wispfox

There is a post bubbling away beneath the surface of my thoughts which may or may not manage to come out in this post, as a result of the combination of metahacker's post on cuddling and affection with friends-who-are-not-necessarily-lovers, and figmentj's post on dating when not seen as an audition.

It took me a very long time to understand that, for most people, and in the context of typical societal norms, cuddling was assumed to be sexual. Touch at all - beyond a handshake - was assumed to be an expression of sexual interest.

An additional difficulty with wrapping my head around this concept is that my line between finding someone interesting and wanting to seek them out and spend more time with them, and being sexually attracted to them is very thin. And, people who I find interesting enough to actively seek out are people I would like to cuddle, and there is probably at least some amount of sexual attraction there. It's not quite true that everyone that I'm close to and seek out and am cuddly with is also someone that I have some sexual attraction to, but it's very close.

But having that attraction does not mean that I - or they - have time, energy, sufficient levels of attraction, or even necessarily are aware of it. So, for me, cuddling is _not_ automatically a sexual thing - and has never been - and the idea of there always being a sexual aspect to touch and cuddling is a hard one for me to grasp. However, it does seem true that, at some level at least, whatever nebulous concepts sexual attraction contains is frequently involved in whose touch I seek out.

Also in whose touch I am not comfortable with. If there is any level of sexual content in cuddling for another person and I am not interested in going there, I will not be comfortable cuddling them. This does not even need to mean that they are aware of said context, so I am not entirely sure how I can tell, sometimes. If I can't tell, I will tend to err on the side of caution, so if I can't read a person, I will generally not touch them. Too much cultural baggage tied up in touch, especially cross-gender. This was a very, very hard-learned lesson.

The frsutrating part about this, though, is that I do still find myself hugging people, sometimes, because the social costs of not doing so are more than I can handle right now. This frustrates me when I do it, and is usually a good sign I'm not actually up to group social interactions.

So many things meant by 'attraction', even 'sexual attraction'. So much tangled up in that concept, and the related concepts of the process of sexual entanglement and dating.

Why does [edited to add: anyone believe that] it need[s] to be true that touch and cuddling are completely unrelated to attraction in order for them to be non-sexual? Attraction may often, and possibly usually, contain sexual desire, but that isn't the only thing in there. That isn't the only possible context for touch between adults! Including adults who _are_ sexually involved with each other.

Via mactavish, ladytabitha, and ratatosk, a post by vito_excalibur, "No, I did not bring enough vaginas for everybody."

This post also links to, among other things, It’s that whole “‘no’ means ‘no,’ but we’re not going to teach you what a ‘yes’ is for fear that you’ll actually have sex” issue.

[edit because I didn't mean to post this as early as I accidentally did]

Yeah. There's more bloody lines than just "will have PIV sex" or "won't have PIV sex"!

And, I note, I had lingering bits of this excessive black-and-whiteness in my head at least as recently as '02-'03. Probably still picking bits of this out of my psyche. I knew, intellectually, that it was wrong, that there was more granularity, that it was ok to just want to kiss or make out or whatever. But I didn't know/understand/comprehend/_feel_ where I wanted my boundaries to be, or where they should be, or where I needed them to be. That's part of what I was trying to figure out during my self-enforced period of singlehood from '02 to '03, you see. Still firming it up, mind, but that was a significant part of my intensly internally-focused exploration.

And it's interesting to note, at least in my experience, that it's an awful lot harder to be verbal about sex, safer sex, and where one wants to go, if one doesn't know where one's boundaries lie. Probably partly because it's harder to tell when one should speak up!