For many of my close friends and unfortunate family members witnessing me at the open house Christmas party, they can probably vouch that since I lost my virginity at eighteen I kind of spiralled into nympholand. Growing up in a square suburban town where your 100-person high school graduation class was pretty much everyone you had known since you were ten, there weren’t that many options to date. Mind you this was almost ten years ago (WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK) a time before apps, before you could DM someone’s Instagram, Blackberries ruled supreme, and many of my queer friends hadn’t even come out, including myself. Due to the boundaries of my non paved neighbourhood streets, I didn’t even realize how much of a sex pot I was. I was an athlete, I studied French, and tried to get an 89% average so I could go to the ‘best recognized academic arts university in western Canada’. I also had a lot of family problems going on at home, I wasn’t really wearing makeup and was poked fun at for seeming butch, and wasn’t raised in the kind of environment where you were given an allowance to hit up Aritzia every week and had your own car. Kind of a naive sexpot at the time, ironically working my first restaurant job in a mini skirt, soon I’d hit the big pond, it all went out the door and I won an oscar starring in a Lars Von Trier life project.

Again this is a taboo thing to say that all college does is revolve around sex. My cohort program was predominantly a handful of intelligent girls, that had sadly less experience than myself in the bedroom. I learned that if wanted to start a fire, I was going to need to go out into the passion forest and collect some wood. I started falling in and out of love with any man that would talk to me. I wanted a taste of the football team, particularly a DE that tricked me into a threesome with this other girl that was in love with him.  I worked with pristinely groomed bartender/career “actors” , and would have sex with them and their friends, my stats TA. Nobody was safe, this was also a time where I felt super comfortable getting confrontational at the bar with bros I felt stepped out of line with myself or a girlfriend, and even they would end up with me naked in their basement suite. There were hockey players, european models, 40-something year old guys in my softball league, lots of tourists, and then the good chunk of black-outs I don’t have any trace of contact information from, thankfully. Sometimes there are past voices whispering behind my back about my deviance, but the truth is I was happy and hungry for connection and a good rally in the bedroom, I didn’t and shouldn’t care. I’m proud of myself for going out there in a time when convenience was still not perfected through smartphones.

That is where this next and final phase of my sexcapades climaxed and crashed into my now smouldering, demi sexual, nobody-can-figure-me-out aura. For the past five years I had been an extreme bookworm. I was writing 40-page french papers on cultures I had never experienced, governments I would never understand, and then poisoned my optimism for humanity with the most depressing VICE articles I could find. I thought this would help carve me out as a journalist, but somehow through finding myself I was lead to Tinder. Meeting people online wasn’t anything new to me, I loved Nexopia when I was in my emo phase at high school, meeting up with all the coolest unemployed haircuts at Warped Tour and random Ska-punk shows in West Van community halls. I laughed at first when my besties and coworkers started telling me about this ‘Tinder’ app. It all became too easy, and my short lived West End roommate would soon be equally horrified and amused at how many bites I got in a week. It was bad. I was meeting a lot of guys, they would hit me up multiple times after our first dates but I wasn’t interested in the pursuit of love, really. I wasn’t interested in dating someone who lived on 49th Ave, or didn’t have a car, or who was a plumber and didn’t have much to talk about in the alienation of our modern industries. I was figuring out my next moves in the city, what my intentions would be as a writer, if that was going to be possible with my diluted double major. Then I met my now ex-boyfriend and so-called astrologically placed check-mate, the man that my astro reader claims was put in many of my lifetimes to purposely block me and transgress me to a reborn state. Heavy for a Tinder match.

 

Once again I’ll say because I wasn’t really phased by meeting people online, I didn’t think much of him at first glance. He was really cute, but so were a handful of other guys filling up my phone with dick picks and tongue emojis (ew). This part of my dating journey really highlighted my calm nature with meeting new people, where as many of the guys I was meeting were extremely nervous to be meeting a random at their apartment or down the street from another bar. I could tell my now-ex was skeptical, but since we had gone on a brunch date, it kind of changed the atmosphere. It’s not like we were going to start jacking eachother off under the table during a 160 seater Saturday brunch service, although I feel I could use that right about now, and I was working lots of nights. I was exhausted, showed up without makeup, in my grandpa wool sweater, more focused on Eggs Benedict than how the interaction was gonna go. It’s not surprising that this nonchalance came off as a big turn for him, and we ended up dating for almost a year.

 

The course after our honeymoon relationship became uncomfortable. At the time he didn’t live that close to me, and since I was in the city, I became the focal point. I was cancelling plans, constantly checking my phone for updates on where he was or when he was coming into the city to stay the night (he didn’t like waiting around, well tough). I thought that was satisfying for me, this was going to be my committed relationship and this is what it was supposed to look like, but after a shady business deal went sour on him, I felt so much pressure by friends and him to make a decision. Do we make this work? I brought it up first, that we should call it off, and after a couple weeks and Christmas holidays without him, I realized I had made a huge mistake. He was the only guy in years to truly get to know me in and out (literally), he was hilarious but also highly creative and passionate about his interests, he was actively pursuing everything he ever wanted. But when you’re dating someone as equally as fiery as you, but you’re the one supplying the accommodation, laundering the sheets and cleaning the bathroom, is it fair? It’s never supposed to be ‘fair’, but I realized I put a lot of secondary effort in sustaining the uncertain relationship for way too long. I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m calling off business dates with close girlfriends, cancelling last minute plans to go to a fun after-hours party, so I can make sure my boyfriend doesn’t have to get up early with me? It was kind of a shitty deal, and it streamed a fucking river of heartbreak after. I realized so much was missing in my family life, and temporarily he had become a very intimate member of family for me. This was supposed to be fun! Now he’s dating someone new, and in my mind I don’t understand how he has the emotional energy. It’s because I gave most of mine over to him.

I lost so much of my drive to love from this overtly caring  past relationship, and for months I have not even wanted to light some candles in my room and use my vibrator, I feel almost nothing towards the passionate sex I could be having with half of the men in my neighbourhood. I feel absolutely nothing when I deny three Brazilian guys at the bar asking if they can come home with me (THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG). I was starting to think my sex life was over at 27. But the truth is my taste is changing, I’ve become a demisexual for the time being it seems. Thanks to some light reading on Bustle.com and chats with new friend Chelsea curating glitterxfilm, we’ve come to realize that life is more important than seeking out sex. If it happens, great. But maybe we’re at a point in our lives where creative and emotional connections sustain your growth:

“A demisexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone. It’s more commonly seen in but by no means confined to romantic relationships. Nevertheless, this term does not mean that demisexuals have an incomplete or half-sexuality, nor does it mean that sexual attraction without emotional connection is required for a complete sexuality. In general, demisexuals are not sexually attracted to anyone of any gender; however, when a demisexual is emotionally connected to someone else (whether the feelings are romantic love or deep friendship), the demisexual experiences sexual attraction and desire, but only towards the specific partner or partners” .

Overall I think it’s important for us to go in phases sexual and non, and not feel bad about it. Just like Shakti did in his hidden mountain meditation, he resisted all of the Pavarti passions he could have been receiving until he was cracked open by natural lust and desire. Life comes in waves, ride what may, and don’t get beat up about the lulls. All orgasms and twin flames aren’t created equal.

 

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