Sex is a universe.
The ancient Muslims knew this. I mean the ancient-ancients, those that existed pre-western colonization and our current moment of Wahabism, the ones who wrote detailed pamphlets on queer sex, on how to bottom correctly and how to be a considerate top. The ones who prescribed having sex multiple times a day & knew that pleasure was the key to our life unfolding & opening beautifully, the ones that knew that pleasure had to be present for all involved or else a jinn was present, taking. And that sex can’t be based in selfishness, otherwise it’s so easily corrupted.
I’ve begun to reorient myself around sex as asking myself; is this someone who I would want to share a universe with? Is this someone I would want to build a world—a private, sacred world—with, where we can slowly over time build trust and understanding.
At times, I’ve gotten hung up on the word ‘sacred’ there. I do believe sex is sacred. That being said, I believe you can have sacred encounters with multiple people, and that sacred-ness can occur with people who are in your life only briefly, provided that you both see each other as human, as complex, as worthy of pleasure, care and desire. And this is all provided that the rules and boundaries that all people involved are honored, that there is mutual respect and listening, and ethical engagement. To try and see a person’s wholeness is actually not that complicated—you don’t need to know every detail about them to see that, you just have to understand that they are as complex as you are complex, that they have a full life that exited beyond and outside of you, that they have traumas and joys and secrets and pain points and that you might never know them fully in the same way that they might never know you fully. That being with you might bring out another side to them, and this side, this dynamic that exists between you two is the relationship that needs tending. They are on their path of growth, as are you, and for a moment you are linked up, choosing to be with each other, choosing to build, as long as you can support each other’s growth at the same time as you can support yourself.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of safety in sex, and containers. Safety—like so many things—is an illusion, and when we choose to have sex—and kink specifically— we engage in being at the edge of safety, moving into a space where we can’t always control what can happen. (hot). Recently, my friend told me the phrase ‘risk-informed consent’ which wasn’t something that I had heard before, but contextualized it as entering a situation knowing that you might not be able to control what happens, but entering with the trust that your partner can hold you if something happens, and the trust that you can talk through conversations about sex and consent in a way that feels good. I’ve definitely had experiences in kink where something sticky around consent has come up and a partner has been able to hold it well—that actually transformed the experience to being one where we could both learn, grow closer and move with more intention and more risk. I’ve also had the experience where something has happened and a partner has not been able to hold it well—that ended up creating a breach of safety, dissolution of trust, and struggle. I think what’s important for me too, is knowing that both partners are deeply responsible for the container, for the conversations and actions afterwards, and for meeting each other in a space of vulnerability to actually talk through what has happened.
In my twenties, I used to be someone who really heavily identified as polyamorous, it was an identity that I really clung to. During quarantine I had a real change in that, when I realized that a lot of the ideas of ‘non-hierarchical polyamory’ actually deeply went out the window when folks were worried about safety and health, and it actually because really clear—and almost innate—who people prioritized. In quarantine I also was doing a lot of deep childhood and early twenties therapy and processing, and starting to realize that I had a sticky link with identifying as polyamorous and the ways that I had been groomed as a young person to actually think that being polyamorous made me more sexually desirable, and that I was actually often acting on an impulse that wasn’t authentically mine, but had been engrained there because of grooming and issues with desirability. I also have had many traumatic encounters with polyamory where people don’t practice ethically, and where they actually just use polyamory as a way to behave deeply irresponsibly and to break boundaries and cheat and not take accountability.
My good moments with polyamory have made me realize how much polyamory has allowed me to dip into understanding people better, to create relationships that honor the rules of what people actually want rather than defaulting to ideas of what society tells us a relationship is, and to feel, what I think is one of the best feelings ever—compersion (happiness at what your partner experiences even if it doesn’t involve you).
My bad moments with polyamory have often made me confront illusions in relationships, and see where people are willing to disrespect a relationship, boundaries and rules rather than honor them. It also has shown me when there are still implicit assumptions being made, or have to confront where I feel uncomfortable when I see someone’s attachment or love style (ie, seeing someone love bombing someone, or moving too fast). When boundaries in polyamory are deliberately ignored or crossed, it is a deeply acute form of cheating and betrayal, because it actually shows that a partner is willing to disrespect conversations in which rules were outlined in order for their own momentary pleasure. It’s made me see when folks are comfortable holding up rhetoric rather than action, which is deeply manipulative. And that feels devastating, because it feels like the container that you were deliberately creating with someone has been deeply shattered.
And ultimately, it moves sex and relationships from a sacred place, to a place of disrespect. And not fun, kinky disrespect, but actual disrespect. I’ve seen polyamory be deeply corrupted by selfishness, where the desires of one partner outweigh the container of the relationship. And that is deeply sad and heartbreaking.
Recently, I asked a friend who is in a polyamorous relationship if they identified as poly. They said no, that they actually could see themselves wanting and in a monogamous relationship with a different person, but with the person they were with at the moment they felt like polyamory was really good in their relationship, and allowed them both to thrive.
Ultimately, what I heard in my friend’s answer, was it was about meeting the relationship where it was at, cultivating safety for both of them, and allowing what felt organic and good in the relationship structure to be able to hold that relationship. I think that’s what feels good to me too—not identifying as ‘polyamorous’ or ‘monogamous’ but seeing what the specific relationship needs, and if that safety can be cultivated, honored, and upheld by both partners.
In the same way that, for me, sex has to be this too—a universe you choose to build with someone else, a universe that’s threaded with trust, conversation, sharing yourself, and choosing to move into the unknown together.