SEX – Fader’s Complete Lack of Self-Understanding

I’m sure you’ll all agree SexWeek has been full of some eye-opening revelations, and some really honest explorations of what works, and what doesn’t.  I’ll leave it to Fader to wind up what became two weeks of talking about Sex on the blog, with a very personal revision of a post she first wrote last week 🙂 

Miss Twenty-Nine xxx

Last week, I wrote a blog for Sex Week.

Then I texted Miss Twenty-Nine to ask her not to post it.

No, I wasn’t going through a crisis of confidence, wondering if my darkest confessions are perhaps best kept to myself rather than aired to the 30 Dates masses. No, I wasn’t intimidated by the posts of the other Experimental Daters on bonking and the like.

It just turned out that some things needed a few, erm…tweaks. You’ll be able to work out which bits they are.

Readers, I present to you: Fader’s Complete Lack of Self-Understanding.

Sex Week

Sex Week, for me, could have wiggled its way down several avenues:

Let’s talk about how I lost my virginity at the grand old age of 19.

Let’s talk about how I wrote gay Harry Potter porn for money at Uni (yes really).

Let’s talk about how I’ve only had two sexual partners, if we’re talking intercourse. Tweak 1: Erm…..!

Let’s talk about what sex is like with a temporary stoma, because Crohn’s disease is THAT MUCH FUN. Nothing says a good bonk like a gurgling poo-bag.

Let’s talk about how I love sex, a LOT, but how I am genuinely so scared of strangers that the joy of a sexual relationship with another person seems about as close and as tangible as the damn moon.  Tweak 2: Seems as though I’m an astronaut, and didn’t know it!

Letting somebody in – both physically and emotionally – is such a big deal.

For me, the very best sex has always been with someone I trusted so entirely and so implicitly, with every atom of myself. Some might flippantly dismiss this as idealistic.

It’s not. It’s simply how I operate, and how I have always operated. Believe me, I wish it was a straightforward choice.

No, I don’t have to be in love with somebody to sleep with him. But I do have to feel like I can be myself with him, and that he knows me.

Yes, I have done “other things” (wiggly-eyebrow-expression).

And no, it’s really not a choice I’ve made. I wish I could patrol my city centre of a Friday, capture a hottie and snarfle him off home.

But it just doesn’t work like that.

I don’t know what makes me like I am. If I were a bit lazy, I’d blame stuff from my childhood. It would be easy. In fact, I’ve been seeing a counsellor for a year – something I should have done FAR earlier in my life – to try to work through some of my intimacy issues. And I do mean “intimacy”, not “sex”. For me, sex can’t happen without intimacy being established in the first place, mainly emotional intimacy. And that’s what I struggle with the most. Tweak 3: Apparently, astronomical flirting and copious amounts of Long Island Iced Tea also do the job.

I think my main problem is that sex, for me, has been low in quantity but VERY high in quality.

In my very longterm relationship, in which I lost my virginity, sex was ace. Then I got sick, and sex sort of didn’t happen. And after that, you sort of fall into a fluffy marshmallow cloud of asexual living, where you become more like friends than lovers.

Even when I popped out the other side, entirely well again, sex was just…meh. An inconvenience. A hassle.

Sex should NEVER be an inconvenience, or a hassle.

I know what good sex is. Believe me, I do. Tweak 4: YEAH, I DO!

And I’m not searching for “the same type” or quality of sex in new partners. I’m not naive. But at the same time, if I’ve eaten a really good sandwich for lunch, I’m not going to eat a square of corrugated cardboard for dinner, am I?

But I’ve had excellent sexual experiences, which I think I’ll document in a blog all of their own. Some of them are HILARIOUS. Tweak 5: YEAH, THEY ARE! But they don’t feel right for now.

I am a very, very sexual being. I love pleasuring my partner. I love exploring myself and allowing my lover to explore me.

But finding that lover, and allowing him to be intimate enough with me to achieve this, genuinely feels impossible.

Original Ending

For now? I’ll continue the sex drought, revelling in the experiences of the other Experimental Daters and, as always, living vicariously through them. Thanks for Sex Week! It’s made me think, a lot.

Alternate Ending (post-credits treat, a bit like Toy Story)

Turns out that the 23 year old I very irresponsibly snogged at the work Christmas do (see earlier blog post!) is a persistent little thing…!

Seriously though, I feel absolutely delighted. Not just ‘cos of the boinking, although that’s obviously an added bonus.

The main reason for the delight is how liberated I feel…how normal. It’s OK to fool about with someone for no reason other than a grand old giggle. I am not some abnormal, sex-phobic freak. I CAN have a sex life!

Oh, I know. I must sound like a twit. But I can’t emphasise enough how much I had resigned myself to a lifetime of probably never having sex again until I’d met the person I’d eventually marry, and seeing as that felt – and still feels – so very far away I sort of thought that was it. And the worst bit about it was that it wasn’t even a choice. It was something I felt I had no control over. It was something my stupid, frustrating brain wouldn’t allow me to do.

My last blog talked about February needing changes, and the biggest changes to come from within myself. I can certainly say I’ve succeeded there.

At thirty years old I am realising something that normal people have understood since they were about eighteen: it’s OK to be sexual.

It isn’t the big deal my brain has always made it out to be.

I certainly haven’t got any romance/relationship designs on Mr 23 – it would be genuinely ridiculous – but that night with him has made me really, really happy. As corny and silly as it sounds, he’s given me freedom.

Oh, and being chased by a clever, attractive, well-bred youngster when you’re a thirty year old cat-lady isn’t all that bad for the ego, either!

In my next entry I’ll tell you all about what happened – well, the run-up rather than the after-dark stuff, of course! It’s a good story.

Until next time,

A very changed Fader

x