I wish I’d known that sex can be really hard, and that doesn’t
mean anything is going wrong. I grew up
with these ideas that when two people love each other, physical connection is
easy and simple and it always is, and if anything feels awkard or scary or
upsetting or unpleasant, then it means the relationship is bad, or one of the two
people involved does not love.
For me, falling in love, and/or falling in lust, has often
been, at the beginning, about being intoxicated (we do literally get drunk on
our own body chemistry!) – and it feels like flying. And I’ve flown right in, jumped off a
cliff. It felt like this feeling would
never end. But it does. Like any high, it wears off, and then boom – crash
into the hard earth.
It can even happen in the middle of a kiss – what am I doing
here? How did I get here? Who is this person?
This can happen when we’re 12 years old, and even when we’re
62.
What I’ve learned is, it’s normal. Yes, it might mean I’ve been holding hands
with the wrong person, that my drunken state of attraction has led me where I
don’t want to be, and it’s time to go. And
at that point, it is really important to own the situation, and back away. But the crash can also simply mean that what
is happening is starting to feel real, and that is scary – I am no longer invulnerable,
I have something to lose.
Sex – whether it’s a first kiss, or at the heart of long
relationship, and everything in between – is not always easy. It can be amazingly wonderful, yes, but at
some point, it takes courage to make it wonderful, it takes real honesty, and
sometimes, some really uncomfortable moments.
Now, there might be someone out there reading this, saying,
oh no, sex is always easy for me. Well,
I say, good for you. I have never met
you, and I wish you every joy and success, and if we ever meet, I have a lot of
questions for you. For the rest of us
figuring it out, I say, sex is a big deal, touching and seeing and exploring is
a big deal.
And like all things that really matter in life, that have
the capacity to touch our souls and break our hearts, it takes work, and it
takes practice, and it can take a long time to know what we want and how to
make that happen.
And toward that knowledge, we have only our own inner sense
of what feels right to guide us, and to express that feeling, only clumsy words
and incomplete gestures and hurt feelings and blissful moments of connection.
Welcome to being human.
