This post contains blunt and explicit discussions of sex, sexual assault, and things of that nature. Please read at your own discretion.

(Also, if you’re going to be weird about me, a twenty-six-year-old adult woman, talking about sex publicly, maybe skip this one. And watch Sex and the City or something.)

I have a complicated relationship with sex.

As a high schooler, sex was just a concept to me; it lived in the jokes of fifteen-year-olds who had never even had their first kiss or allusions in Taylor Swift lyrics about a woman being “better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” It was something that was never brought up with my parents and rarely brought up with my sister, something devoted only to lunch table gossip and slumber party whispers. It was never tangible. And because of that, it became coveted. 

I became very into sexual liberation, which in hindsight is quite funny considering I didn’t even properly make out with someone until I was seventeen. But who cared? I shared my fantasies with my friends, convinced that when the time came for me to finally have sex all of the knowledge (read: false expectations) I’d gained through fanfiction would turn me into a siren instead of an awkward teenager. Every single sentence became an innuendo; I posted photos on Instagram of thigh-high socks and fishnet tights, convinced that I was going to be the face of radical feminine sexuality.

And then during my first semester of college, I woke up in the middle of the night to my then-boyfriend’s fingers inside of me. Without my consent.

A year later, as I began to fully understand what had happened to me that day, I found myself in a new relationship that was also taking a dark turn. Reconciling with the fact that I had been assaulted didn’t leave me with much of a sex drive, and my then-boyfriend began resenting that fact. He became very controlling about every aspect of my life: insisting he spend every night in my dorm room even when I didn’t want him there, getting angry when I wanted to spend the night at my friend’s apartment, refusing to let me shower alone, asking to read my diary entries, and, most critically, emotionally manipulating me every time I said I didn’t want to have sex. Sex became something used to avoid a fight. It became my obligation as a girlfriend. I would say no, but that no didn’t matter; I would get iced out and ignored until I gave in. It came to a head when he coerced me to have sex with him in my own house with my entire family home. It was the only time I ever cried during it.  

These two experiences would completely alter my perception of sex. To me, sex wasn’t something connected with love, but rather a completely separate act. It was fun! But it wasn’t something I needed. I’d hear my friends talk about their own experiences and live vicariously through them, but I couldn’t relate to this feeling of constantly wanting to have sex, of craving it. I’d read romance novels where the characters would actually get irritable if they went multiple days in a row without getting their rocks off and think “wow, I guess you do have to make some stuff up when telling a fictional story,” only to read online reviews and find out those scenes were highly relatable to people. It began to affect my romantic relationships; it wasn’t uncommon for a partner to tell me they were sexually frustrated, even ending relationships over it. 

And I was frustrated with myself! Why couldn’t I just be normal? Why couldn’t I have a normal relationship with sex?? Was I somewhere on the asexual spectrum? Was my Prozac inhibiting my sex drive? Had my past trauma affected me so deeply that I was incapable of going back to that high school teenager who was so vocal about the liberating aspects of sex? All of these were plausible, and yet none of them felt like the correct answer. I felt somewhere in between–––with too high of a sex drive to be considered asexual, and way too low of a sex drive to be anything else. Going off of my Prozac wasn’t an option either–––it’s the only thing keeping me from being agoraphobic. I felt like there was something wrong with me, something broken, a piece that had once existed removed from me without my knowledge or permission. A piece that was vital to understanding human intimacy and sexuality was gone, but everyone around me still had it. An understanding that I, on some level, once had, but lost somehow. 

When I began dating my current boyfriend, I very quickly told him that I wanted to take things slow; I wanted to be sure he liked me for me, not just because of a service I could provide for him. This set in motion a process that I was unaware was even happening. We would spend time just kissing, something I hadn’t done since I was seventeen. Slowly, I was being afforded the gentleness and care that I was denied in my first moments of intimacy. I often tell my boyfriend that the song So High School by Taylor Swift reminds me of him because he makes me feel like a teenager again, but it’s more than just the butterflies and schoolyard crush; I’m experiencing the slow burgeoning of a teenager coming into their sexuality, just in my mid-twenties. He has allowed me to develop my interests, always taking into account what I am comfortable with and never crossing any lines. I needed that fundamental exploration of interest that had been denied to me in college. I needed to take things slow and figure them out for myself instead of being rushed into doing something I was not emotionally ready for. There’s a lot of conversation online about “healing your inner child,” but he has definitely healed my inner eighteen-year-old.

I am now, please excuse my vulgarity, super horny for my boyfriend (okay, maybe not what you’d consider super. I still think I have a relatively low-ish sex drive. But! I understand all those romance novel scenes now! And for me, that’s super horny!). 

I was initially very hesitant to write this blog post–––after all, I grew up with sex never really being talked about besides a “that’s what she said” joke thrown around–––but I also know that in that time where I was really struggling, the only solace I found was in other people who also didn’t have a super high sex drive. Even as I’ve begun developing my sexuality and even as my sex drive has slightly increased, I still don’t consider myself a particularly sexual being, and that’s okay. I’m thrilled for people who are actually super horny (the last thing I want is for this to get misconstrued as a puritanical “there’s too much sex in society” rant), but I’m finally becoming thrilled in my own experience with sex.

Coming into your sexuality in your mid-twenties is a weird experience. While my personal experience with sexual assault definitely changed and informed my perception of sex, I know there are people out there who aren’t completely comfortable with their sexuality for plenty of other reasons. But I really think that this is a side of the conversation that should be normalized. I think that it shouldn’t be considered weird to discover your sexuality in your late twenties, or even later! There is so much pressure in early adulthood to completely figure out who you are and never deviate from that for the rest of your life–––both in one’s sexual life, but in their personal and professional lives too–––but that’s simply not how human beings work. We are ever-changing. We are having new experiences every day, and to assume we will never change from them after the age of twenty-one is just absurd. 

What I believed at fifteen–––that sex would liberate me and become a defining aspect of my life, what I believed at twenty-one–––that my opportunity to learn and explore who I was sexually had been taken from me, and what I believe now at twenty-six–––that there is no “timeline” in learning and developing, are all dramatically different opinions of sex, and yet they are all a part of who I am. I can’t wait to see what my opinion is on sex at 30, or 40, and to see how I evolve. I hope you’re able to see that same evolution in yourself too.