Casual Sex Is Not For Everyone
I am part of the “hook up generation”, where “casual sex” – as in sex for pleasure only without emotional connection – has become the established norm. Where dating and relationships are “out” and short term flings aren’t just “in” they are practically the expected mode of social interaction. Unless you are me, or like me.
It’s not that I am incapable of having casual sex, it’s not even that I don’t want to, in fact I envy women/men/ anyone who is able to feel nothing after a random sexual encounter because sadly, I can’t. Instead I go through a series of mentally and emotionally draining feelings that reinforces the fact that casual sex isn’t for everyone, or at least it isn’t for me.
Because for me the momentary pleasure is not worth the mental and emotional degeneration. It is not worth the anger, the regret and the disappointment [in myself]. It is not worth the sense of sickness, of emptiness and of loneliness. The momentary pleasure is not worth the almost debilitating pain and depression that I undergo after the fact.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am easily one of the most sexually liberal people you will ever meet – I love sex and there is little relating to sex that I wouldn’t do or at least try and I think that it is this liberalism that confuses people. Being sexually liberal has come to be synonymous with being able to have sex for the sake of sex and so I often interact with people who cannot reconcile my willingness to have out of the box sexual experiences with my unwillingness to have random and/or meaningless sexual encounters.
But there is just something about sex with someone that I don’t know, with someone I care nothing for and with someone who cares nothing for me that I cannot deal with – that I cannot mentally and emotionally process.
I don’t need to be in love in order to have happy, fulfilling, non-emotionally masochistic sex, but I do need to feel something more than plain old desire and know that that feeling is reciprocated. I do need to know that I am not one step up from being a fleshlight or a blow up doll. I need something more than the feel of another person and the pleasure that comes from that. I need an emotional connection.