The Myth of “Special Sex”
I recently told a someone about my job. I try to be particular about who I talk to about what I do with. While I am far from ashamed of my work, privacy and boundaries are very important to me.
“I just don’t understand. Don’t you want it to be special?”
I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot. The idea of sex being “special.” I grew up hearing that too. Sex should be special. But how exactly does that work? How one goes about assuring that every single sexual encounter is special. If you’re waiting until marriage and sex with them isn’t “special,” did you fuck everything up? Is sex for procreation or specialness? Or pleasure? Or to make your husband happy? Or because well I guess all the kids are gone so I guess we should while we have a chance? Or
I’ve had a lot of sex. Some good, some great, some in between. I’ve found that when I go into a sexual encounter with an excessive amount of expectations, I’m often very disappointed - emotionally, sexually, mentally, etc. To me, it’s like waking up and saying to yourself, “Today is going to be very special!!” How exactly do you plan on making that happen?
I’m not saying that sex isn’t important to me - it very much is! But I wouldn’t describe it as “special.” It’s a milquetoast description for sex. Sacred, divine, satisfying, symbiotic, fulfilling, communicative, carnal, vulgar. There are so many words that are better than “special.”
It hasn’t always been easy for me to communicate - or even know! - my sexual needs or desires. I think we oversimplify a lot of things - “People with penises orgasm like this; people with vaginas orgasm like this.” There are a myriad reasons why we all can’t seem to figure out how to figure out sex. We blame our parents, we blame religion, we blame society, we blame our exes, we blame TV, we blame movies, we blame porn, we blame capitalism, we blame our medication. It doesn’t really matter whose fault it is. When it’s you and another person alone in a room, those excuses fade away. All that matters is what you can create with that person.
It took me a long time and showing myself a lot of kindness and patience to learn my sexual needs solo and then with a partner and then be able to communicate these needs and desires with greater clarity to each subsequent partner. Those very specific and vulnerable communication skills poured over into every other aspect of my life. You fill one cup, and they all feed into one another. You don’t even notice. You’re taking on one experience at a time, focusing on everything as it’s happening. Suddenly, you look up and you’re surrounded by this vivid, specific, special life that you called into being because you didn’t wait for life to happen to you.
There’s this idea that you’re supposed to sit around and wait for “special sex” to fall into your lap, but what if I told you that if you do the work on your own, you can have amazing, divine, delicious sex with anyone. Not because sex doesn’t mean anything to you anymore, but because communing with this other person for an amount of time, communicating - both with words and with your bodies - without fear of shame or rejection, is your entire existence. I think that’s very special.
Until Next Time