Why I quit casual sex
When addiction met my attachment wound.
I just got back from therapy after discussing my brief stint with casual sex. I feel like the clown emoji — big, creepy smile and crazy eyes that, like my friend so aptly put, "don't lead anywhere good."
I was on the dating apps for two months. Thrilling! Until I found myself in a non-consensual assault-adjacent situation (that ol' "grey area" again), and needing EDMR to forget the tale.
Now I’m in acute oxytocin drop, eating leftover curry a man resentfully bought to appease my misplaced expectations, with an activated attachment wound, wondering how I’m here again 20 years later.
Because this is the same feeling I felt after seeing a guy I met on the bus when I was 14. He picked me up in his ute and took me to remote locations, and we'd both get high and hook up on the bonnet of his car.
Fun! Adventurous! Wild!
… until it wasn't.
After lapping up the dregs of feigned intimacy dolled out like crumbled ecstasy pills (I would replace him with these later), I would soon be in withdrawal, coming down and riddled with self-doubt. I’d be tortured with thoughts about whether he liked me or not, whether I was good enough, and wondering when I’d hear from him again.
This high-and-low hell train took up most of my adolescence — 5 years! I wasted many, many hours on this boy, and even his friends shook their heads and wondered why I kept going back for more.
So here I am again. And I don't know what's more disappointing, that I'm sitting here feeling broken and deleting apps I'm not Cool Girl enough to handle or researching attachment theory while sipping water out of a Frank Green bottle?
Neither. It's that I ate the goddamn curry.
But this is not about the resentful curry guy or the boy on the bus, or even the predator lurking on dating apps waiting for sexually adventurous women. It's never about the guy.
Because let's face it. Once it's over and the shine is off, the shine you gave them, there's always someone else. Another man who seems wonderful, and you decide is magic, who fills you up and makes you feel complete… for a minute.
But if it's not about the guy, then what is it about? Why do I feel like absolute shit, again? This is what I'm trying to figure out — nothing like over-intellectualising to distract myself from the ache. But that's how I roll. I write myself out of feelings, or at least I try.
I guess I'll start at the beginning, the recent beginning. After two failed relationships with unavailable men, I decided to take a break from dating. It lasted almost six months before I wondered why I couldn't have some fun. I won't do the relationship thing, I'll just have sex with no attachment, I thought — what a great idea!
I was curious, then excited, then fucking high. Male validation felt so goddamn good, so good that all I could think about was that lusty, euphoric midweek treat. It was like mainlining the most potent drug. I was dangerously intoxicated, then withdrawing and feeling increasingly insecure.
I had the inkling something was wrong early on like maybe this was the latest parade of Red Flags, or perhaps just another Shiny New Thing. The stuff I use to fill the emptiness, things that make me feel good when I feel bad — food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, etc. — then make me feel much, much worse shortly afterwards.
I know enough to know it's not the thing that is the problem because I've tried all the things and none of them work, at least not forever. My eating disorder has probably been the most effective because it has worked for me for over 30 years. When I say “work”, I mean it's allowed me to dull pain without derailing my life in a matter of months. See, an ED is incredibly malleable, morphing into new and "interesting" manifestations. Am I bingeing ice cream or doing triple Pilates classes? Take your pick! Same damn shit.
When it came to booze, I was lucky. I was only in active addiction for 2-3 years before I reached "rock bottom". I invited a guy I was seeing over during a 12-hour blackout. I said a lot of shit, apparently. Of course, he dumped me (I still buy his granola. It's the perfect smoothie topper, okay), and I don't blame him. I was a mess.
Now, this wasn't the first time I blacked out or did things I can't remember, but this time it hit differently. The shame, guilt and remorse were so intense I almost couldn't live with myself, and I drank the next day to ease the pain.
But the alcohol was easier to quit. When I say easy, I mean you can quit alcohol and not have to drink again. But the other stuff? Well, they're more tricky because even if you stop wandering down dodgy back alleys looking for trouble, you're still one dick or doughnut away from hopelessness and despair.
This time it was dick. And frankly, this surprised me. Sex seems harmless. It isn’t wine or drugs, or even the internet. It's just a connection with another human being, and connection is healthy, right? Healthy. Normal. Good.
In Chasing the Scream, Johan Hari agrees, writing that the opposite of addiction is connection. Sure, physical dependency plays a part, but the environment we're in and our ability to form connections will reduce our likelihood of acting out.
The importance of social connection in addiction can be seen in the famous Rat Park experiment. In the experiment, psychologist Bruce Alexander built two rat environments — one cage was small and isolated, and the second cage, Rat Park, was rat heaven, with food, toys, and social interaction with other rats.
Both sets of rats could choose between plain water and water laced with morphine. And guess what? It wasn't long before the rats in the isolated cages overdosed. The rats in Rat Park? They were too busy having a grand ol' time playing and engaging with each other to worry about the drug water.
I thought I was loving life in my fun, dick-decorated cage. I wasn't sucking heroin water. I was playing with other rats, right? But I must've known something wasn't exactly healthy because, in between my little "liaisons", I started reading about attachment theory.
Attachment theory, coined by psychiatrist John Bowlby in 1958, refers to the emotional bond one forms in early childhood with primary caregivers. Children need to feel a sense of safety, security, and comfort to form healthy bonds, and if they don't? They may develop attachment trauma, which creates destructive patterns later in life.
There are four attachment styles — anxious, avoidant, disorganised and secure (and yeah, the secure people are the healthy people — fuck you guys!). You can find out your attachment style here.
Anxiously attached people, like me, are hyper-sensitive. We crave closeness and intimacy and need a lot of reassurance. We also have a fear of abandonment, among other things (Bummed you're anxiously attached? Watch this video by Therapy Jeff. He says anxiously attached people are the best in bed lol).
Unfortunately, anxiously attached people are often attracted to emotionally unavailable people, aka avoidants. These relationships feel exciting, all-consuming, and goddamn delicious at first, but they're bad news bear. We mistake the highs and lows for passion and the intoxication for love when really we're not getting our needs met.
And, by God, do I mistake highs and lows for passion! As soon as I get a taste of validation from an unavailable person, I'm like one of the rats in the shitty cage – sucking on heroin water like my life depends on it… until my heart hurts and I'm asking for advice from Reddit in the middle of the night.
So is this why I ended up washing sad curry down with water from a Frank Green bottle I bought with questionable motives while checking men out in another recovery group? Because I'm an addict with an attachment wound? How uncool!
If the antidote to addiction is connection, and connection is fraught for anxiously attached people, then casual sex may not have been my greatest idea. The validation supply is unreliable – there just ain’t enough heroin water to satisfy me! It’s not long until the fear of abandonment sets in, and it's downhill from there.
So what to do? Throw out the curry along with my dignity. Send a cease-and-desist to my latest obsession (he seemed shiny, but he was really just unavailable and possibly avoidant — yummy!). Fashion a better cage and connect with emotionally available rats (boring!). And, of course, delete the goddamn apps!
Then wait for the emptiness to emerge and a soft whisper that mimics a David Berman verse, "If no one's fond of fucking me. Maybe no one's fucking fond of me." But that's just my attachment wound speaking, right? Right?
What was it like when I was high? Read about it here.
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Wow..wow…wow. Moving and exhilarating.