One of the weirdest things about being a sex writer is the cognitive dissonance between the sexual person your readers think you are and the sexual person you actually are.
It’s important to keep in mind, always, as you’re scrolling through your social media feeds and your RSS reader (if you still use one of those antiquated things like I do), that comparing yourself to people you see on the internet is comparing your insides to somebody else’s outsides. You’re never getting the full picture, even if you think you are.
And that’s not as bad a thing as some people would have you believe, either. “Authenticity” and “transparency” are only useful up to a point; y’all don’t need to know about the chin hairs I pluck or the ins and outs of my fibre intake. I mean, maybe some of you want to know that stuff (I know plenty of my readers have unusual fetishes!) but I am by no means obligated to share it all with you. The people who make me the most uncomfortable in this business are the people who insist that my openness and honesty in certain areas mean I’m required to be open and honest in every area. Nope. Fuck that. Fuck that forever.
All this to say: I’m probably not as horny or as sexually adventurous a person as you might imagine. In fact, if not for phone sex, I think these days I’d only jerk off 2-3 times a week, tops, if left to my own (vibrating) devices.
That caveat – “if not for phone sex” – is what I want to talk about today. As you might know, I keep a sex spreadsheet, so I have stats on my IRL sex life for the past several years and my phone-sex sex life for the past year and a half. My partner Matt – who is delightfully chill about the whole “recording detailed data on our intimate encounters” thing – recently pointed out to me, as we were totalling up our sex numbers from the 4 months they spent quarantined with me, that despite having phone sex nearly every night when we’re apart, we didn’t have sex every single night we were physically together. We had sex 84 times in the 121 days they were here – so, about 69% of those nights (nice). I had noticed that too, and had been pondering the possible reasons.
When we discussed it, we came to 2 overall conclusions about why we’re more prolifically horny over the phone than IRL:
- Sometimes the “point” of sex (or one of them, anyway) is to establish intimacy and connection. When we’re together IRL (especially when quarantining), we’re already getting a lot of that throughout the day – not to mention throughout the night, when we cuddle and touch and kiss and can smell each other and feel each other’s warmth all night. Sex isn’t less appealing, necessarily, but it doesn’t feel like as urgent a need when part of its “purpose” is getting fulfilled elsewhere.
- In-person sex takes more energy. Phone sex is comparatively chill.
That second one is really the crucial one for me, I think. As a person with depression and chronic pain + fatigue, sometimes I just don’t have the energy for sex, despite knowing it would almost certainly improve my mood and my pain status. It’s not only the physical motion involved – which can be reduced or almost entirely eliminated when I’m fucking a capable and enthusiastic top, like Matt – but also the mental energy involved. No matter how comfortable I am with a partner, it still saps some of my energy to constantly wonder if my sex faces look weird, or if my body is actually as attractive as my partner claims it is, or if my roommate can hear the impacts when I’m getting spanked.
It’s a lot like how Zoom video calls can be utterly draining for me (I’m sure many of you can relate) while audio-only calls are comparatively blissful. I just don’t have enough brain-spoons to simultaneously manage not only the conversation we’re having but also how I look while we’re having it. Let’s turn our video off so I can forget, briefly, just how ugly I secretly worry I am.
Phone sex with Matt is so good that I’ve pondered many times whether we can continue having it when we’re eventually living together. And fortunately, they’re the type of inventive, considerate, GGG partner that I honestly feel like we might. I can imagine us residing together in a tiny one-bedroom New York apartment and me saying at the end of a long day, “Hey, I’m super worn out. Can I go to the other room so we can have phone sex?” I’d bring some sex toys with me and slip back seamlessly into that pleasantly agitated headspace I so often inhabited when we had just started dating and our romantic nighttime phone sex sessions were the fuel that propelled me through my difficult, depressed days.
I’ve had a wide range of opinions on long-distance relationships over the course of my life, but I never really thought I would prefer them, or at least prefer elements of them. Maybe it’s a bad sign about my relationship with my body that non-corporeal forms of sex seem to appeal to me more, and rev my sexual engine more consistently, than types involving my actual fucking body – but honestly, the world is a mess right now. “Whatever works.” That’s the phrase I keep saying to friends on the phone and via text when they tell me about some supposedly “weird” coping mechanism or distracting hobby they’ve picked up since the coronavirus swept the world. “Whatever works.” Whatever makes you feel happier and more at ease and more functional is worth at least considering.
I’m so blessed to have a partner who understands and accepts all of my limitations, and not only knows how to work within them but also actively gets excited about finding new ways to work within them. I am so lucky to be in love with someone so good, so kind, so accommodating. And I am so lucky to have access to a type of sex that bridges gaps, raises my self-image, requires very little energy on my part, and makes me feel like a scintillating stunner even when I’m lying in bed with day-old pajamas on and a cavalcade of unsexy pillows cradling my aching body.
This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.