Megan Wallace\u2019s sexual experiences had mostly been with women \u2013 until an attraction to a male colleague surprised her<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]
By Megan Wallace<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/06\/GettyImages-994816802.jpg” alt=”Jennifer Aniston” title_text=”GettyImages-994816802″ force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” min_height=”107px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] Growing up I was always more drawn to women than men. My female friendships were intense, filled with four-hour phone conversations, secrets spilled and intense jealousy. When it came to boys, I was largely ambivalent \u2013 but as adolescence crept in, discussing them became a rite of passage. It seemed clear that experimenting with the opposite sex was a necessity to seem \u2018normal\u2019 among my peers.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there was a major problem: my body wouldn\u2019t respond the way it was supposed to. Boys would lean in for a kiss and, despite an inner monologue trying to convince myself that this was what I wanted, I would physically recoil. Any clumsy hands under my skirt would lead to vague feelings of embarrassment rather than the warm flush I was told to expect. Then finally, when I was 17, a friendship with a boy in my class blossomed into something more. I remember letting him kiss me and thinking that I had been \u2018fixed\u2019.<\/p>\n Sadly for my 17-year-old self, but happily for the 28-year-old queer person I am today, one relationship with a cis boy did not iron out the knotty, hard-to-pin-down aspects of my sexuality. I still had a fascination with brown-haired, blue-eyed girls, and when that relationship inevitably imploded, as most teenage relationships do, I slowly but surely rebuilt my life as something approaching a lesbian \u2013 dating mostly women but also non-binary and trans folks. Queer spaces helped me to understand the vastness of my capability for love and attraction, encouraging me to look beyond gender or sexuality and get closer to who people really are.<\/p>\n After years of a romantic life that could best be described as omnivorous \u2013 multiple partners of multiple genders, flings in different cities, first dates that lasted four days \u2013 the pandemic forced a blossoming fling into a monogamous, live-in lesbian relationship. Amid the stultifying domesticity, the monotony and the many fights, I began to fantasise about cis men for the first time ever \u2013 and it made me afraid. I was afraid that my belonging to the queer world \u2013 which encompassed the only spaces and people who made me like myself \u2013 would be revoked. I was also scared that I had been kidding myself all this time, and that all I\u2019d really wanted was to be in a conventional cis-het couple.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] It took a messy breakup from my pandemic era girlfriend, after three years of a serviceable but passionless relationship, for me to finally act on my identity crisis. After several months of tension with a colleague \u2013 a man my age who was soft enough to burn sage in his room every morning but tough enough to have Tottenham season tickets \u2013 I took the plunge on a staff night out. A kiss on the neck on a crowded dance floor became a hasty uber back to his, followed by long coffee breaks in the middle of the working day, weekend trips to the seaside, and eventually a fully fledged relationship.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an interesting time to be dating a man again after so many years. When I tell straight women, the response is often incredulous: \u2018Why would you choose to date men?\u2019 After all, apps have facilitated a culture of lacklustre connections and overly casual treatment of others, and for good reason, many women have become disillusioned with dating and heterosexuality more broadly. Coming into it fresh and without preconceptions, however, I feel like I have learned and grown much more than I\u2019ve suffered.<\/p>\n There are some things that I simply wasn\u2019t prepared for \u2013 namely, the sex. According to the casually ignorant homophobe, queer and lesbian sex is not sex, but foreplay at best \u2013 yet this had been far from my experience. As a queer woman, I would get swept up in days-long romps; I would call in sick to work so that I could spend hours pressing every inch of my body against someone I barely knew.<\/p>\n With men, sex can be just as intense \u2013 but there are obvious logistical concerns that I had forgotten about. It\u2019s not just the obvious issue of contraception, but the fact that multiple orgasms are rare and that men need down-time after they come. Their biology sets the pace. It means that even if they\u2019re quick to get aroused, the sessions are much more short and sweet.<\/p>\n It seems to me that men\u2019s attention to their bodies and to pleasure is much less attuned than women\u2019s. They tend to view themselves as having a good time if they achieve orgasm, rather than focusing on the sexual experience holistically. More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that this very formula \u2013 male arousal, some foreplay, penetrative sex until ejaculation \u2013 makes it easy to take a casual approach to desire. Rather than engaging in elaborate, protracted periods of exploring each other\u2019s bodies, sex can easily become something perfunctory or an obligation.<\/p>\n To combat this, my boyfriend and I have tried different methods of arousal \u2013 from exploring our erogenous zones to speaking candidly about our desires. Encouraging my boyfriend to cultivate pleasure has been important to our relationship, and it\u2019s not just what we get up to in the bedroom. The first time I bought him flowers \u2013 something I\u2019ve done for all my partners without really thinking about it \u2013 he seemed completely overwhelmed. He\u2019s a sensitive guy. When I ask him about his feelings, it sometimes seems like he\u2019s never been asked these questions before.<\/p>\n The thing that has surprised me the most is how little men are made to feel like they matter. Whether it\u2019s their feelings or their pleasure, they seem so used to skirting through life without introspection or attention to their wants and needs. Yes, men experience untold privileges in the way they are treated and how they move through the world \u2013 but are they even having fun? One thing this experience has taught me is that queer and female people\u2019s powers of attentiveness, nurturing and care are a force that improves life from the inside out \u2013 and that men need to learn how to follow suit.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”9px|||||” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”] Photo: Getty<\/b><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are some things that I simply wasn\u2019t prepared for \u2013 namely, the sex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3362"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3372,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3362\/revisions\/3372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘With men, sex can be just as intense \u2013 but there are obvious logistical concerns’<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”|||0px||” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]