Spin the bottle in your 20s?

Spin the bottle in your 20s? [+ favourites]

Dear Eva,

I recently had a very bazar conversation with a friend. We were discussing my lack of experience in sex and indeed any sort of erotic activity with the opposite sex. I should mention that I am a man in my early 20s. The gist of the conversation was that I was lamenting that I had never had the opportunity to explore these aspects of life through the sorts of mediums most people do. That is the sort of juvenile experiences and cavorting young teens may do. Spin the bottle, 7 minuets in heaven, that sort of thing. Aside from the fact that I have never found the notion of promiscuity to be terribly attractive I still find the opposed sex as attractive as any man.

Now I mentioned to this friend that I found the prospect of engaging in such games appealing to this day. Her immediate response was that only young teens played such games and would I want to play with young teens. I replied that the notion of doing such things with young teens did not disturb me personally provided they were physically mature. (I certainly agree that the notion of doing such things with young teens who are clearly physically immature (as some are) would be disturbing) Now I did not say it was my intent to seek out young teens for such things or that I had any special interest in young teens, simply that I wanted to have the opportunity to enjoy such activities as explorations. Such activities could in principal take place between much older people. As you might imagine there was a long and heated conversation.

Now the point I would like some advise upon is not the relative morality of kissing young teens etc. This is not really even on the cards to the best of my knowledge and I have my own views up on it. It is on my attraction to such activities I would like you to advise me up on. Do you think it is healthy for me to find such activities alluring, to regret having missed out of them and to have a hankering for them to this day? Even if it is healthy it doesn’t presuppose they have a healthy out working. What do you suppose I should do with this peculiar desire? It is by no means a burning passion that haunts me day and night but it is not a passing fancy either.

many thanks
never been kissed guy

Dear NBKG,

The most important question you should ask yourself to determine whether such interests are healthy is why you desire them.

So, why do you desire them? And remember, ask yourself this question honestly. Don't attempt to answer it correctly.

Eva

I suppose it’s a yearning for excitement mixed with curiosity. It’s the kind of thing I wanted to do at the time, at that age, but was to scared to express my desire to and had no opportunity to at the time. I suppose that same curiosity remains as intense as ever but the fear has dissipated. The aspect I feel the need to explore is the experience of exploring sexuality on that very juvenile level. The issues if I tried to do the adult equivalent I run in to one of 2 problems. One I end up operating on a romantic level or rather the other party believes we are or hopes we will become so. On the other hand I might end up with a girl who is simply interested in casual sex and sees such activity as naturally and inevitably leading to it. I’ve said before, “the immature person sees sexuality as some consumer product he wants to indulge in where as to the juvenile it’s something exciting and new he wants to find out about.” If I explore kissing and alike with people who have already done this exploration they would not understand that I am not looking to satiate my sexuality but explore it. They would likely want me to respond with in the frame works and norms of what is generally referred to as ‘pulling’ and ‘dating’. That’s not what I want. I want the trembling of hands and the mutual excitement of not being entirely sure as to where things are going or how things will be. I want to know what it feels like to have blood rushing between my ears and adrenaline in my veins but at the same time feel exited and elated afterwards rather than tacky and dirty. I want to have experiences that enrich me with out the guilty hang over. I want to have affection from other human beings and to feel I have made a connection but with out feeling I’ve prostituted my self. When you explore something for the 1st time with others it does to some degree bring you together. I want to dip my toes in to unfamiliar waters with out the current dragging me in.

Dear eva.

Just to clarify I'm not only interested in weather such an interest is healthy but weather it is useful. That is weather there can be any application of these desires that is not in some way destructive.

many thanks
NBKG

Hi NBKG,

There are many images that we are told represent the necessary steps in growing up. These steps include parties, spin the bottle, fraternities, alcohol, drugs, fights and more. Everyone can empathize with watching a movie about high school and feel like they missed out on an entire part of their lives.

The unfortunate part about all of this is that first of all, such ideas are not real. They are manufactured by movies, television and the age of our current society. What we imagine the first innocent sexual encounters to be based on the images we see are almost never similar to reality.

With that in mind, you can rest assured that although there may be some people who were lucky enough to experience the innocence of sexual discovery as you have described, most people have forgotten that entirely and have never experienced it. This includes those that engaged in such activities at a younger age.

What you describe is a beautiful thing and I'm quite certain you don't feel ashamed of it. There can be nothing wrong with waiting indefinitely to explore your sexual side, and there can be nothing wrong with wanting to do so in an innocent manner.

So, in answer to your question, there is nothing wrong with your desires if they do not spawn from the need to socially experience such things as the "cool kids" apparently did. If these desires exist as your own want to be able to explore sexuality in an innocent manner, then it is idealistic and is not in error.

(A way of testing this yourself is to imagine exploring this with only one girl who shares the same innocent desires as you. Imagine doing this in privacy with no one else knowing about it except you and this girl. If this is satisfying to you, then your desires are not based on insecurity. Whatever part feels unfulfilled by a lack of other girls or people involved would likely be due to the insecurity of being left out of the "cool kids" crowd.)

Now, we know the ideal answer. But you live in reality and the only way to maximize your happiness is to figure out how to manifest your idealism in a non-idealistic environment.

Your primary problem will be finding girl(s) like yourself. Girls generally lose their virginity a few years younger than boys do and therefore it is less likely to find an inexperienced woman than a man. Another harsh reality is that most girls that are inexperienced at an older age are not inexperienced out of choice: it is because they are unattractive. This, in itself brings about further problems.

I think the best perspective you should have is this: Although you are not physically as experienced as other females may be, this does not mean that they did not miss out on the same exact experiences that you are looking for. A woman that has had sex a hundred times may still yearn for the simple pleasure of kissing in a grassy field because she never met a man who wanted such simple pleasures.

Your goal, therefore, should be to find a woman (experienced or not) that recognizes the importance of discovering sexuality in a calm and collected manner without the pressures of society or expectations. The biggest difficulty in doing so will be that most women in their 20s have long lost hope in finding a man that doesn't just want to have sex. It isn't your responsibility to convince them you are a nice guy, and if you try, you will most likely fail.

Your most probable solution would be to find a woman that is re-discovering her innocence and slowing down her sexuality to experience what she missed. Such a woman would be willing to believe that you are similar. Alternatively, you may find a woman exactly like yourself. This is not likely, but still possible.

Either way, I do not believe what you are expressing is a bad thing. I feel it is useful to experience sexuality in the correct manner, without pressure. If anything is ever experienced with pressure, you tend to lose a part of yourself that you may end up looking for at a later age. By that time it becomes much harder to find it again.

Eva

I think I can say with reasonable confidence that my desires don't derive from some need for social status. Indeed the fact that such activities tend to take place behind closed doors, that they are the sort of things where people will produce some childish oath of secrecy, is exciting factor. In fact some of the most interesting activities are the ones which involve darkness or some degree of uncertainty regarding who are the participants.

Unfortunately I can't for the life of me think how I would go about finding a girl slowing down her sexuality. In my present environment the 2 speeds seem to be stop and go very fast.

Also part of the attraction of such games is they are played in a group. Kissing in a lone grassy field seems to come more under the heading of a romantic interlude than a game. It is in part the mischievous, playful nature of it that is the attraction. I suppose one can have a game with 2 participants but some how in my minds eye even that takes on much less of the aspects of tension and mad cap enthusiasm that one imagines when one thinks of such games.

Unfortunately 90% of human contact is shallow. There is no way for me to tell in the majority of cases weather a person would have any interest in such activities. Just walking up to a random associate and asking wether he or she was interested in such activities might provoke some odd looks. Also I wonder if experienced individuals could approach such games with quite the same out look, if they could really appreciate the excitement and, for want of a better word, juvenile nature of the activity or if they might not soon tire of it or wish to proceed to something more racy. I imagine they might see it as an ice breaker rather than the main event or possibly as a way for people to decide who they wanted to pair up with for sex.

It is a great shame there are no appreciation societies for such games. Even tiddlywinks has one of those but sadly not kissing game and alike.