Spring Break
The cost of free love, worth of hook-ups
Rose Hansen
Issue date: 9/30/08 Section: Forum
Inevitably, trouble brewed when we were pushed outside of our emotional limits. Sex is an intimate act, but in a casual relationship, intimacy is not allowed. Now, all sorts of questions arise. Is it okay to spoon? What's an appropriate time to go home? As friends who have sex, how is that different from a normal relationship? Do you want to meet my friends? Who was that on the phone?
Power games, jealousy, frustration, anger - these were the emotions that made the sex so intense. And underneath it all was fear. Was I ready for a relationship? Was he? No, we said. No. There's so much more to lose when you willingly put your emotions at stake and slap a title onto it. It's easier to ask for nothing, expect nothing, and know there's no logical reason to ever feel disappointed.
But emotions aren't logical when you're having sex with the same person night after night. I didn't get involved with him under the illusion that it would turn into something more, but pillow talk is still hard to dismiss. The person you're sleeping with becomes the person you want to sleep next to. Every action and word adds to the looming mountain of testimony that proves how tricky and multi-faceted casual sex becomes.
How does a casual relationship end if neither person meets someone else? That's where I am now. Even the bad emotions have withered because there's no purpose for their existence. There's no forward movement together. The sex becomes less and less satisfying because afterwards, there's nothing there to support it.
There's a fable of a casual relationship that bloomed into true, emotional love, but in my case, the only one who got emotional was me, and that emotion was nothing like love, but instead a combination of dissolution and sadness.
Every relationship you ever invest in - whether its marriage, casual sex, or just friendship - is hard. While a casual relationship sounds ideal, particularly for people our age, it is anything but casual because people are incredibly complicated and sex itself is not a casual event. It's capable of stirring deep emotions, and can come with enormous consequences.
Proponents of free love got it all wrong. We're not built to have consistent casual sex. Look hard enough and you'll find people who do it, but I haven't met anyone totally satisfied with it. When you're intimate with someone without requiring intimacy, they're never obliged to give you anything, including the reassurance that you are valued. While valuing each other didn't matter to me in the beginning, it matters enormously now. I've trusted my naked body with his hands only to realize that he doesn't want or appreciate what it holds: me.
I'm in a casual relationship, and there are no roses or white knights at my door.
Power games, jealousy, frustration, anger - these were the emotions that made the sex so intense. And underneath it all was fear. Was I ready for a relationship? Was he? No, we said. No. There's so much more to lose when you willingly put your emotions at stake and slap a title onto it. It's easier to ask for nothing, expect nothing, and know there's no logical reason to ever feel disappointed.
But emotions aren't logical when you're having sex with the same person night after night. I didn't get involved with him under the illusion that it would turn into something more, but pillow talk is still hard to dismiss. The person you're sleeping with becomes the person you want to sleep next to. Every action and word adds to the looming mountain of testimony that proves how tricky and multi-faceted casual sex becomes.
How does a casual relationship end if neither person meets someone else? That's where I am now. Even the bad emotions have withered because there's no purpose for their existence. There's no forward movement together. The sex becomes less and less satisfying because afterwards, there's nothing there to support it.
There's a fable of a casual relationship that bloomed into true, emotional love, but in my case, the only one who got emotional was me, and that emotion was nothing like love, but instead a combination of dissolution and sadness.
Every relationship you ever invest in - whether its marriage, casual sex, or just friendship - is hard. While a casual relationship sounds ideal, particularly for people our age, it is anything but casual because people are incredibly complicated and sex itself is not a casual event. It's capable of stirring deep emotions, and can come with enormous consequences.
Proponents of free love got it all wrong. We're not built to have consistent casual sex. Look hard enough and you'll find people who do it, but I haven't met anyone totally satisfied with it. When you're intimate with someone without requiring intimacy, they're never obliged to give you anything, including the reassurance that you are valued. While valuing each other didn't matter to me in the beginning, it matters enormously now. I've trusted my naked body with his hands only to realize that he doesn't want or appreciate what it holds: me.
I'm in a casual relationship, and there are no roses or white knights at my door.
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Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
epador
posted 10/05/08 @ 10:28 AM PST
Seems like each generation chooses to ignore the lessons of their elders and has to find out for themselves the real world has consequences, that nothing is free of them, and that you can only fool yourself and others for so long. (Continued…)
bella
posted 10/23/08 @ 6:57 PM PST
ultimately it is about destiny. these things can lead to something else. maybe the trick is to just not worry about it so much.
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