Sure, sex is great but have you ever just stayed in bed eating hobnobs and watching Buffy re-runs?
The last couple of months have been busy. Not only have I had a lot of work on - exciting, inspiring, important work that I have loved doing - but I’ve also moved house. Then just as we were settling into the new place and I was beginning to imagine what life might be like beyond the stress and endless boxes, we went hurtling once again into lockdown, with all the anxiety and doom-spiralling that involves. I’ve been trying to book myself a week off for what feels like forever and to be honest, I am just plain exhausted. I’m all out of energy—both creative and sexual. And that, as you might imagine, is a real dilemma for me!
I often joke about the inevitable intersection of my work and personal life by saying that “there’s no separation of church and state”. The value system of one informs the governance of the other. But unlike the church and the state, my professional and personal lives were never different entities to begin with. Who I am and what I’ve chosen to do with my career are inextricably linked (see previous newsletters on “Why I am so obsessed with sex”). And when it comes to my professional and personal approaches to sex, the power and influence goes both ways. In many ways this has been a beautiful thing. Through my professional growth, my research, my exposure to and engagement with different ideas, experiences and stories, I’ve developed a greater understanding of my own sexuality and its ebbs, flows, boundaries and limitations. But sometimes that very exposure and engagement has fast-tracked me towards ideas and things that I’m actually not quite ready for, causing conflict as I struggle to work out why I’m not as “adventurous” or “uninhibited” or “liberated” as my interviewees.
And sometimes, as has happened to me recently, it gives me ideas that sound good on paper but which, when I go to implement them, I realise I’m not sure I can be arsed with. I get mixed up about what’s inspiring me intellectually and what’s inspiring me sexually.
Over the last month I’ve been interviewing dozens of people about the sexual adventures they’ve had this year, whether solo, digital, or IRL. I’ve heard some fantastic stories: BDSM via Zoom, strip poker on Skype, virtual threesomes, online sex parties, self-pleasure workshops, socially distanced tease, extreme sexting. It’s made me look back at my experience of lockdown the first time around and think Wow, I really didn’t use my time well!
I know, I know. I have a small child and a full-on job; I was pretty busy in lockdown. But talking to those people and hearing about what they’d got up to inspired me to make the most of this lockdown. I’m going to get on Feeld and find a sexting buddy, I thought. I’m going to go to a virtual sex party. I’m going to do some fun shit!
Except… I don’t know that I am. We’re a week into Lockdown 2.0 now and honestly? The thing I want more than anything in the world is to lie on the sofa eating biscuits and watching films. Or maybe to lie in bed drinking wine and reading my book. Or maybe take the biscuits to bed and watch Netflix. Or drink the wine on the sofa while listening to Audible… you get the idea. I’m tired; I wanna chill.
So fine. That’s fine. I’ll do that. The problem is my head still begs to differ. My head wants things my body isn't up for. It wants excitement, arousal, inspiration, escapism. My body just wants to have a nice lie down. I’ll hear about interesting sex stuff through my work and it piques my interest but when it comes down to it, when I actually tap into myself and my body, all I find is a big fat “meh”.
It’s a curious dilemma but I don’t mind it. I’m observing it, learning from it. It’s clear to me that I need to listen to my body right now, the stuff in my head can wait. But what also emerges is that dips like this in my energy and motivation don’t define me. I’m still the same horny person, still just as likely to read a jokey tweet from my friend about being called to a work appraisal and ordered to masturbate for productivity and think HELLO! It’s just that right now I need to shelve that particular fantasy and take a nap instead.
I’ve always been an ideas person. Sounds obvious, right? But I mean in terms of what fires me up. Often I get much more excited about theory than I do about practice. The prospect of something is frequently more intriguing to me than the actuality. No surprise, then, that when it comes to sex, anticipation and tease are a big deal for me. But sometimes this can backfire. I can put a lot of energy into the idea of something and end up disappointed by the reality. Or worse! I’m so convinced that the reality won’t live up to my idea of it, that I don’t bother to follow through. (Honestly, if you knew how many times I’ve cock-blocked myself through fear of disillusionment… but we can talk about that another time.)
Not to be a cliche (I am definitely being a cliche) but I’ve learnt a lot about myself this year and I think I’m getting better at sorting my flashes of inspiration from my real, genuine desires. I’m also getting better at spotting when my head is getting ahead of my body, when it’s running away with an idea rather than checking in with the reality of what I want and need. And I’m getting better at being disillusioned. Because sometimes the reality doesn’t quite live up to the fantasy and that’s OK. Instead of feeling annoyed with myself for letting my imagination run wild, I count myself lucky to be able to have both experiences.
But mainly I think I’ve got better at working out what I want—not what I think would be cool to want, or what would be awesome in theory, or what I’d be up for one day, or what I’d like in an ideal world if the people and circumstances involved could somehow magically be adapted to suit me—what I actually want from the situation here, now, in this moment.
And what I really want right now is a break. So I’m happy to say I have finally managed to book myself next week off and for the four days my son is at nursery I will be able to lie in bed eating chocolate biscuits and watching Netflix. Heck, I might even have some sex too!
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What’s on my mind this week…
Intense brittle connections
When I was looking for people to tell me their stories of lockdown sex and relationships, one guy (who’s also an Overthinker’s subscriber - hi, friend!) said something that stayed with me. He was telling me about how he’d reconnected with his ex over lockdown but that ultimately it hadn’t worked out and he said “lockdown caused intense, but brittle, connections.” This really resonated with me but I couldn’t quite work out how. I didn’t start dating anyone new or get back in touch with an ex during lockdown but I think what I related to was this need to feel something stronger than the feelings provoked by lockdown; the desire to feel something that could blot out the anxiety and uncertainty and sense of doom about our jobs, our social lives, our futures, if only for a while. It was also maybe a desire to feel vibrant in a time of monotony and caution. And I do think situations like the one we’ve been through this year can do that to us, it can make us grasp onto shiny new connections that provide a quick-fix, a sense of escape, rather than do the hard work of nurturing our existing connections.
I’ve actually found some friendships quite hard to maintain this year and this recent Refinery29 piece touched on some of the reasons why. Even in adult life, many of us have always just assumed that friendships will sustain and even if we’re busy right now, there’ll be an opportunity to hang out soon. Even with my very best friends, who I WhatsApp regularly, this digital connection is always backed up by the fact that we’ll see each other in person soon and have a proper catch up then. Suddenly the act of “staying friends” became something we had to be a lot more intentional about. And it felt hard. I found myself messaging my work group chats - people I’ve perhaps met once or twice in my life - far more regularly. Chatting shit about the news and bitching about stupid stuff we’d seen on Twitter felt much easier and gave instant gratification. I think there might be parallels in dating too. The quick thrill of sexting with a partner I didn’t live with was much easier than trying to plan a date-night at home with my husband, carving out time and thinking of ways to make it feel genuinely special and exciting despite the fact that we were spending 24/7 together. And I wonder if other people felt this too. Did new relationships, people you met on apps, through online communities, over Zoom, take on a greater glow and significance than they might have done in normal times?
I think I’m coming out the other side of this now. I’m nurturing my old relationships and while I’m still (always!) up for cultivating new ones, I’m more aware of what I’m investing in and why.
Is uncertainty what makes sex hot?
Have you been watching Brave New World on Sky? I don’t necessarily recommend it. It was quite fun but it diverges quite significantly from the book (purists, look away!) and tbh I thought it was massively overambitious and a bit of a mess. (Also, we don’t EVER find out what the Deltas do. No Delta is ever seen on screen and in a moment of utter transparency, there’s even a line where a character is describing the roles of each caste and when he gets to “The Deltas…” someone cuts him off. It’s almost like the writers WANT us to know they couldn’t be arsed coming up with a story for the Deltas.) BUT this is not a review of the show - though you can read one here - the thing that did interest me briefly, was the treatment of “savage” love and sex versus the anti-monogamy free-for-all of New London.
In an early episode, the character Lenina is reading a book about how people used to do relationships before the free love utopia in which she now lives was created and as she reads about the uncertainty of knowing whether someone likes you, the crackle of sexual tension as people wonder whether to make the first move, the emotional risks that they sometimes took to initiate a sexual connection with someone, the negotiation of consent, she realises… it’s actually really fucking hot. The very fact that sex is not something we are guaranteed to have night after night with anyone we feel like, we begin to appreciate, is part of what makes sex so exciting.
Unfortunately the framing of sex goes downhill from here, with a lot of the focus of the later half of the series being on the “inevitable” double edged sword of love and jealousy which obviously I vehemently disagree with. But I thought these initial observations were interesting.
A couple more things to (over)think about…
I liked how this Rolling Stone article looked like a titillating human interest story and ended up being a genuine exploration of sex worker disenfranchisement
This piece in Guardian Australia on medical research into the clitoris is frustrating and illuminating
As someone who has recently hit pause on a relationship while we’re in lockdown, I found this piece on going “on a break” affirming
Rachel Thompson at Mashable wrote about guys on dating apps who say they’re looking for women who “don’t take themselves too seriously” - there’s a quote from me in there too!
As we go into winter and another lockdown, Kate Moyle’s IGTV conversation with fellow sex and relationship therapist Catriona Boffard about the impact of anxiety on sexual desire seems timely
This tweet (and the subsequent replies) about consent is quite a take
Pornhub has launched a sex education series as part of its “sexual wellness hub” I haven’t watched any of them yet so will reserve judgement but suffice it to say I remain sceptical
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