I grew up
Catholic. I went to an all-girls’
Catholic school for six years. I had
abstinence-only sex education in high school.
While I was lucky enough to be able to find solid sex education resources
outside of school, the environment I grew up in was very clear about their
attitude toward sex: sex is for
marriage, and not waiting for marriage is a radical, even slutty, act.
When I went
off to college, I rebelled. Well, I
rebelled eventually. I knew I wasn’t ready my freshman year. Sophomore year I was definitely ready, but I
didn’t want to lose my virginity to a one-night stand. I also absolutely did not want a
boyfriend. That’s what I told myself – I
didn’t have time for a boyfriend. I
wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. I
thought it would be embarrassing to admit I wanted a boyfriend, that it
would be silly and anti-feminist of me to admit I wanted a boyfriend, and so I
made it very clear that I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend.
I wanted
the casual. I wanted a casual
hook-up. I wanted my first time to be
with a guy who I’d been casually hooking up with until he casually swiped my v
card during some casual sexing. This was
The Casual Dream for me.
I finally
got this wish fulfilled the summer between sophomore and junior year of
college. We only saw each other when at parties, and absolutely never sober. We didn’t
know if we had anything in common besides a love of having a great time. I’m sure I sent out mixed messages. “I don’t want anything serious, but why
aren’t you talking to me as much as I want you to talk to me?” I’m sure I got labeled Crazy because of this super fun emotional flip-flopping.
I realize
now that my desire for something casual, coupled with my inability to at all be casual (I’m just not a casual person,
which I finally realized at the tender age of 24), stemmed from a lack of
self-esteem (fear of rejection), a rebellion against the conservative sexual
morals I was taught when I was younger, and a fear of my future relationship
not measuring up to what I saw in the romcoms I watched on TV. In truth, I didn’t think there was anything
wrong with my sexual desires, and because I had been taught for so long that a
“loose woman” is to be looked down on, I ignored my own personal emotional
desire for a traditional relationship in order to rebel fully against the
judgmental and harmful teachings I learned in an abstinence-only environment.
You are
allowed to be a radical feminist and still want a monogamous relationship for
yourself, as long as you understand it’s not for everybody. That took me so long to learn.
Once I lost
my virginity, I discovered my love for the one-night stand. And honestly, the first several one-night
stands I had were amazing. I have no
regrets. They make great stories, the
boys were a ton of fun, and I didn’t feel bad about myself at all.
The problem
is that, in my zeal to eschew traditional sexual morals, I didn’t realize I
needed to set some ground rules for myself.
This is the thing I regret most about my sexual promiscuity: in my desire to show how “fun” and “fuckable”
I was, I forgot to check in with myself and what I was comfortable with on
multiple occasions. I thought my sexual
promiscuity made for some great stories and some great jokes, and for a while I
couldn’t always tell when my experiences veered from “just some good sex fun
LOL” to “oh god, Caitlin, how could you let a guy treat you like that?”
I tried to
play off the stories that fell into the second category as No Big Deal, because
otherwise I, a self-identified Strong Independent Woman, had turned into
someone weak and dependent and silly and bad and dumb. The bravado I normally exhibit when it comes
to topics or activities I am well-educated about disappeared when it came to
knowing what is and isn’t proper protocol during casual sex. I didn’t speak up when I was uncomfortable,
and I ignored those feelings as they cropped up because I didn’t know I was allowed to have them. There
is nothing wrong with being sexually active, but, like everything else, you have
to make sure you’re enjoying it and you’re being safe – physically and emotionally.
I don't write this article for pity or sympathy. I'm very happy with where I am now, and I had some pretty great times with some pretty great guys overall. Mostly, this article is to help women who want to be sexually active realize the importance of setting emotional ground rules for yourself. There is no need to be too embarrassed to say "no" or "don't."
Here are
some rules I wish I had when I was single and sexually active:
1.
If it
makes you feel weird, just don’t. You
don’t need to explain yourself.
I remember one night in college I
went home with a guy, and we were both too drunk to do much of anything. The next morning we sort of started hooking
up again, until he stopped, turned over, and just started masturbating.
Since I never talked about this
with anyone, I assumed it was normal and let it happen more than once with more
than one guy. This is not a condemnation
of mutual masturbation – if that’s your thing, go for it! But I didn’t personally like it, I felt
neglected or even less than human lying in bed next to the Mister Masturbating
Man, and instead of exploring those feelings and saying “hey, this is weird, I
don’t like it,” I wrote it off as part of a thing that happens when you’re
sexually active and single.
I wish now I had told the guy “um,
excuse me, but you’re not alone – maybe work on getting me off too?” Or I wish I had told somebody else this story
to get an outside perspective. By the
time I made a joke about it to a friend (“you know those guys that just
masturbate next to you instead of fucking you?
What’s that about?”) and she shook her head, letting me know that she
actually had never experienced that
and that it wasn’t “just part of
being sexually active,” I was already pretty much done with this part of my
life anyway.
2.
If
you’re not having sex right now, or you haven’t had sex in a while, that
doesn’t make you a prude, and there’s nothing wrong with you.
It just means you’re not lowering
your standards during a drought. DON’T
LOWER YOUR STANDARDS. It’s not worth it.
3.
You can
have a fun night out even if it doesn’t end in sex with a stranger.
I KNOW THIS IS SUPER OBVIOUS. And I know saying this is going to make people call me names. Fine. Truthfully, there were many nights where I went
out hoping to go home with someone, and if I didn’t, I felt like the night had
been a failure. That’s a pretty terrible
way to look at a night out, obviously. You can be
sexually active without putting all your self worth into whether or not you
managed to get laid that night. Once I learned this lesson, bars were almost always guaranteed a good time.
4.
Being
a sexually active female doesn’t give the guy you’re being sexually active with
the right to treat you with anything other than respect.
One guy called me a cab afterwards
that I ended up having to pay for.
Another made a big show of going to sleep while I was in the middle of
talking to him. Even writing about this,
I get embarrassed all over again. I just
thought that was part of being sexually active.
Of course you don’t want to
get breakfast with your one-night stand.
That’s weird. I don’t
want that either.
But there’s a big difference
between not wanting to hang out with your one-night stand, and not treating
your one-night stand like a piece of shit.
You’re allowed to demand respect for yourself.
5.
If a
guy isn’t respecting some basic ground rules you lay down from the get-go, you
are allowed to just leave.
The one rule I was always pretty
good about was condom use. Unless you’re on birth control and in a
committed relationship, condoms are an absolute must. Everything that can go bad from not wearing a
condom is worse for the woman – pregnancy, for example, or certain STIs which
affect women more than men (like HPV).
When I was 22, I went on a date
with a 29-year-old guy who I knew was kind of a jerk, but I also knew he was
6’4” and that I was “just looking for something casual.” He bragged about himself most of the night,
and I was definitely not interested in seeing him in social situations, but I
figured it’d be nice to have a fuck buddy.
So on the first date we had sex in
his truck. He at first tried to have sex
without a condom, and he mentioned he had recently been tested as an argument
for going bareback, but I insisted, and he acquiesced without too much further
debate.
On the second date, I went over to
his apartment so he could take me out to dinner. Pretty much right away we started hooking up,
and then he bent me over a chair and tried to have sex with me without a
prophylactic.
“Not without a condom,” I objected.
“I have something better,” he
said. “I have tests from a few months
ago and also from ten days ago.”
“Get a condom.”
“I don’t have any condoms.”
This 29-year-old sexually-active
man did not have condoms in his own apartment?
I didn’t believe it. Especially
with his STI tests lying around, easily accessible for the curious sexual
partner he brought home from time to time.
“So I guess we’re not having sex.”
“But look, I have tests.”
“That’s funny – that’s not a
condom.”
“Are you on birth control?”
“Yes, but I like to be safe. I don’t have sex without a condom.”
The man had absolutely no regard
for my feelings or my comfort level during sex.
He was only focused on what felt best for him. Sex is an act between two people, and both people's feelings should be consulted during said act.
This is when I should have left.
He offered to give me a
massage. He stripped me down (which I
hated, but I didn’t have time to say no).
He got out sex toys. Then, after some
massage time, he turned me over and tried to thrust inside me. I literally put my hand down over my vagina
to stop it.
He thought he could trick me into
having sex with him without a condom, despite my clear objections to it earlier
in our conversation.
This is when I should have left.
“I said not without a condom!” I
yelled. “Did you really think you were
going to get me so worked up I was just going to forget?”
He stared at me, totally in shock
that this technique didn’t work. He got
off me, and now he started to “reason” with me.
He thought he could convince me to
give up on the only rule I had laid out for myself, simply because it felt
better if we did things his way.
This is when I should have left.
“Would you ever not wear a condom?”
he asked me.
“If I was in a committed
relationship, maybe.”
“How long until you don’t wear a
condom with someone?”
“I don’t know! A few months?
I’m not being unreasonable here!”
“But I have tests-“
“A test doesn’t tell me if you’re a
carrier for HPV! There are no tests that
can show that out there right now! We’re
not having sex without a condom!”
“Well, if there are no tests that
show that, then what is the point in waiting? You’ll never know. What will waiting do?”
Objection after objection after
objection, and he was still trying to argue with me as though this was a
legitimate intellectual debate. It's not an intellectual debate - my feelings about what I am and am not comfortable with during sex are not up for debate.
This is when I should have left.
“This is our second time hanging
out,” I explained. “I am not being
ridiculous right now for insisting you wear a condom.”
He sighed, realizing I wasn’t going
to see the error of my ways and listen to his superb reasoning skills. He went over to his drawer to fetch a
condom. A condom he said he didn’t
have. I caught him red-handed in a lie.
This is when I should have left.
We had sex. He put me in a position that hurt. I told him it hurt and moved my legs so I was
more comfortable. He moved my legs
back. I was too tired of arguing with
him at this point, so I just waited for it to be over.
This is when I should have left.
He took me out to dinner. I made sure he paid for it. We ordered expensive sushi. I figured it was the least he could do. Then he thought we were going to keep making
out, keep hanging out, keep having sex for the rest of the night. I told him I was tired, and that I had to go
home. In a terrible mood, I went out to
a bar with some friends to drink and forget the whole thing.
This is when I finally left.
I told that story to a few
friends. Some of them just got kind of
quiet. Some of them pointed out how
semi-rapey the whole thing got, even though I never explicitly said “no” to
sex. One of my (former) friends announced that
she definitely would have left, that she would never let someone treat her like
that, which made me feel pretty terrible about myself – like she was the Strong
Independent Woman I was only pretending to be.
(Do not, if a friend tells you about an experience like this, tell your
friend what you would have done differently.
You’re not helping.)
I even tried to write a comedy
script about a sexually active young woman, and I wanted to start with this
scene. I thought because I was so
insistent on the condom that I was doing everything right. But when I wrote the scene down, it wasn’t
funny. It was sad. It was weird.
I chalked it up to not enough time passing, to me not figuring out how to
make it funny yet, and put the story aside.
It took me a few years to come to
terms with how unacceptable his behavior was, and that I don’t have to put up
with shit like that from anybody. I
couldn’t make the scene funny because it wasn’t funny.
The consolation I get from the
whole thing is that he smelled pretty rank, and I’m sure I’m not the only one
to notice that.
6.
If
one-night-stands aren’t fun anymore, stop doing them.
This lesson I did eventually
learn. It just took me a year longer
than it should have.
8.
Don’t
let anyone judge you for how many or how few people you’ve been with.
Oh man. This was one of those things I knew in
theory, but in practice it was a totally different animal.
Did you ever see the movie “What’s
Your Number?” It’s terrible. Don’t bother.
But one of the worst scenes in the movie is when a bunch of women get
together to talk about how many men they’ve been with. If it’s more than 20, you have a better
chance of being blown up in an airplane than in getting married. (I’m never getting married, but then, neither
are any of my friends.)
The “slut” of the group had been
with 13. Jesus. I might as well kill myself now.
First of all, not getting married
is just not the worst thing that can happen to you. Being in a terrible, loveless marriage is far
worse.
Second of all, how many people
you’ve slept with is your business, and it shouldn’t affect how a future
partner sees you.
There’s of course the old joke (you might remember it from “American Pie 2”) that, when a guy tells you how many people he’s
slept with, divide that number by three to get the actual number. When a girl tells you, multiply that number
by three to get the actual number. A
woman lies to minimize her sexual experience lest you judge her a “slut” and
look down on her. I was obviously
against this in theory. You shouldn’t have to feel bad about your
number.
Then I met my boyfriend.
On our third date, the conversation
turned towards number of sexual partners.
My boyfriend said his number, which was less than half of mine. I confidently told him my number, and then I
immediately regretted it.
“Oh god,” I panicked. “I just heard that out loud.”
I was suddenly terrified he was
going to think I was a slut, and I was so mad at myself for caring about that
stigma, because if he did think less of me for my number, then obviously he’s
not the right guy for me. But then, I
was also so worried he was going to think
I was a slut.
“All that number tells me,” my
boyfriend responded at the time, “is that you like sex, and you have a lot of
experience, so you’re probably pretty good at it.”
There are a lot of good men out
there. This is how a good man would
respond.
As you can
tell by the last rule, I did eventually admit to myself I wanted the comfort of
a stable, monogamous relationship (which is NOT FOR EVERYONE, but it did happen to be right for me). I
went on some dates with a few guys – some good, some not so good – and I’m now in
an amazing relationship with one of the best people I’ve ever met. The first step to getting here was learning
to respect my own desires at least as much as my sexual partner’s. The second was being honest with myself about
what I wanted. I can be a kick-ass
feminist who knows how to have a good time without constantly wanting to fuck
everything that moves and demand high-fives for it.
Mostly I
want to tell young women out there that you can stay virgins, have a lot of
sex, or do something in between, and it doesn’t change anything about you or
who you are as a person. You’re still
just as good at your job, you’re still just as close with your family and
friends, and you’re still just as interesting or as boring as you always were. Just know yourself, know what you’re
comfortable with, and know that if your partner doesn’t respect that, you’re
allowed to walk out. You deserve to be happy and comfortable
throughout sex, and if your sexual partner doesn’t know that, he’s an asshole.
So happy sex-having! Or not sex-having! Up to you!
