By Kelly M. Marshall
My best friend’s text comes through with a resonating bing.
“So I need to know, are you getting laid?”
I scrunch my eyes shut and rub my face. I tap back:
“I am not, unless you count self-laid.”
I sigh to myself and tap out an additional comment:
“I am working on it.”
I’m lying. I’m not. And I won’t.
With that, the conversation moves on to other topics and relief washes over me.
I’m not sure what it is, the confluence of summertime vibes, queer hookup culture, Austin’s bustling singles scene, or my public decree of divorce many months back, but I feel like the world is conspiring to get me to have casual sex.
I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if I was asexual and these expectations were being blared in my face all the time. As it is, I am a very sexual being. I have dabbled in casual sex in the past. And while it’s not to say that I won’t ever again. It’s just highly unlikely.
The casual sex I have had has always been lackluster to me. I mean, it was fun. But so is eating ice cream. It doesn’t really nourish me. And too much makes me feel empty and kind of nauseous. And if we’re just going to do the no-pants dance and then not ever really interact again, I don’t really understand the point.
We could just go out for coffee and have a stimulating conversation. I’d enjoy myself just the same. Probably even more.
I’m pansexual, sapiosexual, and demisexual. I’m much more interested in your brain and connecting with you intellectually and emotionally than what’s in your pants, anyway.
I also suffer from being the biggest contrarian ever. So, if there is pressure from anyone to do anything, I will immediately take up arms in the opposing direction, just on general principle.
I know this is not useful.
And I recognize that I am totally doing it regarding casual sex and open relationships. Like septum piercings, open relationships are quickly becoming a trendy way of doing relationships. They’ve always kind of been de rigueur in the queer community, at least amongst gay men. Now the queer AFAB community is doing it too.
I’ve dabbled in polyamory/open relationships and it was a limited success. I’m not opposed to open relationships on general principle, they’re just a lot of work.
To me, it’s as if managing my myriad of romantic relationships with others becomes like another hobby or a part-time job. And I’d rather focus on other things, versus other people. I have a hard time even casually dating more than one person at a time.
Like many folks, my default mode has always been serial monogamy.
I’ll be single. I’ll date around. I’ll find a person. I’ll date them a bunch exclusively, we’ll have sex, and we’ll decide to be official (whatever that looks like). We’ll stay together a while, and then we’ll break up.
Ad nauseum.
In the immortal words of Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is?”
And if so, why is that all there is?
Also, why do we think we’re going to reach some ultimate destination of happiness if we have a lifelong committed partner? In the game of dating and romance, that’s supposedly the point of all of this.
But I’ve been married. I’ve reached the pinnacle of courtship and then some. And the work doesn’t end when you’ve tied the knot. On the contrary, the deep work on the self and on the relationship only really begins when you close the container with vows, duties, myriad expectations, and the cultural weight of the concept of “marriage.”
Sometimes I think about opting out entirely, taking vows of celibacy, and becoming a Buddhist monk. Seriously, I fantasized about it for a few months.
And then, I realized that it’s best for me to press through the discomfort of relationship via spiritual growth rather than avoiding it altogether.
I don’t need a romantic relationship; I want one—eventually. There’s a distinct difference between want and need. Because, for a while, I felt like I couldn’t function properly unless I had a partner. I felt incomplete.
Then I realized that the feeling of being incomplete doesn’t get resolved by having a partner. If anything, it can even exacerbate it. There’s no greater loneliness than holding onto the expectation of feeling understood and supported by someone who Really. Doesn’t. Get. You.
The incomplete feeling is a kind of illness, the game of the ego saying, “Find the thing/person to fill the hole and you’ll win the prize of happiness!”
There’s no hole to fill (pun intended). We are all actually complete as-is. The dominant romantic narrative of “finding your other half” is seen by some as weird and codependent and can fall within the realm of toxic monogamy culture.
Also, why rely on a complete stranger to fulfill my sexual needs? First, being a person of trans experience, I’m going to have to educate them on how to have sex with me. I mean, regardless of your identifications and labels, I hope you’re advocating for your own pleasure and telling people how to fuck you anyway.
Secondly, fine. I am starting to cop to my need for regular physical affection. But, I’m a bit like a succulent, based on my childhood upbringing. I can survive on very little from other people. My education in emotional intelligence and resilience and my personal work with vulnerability tells me that I should probably not be as proud as I am about my emotional self-sufficiency.
We’re always talking about clean boundaries, clean relationships, healthy individualism, self-sufficiency, interdependence versus codependency. Those are nice ideas, but they aren’t really an ongoing state in most real relationships. Real relationships are messy. They are organic and non-binary. They’re evocative. If they don’t inspire you and make you feel crazy at least a little bit, then it’s an empty comfort. Like too much ice cream.
Relationships, like the people in them, are a dynamic creation.
Other people like to conceptualize relationships as mostly transactional. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I’ll trade my nurturing nature for your impartial steadfastness and we’ll coagulate and create some sort of commercial exchange of personality, sexual favors, and love languages.
There’s more still to it than this. Relationships, no matter what their contents or configurations, are a mysterious alchemy between people, and they (like us queers) often defy these weird structures that the dominant culture demands that we place upon them.
Getting to know and love just one person (at least the people I’m into) is a vast labyrinthine journey that only ends when and if we part ways. As human beings, we are always growing and changing. That’s the magic of being human: every moment is an opportunity to change and grow and you never step in the same river twice. We are all moving targets.
The second I decide that I truly know someone is the second that the relationship starts to wither. And that’s the second that I’m also dead wrong. I become fixed in my concept of something that always evolves. So, I stay curious. I try to keep paying attention.
I think where I (and others) get into trouble is when we decide to elevate one type of relationship over the other. In this case, romantic partner or spouse gets the lion’s share of attention and emotional energy. We’re told by society to prioritize their needs alongside and even above our own.
Why? Why do we cram the concept of human love and connection into this narrow container with one or few and then elevate it in importance above all other relationships? If you think about it, it’s kind of weird.
Don’t get me wrong, hierarchy is sometimes important and can give us structure. But overall, I’m finding that the dominant paradigm for being in relationships doesn’t really fit my personality or my needs.
I guess this is a call for more relationship anarchy, versus the “safe” ways that we try to navigate the ways we connect, especially as queers. Just let the wild animal of intimacy be what it is and grow around and through those connections.
