I recently read an article about how casual sex is bad for relationships and individuals alike, and that it's on the rise. Shortly thereafter, I read another piece about how it's not really on the rise, nor is it particularly bad for people. So which is it? Well, I'll let you decide.
Hillary, a regular reader, weighs her options.
Nah, not really. I'll tell you. It's the second one.
How do I know? Well, not to resort to ad hominem attacks, but one is a site that claims to have "all you need to know about everything that matters", and has such breaking front page articles as "Most Compulsive Twitterers of 2009". The other is scientific research that has recently been published. The latter also isn't redolent of a "those crazy kids" rant that I see pretty regularly making the rounds, exclaiming that everyone is doing more drugs, having more sex, cussing more, and probably eating more babies than any generation previous. As it turns out in nearly every case, no one generation ends up being that different from the last.
I also know from personal experience. That's right kids. I know this may surprise you, but I have had sex with someone with whom I wasn't romantically involved. But actually, in full disclosure, it did mess with me for a little while. In fact, I had some sort of weird hangups about sex for a pretty long time. Get comfy, kids: it's story time.
It's now time for the other type of fireside chat.
When I was in the eighth grade, I dated a girl for 9 months. (9 months and one day, actually, as it seemed cruel to dump her on our monthiversary. Seriously.) Towards the end of this 9 months and the many months after that we continued to hook up, I routinely received oral sex from her, but we hadn't gone any further*. We had talked about having sex , decided we were both okay with it in theory. She went and got condoms, and ater a lot of debating, I eventually decided that I was ready, and that I was going to have sex with her. We were broken up at the time, as I broke up with her for being completely emotionally dependent on me, and I could no longer handle the pressure. Why I decided that sex would not compound this problem, I'm not sure. Emotionally, I still think I could have handled it, but she certainly couldn't have, at least not given our situation. Shortly after this decision, she and I got a little alone time at her mom's place, but after much ramping up and me being nervous as hell, her mom came home before we did, and it never happened. Shortly thereafter, we stopped talking altogether for a while, and so we never had sex.
Though I got into other situations in which I could have had sex after that, for whatever reason I had always known that my first time had to be meaningful. I don't know when I decided this, or what my reasoning was, but it was always there, crystal clear in my head. My best friend at the time had the exact same view as me: the first time has to be with a girl that you really care about, but after that you can have as much sex as you want, with whomever you want. Presumably within reason, but neither of us had even gotten that first step.
Throughout high school, I dated a few girls, but never came particularly close to sleeping with any of them. The only girls I would have even really had a shot sleeping with were girls that I didn't have any great interest in long-term, which, at the time, meant I didn't have any interest in fucking them, either. Eventually, I did end up staying with a girl for long enough, and caring about her enough, to have sex with her. If you haven't already heard that story, I told it here. Around a year after that, I was head over heels for another girlfriend, and had sex with her, too. It wasn't until a few months after she and I broke up that I had sex** with a girl with whom I wasn't attached, nor particularly interested in. She was a friend of a friend, and she was very straightforwardly a booty call (as I was for her). The night it happened, I told her up front that I wasn't going to have sex with her. She asked why not, and I think I did a pretty half-assed job of explaining it, but gave her the basic idea: I'm not in love with you, and I've never slept with someone I'm not in love with. However, hormones, self-destructive tendencies and wheedling got the better of me, and eventually we had sex. The next day, I felt terrible. My aforementioned best friend was unavailable for a few days, and all my other friends with whom I'd have liked to talk about it knew her, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to tell anyone about it yet. So I basically spent a couple days stressing over this, and not knowing what to do. The weirdest part is that at no point could I explain why I felt bad. I remember thinking, okay, I guess now I'm the type of guy who just fucks girls he doesn't care about. Firstly, given my history, I was obviously not this type of guy. Secondly, I knew guys like this, and I didn't think they were doing anything wrong. So what was it?
After a few days, I eventually just chalked it up to Stupid Shit I Learned At Catholic School. As much as I balked at all of the stupid abstinence-only bullshit they crammed down our throats, I managed to retain just a little bit of the moralistic view of casual sex. It took some fairly serious searching to realize that I wasn't doing anything that I disagreed with for anyone else, and, when I really thought about, I didn't disagree with for myself either. Since then, I've had sexual encounters of the casual and the committed kind, and I've felt fine about all of them.
Throughout his issues, Tiger still finds time to be excited about my breakthrough.
The point I'm trying to make is not that you need to go out and have sex with strangers. My point is that you shouldn't let anyone tell you not to. The cultural stigma (especially for women) is strong, but you shouldn't let it stop you. If it sounds like fun, you're up front about your intentions with the other party(ies), and you're safe, then go for it. It looks like it's not going to hurt you if you're in it for the right reasons***. Science says so.
*This was the case with girls for a long while after that. I managed to go 5 years from the first time I received oral sex to the first time I gave it. This was not my desire, as in nearly every case I offered to reciprocate and was turned down. Women are weird.
**I am referring to penis-in-vagina sex, as I have not counted oral sex, mutual masturbation, or many other things which to many people constitute sex. My fixation on PIV sex in particular is another odd part of my adolescent views on sex, though less odd than some things. I plan on talking about what exactly constitutes sex very soon.
***This could be a number of things, eg. I felt like it, He was hot, I wanted to try out this new toy, I found out we were both into elbow play****, etc. It is expressly not things like I wanted to get back at my friend, I wanted to give him an STD, etc.
****It's not a real thing, don't worry. I only know about a FEW sexy activities that you don't.
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