The Truth About Conflating Communication and Romance
THE TRUTH ABOUT CONFLATING COMMUNICATION AND ROMANCE.
FEBRUARY 2, 2021
BY SHAWN BINDER
For a large period of my life, I was having really shitty sex.
I tried all the tricks I had heard about to make my experiences larger-than-life: pull my hair, move your hips there, let me bend you over there — it felt performative. Like when someone bakes you something and you have to take a bite and tell them it’s great, even when you want to spit it out. Sex always felt like it was something that was happening to me, rather than with me. ‘I feel broken,’ I told a friend once.
Without question, the secret sauce of great sex is respect.
Disrespect in the bedroom can, unfortunately, come in many forms. Sometimes consent is never given or is taken back, other times the needs of our partner come before our own, making us feel like a vessel for pleasure, rather than a partner.
And while there are many ways people can disrespect us in the bedroom, there are just as many ways our partners can show us respect.
The dance we perform during sex should be an ebb and flow of desires, compromises, and conversations.
While this sounds super lyrical, what I mean is that mind-blowing sex is when two people get naked and allow each other’s emotional and physical desires work together.
When you find the type of partner that truly respects you, it might be a natural response to begin to have romantic feelings for them. The first partner I had crazy good sex with would bring cookies to bed for us afterward. We’d take breaks, and talk about our passions, music preferences, and write bit jokes together all in a sweaty, musty haze.
It was those moments that I began to blur the lines between respect and romance. I found myself back in the headspace of being a young person with a crush rather than, you know, the grown man I was. I’d try and find excuses to see him outside of our arranged sex schedule, and in my mind painted the narrative of what it would be like to grow old together. He would ask me every few minutes if what he was doing felt good, or if I needed water. Naturally, he was destined to be my forever lover.
I was shell-shocked when he told me he was picking up my feelings for him being more than friendly and said that as much as he enjoyed our time together, “there just was no spark there.” He was nice enough to tell me in person and he even hugged me as he handed me a bag full of my jockstraps and a cock ring we had bought together.
“I really do want to be friends, you’re great,” felt like a weird thing to say to someone who had done some really unique shit to your body.
For a while, I felt tricked. Were all those times he told me about his mom and his deepest fears all a lie?! I’d retrace every conversation in my mind, searching for clues where I went wrong. Like some sort of love detective, I figured if I could figure out where I went wrong, I could right us, and we’d find our way to each other. In reality, the notion of us being together was scorched earth.
Like, of course, you should have sex with someone who is nice to you and cares about your feelings beyond what ways your body can bend. Of course, you should have sex with someone you feel comfortable enough to eat cookies in bed with. Intimacy comes from knowing both of you want to be treated with respect and care, and that both of you are committed to making sure that the sexual contract you’re enterings upheld. Sometimes you’re going to have sex with someone you think is lovely, but it is totally OK to not want to date them solely because they treat you like the human you are.
You can have great sex with someone and not have them be the right person for you.
Through this friendship, I had learned what type of lover would allow me to see fireworks again. Conflating respect and romance sucks, because it makes you realize all the times you gave yourself to someone who wasn’t listening to you. But once you make peace with it, it allows you to step into a more confident and communicative sex life.
