May 19, 2021

"Don’t assume you feel comfortable with the same things you felt comfortable with in the before times... You’re a different person now. We all are."

Says one expert quoted in From "The Back-to-Sex Special: How to Prepare for the Post-Pandemic Summer of Sex/It's time to have sex again. Here's how to get ready, according to the experts" (Inside Hook).

The Hot Vax Summer discourse makes it sound like everyone is about to have the horniest summer of their lives, and if you don’t, you’re doing it wrong.... For many people, the prospect of impromptu hookups with random strangers never held much appeal, and holds even less in the immediate aftermath of a pandemic....

“It might take some time to feel comfortable opening back up, and sometimes our mind might be faster than our body. So, honor your body’s pace.... Embrace the awkward..."...

“If your sex life has been mostly with yourself during the pandemic, you might be feeling a strange mix of emotions as you prepare to put yourself back out there — excitement, anxiety, maybe even dread — so it’s important to check in with yourself emotionally as you go,” says Kocak.

That said, remember that sex is something our bodies are literally built to do. No matter how long it’s been, you’re probably not as sexually inept as you fear. “It will be like riding a bike,” says Sparks. After all, she adds, “You never really forget how to have sex.”

It's not like riding a bike! You don't fall off if you're doing it wrong. And what makes you sure you were doing it right in the first place. With a bike, you were doing it right because you made forward progress and didn't fall. With sex, you rarely fall off and you aren't traveling from one geographic location to another — e.g., from your house to the park. You may think you're "traveling" through some abstract landscape from titillation to satisfaction — and there are probably towns in Pennsylvania called Titillation and Satisfaction — but you most likely began and ended at the same geographic coordinates. 

And if you've been assuming you're doing it right because it's "something our bodies are literally built to do," that's a crazily broad definition of what it means to do it right. But thanks for taking me back to the time when I was a little kid and asked my mother how babies are made. I have never forgotten her explanation, the sum total of it, verbatim: "Well, you know how men and women are physically built."

3 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

Walker writes:

"Every once in a while, one of the eternal truths that comprise the foundation of the universe manages to slip into our silly cultural discourse about sex. That’s right! You can’t forget how to do it because that instinct is standard operating equipment for mammals…because IT GENERATES LIFE!

"Love your Mom’s wise answer— just look at the way men and women are put together. This is actually the Catholic theology answer.. that man was made for woman and woman for man…their bodies coming together in a coherent, fruitful union, during which— and this is an important detail — they are face to face.

"In the order of creation, we see complementarity, not the kind of pseudo equality we have sacralized in this, our Weimar moment. Light and dark, fire and ice, yin and yang, winter and summer, earth and sky. Make complementarity great again!"

Ann Althouse said...

Robert writes:

"You said "there are probably towns in Pennsylvania called Titillation and Satisfaction", which reminded me that in Southwest Georgia (aka "Sowega") you can take a short trip from Hopeful to Climax, which is a comforting thing to know."

Ann Althouse said...

Will writes:

"Sounds like the details "the talk" you received were about like mine. Likewise, I will never forget: "You know honey... it's like when Lucy [the cat] had her kittens." Oh. OK..."