I've been in love before. More than once actually so I know the accompanying feelings. For the past month and some change, I was seeing a guy who I can genuinely say I cared about. And while I can't speak for the other person and his feelings towards me, I'm sure on some level we both felt strongly for each other. We saw each other consistently, we slept together many nights, we lay in the dark and spoke about the deepest and stupidest shit there is. In essence, there was true intimacy.
At the same time, I continued to date other people (although not as consistently or consecutively) and I had sex with other men.
The last man I had sex with asked me an interesting question. The question wasn't interesting in itself, but upon reflection it raised a bunch of Carrie Bradshaw-esque personal musings. After we had sex, we were laying down cuddling and he asked, "Are you dating someone?"
I felt naked - and I was already naked so double whammy. I answered coyly along the lines of, "Aren't we all dating someone?" I don't know why I was afraid to say, "Yes, I'm dating someone" since in all fairness I was. Well, actually I do know why and it's pretty much the subject of this blog post: I was embarrassed to admit that I was dating someone yet had thrown caution to the wind and fucked somebody else.
In my older years, I've become hugely aware of the intricacies of human relationships. Commitment, dating, courtship, hooking up, friends with benefits, fuck buddies - all of these terms have very different rules and regulations. While some may be a lot less defined, there are still boundaries that one can and cannot cross.
Commitment, which is probably the most coveted and despised of the abovementioned, is like the holy grail to any single person who wants to be in love. It doesn't just mean going steady, it's runs the gamut of seeing each other almost everyday, spending very intimate moments together, being able to hold hands and kiss in public, sharing the deepest and darkest parts of yourself, sharing your life in almost all of its entirety and being completely vulnerable with someone all the while being stuck at the receiving end of their judgment.
Dating is a little harder to define. Personally, when dating someone I prefer the clean and simple. I can't date more than one person at the same time. It can get sticky, details, dates, situations and stories can get blurred and to be very honest, if I see someone more than four times it pretty much means I can see a future with them in some capacity. Sharing a part of yourself like that can be tiresome if you spread it out among multiple dating partners.
I did see the guy who asked me the "dating" question once again. We met for coffee in Chelsea and we had a conversation about sex. He asked me if I had bottomed for anyone since we had had sex (I had refused to bottom for him because, as I explained, I feel the need to have a certain level of emotional connection with a man before I can enjoy being penetrated by him). I didn't respond but that was enough of an answer for him to assume the worst. I think he was genuinely upset that I had let someone else fuck me but not him.
The interesting thing is even I felt a little weird after. Was I being some kind of slut martyr? What was the difference between dating someone and having sex with someone? Furthermore, the guy who I wasn't dating was actually sweet and hot and we did have an emotional connection which wasn't completely based on simple sexual tension. We had met before, we had conversed and were both very attracted to each other, not to mention I knew the possibility of dating him was on the table.
And even deeper than all of this, was the person I was actually dating even taking any of this into consideration? Not that it mattered much (except it totally did). I rarely fuck someone when I hook up with them. I'm not old fashioned but it takes a lot of emotional energy to stick a dick into a person and it is infinitely more pleasurable if it's someone I actually like, really like, really, really, really like or love. However, was this the case for the man I was seeing? Or was he fucking other people without the scruples I was holding on to?
The dating question also wasn't just transfixed on sex though. I was genuinely in like with a guy, a future would have been exciting, dare I say a relationship could have blossomed yet I was seeing other people and having sexual relations outside my courtship. The reason being that I felt like if nothing was said and no discussion about a probable future ever had, I was free to do whom I pleased. Except I never tried to broach the subject.
Early on in our relationship, I'd had a conversation with my dating partner and he had made it clear he "wasn't looking for a relationship" yet on the flipside he had told me (during the same conversation) the quest for love was paramount in his life - so even these confusing signals left me with an eyebrow raised and a straying penis. However, in other conversations he would say things like "our dating life is going well" or that we had a good thing going together or while he wasn't looking for a relationship, the natural flow would dictate more than he or I could.
So when does dating become DATING (caps intentional). And when does DATING become being open to something even more serious... like a relationship? While a month and a half is definitely not enough to know if I want to pursue a full fledged relationship, I wish I had brought up the topic just to bounce it off the other person. It's a confusing land, and the terrain isn't that well traversed. I remember being 15 and after making out with my first boyfriend, we hung out everyday and never even spoke about the fact that we were in a relationship - probably due to the fact that we were too young to even realise how earth-shattering and gravity-defying the word "relationship" tends to be. Is it that we just put too much weight on shit like commitment, or boyfriends, and we should just hop on board and hope for the best?
Or do we just need to program our minds differently when it comes to relationships and dating. Do these terms only hold the weight we apply to them? And if we don't apply any weight, or don't even think about the consequences of what they can possibly mean, would our dating lives/relationships be the better for it?
Something to ponder.
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