Adulting (Still Under Construction)

Why does intimacy seem so easy for everyone else, yet so complicated for me?

Sometimes I wonder if the definition got lost somewhere along the way — buried beneath social norms, hookup culture, and the pressure to “have experience.”

Did I miss the ability to get on board?

Or did I simply never agree with the destination?

I’m 26 years old, and I’ve only been intimate with three men. According to society, that somehow means I lack the experience required to “qualify” for settling down.

My friends tell me, “Don’t stress about not being married. You just need to put yourself out there more. Get more experience. And maybe along the way you’ll find someone worth settling down with.”

And honestly? That’s solid advice.

But in the same breath, they also say things like, “To get over a guy, you have to get under another… and another… and another.”

And that mindset is exactly what led me to body count number two and three. Which I hated.

Was it the experience that counted?

Or was it just another way of avoiding grief?

The idea that the cure for heartbreak is sleeping with the next available person always felt absurd to me. Yet I was willing to try, desperately willing. I would have tried anything to piece my heart back together after it was shattered by the man I thought was my forever. The man I imagined growing old beside.

Did it work?

Did sleeping with two more people help me get over him?

Did I accomplish what painters, musicians, and poets have wrestled with for centuries?

No.

If anything, it left me more self-conscious. More used. More unworthy.

Which is ironic — because that’s exactly how I already felt.

So why did I go back for round two? And three?

And why did round three make me want to give up sex altogether?

The answer is intimacy — something I crave deeply… and fear just as deeply.

To me, intimacy means giving my whole self to someone. It means vulnerability. It means trust. It means kissing someone without my OCD hijacking the moment with intrusive thoughts about germs, contamination, and worst-case scenarios.

Intimacy, to me, is sacred. It is the act of becoming so emotionally intertwined that you begin to move as one. It feels like sharing a soul.

And sex?

To me, sex is the physical embodiment of that bond, the ultimate expression of love.

But it also requires performing what sometimes feels like the most unholy ritual taking someone to bed and hoping they don’t leave afterward.

Because for me, sex is not casual. It is not recreational. It is not a distraction.

It is surrender.

And surrendering to someone who might walk away feels like jumping off a cliff and hoping they decide to catch you.

So here’s what I’ve learned along the way:

It was never that intimacy is easier for everyone else.

It’s that I’m afraid of it leading to nothing.

I’m afraid that after I open myself up — after I let someone all the way in — it will end in rejection. Again.

But maybe protecting something so sacred isn’t immaturity. Maybe it isn’t inexperience.

Maybe it’s self-awareness.

Maybe it’s acknowledging my worth, accepting that I deserve more than a one-night stand. That I deserve something as sacred as love. That being in love and experiencing that kind of intimacy was never meant to be easy.

Maybe that doesn’t make me behind.

Maybe it makes me intentional.

 And to that I say, voulez-vous coucher avec moi?

But not like that…

Mais more like, vous préférez jouer avec mon esprit plutôt qu’avec mon corps ?