I wish I'd known.... that sex can be really hard...

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.