AN ARM'S LENGTH: AN ANALYSIS AND BREAKDOWN OF LUCY'S SEXUALITY AND RELATIONSHIP HABITS. CONTENT WARNINGS ARE AS FOLLOWS — MENTIONS OF SEX / MASTURBATION, MALADAPTIVE COPING MECHANISMS, AND VAGUE REFERENCES TO TRAUMA.
lucy’s relationship with her sexuality is a difficult subject. while she, like anyone else, has wants, desires, and needs, she’s also someone who is extremely avoidant and fearful when it comes to emotional (or even long term) connections. lucy tends to be someone who runs away from anything the minute she feels that it’s becoming too personal, or doesn’t even give it the opportunity to go towards that trajectory. for that reason, a majority of lucy’s connections are one night stands or brief encounters. seeing as she moves from place to place fairly often, never settling down or staying long, there’s a plethora of other reasons and difficulties that she’d run into if attempting to pursue a connection — however, the primary and sole reason that things never develop is because she, simply, does not want them to.
lucy functions to extremes when she is avoiding connection. one night stands get fake names, fake phone numbers, and due to her struggling with setting boundaries, they tend to get some sort of false promise as well. she will tell individuals that she will call them, that she’ll try to get together with them soon, et cetera, all while knowing that everything she’s given them will lead them nowhere. she doesn’t feel any sort of guilt or remorse for that, either, as she believes that it isn’t a massive difference and that a one night stand could never truly be all that special to get hung up on, regardless.
in the case of her one night stands, even the progression towards them is fairly difficult. lucy struggles with understanding how to flirt (due to a lack of experience in developing relationships) and feels fairly awkward about “being sexy.” she doesn’t tend to seek people out, but because of the places she frequents (dive bars, pool halls, et cetera), she will and has ended up with brief encounters all the same. once someone does approach her, however, it’s almost an 100% chance that she’ll end up with that person for the night. not because lucy has no standard or preference, but more so because she struggles to say no and set boundaries if she isn’t interested. often times, lucy will fall into encounters simply on the basis that she doesn’t know how to draw a line or refuse someone. her struggle in being able to stand up for herself is centric around non-platonic connections, and becomes emphasized the most with strangers she doesn’t feel any sort of comfort, security, or safety in.
this isn’t to say that lucy doesn’t enjoy her connections, or that she’s uninterested in sex itself, though. lucy leans hypersexual, being someone who masturbates frequently (as well as consumes a very unwell amount of hardcore porn), and engages in sex regularly for her own benefit and want. regardless of that, though, lucy is simultaneously someone who struggles to orgasm in the bedroom. when masturbating, she doesn’t tend to struggle at all, but when with another person (specifically in the vein of short term connections) she often, if not always, is someone who walks away without orgasming. she tends to fake it about 90% of the time, especially if the basis of the sex is penatrative, which both comes from “signaling” the sex is over, but also from an inability and struggle to not perform for the other person to some extent. it draws back to her struggles in setting boundaries, feeling as if she cannot be honest or truthful because it won’t be regarded as acceptable or, in the case of rejection, enough.
because a majority of her experiences have been one night stands, lucy’s understanding of foreplay and even what she (realistically) enjoys is fairly minimal. most, if not all, of her experiences in sex have been basic, run of the mill cis-heteronormative sex that centers around penetration. she hasn’t explored a lot of her pleasure with another individual, most of the time only exploring her pleasure privately and with herself. this, in some way, is another boundary of disconnection. lucy tends to fracture the sense of intimacy through these means of dishonesty or lack of attention towards herself, placing everyone at an arm’s length just by proxy of the fact that she isn’t allowing her real self to show up to begin with.
due to the fact that her experiences have been so incredibly cis-heteronormative, it’s important to mention that lucy, regardless of her bisexuality, has never been with another woman. she daydreams about them, admires them from afar, and watches lesbian porn in increasing frequencies, but she’s never actually had an experience due to both how she operates (i.e: letting other people approach her first), and due to her internal struggles with the feelings themselves.
in a realistic and true sense, lucy needs long term connection to be able to feel safe and secure enough both in the relationship itself and her body. she needs someone who she can consistently learn her body with (as well as them learning hers), and begin to understand how to establish certain truths in the bedroom. she needs someone she feels comfortable enough with to say that something doesn’t feel good, that it does feel good, or even that she isn’t feeling anything at all. lucy’s means of connection (i.e: one night stands) are unrealistic for a survivor like her. they don’t foster the type of intimacy that she truly needs to be able to enjoy sex to the fullest. this isn’t to say that lucy doesn’t enjoy her current encounters to some extent (as she does feel pleasure even if she doesn’t orgasm) but more to say that the method she uses to navigate her relationships isn’t one that allows her to show up in the bedroom in a real way.
on the topic of relationships, everything mirrors the above. lucy needs long term, committed connection to be able to slowly (but surely) reveal things about herself, open up about the simplest of things, and become comfortable and safe enough to establish herself as a person in the relationship, no matter what that means. short term or brief connections leave an enabling factor that puts her in a position of never feeling the need, want, or pressure (which she needs) to start sharing emotional intimacy.
emotional intimacy is, truthfully, the key thing in lucy’s life that she’s missing. lucy is someone who has survived a very specific kind of relational trauma, and while she believes that keeping everyone at an arm’s length is something that keeps her safe, all it does is stagnate her ability to address, process, and overcome certain elements of her past and life. she’s never been on a date, she’s never had a relationship, she’s never experienced the trial and error / argument and repair of what it means for a relationship to exist in the long-term. because of this, a lot of her ability to move through relationships in a progressive way (not even healthy, but progressive) is stunted in the beginning of dynamics. depending on how the other character proceeds, the development shapes from there, but if she’s only to engage in one night stands, then that process never truly starts.
healthy relationships are built off a basis of growth, emotional intimacy, and equity. lucy proceeds in her life in the complete opposites. she avoids anything longer than a night, not sharing anything that touches close to her heart, and then, by proxy, creates an imbalance in the relationship right from the beginning. the reality of what lucy has survived means that while she may think she’s interested in brief encounters, hardcore sex, and living in a perpetual whirlwind one-night-only state, what she really needs (or, rather, what her nervous system needs) to achieve something beneficial is long term connections that foster an environment that her body and mind can acclimate to, and eventually feel safe / secure in. what lucy believes to be pleasure is just familiarity. what she believes to be safety are just protective measures.
