This is the MOST important question Lara Sterling
When what feels like a beautiful, shared experience to me is reduced to a commodity transaction, it breaks my heart.
My wife once complained to me, “I feel like you’re just using me for sex.”
I said, “OK. I will fix that. Whenever I want to just use someone for sex, I’ll find someone else.”
She answered, “That’s not what I meant!”
Yeah… we were married with three kids at the time. Her feelings about being used made no sense. I got the impression she was reacting to stuff her girlfriends had told her, and was thinking she might withhold sex to try and extract some kind of concessions from me.
I hated it, and we’re divorced now.
More recently, when a Lover I care(d) very much about said close to the same thing… something like, “How do I know you’re not using me just for sex?” it messed with my head.
I pulled away.
I found sex with someone else, who was explicit about wanting sex with me, instead of bargaining for it.
That experience taught me how dangerous it is for me to be in transactional, sexual relationships. My emotional resilience is not strong enough to handle it.
One of the cognitive bias traps that I think many women fall in to is “all of nothing” thinking.
Sometimes women will hear a story from their girlfriends about “giving away” the sex and not getting enough in return. They start imagining that they should go on some kind of a sex strike, in an effort to extort commitment, because they can’t imagine that their lives are also better with the sex they’re having, and that real commitment can’t be coerced.
Lots of women know this, but when their fears keep the best of them, they are subject to the kinds of cognitive biases that will distort their thinking and cause them to make choices that leave everyone worse off.
It’s a form of sex shaming, and it makes me sad.
