Year Without Love: Sex Update

 

The facet of my Year Without Love that is proving most vexing is the one I thought would be the easiest:

– Become good enough at pleasuring myself that I’m not tempted to pursue sex without love. As delicious as that can be, I’ve learned it’s a lot like those Hostess Fruit Pies I used to be obsessed with. SO good going down, but then you feel empty and more hungry than before once the sugar coating fades from your blood.

I’ve been putting off writing about this for a few reasons. First of all, this is going to be the definition of TMI (fair warning; stop reading right now if that worries you, please). This feels so personal that clicking “publish” on this one is going to take some courage. What I want to write about seems to touch on a number of subjects I don’t see a lot of other writing about, the sex lives and fantasies and self-pleasure of single middle-aged women who have medium-sized bodies and some wrinkled fat (not the sexy, lush sort of fat, but the sort that is never displayed in polite society). I am plain nervous that I will be revealing myself as a bizarre freak, alone in my experiences and thoughts. But here goes, anyway.

At the beginning of this year, when I was organizing my thoughts and plans for my year without romantic love, I added this self-pleasuring goal to my list without worry. I figured I’d find the perfect toy(s) and erotica and that would be that; I’d post a link to the magic that does it for me and check that box off. Insert that needle scratching off the record sound here.  Not so simple. I think this may need a year of its own, just this one item on my list.

During my 7 years of single motherhood, since the demise of my marriage, I’ve had a few happy-enough trysts and one short but dangerous relationship that, two years later, I’m still coming to understand and recover from. On balance, my experiences have been positive, though. Whenever possible, I’m an experiential learner, and I’ve taught myself about online-only sexting affairs, ex-sex, fuck buddy sex, friends with benefits sex, small-town swinger sex, and long months with only my two hands for company.

I imagine that living a solo sex life might not be a hardship for some people. I wish it were easy for me. I’ve always related more to the pop cultural descriptions of the sexual drive of men than of women. I think about sex a lot. In my past when I had a spare hour, sex with my partner was at the top of my To Do list. I do a lot of other things with my time now, and I enjoy them all, but if I had a choice between gardening, hiking with my dogs, hanging with friends, making art, and sex, sex would be first on the list; then I’d feel energized for the rest of life’s fun. That’s not to say I want only sex; but it’s something I never tire of, no matter the weather or the state of my mind. These past 7 years have given me a chance to focus on other ways to use my time and energies, but I feel the net loss in my vitality, in my sense of myself as whole. I feel like I’ve had a part of myself amputated, and the loss of this part of myself is one of the main things I know I’m mourning when I’m suddenly crying in my car or in the shower (two places single mothers can cry in privacy).

The easy answer would be to install Tinder on my phone and join the hookup culture. And I’ve tried, really I have. This is the first of my problems: While I love sex, I’m no good at all at casual sex. It’s not that I think that all sex needs to take place in the context of marriage or established, acknowledged love, it’s that I just don’t like fucking people I don’t know and trust. Sometimes casual sex is exciting, but mostly it feels to me like scratching an itch. It’s simply physical, without much depth. It’s good for orgasms, but orgasms are not what I miss most. Sex with people I don’t know and trust requires a level of guarding of my heart, of my core, that prevents me from being fully present. And that’s what I miss most: Sex when my partner and I are fully present, fully there physically and in spirit, stripped bare of masks and artifice, so that the whole messy, delicious union is both primal and elevated, ancient and brand-new, profane and holy, the collision of individual bits of tinder that slam together to provide a glimpse of the moment of creation. I know this is colored by my religion’s view of sexual pleasure as a gift, not meant only for procreation, but for the joy and union of it, the glimpse of the universal oneness it allows us. Sure, in the fine print of my religion, sexual pleasure is meant to happen inside the bonds of marriage, but I know that’s a human addition, a patriarchal addition, so I’ve chosen my own interpretation that doesn’t require marriage but that does require trust, respect, and presence. Tinder’s handy, but it doesn’t deliver this for me.

I know I’d get the sort of sex I want inside of a relationship. Not a fuck buddy relationship, not a friends with benefits relationship, but in a good old-fashioned romantic relationship. And that’s the thing I’m not putting energy into pursuing. So that leaves my goal for the year, learning how to pleasure myself well enough that I’m content without the sex.

I was hoping that finding my way to solo mind-blowing orgasms would be enough. And maybe it would be. but this brings me to my second problem: I’ve lost my fantasies, the ones that used to get me off when I was alone, coaxing an orgasm from myself. I used to have a number of stories, words and images, I could play in my mind while my hands were busy. But now reality gets in the way. I can’t suspend my disbelief any longer. While my body is in bed, my mind is gazing down to see a medium-sized, middle-aged woman who is alone in bed because she’s not desirable any longer. I see every unattractive detail of my body through the eyes of my male friends, the ones whose candor I value, but whose comments about the aging female bodies of their partners and conquests come back to haunt me when I’m on my own. My imagination isn’t strong enough to picture myself as young and hot and sexy, and then come the memories of the abusive relationship that most of my recent in-real-life sex took place within, and more often than not, I get kicked right out of feeling horny to feeling stupid and pitiful, in bed alone with a toy that reminds me of Totoro (which adds another level of odd to things). So instead of giving myself mind-blowing orgasms, I end up feeling shriveled and ridiculous, rolling over to pick up a book instead, to read myself to sleep.

I’m still working on this, on finding a way to reclaim this part of myself, to heal this amputation. Right now, it feels like a Gordian knot and I don’t know where to begin the untangling, which bold action will help me cleave through the whole mess.