Originally published by Ladybud Magazine

Everyone knows the fastest way to get over a relationship gone wrong is to fuck someone else. Exes leave greasy fingerprints on your psyche that can only be wiped clean by a fresh lay. I went through a pretty bad breakup about a year ago and knew I needed to redefine sex to not involve my ex anymore– so I had sex with his best friend. Unfortunately, while banging your ex’s best friend is satisfyingly sadistic and slightly incestuous, it doesn’t work to clear the sexual psyche the way sex with a stranger does.

Because when you get in the habit of fucking the same person over and over again, especially one you live with or are married to, the sex can get pretty routine. With strangers you never know if they are going to try to slip a finger in your ass, or like most older gentlemen I know, decide they would rather eat pussy for hours on end.

While sexual routine clearly isn’t the only reason to partner up, it is definitely a good one. One night stands and (some) bizarre sexual deviance can just get exhausting sometimes.

I have had more one-night stands than I care to count. I have sucked dick on the river Seine in Paris, been pounded in the back of a coke dealer’s limo, in a hotel room next to a passed out friend of the Norwegian-speaking guy I was sleeping with and conspicuously inside cars in a ridiculous variety of places—cemeteries, churches, industrial parks, a residential neighborhood. The more anonymous the person the oftentimes stranger the sex was.

Although it’s not the strangest, the most annoying would have to be the guy who painstakingly narrated his every move. He let me know when he was taking off my clothes, his clothes, when he was getting hard, that he was going to touch my vagina… when he finally got in he asked, “Do you like that, girl? Like the way that feels?”

“I’d like it if you shut up!” I said. Cruel? No. Not when the guy is ridiculously hotand they know it. The combination almost always makes for grade-A douchebag. Never sleep with anyone obsessed with their own hotness, they are useless in bed. Besides, learning to read someone’s reaction is a valuable life skill, especially when you have a hot DTF girl in bed. Wrap it up and shut the fuck up.

“Never sleep with anyone obsessed with their own hotness, they are useless in bed.”

Then there was the guy who not only pulled out when he was going to cum, but jumped up on the bed and sprayed his semen on me like a fire hose. I couldn’t help but think there was a deprecating nature to his splooging all over my confused face and naked body and needless to say, never answered another call from him.

See, exhausting. Just exhausting. That’s why it’s so easy to get in a relationship and stay in it. Or keep getting back in the same damaging ones over and over again even though you know they are no good. A partner can hit you, call you names, neglect you or depress you, but they are the problems you already know, like hearing the same bad song on the radio so many times you start singing along and telling your friends “turn this up, I love this one!” You hate that song, that song isterrible. Previously chartered territory is always safe. When you travel the same road every day you know all the pit stops, the turns, the potholes. It’s the same reason the majority of us settle for jobs we hate or marriages with people we are only mildly interested in. There is a comfort in complacency. Sex with new people can be terrifying because it’s hard to please someone you don’t know. It’s hard to be vulnerable for the first time and actually have good sex with strangers—especially the ones with bizarre sexual habits.

“A partner can hit you, call you names, neglect you or depress you, but they are the problems you already know, like hearing the same bad song on the radio so many times you start singing along and telling your friends “turn this up, I love this one!” You hate that song, that song is terrible.”

After my last breakup my close girl friend finally talked me into starting an online dating profile on OKCupid. I deleted it within a month. Either people were graphically detailed in their sexual desires or graphically intimate with all of their flaws—as if outlining the things they think you will eventually discover you hate about them will somehow draw you in.

It also just felt inorganic to me, like I was grocery shopping for dick the way I would stroll casually through my local co-op reading the labels on pro-biotic yogurt or grape seed oil mayonnaise. 

What it all boils down to is desperation is unattractive. Any woman can find someone to have sex with in a heartbeat if she lowers her standards. But we have to know we are better than that. I am sick and tired of seeing so many people so desperate to have a partner that they forget that the most attractive quality in anyone else is always confidence, looks are secondary. If you love yourself you become infinitely more attractive to others. When you stop looking you will find what you need.