My dilemma involves a woman I’ve been friends with for about a year. We met through a mutual friend during a time when we had both recently broken up with long-term partners. However, I was immediately interested in her personally and also very physically attracted to her. That summer, we had (drunk) sex a few times. In a very direct manner, I expressed interest in dating her several times, but she indicated she wasn’t ready to start dating yet — or wasn’t interested in dating me. It wasn’t entirely clear.
In the year since we met, we’ve become good friends, and it’s a friendship I value greatly. Interestingly, our conversations have often revolved around the topics of dating, sex, really anything mutually titillating. Sometimes the focus of our conversations has seemed like a form of subtle flirtation; other times I think that’s just what we like to talk about. Needless to say, I hadn’t entirely given up on the idea of pursuing something more than a friendship with her, and I could tell it was at least somewhat mutual. So I wasn’t totally surprised when I went to meet her and some friends at a bar tonight, and we almost immediately started kissing. She sort of (again, drunkenly) challenged me on the status of our current friendship, indicating it was obvious that we should be sleeping together. But, lest another drunken one-night-stand confuse the friendship we’ve been pursuing, I let her friend take her home.
As I said, I genuinely value our friendship as it stands. I am also genuinely interested in being more than friends with her and I’m still not sure if her interest in me as something more than friends is just something she likes to entertain when she’s had a few drinks. She’s hot as hell, dynamite in bed, and her intellect and talent impresses me to no end. I don’t need to know right now that we’re meant to be girlfriends or anything, but I’m not interested in turning our friendship into a friendship with benefits. I’d like some assurance that it’s not a totally casual thing before I pursue a sexual or romantic involvement. How do I find out if she’s really interested in me as a person she could potentially date, or just seeking something fun for now? – Seriously For Real
Anna says: They say actions speak louder than words, but you know what speaks even louder than that? Drunks. And drunks can never be trusted, especially in matters of the heart, or any arguments involving the lyrics to Iron Butterfly’s “Inna Gada Davida.”
The most telling part of your letter is that the flirtation/sex only occur when booze is involved. You’ve been direct with her (more than once) and she responded in a wishy-washy way, which is, I’m sad to say, another way of saying “No thanks.”
Relationships are complicated, but they’re also sometimes far more simple than we like to admit. In your case, I would take her sober behavior to be more indicative of her feelings toward you, that of friendship. The fact that you talk about sex regularly is probably more a case of mutual comfort levels than anything lascivious. I mean, unless you’re, like, exchanging dirty texts and favorite porn sites or something.
I feel for you though. Friendships that involve sometimes-sex can get murky really quickly. Once certain boundaries are crossed, the potential for them to cross endlessly also arises, and you can never be sure if the changes in your relationship are a product of natural progression or simply one too many keg stands.
Also, such friendship+ situations basically thrive on mixed messages. The only way to confront the confusion is head on, with as much (gentle) honesty as possible. If you’re not into the idea of a friends-with-benefits situation, then tell her that. And make sure she is stone-cold sober when you do. Drunks have a tendency to forget important conversations while incapacitated. She might not even know what y’all discussed the last time you were together. If slippery boundaries aren’t doin’ it for you, then by all means, don’t allow them. Put the kibosh on drunken kisses or too “friendly” advances if that’s something you find frustrating or unacceptable.
One last thing, don’t take her hot-cold behavior as a reflection of your desirability. You are clearly a whipsmart, articulate gal who knows what she wants. Plus, you give good email. I’m sure legions of girls would be thrilled to drink you in without, you know, drinking you under the table.
When I was in high school, my default response to inquiries about my sexual orientation was that I was heterosexual or asexual. I found men to be good-looking, but I was never really interested in anyone, at all. I had a boyfriend for around a year and a half, but I considered him a friend more than anything.
I’ve learned a lot about myself since then and what I’ve come to realize this: I like who I like. Whenever I humored the idea of being in a relationship, I always thought about my significant other as a faceless person, not a man or a woman. So I guess my question is this: I’m not really sure what to call myself. I don’t want to label myself for the sake of others, it doesn’t really matter what they call me. Rather, I want some sort of clarity for myself. I’ve considered myself pansexual, and I truly believe that one’s personality is all that really matters for me to be attracted to them. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to date a woman or someone outside traditional gender binaries, but I don’t want to unless I find myself truly attracted to them.
I’m 19, so I’m still considered rather young, and it’s taken years for me to realize this, but I know in my heart that I’m attracted to something more than gender. Am I actually pansexual, or polysexual? Or am I just an open-minded person?
Anna says: A few years ago, I was at a party in Chicago, talking with a hot butch girl that I’d seen around plenty of times at parties and whatnot, but didn’t really know anything about. We got to talking about sex, naturally, and I ended up asking her how she identified. “Sex-positive,” she said, without hesitation. Not gay or bi or polysexual (I don’t even know what that means) or pansexual. Just sex-positive, as in no moral distinction, no label except that of openness. At first her answer really annoyed me. “That’s not an identity,” I scoffed to my then-girlfriend. “It’s an adjective.” But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed kind of brilliant. I feel the same way about your description: “I like who I like.” It’s apt, it’s precise, it’s grammatically sound — I see nothing at all wrong with using such a phrase to sum up one’s sexual proclivities.
In other words, sexuality encompasses far more than we could ever capture in a word, so why not instead embrace an idea of creation, of recognizing our potential, rather than our limitations. That’s sex-positivity. It’s also being human.
Lidia Yuknavitch, in an interview at the end of her memoir The Chronology of Water, put it this way:
The limits we put on our own sexual development and exploration are partly cultural scripts and partly our own hopes and fears playing out skin stories. In other words, sexuality is always undergoing transition – just like our bodies and minds and souls and energies – always in flux.
Remember that as you go about your days, looking for the faceless person you want to end up with. Labels are just words, just stories we tell ourselves. They can be comforting at times and restrictive at others, but the only power they have over us is the power we assign them.
You could ask ten different people to define “bisexuality” and I guarantee you’d get wildly different answers. Some days, I don’t even know how to define it, and I’ve been calling myself bi for years.
Our tendency to want to categorize is very normal; it’s how our brains make sense of information, how we process things. Like when we see an androgynous-looking person on the street, we almost immediately think, “Is that a boy or girl?” We look again, we take in visual cues, hair, posture, wardrobe. Trying to piece together a gender identity even though it doesn’t matter at all. (Unless that cute butch girl you’re eyeing is actually a twelve-year-old boy. Then it matters, and you should abort that mission post-haste.)
It’s very difficult to sit in the stillness of uncertainty. In fact, it’s something we have to force ourselves to unlearn. So when you ask yourself things like, “Am I pansexual or asexual or genderflexible or whatever,” turn those questions around, and ask yourself instead to accept the non-knowing. There’s great power in not knowing, some might say the greatest. It doesn’t mean ignorance, or tuning out, or losing your self-awareness. It simply means finding joy, not anxiety, in life’s inconsistencies and mysteries and WTF-ness.
You’re only 19, and you’ve already done a great deal of work finding out who you are, and what you desire. That’s fantastic. Don’t lose that — keep pushing yourself. And know that sexuality is just one chapter in this messy lifelong narrative. It doesn’t need a title, just living.
Hailing from the rough-and-tumble deserts of southern Arizona, where one doesn’t have to bother with such trivialities as “coats” or “daylight savings time,” Anna Pulley is a professional tweeter/blogger for Mother Jones and a freelance writer living in San Francisco. Find her at annapulley.com and on Twitter @annapulley. Send her your Hook Up questions at [email protected].
