A reader, Dp, just happened to ask me to maybe touch on the difference between a person’s sexuality and the person. He and I sort of look at the equation differently, I suppose, but it’s something I’ve been considering a lot.
I’ve placed a sexual encounters personal of late, trying to find that elusive friends-with-benefit situation that encapsulates someone brilliant, someone my style, and someone who nurtures both the same high libido I do while still being a passionate and creative lover who’s not afraid to cross a few proverbial lines in the sand.
I have a tall order to be met. I know it will be a frustrating search. I’m already frustrated, but I’m resolved. I’ve had responses accusing me of being a “shopping list” woman who’s out there for a trophy man rather than reality guy. That’s so not the case. I’m a reciprocal woman. I bring to the table everything I’m seeking in a partner. Absofuckinglutely. I deplore hypocrisy, and I do not ask for anything I’m not willing to provide, or that I haven’t provided in the past.
I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who are comfortable separating the sex they have with the people they are, but I’m not. The sex I have is as much a part of who I am as the girl who loves to bake for her office coworkers. I mean, it’s part of my identity. As much as I am a generous woman, I am a sexual one with a big love for intimacy and passion. I’m given to doting on partners, and I love selfishly receiving. I’m keen on orgasms. But I’m also keen on taking all night to get there sometimes. I seek power almost only in sexual exchanges, though sometimes in my life; but certainly there’s a part of me that does seek that power. To deny that she exists, or to wrongly assert she’s just a “mode” I operate under, would be to blatantly ignore a core part of who I can be, and often am.
But just because I enjoy power exchanges as part of sex doesn’t mean I can do without the smothering, doting affection of old-school intimacy. Because I can’t. Affection and intimacy are as important to me as any other facet of sex, whether it’s taking a good hard shagging or practicing an evening of switchery.
Born and raised Catholic, much of my life has been spent trying to get past the “Satan is waiting for you if you engage in sex” bullshit taught by a church who seeks to shame practitioners away from sex. It’s taken my whole life to realize that who I am when I am a sexual being, someone who’s getting shagged frequently, is a better person than the moral, abstaining girl that life sometimes induces me to be. I’m better all the way around when I’m getting laid. Simple.
The hardest thing I’ve had to learn to be in my lifetime is that woman I am when I’m having sex. Realizing that she’s not a bad person just because she likes to take it the way she does, or domme a fellow when the urge strikes, or tease and taunt a fella to the brink.
I’ve learned slowly over the years that I need to get past that mind-body connection. Past that place that distinguishes the mind over the body, or vice versa, and instead uses them both together to transcend mind/matter, which some of us believe has to happen for real “sexual union” to occur between lovers. Complicated, huh?
It’s one of the reasons that getting vocal about sex wound up being a huge turning point for me in taking my sexual experience to another level. By being less concerned about my volume, just allowing that natural reaction to occur, I somehow got past another level of hang-ups, got more into the now, less into the thought side of it all. It was, and is, such a struggle to override the person I was raised to be as I try to embrace the person I’ve discovered I am, all the while trying not judging the latter just because I was raised as the former.
How each of us gets to that point where we stop segregating who we are sexually with who we think we are morally, and realizing they don’t have to be separate people, that we can (and often are) both, is a struggle I think some of us will be fighting for our whole lives. There will be no easy answer to how you get to that point of accepting the coexistence of your sexuality and your morality, and the realization that one need not cancel out the other.
But the only way I know to do it? Stop stopping at our comfort zones. Stop assuming that just because you’ve always thought one way about sexuality that your mindset is correct. Stop assuming you know how a sexual act will or will not make you feel. Don’t presuppose things like bondage will never appeal to you, because the odds are mighty strong that, like the majority of people out there, who you truly are sexually is something that will be shifting and changing with the rest of you throughout your life. Embrace it. Most importantly, explore it.