Anonymous asked: 63, 64, 84, 85?
63.) What is your definition of “having sex”?
There has to be some kind of contact involved with genitals or breasts or butts or any of those other “recognized as sex organs” things, but I suppose physically intimate nudity toes the line. You can also have sex through the phone or through text or through skype and it totally counts. Orgasms are not a requirement.
64. What is your definition of cheating?
This is a question I think about a lot for a variety of reasons.
I think for me, what it means for somebody to cheat on me is for them to engage in a taboo thing but then keep is secret from me for an extended period of time. Because people slip up, and if your relationship dictates “we only have sex with each other but kissing somebody else is okay” or “we only kiss and hold hands with each other, but with no one else,” things might happen. Rules can be broken, intentionally or not, and it’s important not to punish actions but intentions (in this case).
So if my partner sleeps with somebody else, for example, and we had already established (or heavily implied) that we would be monoamorous sexually, I want to know about it. And if they tell me a day or two later and express sincere concerns, I don’t think it’s my place to hold it against them. But if they approach me months later, it’s like… the secrecy is what actually hurts the most.
Of course, there will always be modifiers to this general rule. I don’t know what I would do if my partner ended up being engaged in something non-consensual, for example, but obviously that might be a case where it’s not their fault if they don’t feel safe approaching me. But even more of course, the whole concept of consent is something I also think about a lot, and I have a lot of thoughts about whether consent is even good enough. But that’s totally me getting sidetracked right now, so if you want to hear about it, that’s a different ask.
Anyways, my first ex asked out my best friend while we were dating and didn’t tell me about it until like a year and a half later after we weren’t even together anymore, and I was more pissed that I spent so long in a relationship with him not knowing than I was that he did it.
84.) Why did your last relationship fail?
When I first asked him out, my ex put a cap on the relationship at one year. Right around that mark, things started getting rocky as fuck. I think we were sort of anticipating something to happen (or at least I was) and it built tension. We were also under a lot of stress because of finals. He constantly made sure to remind me that it wasn’t a “serious” relationship, and I think that stifled a lot of things, too.
It was also like… I was in high school when we started dating and had just finished my first year of college when it ended. During that time, I became way more involved in social theory and started thinking seriously about my future. I also started using my preferred name and pronouns. And at the time, he was on a very self-discovering journey, and he was using the relationship to heal.
I thought he was perfect because he understood the two most important facets of my identity at the time: mental health and drum corps. But at the end of the day, that was all that we had in common. He didn’t use my name or pronouns, and we butted heads on practically every subject; he had a different vision of his adulthood than I did; we didn’t even have the same tastes in anything. So there’s also the fact that to some degree, the relationship was always a superficial farce.
85.) Would you ever date someone off of the Internet?
Yes. Although I might be a little cautious because I am a very disagreeable human and it takes a very special kind of
saintperson to put up with my nonsense, and somebody who only talks to me online probably wouldn’t know what they’re getting themselves into.
Also, not to be that person, but~ I don’t really want to lead anybody on. I do, in fact, have a boo from the interwebs!
