What I Learned from Sleeping With Someone I Didn’t Care About

The freedom of a one-night stand

It was February 2020. I was at a hotel bar, sitting across from a man I’d just met. My husband was at home putting my two sons to bed.

Things had gotten weird.

I had just made what I thought was a harmless comment. It was something about how much I liked Esther Perel’s book Mating in Captivity.

But my date didn’t love this comment. Apparently his marriage had crumbled because of his cheating, and I had struck a nerve. He took a swig of his cocktail and looked away from me.

We met on Bumble and had maintained a witty banter by text message for the past week. He was a recently-divorced dad and was accepting of my open marriage with my husband.

I liked that his profile mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). I liked that he linked to cool Spotify playlists labeled only with a single letter — my favorite was “h.” He seemed hip and worldly.

Except in person, this was not going well.

He was awkward to talk to. His tolerance for silence was unbearable. He had trouble making eye contact with me, and I carried most of the conversation.

We had enough semi-awkward conversation in us to last one round of Moscow mules, as long as we swallowed them very quickly.

And then the moment of truth arrived. We reached the point in the date where you decide what happens next.

Would I say goodbye to him right there at that hotel bar, just one hour after meeting? Or would I forget the awkwardness and walk back with him to his apartment, which was conveniently located 2 blocks from the hotel?

As we stood up to put our coats on, he asked me outright:

“Would you like to come back to my apartment?”

I paused a short time and blurted out yes. We headed out the door together and walked in silence to his apartment.

I was attracted to this man. He was tall and well dressed, with long wavy hair. Sure, it was tough to hold a conversation with him, but in that one-second window of time I had to decide how this night would end, I decided it was worth it to continue on.

In my 37 years, I had never slept with someone I didn’t care about.

Sure, I had experienced spontaneous flings. But in the past, those nights had led to short or medium-term relationships with men.

I had never had a real one-night stand, the kind that involved having sex with someone new and then never seeing them again.

It was consistent with my open marriage state of mind that I said yes that night. A month before, my husband and reluctantly agreed to the arrangement, and the experience had set me on a whirlwind path of destruction. I was making out with men in parks. I was buying lingerie to wear under my clothes to work and listening to music 2x louder.

The theme of that winter was saying “yes,” so I said yes to that handsome man with awkward conversation skills.

We entered his apartment, and he began kissing me against his entryway wall. He knew exactly what he wanted and what would come next. Though he was awkward to talk with, he was not at all awkward with the ways of a woman’s body.

Soon after we moved to his bed, I realized how novel this experience was. I felt free to tell this man things I wanted and didn’t want with no repercussions.

At one point he asked me outright if I wanted to do something, and I just said “no” matter-of-factly. He was unfazed, and we moved on to other things.

Later, he asked me what I wanted. I looked him straight in the eyes and told him step-by-step what I wanted in a way that I had never done before, even to the husband I had been with for 15 years. He followed accordingly.

It didn’t matter to me that I knew there would be no date #2 with this man, and I don’t think it mattered much to him either.

For the first time, I was having sex purely for my own pleasure.

When our night was over, I thanked him for his time, left his apartment, and drove home to my family.

This is not a story about my ideal sexual experience. I crave emotional and sexual intimacy, the kind that keeps you lingering in bed long after sex.

I need real conversation and solid eye contact from a romantic partner. I tried an open marriage for a brief time, but I’ve learned that I am hard-wired for monogamy and would likely not try an open marriage again.

But I learned a lot from sleeping with this tall, handsome man who was easily offended and barely spoke in complete sentences.

I learned what it feels like to rid myself of self-consciousness about my body or the way I should act in a sexual exchange. I learned how freeing it could be to tune out the noise in my head and just focus on what I wanted.

I didn’t maintain much contact with him after our encounter, aside from a few brief texts we exchanged once the pandemic hit a few weeks later.

Even though I have no desire to see this man again, I still have a deep appreciation for him.

And I was smart enough to save all of his Spotify playlists, so I still listen to that great playlist called “h.”

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