my numerous single female friends in Seattle and around America, I think it reflects our desire for genuine connections with men yet also our fierce independence that we've acquired. We are smart and successful. We make our own money, have our own apartments and cars. We have active social lives. We want boyfriends and later husbands and children, but we do not want to have to sacrifice the lives for ourselves that we have worked hard to build to be with a man who doesn't meet our standards. We can have casual sex with men because we are making our own futures; we do not need to attach meaning to encounters that have none. With #10 and the four other men I've been with in the last twelve months, I have rolled the emotional dice without much to lose on the table.
Or, as my 86 year old grandmother more concisely put it while giving sage advice to her single granddaughters: "Why marry the pig when all you want is a little sausage?"
I was talking with my friend and her boyfriend about this man, and they could tell I was ambivalent.
"I think you've said 'I don't know' about fifteen times in the last five minutes," my friend's boyfriend noted.
"Well," I replied, "I guess that sums it up."
What makes this most recent partner numerically significant for me goes beyond the ten notches on my bedpost. It is that, in the last year, the number of people I've had sex with is equal to the number I had sex with in the previous 29.
How did I get here? I put some blame on my exboyfriend and my disillusionment in love and trust that happened when that relationship ended. I became less vulnerable, more open to sex because I can take it emotionally. If I sleep with someone who never calls me again, I'm not hurt because I was never invested to begin with. I can take sexual opportunities without emotional risk.
This change, though, is more than the consequence of a bad breakup. In talking with my numerous single female friends in Seattle and around America, I think it reflects our desire for genuine connections with men yet also our fierce independence that we've acquired. We are smart and successful. We make our own money, have our own apartments and cars. We have active social lives. We want boyfriends and later husbands and children, but we do not want to have to sacrifice the lives for ourselves that we have worked hard to build to be with a man who doesn't meet our standards. We can have casual sex with men because we are making our own futures; we do not need to attach meaning to encounters that have none. With #10 and the four other men I've been with in the last twelve months, I have rolled the emotional dice without much to lose on the table.
Or, as my 86 year old grandmother more concisely put it while giving sage advice to her single granddaughters: "Why marry the pig when all you want is a little sausage?"
I was talking with my friend and her boyfriend about this man, and they could tell I was ambivalent.
"I think you've said 'I don't know' about fifteen times in the last five minutes," my friend's boyfriend noted.
"Well," I replied, "I guess that sums it up."
Cheaters BEWARE! This could be you.
ReplyDeleteCheck out how these people lost it after being cheated on.
http://huff.to/1nUIwDI