Sex After the Ex

Dear readers,

The following is a guest post I wrote for one of my very favorite blogs, Sex, Lies & Dating in the City. This blog is awesome and I love following Simone’s dating experiences and hearing her thoughts on love, relationships and life in general. She also has a really interesting section called A Guy’s Story where you can read posts from men about what they think about dating. Very informative stuff (scary sometimes, too). When Simone asked me to write a guest post for her blog, I was really flattered and decided to use the opportunity to take on a subject that I haven’t really written about before. That said, this post is about sex. If you are my mom, my coworker, a guy I have casually dated, a devout Christian ready to tell me about how premarital sex is a sin (but can you call it premarital if you don’t intend on marrying the guy? Haha …) or someone else who would feel weird talking with me after reading about my sex life, please do not continue. And come back and visit another time. I have no intentions of turning this blog into a place where I painstakingly detail my sexual exploits (although there are a lot of blogs similar to mine that do that, and damn it’s interesting stuff). I do, however, think the following topic is worth broaching and wanted to take the opportunity to write about it. I look forward to hearing what you guys think in the comments. And be sure to check out Sex, Lies & Dating in the City.

Photo courtesy of Jean Koulev

Sex after the ex is an act of courage in this world. When is the right time? What will it be like? Am I ready? WHAT DOES IT MEAN!? WHY AM I SCREAMING? Oh, it’s just very stressful.

As a woman, I’ve been socialized to believe that I should really focus on keeping my number low. How else will I survive the “How many people have you slept with?” conversation with a new partner? And why do we feel the need to have that conversation anyway? So, I guard my number. Like the Nano Puppy I had in middle school, I feed it and exercise it. I give my number the love and attention it deserves. And it’s always in the back of my mind. Now, should this be the case? That’s a conversation for another day, but for me, it just is what it is.  

When we broke up at the end of April and cancelled our July wedding, my ex and I had been together almost seven years. Seven years, since I was 18. So as you can imagine, I haven’t “taken many lovers.” I haven’t had many “gentlemen callers.” I just didn’t have the opportunity. Being single again at the age of 25, I feel a little at a loss of what to do. I feel like in some ways, I lack a sexual maturity that I should have by this age. I feel this urge to read Cosmo for hours and ask all my friends what you are supposed to do regarding sex in a relationship. How many dates before you are “allowed” to sleep together? When do you have the contraception conversation? How should sex be initiated? What if he’s no good? What if I’m no good? I’ve never really had the chance to learn or experience these things in the past. And there was a big part of me that realized, I mean really realized, that sleeping with someone would be the final nail in the coffin that was my relationship. With each first date, with each first kiss and with each time I developed feelings for another man, I was one step further from my ex. And this was a big step.

Then, there are the logistics. We all have things about our bodies we don’t like, so I would prefer the first time I am with a guy for it to be dark. And by dark, I mean pitch black. I mean I want it to be midnight and the power goes out in the whole city, so there are no lights anywhere. That dark. Just for the first time. After that, the stress goes down quite a bit. For the first time with a guy, I want to have shaved my legs. I want to be wearing matching undergarments (not that it will matter much, since it’s so dark). I want to have fresh breath. I want to be ready, prepared.

For me, the first time I was intimate with someone after my ex was scary and exciting, fun and daunting, exactly what I expected and nothing what I expected, all at the same time. I felt certain that having sex with someone other than the man I thought I was going to marry was going to make me cry. I just hoped the water works would be sometime later (when I was alone), not during or immediately after the act itself. I knew that not only was the experience going to be strange, it was likely that I’d be awkward. I don’t believe anyone who says it’s like riding a bicycle.

After weeks of shaving before every date, just in case I was ready and it happened, after weeks of coming close but not all the way, to almost becoming a nun because the whole thing was stressing me out so much, it happened. Early in the morning so the sun was peeking through the windows. I had shaved the previous morning, but the hair had started to grow back and I wasn’t at my smoothest. But it happened and it was good. Not scary or sad. And I didn’t cry. Not during, not after. Not even later, although I did feel strangely for about a week after.

I didn’t know how to tell anyone. I wanted to tell my friend but the only thing I could think to say was, “He bought me flowers. So I slept with him.” I don’t know why that statement even came out of my mouth and laughed very hard when I said it. It was as though I felt like I had to give a reason why I slept with him after dating him for at least a solid month. I had met the six-to-eight date requirement all my friends mentioned. But I still felt like I had to make some sort of excuse for myself, give some reason for the fact that my number had increased with someone with which I wasn’t even in a committed relationship.

Now is the fun part. This is the part where I get to feel the emotions of what it’s like to be intimate with a new person. The excitements, learning about what the other person likes, helping them learn about me. This is when you get to really experience another person. This is the best part, and at times the most confusing part, because for some people, maybe most people, but certainly for me, sex changes things. And so what, now my number has increased. It’s time to enjoy it.