Why I Wish I Could Separate Sex & Love

The good girl in me needs to go

What if I decided to keep sex and love in two different boxes? What if I only leaned on men for friendship or fucking? Nothing in between.

Maybe I could write a new profile on the dating apps. Seeking sex and nothing else. Booty calls only. (And I’ll be the one doing the calling.)

I wonder how many responses I would get. Would guys be lining up, boxes of condoms in hand? Or would they left swipe me with a scowl? What a slut… I wonder if she’s good at blow jobs…

Surely someone would bite, though. We could go to my place. No spending time in the kitchen or living room. Definitely no cuddling on the couch.

We’d go straight to the bedroom.

I’d have to take off my own clothes. The symbolism of him undressing me is too unpalatable for sex without love. I don’t want anyone taking off my armor.

I’d keep eye contact to nothing but passing glances. This is just sex.

In fact, I’d rather there not be a lot of looking, at all. I don’t really want a “just sex” partner taking close notice of my body, letting his eyes linger too long in any one space. I don’t want him to be able to recall me easily enough that one could say he “knows” me or is “familiar” with me or my body.

And I’d rather skip the verbal pleasantries. I suppose we’d have to make room for questions and requests. Though I’m not sure I’d want to hear the rest. “Your skin is so soft.” Stop. No. I don’t care what you think about me. “I love the feeling of your hands on me.” Please just don’t. “You’re so warm and soft.” I don’t need the running commentary. Let’s just get the job done, okay?

When it’s over, no cuddling. Absolutely not. I don’t want to be touched again, I don’t want arms around me. This isn’t love. This isn’t a relationship.

I wonder what it would be like to behave the way some of my exes did. To roll over and say, “It’s time for you to go home.” To just lie there while someone got dressed, not saying a damn word, and then casually wave when they walk out of the bedroom to make it through the house and back to their car alone.

Bye, casual lover. Maybe I’ll see you again. Maybe I won’t. Have a nice life in the meantime.

I have such a fascination with the idea of random sex with a stranger. I’ve had a small handful of sexual encounters with men I did not love but who were part of my life — friends of friends, classmates, etc. But I’ve never had sex with a stranger. I’ve never had sex with the intention of making it a one-time thing.

For some reason, I find the idea appealing at this stage in my life. Not with a woman, to be clear — I’m only interested in this indulgence with a man.

I’m not sure why this kind of arrangement has to be with a man. Is it because I want to know what it’s like to be that sexually free, the way men are? Is it because I want to experience sex without the hindrance of emotional obligations?

I suspect more than anything that it’s about boundaries. That I want to be able to practice the harshest, most inflexible boundaries I can conjure, being someone who has struggled to assert even the weakest, most basic boundaries.

I want to be able to say things like:

• “Don’t look at me.”
• “No, I want you to do this.”
• “Please don’t touch me like that.”
• “That’s not what we agreed on.”
• “I don’t like that.”
• “I don’t want this.”
• “Let go.”
• “Move over.”
• “Stop it.”
• “I’d like you to leave now.”

I’ve never been able to say things like that — or anything close. On occasion, I’ve been able to say “I don’t want this,” but usually long after I let what I didn’t want happen, long after I’ve paid the emotional price for that.

I want to be able to say that in the present. Loudly. And maybe preceded with an emphatic “NO!”

So it matters that in this fantasy the partner is a stranger. Because I’m not sure I have the guts to lay down strong boundaries with the people already in my life.

Why is that so fucking scary?

And it matters that it’s a man. Because there is no demographic harder for me to navigate than the male gender. I’m so conditioned to saying yes to everything, regardless of how I really feel. It’s so ingrained in me to comply with men’s wishes, to try to make them happy, to follow their lead.

I hate that. And I hate that no matter how hard I try to correct that, I still feel like I’ve made little — if any — progress.

In this fantasy, I don’t know the man, which might make it easier to speak forcefully to him. To tell him exactly what I need, what I want. And to say no over and over and over again.

Which I can only imagine would feel fucking amazing.

Sometimes this fantasy feels comforting because I have this suspicion that if I had meaningless sex with a random stranger, it would literally destroy my sense of identity.

I’m not someone who meets strangers in hotels. Don’t get me wrong — it’s not that I think that’s immoral. It’s just that I was taught (more conditioning) to be a “good girl.” That I should only sleep with partners if I was in love. That one-night stands and casual sex weren’t safe or healthy.

Intellectually, I question all these messages. I know they came from a puritanical, sex-negative, misogynistic culture that insists on controlling women’s sexuality.

But inside, I still see myself as that good little girl who’s supposed to become a good little wife and mother one day. Perimenopause and past sexual experience be damned — it’s hard to let go of that image of myself as a pristine young woman who is trying to remain pristine, no matter how old I get, no matter how much my interest in marriage and motherhood (and “goodness”) has waned.

I know the script. I know what I’m supposed to do, what I’m supposed to want. I know the path I’m supposed to walk.

But what if I could toss a few sticks of dynamite at that young woman? Blow her to fucking hell?

Somehow, it feels like the best way to do that is to fuck some random dude in a hotel.

Who would I be then? Would Good Yael finally die? Would I finally be able to believe that my needs and wants and feelings matter? Would I finally be able to make forceful, clear, strong boundaries? Would I finally be able to say, “No, I don’t want this” in the moment I know that instead of hours or days later?

The truth is, I want Good Yael to die. She clearly doesn’t give a shit about me. And why should she? She is a holographic construct of this culture’s expectations of how a woman should be. She’s not real.

Good Yael would blow up into a million tiny pieces if she got fucked in a hotel by some random guy Bad Yael had picked out.

And with any luck, she’d be gone forever.

It’s possible, I suppose, that this growing desire I have to separate sex from love is born from pain. I am tired of feeling like my feelings shouldn’t matter. I am sick to the depths of my soul that I cannot seem to create and maintain healthy boundaries for myself.

And I’m tired of being so brainwashed that I can’t stop myself from saying “Yes,” or “Maybe,” when I actually mean “Fuck no.”

If the price of getting to enjoy a deep emotional connection during sex is that I lose myself and everything I am, then I’m not willing to pay that price. Not even for the promise of deep emotional connection. Just give me one night with a stranger.

I’ve never experienced a mutual, deep emotional connection during sex, anyways. Men have always treated me the way Bad Yael treats her partner in the hotel-room-with-a-stranger fantasy. I unzip and unzip and unzip, I long, I open, I reveal, and when it’s over they say, “It’s time for you to go home now.”

At least I don’t know what I’m missing.

Because of this, there are days when I long for the ability to be able to separate sex and love. Days when I long for the two not to be so easy to tangle. Days when I long to be made of steel so I can find that random stranger who would meet me in a hotel room and fuck Good Yael to smithereens.

And then Bad Yael will roll over and say: “Thanks for the fun. Now get the fuck out.”

© Yael Wolfe 2021

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