Sex and the City
Every few months I return to a feeling. A feeling of wanting to understand. To understand how I feel and how relationships work. For me to process this feeling, I turned to Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte.
Sex and the City made sex acceptable for women to want, talk about, and demand. It’s aspirational on the friendship level alone, but seeing all the different type of relationships the women have has helped me to see what type of love and relationships I want.
As a young person I wasn’t overly sexually active. Sure I enacted some scenes with my dolls, but I wasn’t allowing myself to truly explore sex. My mother has always been open with me, she had me as a teenager and so when I had questions, she answered them, hoping that if I ever got to that point I would prepared. Sex was never shunned, but for me it seemed like something I shouldn’t explore.
Adults and children are judgmental, and with having a young parent and being a Scorpio, I had friends telling me (jokingly, but still) that I was going to be pregnant as a teenager, and parents looked at me with my single mother with pity. I loved my situation and even though my mom eventually married, I didn’t see a need to marry.
But, seeing all these people looking at me, expecting me to fail and become a statistic ignited my subconscious, making me determined to not meet their expectation. I was stubborn and refused to explore dating at an early age (though I relished a celebrity and unattainable crush). I even told a boy in eighth grade that while my parents were okay with me dating, I wouldn’t want to date until I was at least sixteen.
My stubbornness must have sent out a pheromone because I didn’t kiss anyone until I graduated high school. I avoided any ideas of sex, though I did date a bit. When I was seventeen my mother asked me if I was gay because I hadn’t kissed anyone. I wasn’t and still am not a member of the LGBT community, but her asking me that made me realize that I had never thought that this was odd, and maybe it was.
Once I graduated high school and was away at college I did make out with more people and I lost my virginity my freshman year. It was as if that high school diploma became a checkmark for my subconscious to allowed me to explore my sexuality for the first time. I had two sexual partners in college, and after I graduated it was a few years before I had sex again since I was living at home and was more preoccupied with paying off my students loans than finding a relationship.
When I finally started dating after college, my partner asked me what I was interested in sexually and I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know. He was a few years older and had more experience, but we seemed to fit. I liked sex, our sex was pleasurable, but when he wanted things like mutual masterbation I was turned off. I had never masterbated so the idea of doing it sitting next to him was something I found obnoxious. Couldn’t we have just explored together to find out what made me tick?
The next romantic partner I had was a friend from college who I had connected with again through social media. I had decided to watch Sex and the City again and it inspired questions of, “Could I do a one night stand? Or if not a one night, a non-serious sexual experience for a few days?” We went on an all day date unintentionally and it was a lot of fun. I was glad that I had had some alcohol because it made me less nervous, and when sex was put on the table, I knew I wanted to have sex with him.
I was energized by the idea that I had sex after this date. He was kind and we laughed during and after. As we laid in the bed, he asked what I needed to orgasm. Again, I didn’t know. But I was beginning to believe that maybe I should.
Months later, when I moved out of my mother’s house I decided that it didn’t seem acceptable to not know what made me tick, so I watched the series again. Upon this rewatch I was inspired not by Samantha’s knowledge of her body, of being confident in asking what she wanted, but by Charlotte. She learned what she wanted through the series in both her relationships but also in her sexual experiences.
Sure she had sex with people, but it wasn’t until she was married that really came to terms with what she wanted. She fought to be seen as sexual, she would explore with her husband to find their interests, and after her divorce she realized that she needed a connection with someone who seemed imperfect, but encouraged her to not only discover what she wanted but to verbalize it as well.
With that in mind, I decided it was the year I would discover my orgasm. I read Cosmopolitan for recommendations, chose a vibrator that they recommended, I listened to music that made me relaxed, and would actually set aside time for the discovery. I’ve even listened to podcast to help. I know that there’s more to this process, but as a single woman in 2019 the revolutionary nature of Sex and the City hasn’t lessoned for me. It has been liberating to see these four characters grow and it’s so great to be able to use their growth to inspire my own.
