Hello Coco : A diary

Tag: gender roles

  • Approaching Sexuality at 30: Straight to Bisexual to Questioning. All Over Again.

    I’ve had sex with four different guys in the last month and a half.

    Mind you I haven’t had sex with a guy for 7 years beforehand because I was in a relationship with a woman – so, it does kind of feel like I’m walking back into my twenties and trying to experience things all over again, just through a different lens.

    I feel I do give myself some grace for that, but I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt or judgement coming from behind it. Perhaps it’s the internalized notion that what I am doing is slutty, irresponsible, un-ladylike, whore-ish. I’ll be honest, some of the kinks that have come to light from my ventures definitely make me feel like I am treading further in that direction.

    After that first time with Drake, I was hooked. I just didn’t realize that it could feel that good, that I could get off by a man being inside me. I know my 23-year-old self never experienced that. Most if not all the guys I had slept with back then got off leaving me high and dry. It was like a transaction; except they didn’t understand I needed something in return. It created this idea that men were inherently selfish, and that penetration wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

    I had heard [from where, who the fuck knows] once way back when that only 20% of women can actually orgasm from penetration and that thought kind of made me give up on it altogether. If external stimulation was all most women could really experience, then what’s the point? I guess in that scenario the point would be to give pleasure to them, but none of them even attempted putting my pleasure first so I was S.O.L.

    I find myself asking if I only dated women despite men. I’ve been asking myself if I could see myself dating women again based on these new experiences. I would have to ask myself at that point if I was only thinking that because the sex these last 5 years wasn’t good, but we stuck around for comfortability.

    I think sadly I have to just admit that as 30-year-old woman I haven’t had a lot of quality sexual experiences. I’ve had mind-blowing sex with 1 woman in my life, and a lot of amazing sex with these men in just the last month. It makes me sad, but also excited to see what else I’ve been missing out on.

    I’ve been craving to write about it, to experience them all over again.

    Drake had this remarkable way of sliding into me at the perfect angle to hit my g-spot every. time. He’d made twirls with his hips, spelling god-knows what. He’d whisper in my ear asking me what I like and then give it to me without a second thought. There were moments where each push inside me, we’d make eye contact connecting on breath, feeling literally everything between us until we’d both come.

    Wesley spooned me on the couch as we watched a movie. He caressed my back and hips, playfully pulling them ever so slightly closer to him making my eyes role at the subtle feel of his hard cock against me. When he caught on to me moving with him, he started to trace my neck with deep, breathy kisses making my entire body shutter and press into him deeper. He took me to his bed, ate me out beautifully and then let me ride his fingers until I came.

    Then there’s Cade from last night who talked dirty to me at a packed bar for a good 45-minutes before scooting my chair closer, tucking his hand between my crossed legs and squeezing so hard I about came right then and there. We went back to my place, and he played with me for a long while before everything turned feral. He spanked me hard and let me ride his cock as he took me from behind. I was so wet, begging for more.

    So, yeah – can you blame me? I ask myself really, the person who is casting the most judgement.

    Part of me feels that me listening to my primal needs, wants and desires is a way of honoring this sexual liberation. Leaning into feeling good and experiencing good sex shouldn’t feel like I’m doing something wrong. I think that I will even out and adapt balance, but for now I’m just learning how to let go and let myself enjoy this part of life.

    I just want to learn how to embrace it without the judgement. The internalized slut-shaming of my generation and gender expectations. How the fuck do I do that?

  • Breaking the Cycle: Compassion for Men, Mental Health & Intimacy

    I took a 7 year break from men. From the ages 23 – 30, I dated women and tried my best to forget men existed for all the hurt I felt from high school and college. It wasn’t their fault, we were all just figuring things out at that age, but it was my first impression of intimacy, and it stained me.

    The sex that felt transactional, harshly pornographic, and hasty made me feel like I was just a body – that I couldn’t have a deep romantic relationship with them.

    Experiencing men now, I’ve began to realize that the world did guys dirty. Obviously, they have their privilege, but the men that I have personally experienced have this underlying sadness. They are hurting and don’t know how to express it.

    I think you could probably guess that a romantic relationship with a woman is highly communicative. We’re in-tune with our cycles, hormones, feelings, and the complexities behind them. Women are also generally more likely to get vulnerable. Testing that theory; if a woman was crying in public people wouldn’t be all that surprised, but if a man was crying in public people would think something is deeply wrong. It’s a bias we all contribute to whether we like it or not and that’s just because the world taught men to suck it up.

    I’m meeting these thirty-something men and I’m seeing it all over their faces. When I bring up a boundary, call them out on being shitty, or even harmlessly tease – I see their eyes glaze over and they get defensive, quiet or completely refuse to acknowledge it, dodging the words altogether.

    Over the years, we’ve developed this kind of man-hating culture because of all the really bad news coming to light on celebrities and college boys assaulting women and covering it up. Don’t get me wrong, there are a LOT of bad men out there doing all sorts of fucked up shit, but I feel the over-arching generalizations have made the state of men’s mental health even worse. They are more scared than ever to open up, again just judging from my personal experiences.

    One guy I have been talking to, Drake, struggled to even form words when I asked him a vulnerable question around loneliness. He stumbled and I could see him trying to change the topic completely out of discomfort. I did everything in my power to show him he could be safe and say what was on his mind and it was like pulling teeth. Trying to know the push and pull balance is a new dynamic for me, coming from a prior relationship where everything was on the table.

    Another guy I had been talking to, Jesse, just didn’t engage with me when I would ask slightly personal questions. Everything was a soft spot, even me asking when his last relationship was. He became defensive, snapped at me to derail the conversation, and would ghost me for hours only to respond on a completely different topic. Don’t get me wrong, I know that I don’t know these men very well and they could very well have past traumas that I could never understand – but I was gob smacked at the stark difference between interacting with women these last 7 years and then my first interactions with men being so alike to one another.

    My biggest question, obviously stemming from the ignorance of the male experience, is why they wouldn’t want to try and help themselves – to feel better. To go to therapy and try to break past those barriers. I suppose some feel that is what they have to do to fit in and that perhaps it’s not wrong. I suppose others are too imbedded in their traumas and experiences to see that they can help it. And some are just perhaps stubborn and don’t believe they need the help.

    Regardless of whatever it may be, it breaks my heart. Talking, and having intimacy with these men as a 30-year old woman, has changed my entire outlook on men. As sad and twisty it is to admit, it has healed some of my inner-child’s harsh beliefs from judgement to compassion. It has built some bridges for me from difficult memories into re-framed sad ones.

    I had been really mean to men when I dated them back then because they kept hurting my feelings in so many different ways. I don’t make excuses for them but reapproaching those memories with 8 years of therapy and a fresh perspective, I can at least try to understand and not take them as personally.

    So, where do I go from here?

    I think it’d be difficult for me to say that I won’t date a man who can’t communicate, express their feelings appropriately, or have a hard time doing the work to better themselves, but I’m beginning to realize that a boundary I need to have is balance. I can’t work with a man who won’t try.

    For those who can’t or won’t try, for their own reasons, I have compassion, but my heart can’t save theirs even though I do have so much love to give.

    The tricky part is knowing for certain what side of it they are on. There are men who say they are trying, but the proof isn’t there. You want to believe in them, root for them and give them the support but it’s a torturous game of figuring out when to walk away.

    I had to walk away from Jesse because my alarm bells wouldn’t stop going off and I began to feel that perhaps one day I wouldn’t be safe with him. Jury is still out on Drake and this new guy I’ve been seeing – Wesley – seems to be the first out of about 5 guys that hasn’t shied away from a vulnerable question.

    I didn’t think that this period of sexual experimentation and discovery would lead to me reflecting on every experience with a man that I had ever had, but I’m so grateful for it. But I’m equally as sad processing it all through.

    I have this deep desire to cup these men’s faces between both my hands and tell them it’s okay. That everything will be okay. That they are safe. I wish them all the love they could possibly imagine and that whatever is holding them in a vice grip will just let them breathe already.