Sex is Never Casual
I know, it seems like a strange statement, because people have casual sex all the time. What I mean is, that if you are healthily open in your heart (as opposed to emotionally shut down), being very physically intimate with someone or have sex, will make emotions move in your body. Some of these emotions may feel very good and enjoyable, like connection, pleasure, love, sense of belonging and not least the relaxation and elation we experience from the endorphin and oxytocin release. Other emotions may feel less enjoyable or even painful. In an energetically open body, sexual energy circulates through the heart and brain and that may trigger emotions that may have been buried for a long time, or just not actualized lately.
These emotions are about love, attachment, survival, rejection, self-worth, shame, guilt etc. They may be connected to, for instance, early childhood conditionings, our relationships to our caretakers, previous love and sexual experiences in adolescence and adulthood. They are not always personal, but also cultural. Everything that we have learned through movies, religions, porn, drama etc around love and sexuality has made imprints in our psyches and bodies. An endless flow of shoulds and shouldn’ts that we have been fed with since we were born basically.
If you are emotionally healthy, your heart opens when you have sex. And you may only be able to have sex when your heart is open. That means that a bond is created between lovers. That bond needs to be honored and respected, no matter how short or long it will last. It may be for just one evening or your whole life. But if that is not cared for, one or both (or more) partners will be left emotionally vulnerable and probably also hurt. It is a delicate and beautiful healing process that gets initiated when we open our heart and body to someone and that needs to be respected.
When I learned about sex as a teenager, foreplay was a very established concept, and maybe also afterplay. But I never heard about aftercare back then. That seems like a rather new concept, and a very important one in this context. Aftercare is not only cuddles after sex, it is also about how you feel and interact the following few days after. Or longer, depending on the framing of the relation.
Even if you haven’t made any promises or committed to something it makes sense to care for the other/s. Enough to be willing to check in and see how they feel and how they are doing after an intimate meeting with you. I mean, would you really want to have sex with someone who doesn’t care for you and your emotional wellbeing enough to show you care, respect and thank you for the time you spent together?
Since we live in a time where people experiment quite wildly with new relationship forms and constellations, we also need to find new ways of honoring what is going on. Not least amongst teenagers, where all this is extra sensitive.
Young girls (and boys) are lead to believe that they should just be cool when the person they recently had their first sexual experience with, moves on to the next one, maybe without communicating or even actively ignoring them. Youngsters with fragile hearts and bodies full of hormones going crazy, are called jealous if they feel hurt when their girlfriend or boyfriend (maybe first), sleeps with somebody else. Come on, it is a perfectly natural response to feel hurt if that happens. Not only when you are young, of course.
It is also natural to feel vulnerable after opening your heart and sex to a new person, because you get touched in very intimate places, both physically and emotionally. And you do not know how you or the other are going to feel afterwards, and how things are going to evolve. You might want the same thing, but you may also want different things and then there is a high risk that someone gets hurt. This seems to be a risk that we are willing to take for love, and that is wonderful and beautiful. But let us not underestimate the powers that are set in motion here. There is also a high potential for individual and collective healing in these meetings, and it is a shame to not take that seriously enough to give it some time and space.
I think we all would benefit from clear, kind and open communication in these intimate situations, before, during and after. Even if, and maybe especially when, what is being communicated feels challenging to express or is not what we had wished for.
When you find yourself avoiding someone you have been intimate with, take a moment to check in. What and who is it that you are really avoiding? Chances are high that it is yourself, and that will keep you stuck in the same old unhelpful patterns that you deep down are longing to dissolve, to be able to live and love fully.
Self reflection is the key here, because we cannot communicate something that we are not aware of. Unless we have the courage to throw ourselves out in the unknown and start with: ”I don’t really know what to say, but I feel…”. And trust that what needs to be said will be said. Authentic communication from what we are experiencing in the moment is one of the most precious and intimate gifts we can give each other, regardless of the form of our relationship.
We have enough emotionally detached people in power positions all over the world. Do not let them run this show too.
- Mia Lehndal
First publised April 17 2025 on Facebook