Original photo by Lucky
I don’t like using sex as a tool. Ideally, sex should occur when two people are feeling passionate about each other, or just plain horny. But there’s no denying that it can, at times, be useful.
While I love him dearly, Vincent’s moods can be hard to deal with. He has a lot of insecurities, and when those insecurities are agitated he gets into a mopey funk. He speaks almost in a whisper, giving only one- or two-word responses, and denies that anything needs to be discussed. Sometimes I just ignore his mood, knowing that eventually he’ll snap out of it. Sometimes I keep pushing him to address what’s bothering him, usually resulting in an argument. But the best way to get Vincent out of one of his moody funks is sex. He has one of the highest sex drives I’ve ever encountered. Almost nothing turns him off. We can be in the middle of a vicious fight, and he will be confused if I say that I’m not in the mood for sex – at least not with him. While all kinds of factors – stress, fighting, fatigue – will turn me off, they only seem to make him hornier.
Yesterday while we were packing up his apartment, he noted casually that he’d noticed a certain man and I had become friends on Facebook. I acknowledged it and didn’t say much else. He asked me why, but I tried to change the subject. I knew we were gearing up for a fight.
I’d met Tory two weeks earlier at a festival. He was cute and friendly, and obviously into me. Obviously enough that Vincent made a remark about it and I said that, while I did find him attractive, I wasn’t really interested in dating him. I went on to say I wasn’t sure whether it was because I wasn’t interested in him or if it was just because I wasn’t really interested in dating at the moment. We didn’t talk much more about it, but I noticed that Vincent was especially observant every time Tory and I chatted. But he seemed to be handling it well, so I didn’t give it much more thought.
When we returned home from the festival I never expected to see Tory again. I’d forgotten to get his contact information on the last day of the festival, and I wasn’t sure if we had any mutual friends. But then I noticed that he’d become friends with a girl I knew on Facebook, so I clicked on his name and made a friend request. No, i wasn’t interested in dating him right now, but we’d gotten along really well and I was certainly interested in seeing him again. Maybe it would eventually turn romantic, but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.
So when Vincent asked me why I’d friended him, I knew it was because he was feeling threatened. Yes, we are in an open relationship so it is okay if I date other men, but because Vincent is not my primary partner, and because other partners have taken priority over him in the past, he gets worried when I become interested in someone new. He fears he’ll be tossed aside and left alone. I can’t quite seem to get him to understand that his irrational, jealous behavior when I begin dating someone new is the real reason I push him away, but we’re working on it. In any case, this old familiar routine had begun to play out. I hoped I could stop it by curbing the conversation. “I don’t want to talk about Tory. Let’s just keep working on getting this apartment packed and cleaned.” But it was too late. He tried to continue the conversation, and I continued to put it off until he sunk into a bad mood and the next 10-15 minutes were spent in silence. Not wanting to spend the next 3 hours cleaning his apartment with this thick air of tension between us, I decided it was time to pull out my tool. I walked up to him, caressed his shoulder and said, “Do you want to take a break?”
“For what?” he said, in his mopey tone.
“I thought maybe we could fool around a little bit.”
“Not right now,” he said.
I was surprised. He must have been more upset than I’d realized to turn down sex. But, not wanting to get into a bigger fight, I said, “okay” and went back to my packing.
It wasn’t long, however, before he changed his mind. “You still up for the sex?”
“Yeah, definitely!”
We went over to the bed, the only piece of furniture that hadn’t been disassembled at this point, and started taking off our clothes. What followed was an amazing lovemaking session. It was passionate. It was hot. It was just what we needed to break the tension. I’m not sure if it was the emotion that had built up from our pseudo-fight added to it or if it was just that we knew it would be one of the last times we’d make love before he left for two months. I rode on top of him for quite some time, and by the end of it we were sweaty. We were spent. We were completely satisfied.
“God baby,” he said, as we cuddled. “That was some of the best sex we’ve had in a long time.”
“I agree,” I told him, lovingly.
My tool had worked. We spent the rest of our packing and cleaning session in a good mood, chatting and occasionally stopping for a smooch or to say how much we loved each other. So yes, while I’d prefer not to have to use it that way, sometimes sex is the only thing that can really get the job done.
