From: [redacted]
Date: September 1, 2009 3:06:23 AM EDT
To: julia@nonsociety.com
Subject: ;) + :*( = ?

Hi Julia,

I think it’s great you’re revisiting this idea of crying during sex a few years after you first covered it, because in my (limited) experience, it’s a phenomenon that changes over time - as a woman ages, as our lives complicate and simplify, and as the relationship matures (or disintegrates).

A quick, illustrative set of examples:

The first time was with my high school sweetheart.  It was right around graduation, and we’d snuck off to his empty house after our giddy inability to keep our hands off each other at some party.  We’d exchanged the L-word, had recently introduced our families, and were preparing to leave for college in a few weeks and greet the world at large.  It was a lot to process.  And looking back at it, those are just a few of the myriad reasons why I cried that night, but at the time, I felt like I didn’t really understand it.

My second (and last) experience was years later, but in the same relationship.  It was this perfect Autumn night during our senior year of college in his beautiful spartan city apartment with the candles and the wine and the efficient, satisfying, comfortable kind of sex that only comes after years of experimentation and practice with the same person.  I remember feeling so grown up that fall.  I remember thinking so often, “this is what my life is going to be like.”  And so when the tears fell, quiet and stifled this time, I couldn’t explain them.  In retrospect, I think I cried because it was the first time I knew the relationship was going to end.  I can actually pinpoint to an exact moment that evening when I saw it all drawing to a close; when, instead of thinking, “this is what my life is going to be like,” I wondered whether I’d remember moments like this when it was all over.  The relationship dragged on for several more months, but I never recovered that contented feeling.

Given the distinctly different circumstances, I find it interesting that the common element is the monumental change that was about to happen in my life.  I think in both cases, I was emotionally unprepared for the events that were about to transpire, both within the relationship and externally.  I’ve lost track of the guy in the five years since.  But in that time, I’ve become a completely different person, and big changes no longer catch me off guard.  I love the strong, competent, self-aware (young) adult I’ve become, but I can’t help but wonder what I might have accomplished if I’d taken the time to examine where those tears were coming from and what they meant for my life, instead of revisiting them so much later.  So I agree with you that both partners should want to know why one is crying, but not necessarily because it’s “good” or “bad” or even “really really bad.”  I see sex-related tears as indicative of a large and complicated set of emotions - elation, fear, frustration, exhaustion, love, sadness, disgust, arousal, perhaps all of the above - that deserve and maybe even require examination and understanding.

It’s easy to dismiss sex crying as weird, awkward, and uncomfortable - indeed, it may be all of these things - but I believe to do so is to deny something primal and instinctual that is begging to be acknowledged.

All that said: my unsolicited advice?  Maybe hold off on the sniffles around TK for a while.  Because the boys, they spook easily.

<3