This might sound weird at first but I’ve had more disappointing sexual encounters with long-term partners than with casual friends-with-privileges and/or one-night-stand partners. Chances are actually reasonably good that you have too. Here’s how.
With first-time sex even with casual partners, even when one or both don’t come, you’re both generally highly attentive of each other, highly excited, and pretty darned interested. (If you weren’t both interested and excited one or both of you will tend to put it off till you were enthusiastic about it.) So the odds of dull, off, unpleasant, or just bad hookup/casual sex are relatively low.
In long-term relationships you tend to have sex way more often, and generally under more varied circumstances. And while, especially as you grow familiar with each other’s wants and needs the sex can get better, you’re also going to have more times when one or both of you aren’t in sync, aren’t comfortable, you and/or they are just going through the motions, or otherwise you’re just not so attentive.
Percentage-wise I’d expect sex in non-casual relationships to be better, and percentage-wise it is. But terms of absolute numbers I’ve had fewer overall bad encounters with casual partners than with non-casual ones.
I wouldn’t have expected that.
Obligatory but I hope obvious caveat: I’m obviously talking adult or at least peer partners making competent mutual, and mutually respected, decisions to be sexual with each other. This may not be the case for everyone, whether in long-term or casual relationships and I think it would be a bad idea to try and extrapolate my observation to their situations.
Update See also Amanda Hess and Sady Doyle.
I’ve had much better sex with
Submitted by Britni TheVadgeWig (not verified) on Thu, 2010-03-04 20:42.I’ve had much better sex with long-term partners. In fact, the sex I’ve had with casual partners has been quite unsatisfying on a whole.
I highly suspect this is a
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Thu, 2010-03-04 21:55.I highly suspect this is a girl-boy difference. Sex with casual partners has the thrill of the new, the fun of discovery. However! I’ve rarely known a very short-term partner who really knew how to ring my bells. And my bells aren’t just limited to orgasm; I’m not that simple. The fun was all in the newness, really.
And frankly? About half the guys thought it was over when they were done. (Mind you, my data points stop at about 1990.)
Of course the lows can sink straight to Dante’s 9th circle with a long-term partner. And love doesn’t help. Especially if there’s still love, it hurts more when the sex is perfunctory or worse. But wowie zowies, if he knows my body and he cares about my pleasure and my person, my can he make my flesh sing. Those moments are worth all the slogging and hoping and negotiating and trying way too hard when a relationship is in the dumps.
That sounds about right to
Submitted by chingona (not verified) on Thu, 2010-03-04 22:39.That sounds about right to me. (And my data points are all post-1990 and even that part is about right.)
I’m going to chime in a ditto
Submitted by DanceDreaming (not verified) on Fri, 2010-03-05 04:37.I’m going to chime in a ditto here. Based on percentages, long-term partner sex is
waybetter, and has far less bad, then one-night stands, or first time/rare-time sex in general. I can’t say which way more aggregate. I’ve had a lot more relationship sex then first time/rare time sex, so itmightskew to more total not so good from relationship, but even then I don’t think so.All my worst have been first time, and LTR sex has rarely been bad. There does seem to be some possibility that this is a gendered thing.
There was a discussion about
Submitted by chingona (not verified) on Fri, 2010-03-05 07:21.There was a discussion about this on Pandagon a while back, and this, more than almost any other issue around sex, seems to be strongly gendered. I know a big theme here is breaking down stereotypical notions about men’s sexuality being simple and women’s sexuality being complicated, but when it comes to just the sheer physical aspect of it, I think more men DO have relatively simple sexualities, and it takes men more time to learn a particular woman’s body because there is more variation in response. And in the interest of taking responsibility, I think I’ve felt more inhibited in saying “not like that, try it like this” in one-night stand or very short-term situations.
I should probably really
Submitted by figleaf on Fri, 2010-03-05 08:41.I should probably really clarify at this point that by “first-time sex” I don’t just mean “first-time PIV intercourse.” I’m talking about the whole evening, say, or day, or weekend.
I should also say that I was talking about absolute numbers, not percentages. If you’ve had a single one-night-stand that went badly and one life-long relationship the odds that you’ve had more bad sex in long-term relationships than in short-term ones is going to be very high.
I brought it up not to endorse one-nighters over LTRs. Not that there’s anything really wrong with one-nighters but they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. (How could it be — tea isn’t even everybody’s cup of tea!) Instead I brought it up to point out the inconsistency of the argument that “bad sex” is so intrinsically destructive that no one should ever have it in casual relationships.
—fl
The percentages matter. A
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Fri, 2010-03-05 22:01.The percentages matter. A lot. I’ve had a bunch of short-term liaisons, and several long-term ones. So sure, I’ve had more disappointing experiences within relationships. But I’ve also had overwhelmingly more wonderful experiences within relationships! Absolute numbers are pretty misleading unless a person has had hundreds of short-term/one-night flings, and only a few long-term relationships that turned out to be unusually fraught with sexual problems and disappointments.
All bad sex is not equal. Sex where I don’t orgasm – no big deal. Sex where I feel like an unwilling fucktoy – very big deal. (I realize you covered this partially by presupposing free mutual consent in the original post, but that doesn’t rule out feeling used.) Sex where I feel my partner would rather be anyplace else – whoa, that’s a great way to sever one’s soul from one’s flesh in a way that makes a Rubic’s cube look easy.
I don’t think we can say that all “bad sex” is “so intrinsically destructive” that we need to keep it carefully corralled in long-term relationships. What about the dude who enjoyed a very nice time with me – mutually – then jumped into his pants and straight out the door within a minute or two of his finishing? I was more bemused than traumatized. The deep traumas I’ve experienced from bad sex – or from bad vibes around sex – were all inside deeply committed relationships. So were all the moments where I was translucent and transformed by a man’s touch.
There’s just way more risk involved in long-term relationships, and I think that accounts for the extremes. I dunno, maybe your LTRs have been even more complicated and fraught than mine!
As for the gender dimensions: A while back, Blue Gal wrote this great post about the orgasm gap. Her point was that it can take women many more years than men to learn how to reach orgasm themselves, and especially with a partner. With all respect to those women who come easily at the slightest gust of the breeze, most of us women need more time and techniques. And so it makes sense to speak of an orgasm gap within new partnerships, too. At least, every time except one, my short-term partners easily reached orgasm. (Sometimes too quickly, to be sure.) I had a thrilling time, but I didn’t always keep pace with them. You don’t have to be anti-hookup to acknowledge that one-night-stands often leave women hanging.
Maybe your experience was different, figleaf, because you’ve written of being practically entrapped within a 1970s paradigm that required pleasing the woman first. By the 1980s, I saw very welcome traces of that paradigm (which never wiped out the idea that a woman ought to pleasure her partner). But I also witnessed the beginnings (or return?) of male sexual prerogatives that now culminate in my women students saying that men who are just friends sometimes pressure them out of the blue for a blow job. I mean, these are two platonic “friends,” they’re watching TV, there’s no real prelude involving kisses or caresses, and suddenly the dude is requesting or demanding a blowjob!
All of which makes me think that my youthful sexual adventures came at a very, very blessed moment in history.
Well, in terms of absolute
Submitted by Lynn Gazis-Sax (not verified) on Fri, 2010-03-05 22:42.Well, in terms of absolute numbers, rather than percentages, I’d think that a lot of people would have larger numbers of sexual encounters that were “bad” at least in terms of being more ordinary than earthshaking,had-a-headache sex or couldn’t-quite-get-off sex, in long-term relationships, simply because most sex happens in long-term relationships. And if you had really lousy casual sexual experiences, all the more reason that you’re less likely to have had a very high number of them.
On the other hand, most partners are short-term partners, so I’d expect, just purely in number terms, that the largest number of disappointing partners would be the casual ones.
On the other hand, “bad sex” is pretty ambiguous, and it’s entirely possible to, say, never have had “bad sex” in a LTR in the sense of sex that you wince to look back at. And if you’ve had only a single one-night stand that fit that category, you’d have, at least in that sense, more “bad sex” in casual relationships.
I would agree with the other
Submitted by schneewittchen (not verified) on Fri, 2010-03-05 13:48.I would agree with the other commentators that I have always found relationship sex better than non-relationship sex. But it is very interesting that your experience is the other way round, and that you communicate it in such a way that simply makes me think about the thought provoking aspects of it rather than feeling ‘told’ something. (I’m sorry, I can’t see how to put that without it sounding patronising and I really don’t mean it to be).
Hmmm, I’ve had a somewhat
Submitted by Eve (not verified) on Fri, 2010-03-05 18:58.Hmmm, I’ve had a somewhat different experience. In my limited experience it has divided down gender lines a bit, but that’s probably just coincidence. The couple of casual sexual encounters I’ve had with other women were extremely satisfying. The handful I’ve had with men ranged from mediocre to very disappointing (the majority). Those few disappointing one-nighters make up all of the worst (consensual) sex I’ve ever had. And the mediocre one is down there with them.
The sexual encounters I’ve had in committed relationships with men (there haven’t been any with women) have been fairly consistently wonderful (all of the best sex I’ve had has been in relationships, and there’s been a lot of it, yay!). There have been occasions where the sex was a little mediocre, but I don’t think I’ve had a single instance of sex in a relationship being as bad as any of the one-night-stands I’ve had with men.
The main difference I’ve noticed is that the people I’ve been in relationships with made an effort to please me every time, which works well when combined with familiarity, and we tended not to have sex unless both of us felt up to putting in that effort. (except one relationship that was frequently mediocre, but it was still better than the casual sex I’ve had with men) The guys I’ve had casual sex with tended to be less experienced, but they also didn’t try to go the extra distance to learn that my previously inexperienced boyfriends went, and they didn’t listen as well to what I wanted. The women I slept with casually were more experienced and put in more effort. Hardly my best sexual experiences ever, but certainly very good. However, the women I got to know a little bit over a week or two before having sex, the intention being casual sex, but checking to see if we clicked first, whereas the men didn’t want to get to know me first to see if we’d click.
I think you’re right that none of this can really be extrapolated into explaining anything, although it’s very interesting to think about. I think it’s just a collection of situations that arbitrarily line up one way for some people, the other way for other people, and don’t line up at all for other people. However, I feel I should mention I’m not going off a whole lot of personal experience here. I’m young; I’ve only been (consensually) sexually active for 5 years. I can still (barely) count on my fingers everyone I’ve had sex with (I’ve tended to be in long-term monogamous relationships most of my sexually active life).
The only thing I can really pull from all this is to have sex, casual or otherwise, with people who can connect with me as a person because they seem to put in more effort.
Interesting thought. I agree
Submitted by The Beautiful Kind (not verified) on Sat, 2010-03-06 03:35.Interesting thought. I agree with the idea that casual sex is hotter for men than women. Women need more time in general.
Definitely a case by case basis – if you match up well, if you have the same level of sex drive and share the same kinks, and are open minded and into two way giving, a long term sexual relationship is spectacular.
I want it all! Casual flings and long term, men and women. Life is good!
I know you said both in the
Submitted by chingona (not verified) on Sat, 2010-03-06 08:06.I know you said both in the OP and in your comments that you’re talking absolute numbers, but in the very beginning of the post, you wrote:
With first-time sex even with casual partners, even when one or both don’t come, you’re both generally highly attentive of each other, highly excited, and pretty darned interested. (If you weren’t both interested and excited one or both of you will tend to put it off till you were enthusiastic about it.) So the odds of dull, off, unpleasant, or just bad hookup/casual sex are relatively low.
“Generally” and “odds” aren’t quite the same at percentages, but they’re more in that camp than in the absolute numbers camp.
And I think what you’re hearing from some of the commenters is that even in one-night stand/short-term type situations, some men are not particularly attentive or interested (interested in the curious sense that you wrote about in your Scott Adams post the other day, not interested in the sense of wanting to have sex), and the odds of a dull or off or just bad encounter are not actually that low.
I’m sure you’re not and never have been that guy. But they’re out there.
And I’ll even be generous enough to assume they would be more attentive in general in their relationships/with their wives or girlfriends. Maybe they’ve absorbed the idea that women are so complicated that there’s no point even trying in a one-night stand. Maybe they were just feeling really selfish that night and felt okay acting on it because they wouldn’t have to face us in the morning or any other morning.
And like Sungold, I’ve had encounters that started with consent and ended with me feeling like an object. Some of them, when I remember them, still make me feel angry. One was far and away the worst sexual experience of my life, and I never talked to the guy again, though we’d been friends for years before it happened. So it stands out in my mind when thinking about this topic, while the mediocre/bad sex I’ve had in relationships, I can’t really remember, at least not the specific incidents. Like, I might remember the general problem that we had or that things took a bad turn during a certain period, but I don’t have specific incidents that still bother me years later.
So sure, absolute numbers, yeah, there’s probably more bad/not-great sex in relationships, but I can’t really summon any significance to attach to that. Like Sungold said, the percentages just matter so much more.
Yup. Exactly this. First time
Submitted by Plymouth (not verified) on Sat, 2010-03-06 17:20.Yup. Exactly this. First time sex is THE BEST. I was really addicted to it for a while. Sex with my long term partner is mostly pretty boring. I miss the new shiny. I miss it lots and lots and lots and lots. I utterly fail to comprehend the whole “sex gets better as you get closer” thing. It does not. Like, ok, maybe it gets better for the first couple of months as you learn about each other, but for a relationship measured in years there is WAY more time on the downhill side of the curve.
Thanks to everyone for the
Submitted by figleaf on Sat, 2010-03-06 19:27.Thanks to everyone for the pushback. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. What I had been thinking about was the… interesting argument that casual sex is harmful because it’s “vacant,” or “empty” or unfulfilling or unenjoyable — which could be entirely true except I wasn’t buying the implicit assumption that all in-relationship sex is good sex.
But if I wasn’t expecting the pushback it really forced me to try and articulate my basic definition of “good sex” and “bad sex.” Which I’ve done in it’s own post, above.
I’m more comfortable with my assertion if I put it that way (that for me first-time sex, while not always “good sex” has tended to be more… um… intentional, I guess, and certainly more well-intentioned than other times deeper into relationships when it’s sometimes (sometimes) seemed, say, taken for granted, resentful, one-sided, etc.
Anyway, thanks for the nudge everybody.
—fl