A sexual-coping mechanism

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(CU Independent illustration/Molly Maher)

As October came to an end, most students’ summer flings followed suit. The changing leaves on trees and autumn couples making out underneath them has left me thinking about my own experience (or lack thereof) this summer, and how no amount of “sexting” could truly heal my own bad memories from this time last year.

“Sexting,” or text-sex, is not something that can be done with just anyone. I’ve found that there must be a comfortable level of love or indifference—nothing in between. In my case it was the latter. I didn’t care what this gentleman thought of me. I had already emotionally exhausted myself with a chaotic and volatile relationship throughout my first year of college, and I was looking for the easiest way out of those memories.

So I did something extremely uncharacteristic of myself and tried to find the fastest way out of misery through an exclusively sexual relationship. It is rare for me to be willing to be intimate with someone where emotion didn’t follow, but in this case there was a happy medium I didn’t share with anyone else in my life.

We were close-enough friends that nothing would have changed by our fling; we weren’t new to each other physically, though it had been some time. And jealousy was not a factor—I didn’t care about love, like, or any emotions he may have felt toward another woman, so long as he respected me with mutual honesty. We weren’t so close that we had become platonic; there was still an air of mystery. And we shared a level of flirtation and a transparent level of sexual exploitation I didn’t have with anyone else.

It started with a few drinks and a smiley face here and there. Soon enough it progressed to sober details. Fantasies were unleashed. Experiences revealed. I was able to escape into an erotic, imaginary world of outdoor escapades simply through my phone beeping. Perhaps what made this tolerable was both of us are writers, making the text messages seem like little pieces of art, and not so much a means to a physical end. The crass terminology associated with text-sex was replaced with poetic renditions of our summer plans for one another.

Honest details of our previous sexual experiences were discussed. It was through these questions and answers that I learned we were both in a similar place. We had both been wounded by an emotionally draining relationship in the last year. While neither of us had adopted a “boyfriend/girlfriend” label with our significant others, we both fell in love for the first time and the wounds extended far deeper than either of us realized.

In the end, nothing ended up happening. My fling flung himself far from me in the eleventh hour. I had been transparent about my disinterest in dating him, and made it clear I was looking for nothing more complicated than a carefree rebound. This is the first time I had explicitly pursued a sexually emotionless relationship, and I was honest about my complete inability to provide any more depth than that. He explained that he was not in a place to be my “sexual-coping mechanism.” The phrasing makes me laugh to this day, but he was right. That’s exactly what he was—a vehicle for forgetting my emotional baggage from freshman year. I needed to forget, and when I thought of sex I didn’t want my on-and-off lover to be the first person that came to mind.

While I was frustrated that all my sexual energy had been magnified for almost two months with no delivery, I have to agree that adopting a sexual-coping mechanism is something that would not have been conducive to my emotional well-being. Placing another body in such intimate proximity to mine would not have helped me forget the person I cared for. I’ve found the best way to deal with the memories that follow these changing leaves on campus is to simply face them, and hope that this time around things will be different. That this time, my sexuality won’t require a coping mechanism after all.

Contact CU Independent Entertainment Editor Sara Kassabian at Sara.kassabian@colorado.edu.