Don’t Hurt The Boy
His name was Aaron and he was one of those older popular boys that had a way of making you feel like you were the only girl in the school. And he drove a car. I invited him over one night to hang out with me while I was helping my mom grade papers. He humored me while waiting for my parents to go to bed so we could make out.
Photo by Devon Divine on Unsplash
It felt good there on the living room floor, the warmth of him against me and the comfort of his mouth against mine. But I was tired and it was getting late and I didn't really care to take it any further. I was considering pushing him away and saying goodnight when a voice seeped in from the side of my mind, "Careful, you might give him blue balls."
The other girls had warned me about how cruel it would be to not go through with getting a guy off if I somehow managed to get him aroused during a heavy make-out session.
The strange thing about this, looking back on it now, is that this warning wasn’t for me. Their concern wasn’t that my natural interest in kissing this boy could get me into hot water because now this boy would insist on sex. Their concern was for the boy, that I not hurt him by being selfish enough to allow my desire to kiss to go “too far” and end up hurting him.
Their concern was for the boy, that I not hurt him by being selfish enough to allow my desire to kiss him to go “too far” and end up causing him pain.
So I kept going few more minutes. He hadn’t pressured me beyond his eagerness, but I felt pressured. I felt guilty for just a moment and pushed past my own boundaries to prevent doing hypothetical harm.
But it only took a few minutes for me to change my mind and say something like, “Hey, I really need to get to bed. I’m glad you came over though.”
I remember he protested, frustrated, but when he saw I wasn’t going to budge, he got up off my floor and let me walk him out to his car. In the driveway under the moonlight he said it wasn’t nice of me to give him blue balls and there it was: confirmation those girls had been right and I had just hurt this boy.
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I felt terrible. We were already outside, so I wasn’t about to go back in to continue making out with him, but I felt so bad about it I didn’t see him again. I avoided him at school and over the next few weeks the guilt dissipated as I watched him pick up one girl after another to take my place.
It was a couple of years later, after he graduated, that he would father a little boy with my best friend, and by then I was completely over the blue balls incident, but I always remembered feeling like the bad guy.
The Words We Use
The idea that not being interested in sex is a punishment to someone has been around for as long as I can remember in conversations about sex. There were all kinds of ways of describing this “bad behavior” that was primarily attributed to women:
withholding
rejection
neglect
denying
And today I’m reading more clinical terms like refusal and avoidance. Other terms used to shame a woman for not engaging sexually might include:
sexual disinterest
sexual dysfunction
selfishness
punishment
Even accusations of someone cheating or being gay or asexual are not uncommon when someone doesn’t want to engage sexually quite as often as their partner does. The message is clear in just a few words. You are wrong not to satisfy your partner’s sexual urges.
But What Is This Doing To Us?
What message does it send to women, to anyone, if declining sex or stopping a sex act does harm to someone and is generally seen as deliberate? Every interaction I had with a boy after Aaron, I checked my tone, that I wasn’t too flirty if I wasn’t prepared to be sexual with him. I pulled my jacket closed over my chest if I was talking to a boy so I wouldn’t be a burden to his very natural desire.
It wasn’t just Aaron. There would be many dozens of boys, and later men, for whom I altered the way I dressed or spoke in order to protect against the harm to his balls or his ego.
I got the message, from where I can’t pin down, that it’s natural for a man to have uncontrollable sexual urges and those urges cause him great pain if he is enticed by a woman and unable to follow through with sexual intercourse with her.
At the same time I was hearing the message that my desire NOT to engage in sex was irrelevant, my responsibility to protect myself from these men was mine, and whatever consequences came from my ignorance or inability to stop a man from being attracted to me because of what I was wearing or how I behaved around him, were entirely my fault. There would be no sympathy for me and in fact I would be held accountable for any hurt feelings he had and ultimately any behavior from him as a result of those hurt feelings.
You’re Not Hurting The Boy
Part of deconstructing all of these beliefs is trying out the reverse of these messages. What If I’m not hurting the boy? What if the boy is simply hurt? It’s not me who’s doing it to him, it’s just something that’s happening to him as a course of nature.
We all feel frustrated when things don’t go our way. I feel frustrated when my kids aren’t actively helping around the house. I recognize this feeling as it comes now because I’ve spent time in therapy and learning to sit with my emotions. This means I stop doing what I’m doing and just sit quietly somewhere for a few minutes and identify what I’m feeling and what’s at the heart of it.
I have an emotion wheel similar to this one hanging in my dining room for my kids and I’ll take a look at it to see where I’m at. In the case of the dishes piling up and no one putting theirs in the dishwasher, I identify “agitated” as the feeling and maybe today it’s moved to “exasperated”.
Source: A Visual Guide to Human Emotion
But when I sit down and get quiet for a minute I realize that I’m also feeling “disheartened” and “disappointed” because I’m feeling as though my kids don’t care enough to see the extra work they’re creating for me, knowing I’m the default dish washer. It will always fall to me to do if they aren’t doing their part.
The trick here is getting outside myself to think about what they’re experiencing. This is empathy. I imagine why they didn’t do their dishes and remember they’ve not only been busy with school and extracurriculars this week but I have also been busy and haven’t made time to remind them. They are just kids after all. They’re still learning, so I’ll find them and be direct, asking them, “Kids, would you please go take a look at the sink and make sure you are being responsible for your messes?”
I recognize that they aren’t deliberately making a mess to hurt me. They’re not trying to be a burden or refusing to do their part. None of them has told me, “No, I’m not going to do the dishes because I don’t care about you and I only care about myself.” If I come up with that thought myself internally, it’s unfair to them.
I love them, so I think the best of them and I communicate with them openly and honestly. It’s been many years since I’ve experienced sexual frustration, but I can’t imagine ever putting that on my partner as though he’s done something to hurt me and needs to make reparations for it. My health and happiness is only his responsibility in so much as he is not purposefully causing me harm.
And forgetting to do the dishes or not being interested in sex are nothing that cause harm to me. The harm, the hurt I’m feeling in those moments comes from my own expectations and my dependency on others to create just the right circumstances for my happiness to flourish instead of creating that happiness for myself and sharing it with others.
My partner simply existing in his body and turning me on does not mean he’s harming me if I become aroused and find that I am not allowed an opportunity to act on that arousal with him. I can check the emotion wheel and see that my “frustrated” is actually “lonely” and I can find other ways of connecting with him so I don’t feel so lonely.
Bits & Pieces
How to deal with sexual frustration
But if [feelings are] all negative — agitated, angry, frustrated, grumpy, irritated, etc. — you need to figure out where those feelings stem from.
Sexual frustration is often temporary, so a quick [solo] release can help curb the immediate desire for sex. It may also lead to a better sexual connection in the future.
It’s Time to Solve All That Sexual Frustration You’re Feeling
Symptoms of sexual frustration are not the end-all be-all, as O’Reilly says sometimes it’s about resetting expectations. “Feelings are not permanent states of being,” she says. “They’re temporary experiences and you can make attitudinal and behavioral adjustments to change the way you feel.”
What to know about managing sexual frustration
There are no known health conditions associated with sexual frustration
Sexual Frustration Is Normal — Here’s How to Handle It
“Sometimes what folks think is sexual frustration is actually a lack of satisfaction with something else going on in their lives,” says urologist and sexual health expert Dr. Jennifer Berman, co-host of daytime talk show “The Doctors.”
How To Manage Sexual Frustration
Try touching yourself all over your body, particularly the areas your hands wouldn’t normally go. It’s common for us to focus on stimulating our genitals and neglect our other endogenous zones, such as our lips, neck and ears. Next time, try running your fingertips through your hair and across your scalp or cup your hands around your neck for a gentle and comforting caress.
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