Casual Sex Shouldn’t Make You Feel Guilty Because That’s Not The Part You’re Doing Wrong.
Coming on February means Valentine’s Day…that good old capitalist holiday of love. It seems the fear of intimacy is still on our minds at TSGC. For context, I am a 22 year old queer black woman, Gen Z-millenial cusp, who has never been in a relationship before. I’m not rare or anything special, there’s probably dozens of girls like me around you right now. Coincidentally, like any millenial-Gen Z, I’m pretty spiritual and I just got my palm read. It seems, according to my skin, that traditional, monogamous, love isn’t going to be in the cards, not for some time anyway.
But let it be known, I’m not complaining. I’m used to freedom, despite how much affection I crave. I don’t like the person I become when I do get this attention anyway, paranoid that it will be taken away in an instant or just gluttonous. It seems I am always demanding more from my partners, either verbal or nonverbal so…whether I actually say it or not.
Straight up, some of the meanest words I’ve ever heard said to me or that I’ve heard come out of my own mouth come out of arguments with people I had these close but transactional relationships where all we worry about is what the other person can give. Or how the other person is giving in comparison to what we’re giving and getting.
There was never any concern for the other persons wellbeing or feelings, only selfishness which led to not listening and avoiding the issues that had initially been around all along. Talking to casual partners, no matter how casual and close you are, can be scary and vulnerable. The reactions towards that vulnerability tend to be negative and unregulated and responding to these reactions is a skill that requires practice. For someone who hasn’t been in a committed relationship, casual relationships have helped me grow in ways that I forget to be grateful for.
As that chapter ends, I just kind of hope I never encounter or become an unappreciative partner again. And I know that I am better for it because I learned a few things about compassionate and empathetic casual sexual relationships.
I learned casual sex is great. It’s extremely possible to have casual sex with someone and have your feelings for them exist with negotiated meaning. I learned sex is better when you have feelings for someone but those feelings can be discussed and negotiated to fit the current dynamic. Emotions and feelings and desire can be present without being romantically and suffocatingly intimate. I learned what I can and can’t handle, what I do and what I don’t want to see.
Not everybody wants complete monogamy in their early 20’s and that’s okay. Relationships like this with no forced dating pressure are beyond great and some of the most comfortable and understanding ones I’ve been in. Having sex positive friendships and friends with benefits make adulthood so much easier. Especially when going through periods of life where it’s impossible to commit to anything but yourself and things that serve you, mostly for the sake of my physical and mental health. I have sexual needs, that should be recognized instead of supressed, and I want someone to fulfill them without all the exhaustive emotional labor that I or someone else may require.
According to NYU professor, Dr. Zhana Vhrangalova, some of the ways to eradicate casual sex stigma and mean-spiritedness from your own casual sex relationships, can start at sexual initiation. She states in Mel Magazine, “at the end of the day, make women feel good about what they did. Cuddle and reaffirm that what they did was great. Stay in touch. Communicate. Make women feel like they’re human beings who you interact with and care for in a casual way, without commitments and without leading them on with ideas you don’t have intentions of carrying out. If our culture is going to have a lot of casual sex, a lot of education needs to be done in order to teach people how to do it well.”
Casual sex is as old as humans. As casual partners, we aren’t entitled to pretend monogamy, but realistic respect. If a partner isn’t respecting you, your boundaries, or your relationship…it is time to talk about it. Ending or thinking about taking a break from a casual or even a committed romantic relationship doesn’t make you a failure.And more often than not, that’s when the reactions start to come in. You get called every name in the book, tears start building in the back of your throat, and you run the risk of being told that you made someone you care about feel bad, belittled, and betrayed all on your own. That’s a shitty feeling, all together, and terrifying to go through alone.
For me, it manifests as feeling stupid and humiliated, like I have a terrible intimacy GPA and my teacher just posted the grades on the door.
We grow up in a world that tells us it’s bad to have casual sex, especially for women. But it extends to men, too, who feel guilty for fulfilling the stereotype of “the asshole” or go around believing that women are programmed to want relationships with them, whether that is actually the case or not.
A lot of the time, men refuse to provide or prioritize intimacy in casual sex because they are afraid if they did show more passion, women would get attached and want something more, which sounds like a projection to me. That kind of stuff happens as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more men withhold, the more some women crave because there is less of what makes the relationship good. Some of us are luckier than others, to be instilled with less shame and guilt and internalized suppression. Sex negativity, social disapproval, mental health, and stigma all work against the sex positive future we’re building for our children and families. If you are someone who has casual sex and enjoys it, you have to own that. And you should celebrate that by finding people around you who are going to accept and love you. And once you do find the casual sex partner who is going to accept and love you without guilt, pressure, disrespect, emotional abuse or unrealistic expectations, you should celebrate each other in your own ways, and then again tenfold. The best gift is being present, staying in the moment and being honest with someone.
Sex is healthy. Sex is natural. Sex is healing. Sex is risky. Sex doesn’t have to make you a bad person, no matter how many times you want to have it or don’t want to have it.
Sex can be addictive but sex, the activity itself, can’t taint you or anyone else; it cannot make you a worse person than you already are or could become. Sex can’t and it does not control you.
Sex should be fun and not forced or draining. Sex is normal, an individual, mildly often human experience. Sharing that with someone requires respect and full acceptance of who you are. Casual sex is only wrong if you let casual sex make you feel small, instead of the big part of someone else’s life that they’ve allowed you to be.
Loving is human.
And you deserve to have good sex.
