What I Wish I Knew Before Having Sex

If you have ever had casual sex you know there are varied emotions that proceed and follow it. Here is my experience with it and how I felt after.

Casual sex is fun while you’re doing it, but there’s a lot of emotional baggage that goes along with it. I’ve found that casual sex is not as fun as we’ve been told and sexual liberation is just a different form of prison for women. You don’t have to agree with me but if you’ve felt any of these five things after a sexual encounter you are not alone.

Having casual sex with a stranger isn’t like it is in the movies

I was twenty-one when I had my first time with a guy I met on Tinder. The highs were blissful and the lows were devastating. To this day I don’t really know who he is with his clothes on and my choice haunts me.

Sex isn’t beautiful when you don’t know the person, and my self-esteem was in the toilet after every time we had sex. I felt like I should keep seeing him because he was my first but in the end, I realized that I was better off putting my mistakes in the past.

I regret it

I waited a long time to have sex because I wanted it to be someone who I truly cared for. But in my elation to be out of my parent’s house I let myself be taken with the idea of leaving my virginity behind.

Immediately afterward I was blissfully happy at feeling wanted and desired. The negative feelings came later when he made it clear we would never be anything more than sexual partners.

I felt attached

Even though I knew he didn’t want anything more than casual sex, I nonetheless developed feelings for my first time. After we had been on a long break from seeing each other and he reached out, I revealed my feelings with the note that I’d rather not see him anymore.

His response was strange to me because he said “That’s ok but we can keep hooking up” as though he hadn’t heard me and that is when things began getting emotionally abusive. I still feel some degree of attachment because he was my first time but I have learned that his presence in my life is toxic to me.

Feelings of loneliness and depression

I began feeling lonely and depressed even when I was among friends. I went on dates trying to forget about him, but nothing worked. The days after we met up I would get some relief from my negative emotions but the reprieve didn’t last long. After two years of back and forth, I finally escaped the situation but the damage has yet to be fully eradicated.

I began to wonder if anyone would ever love me

The shame and guilt I felt when all was said and done have been in part due to my desire to form a lasting relationship. The question of whether I deserve one after the things I’ve done festers inside me and when yet another relationship fails the question comes to the fore.

I still have hope that someone will eventually come along that wants to stay and when that time comes I will be ready for him. Until then I am working to improve my self-esteem so that I will be deserving of a good man.

Final thoughts

My feelings toward casual sex are my own and not meant to slut shame, anyone. Some people are mentally developed enough to handle the psychological effects of casual sex but I am not.

I hope that my teenage cousin has the good sense to wait until she is in a committed relationship to give herself to someone to avoid the damage I have endured. But in the end, it is up to each and every woman to decide what she does with her body.