Fuckability does not determine your value

Fuckability does not determine your valueread by the author

8:14

A selfie we took on a recent outing

A little less than a year ago, a friend and I sat over coffee to catch up on our lives. I asked about the new woman she was seeing. Her eyes grew wide and she whispered, “Tracie, I don’t understand it.” Her voice was quiet, but full of incredulity, “she’s really into me, and I haven’t even made her come, yet!” 

My heart broke a little that my friend thought so poorly of herself she was confused when someone liked her outside of sexual gratification. But also, I understood. I was still processing the fact that only a couple weeks earlier, I had snuggled with a man to whom I was attracted and with whom I had explicitly agreed not to have sex.

P.S.* and I met on one of the dating apps. He was in Wales dealing with a family emergency. I was in Baltimore, navigating a different sort of family emergency. He was recently separated. I was in the early stages of my own separation. We were both polyamorous, by self-declaration. 

We struck up a correspondence, each of us sharing little details about our days and the big challenges that come with being human. 

A few weeks into our acquaintance, I texted him “A word of gratitude that we could talk about the black hole in the middle of being human and neither of us flinch. That’s nice. The talking, I mean. The black hole is terrible.” 

We had a lovely banter, with wit and flirt and just enough vulnerability to make it real. He came back to Baltimore and we planned our first date–a bar in the hip neighborhood of Hampden. We both saw people we knew. The chemistry was as pleasing IRL as it had been in text. We parted with a hug. Not the kind of perfunctory hug that feels more polite than affectionate, but the kind of lowers-your-blood-pressure-through-comfort embrace that feels real, that feels like it means something. We both said we’d look forward to a second date.

Things got hard for him right before our second date was planned. More family emergencies. “Is it ok with you if I resume being my normal self tomorrow?” he texted, “Really don’t want you to think I’m ignoring you.” 

We rainchecked. Rescheduled. The correspondence continued. 

A few days later, I admitted, “Crying in the sunshine is a surreal experience. Also, I hate crying. So.” 

He replied, “I oddly love crying. Anything you want to talk about?”

I didn’t. But I liked it that he asked.

A couple of days before we were supposed to go on our rescheduled second date, he wrote a long text that ended with a change in the status of our growing courtship: “I’m just not in a space where I want a romantic/sexual relationship right now. So much energy is going toward my family, keeping myself sane, and reinvesting in friendships, that I just don’t have much left to give. I would love to still see you on Tuesday. But, I also understand that a platonic relationship may not be what you want. So I want to give you the space to decide.”

It was not hard for me to accept his friendship. We kept texting about the real, hard things we were going through (independently, not together). He was managing the aftermath of a parent’s death and a parent’s decline. I was navigating the heavy heartbreak of two important relationships ending simultaneously.

A little less than a month after our first date, we got together as friends. We took a walk around Druid Hill Park. We talked about things that really matter to us. We shared fears and hopes. We made each other laugh. It was easy. I wasn’t worried about whether I looked cute or if he would make a move or whether we would end the time together with a kiss. I wasn’t worried at all. In some ways, his having removed the possibility of sex from the equation allowed me to be more vulnerable, more real with him. We said goodbye with another soul-soothing hug. 

The next day I sent him a text that said, “I have an offer I want to make with maximum invitation and minimum pressure: It occurs to me that the emotional companionship you and I have cultivated is in some ways easier since you removed the possibility of romance or sex. And the compatibility of our hugging game makes me think it could be nice to snuggle up with you and watch something. Or just talk. We could benefit from the positive effects of being close without the constant, low-level mental chatter I experience around anticipating or initiating escalation. So, if at some point snuggling on your couch, talking, sipping a cocktail, and knowing that we’ll say goodbye with a hug—and not more—seems like a thing you’d like, my answer will be yes. And that’s true whether the no romance/sex thing is about right now or about not with me. A non-sexual but snuggly friendship with you would be neither consolation prize nor stepping stone for me.”

I genuinely did not know how he would respond. Would a man want to have an ongoing, affectionate relationship with a woman he did not have sex with? Was I worth that kind of time and attention if sex was not on offer? 

I was delighted and a little surprised when he said “thank you, that sounds fantastic to me.” That was almost exactly a year ago. 

In the time since then, we have seen each other about once a month and texted in between. Our get-togethers often consist of a meal or a cocktail – or both – and they almost always involve horizontal, fully-clothed snuggling. We hold each other and talk. We talk about the little things and we talk about the big things, including our other partners. Each of us is having sex, but not with one another. 

Sometimes, when he tells me about one of the women he is dating, I have a flare of something akin to jealousy. Old conditioning that says, “why not with me?” But each time, snuggled into his chest, the current reality wins that fight: He IS with me. It is a different kind of with, but it is as real as any other with–and more real than some sexual partners I’ve had. 

I’m not sure when I started counting P.S. among my partners, but that status was

corroborated when he told me he loves me, and I was able to reciprocate without hesitation. What he and I have is unlike any friendship I’ve known. We are sexually attracted to one another, and we choose not to act on that. And yet, we are physically affectionate. Every time we hold one another, we choose this friendship and validate the other’s worthiness in a way I had not anticipated. 

This relationship is unusual for the same reason my friend was confused when someone liked her outside of sexual gratification. Society has taught, especially women, that our value is directly correlated to our fuckability. “Women give sex to get love. Men give love to get sex,” is an adage I received at some point in the past fifty years as Fact with a capital F. It is the kind of conventional wisdom that seems to merely describe, but it also perpetuates. The transactional understanding of love and sex at its core causes harm when it leads women to believe themselves unlovable unless love is “earned.”

My friend’s worry was not self-generated. She was conditioned by this adage and the attitude that wrote it. She did not need to worry the way that she did. In fact, she is still seeing the woman who was so into her all those months ago, and they seem to be very much in love.

Whether P.S. and I one day decide to cross the boundary we’ve been maintaining or never do, this year of emotional companionship and physical comfort with him has been deeply meaningful for me. It has been a part of my unlearning: an ongoing retraining of my nervous system. It has helped me to metabolize the truth that my worthiness, my lovability, is independent of whether or not I can make him come.  

*P.S. is his real name. Or, it's his real initials. Which he goes by. I use them here with permission.