Recipro

For all my adult life I’ve never really been turned on by the idea of being shagged by someone who wasn’t really into it. The idea of “doing you a favour” or “this might cheer you up” were lines that never got me going when I heard them in films, be they porn or anything else.

I always wanted to know, or at least believe, that the person I was getting naked with really REALLY wanted to be with me.

I wondered if this was me being oversensitive or maybe just romantic or just a bit sad but that was how I was wired.

Losing my virginity was the one example of doing it just for the loyalty points. From then on I not only wanted the person I was with to actually enjoy themselves thoroughly but for them to find me an absolute sex god.

Porn where the guy cums and then tells the woman to get out did nothing for me and I wondered how anyone could get off on treating someone like that when your own imagination could be a cornucopia of unrestrained fantasy where you could be as dismissive, arrogant and heartless as you wanted...but without treading on someone else’s feelings.

As I got older I would never go and do what some of my friends did and pull women in clubs and pubs that they would take home and then slag off to us afterwards. One guy was grimacing on a Sunday afternoon while nursing a hangover, about how he’d woken up next to a “swamp donkey” that morning.

For years this desire to be wanted in order to get turned on struck me as an anomaly within my libido. I couldn’t just go through the motions, it had to be a scenario of mutual longing.

I never have and still don’t get off on the idea of going with a prostitute. I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with this but it’s not something I would consider doing, no matter how long it may be between lays. The concept of being inside someone who’s only doing it for money turns me off big time. Even that famous scene in Game of Thrones where the virginal Pod returns from the Westeros brothel with his money refunded and ALL the whores saying that “that one was on the house” as he had managed to satisfy them in a way no one else ever had...still didn’t do it for me. Reason being that they had taken money in the first place and the pleasure they had experienced was after the fact.

At university there was a woman on my course who, by the age of 19, when asked how many blokes she’d been with, replied “I don’t know. Have you got 10 pairs of hands?”

As good looking as she was (with very big boobs) something went askew within me when I looked at her after that. She regarded sex the way she regarded a meal or taking a shower. Something she needed to do but wasn’t that bothered about. The men she slept with were just performing a job that fulfilled a function in her life. There was no lust or passion within her and knowing that, my attraction to her waned but we still remained friends.

I often thought that this desire to be wanted back was part of my loneliness manifesting. That I was desperate for a partner and to feel that connection. Truth is that it simply came from believing I was ugly and unattractive as I grew up while the romantic side wasn’t touched by this negativity whatsoever.

As a child I was told that I was both very clever and also incredibly stupid. At the same time I was informed that I had the capacity to be aweseome but was usually vile and unlikeable and if anyone deigned to give me a kind word or wanted to be friendly I should regard that as a benevolent gift. Growing up like this completely drains a child’s self esteem and they will grow up into an isolated and insecure adult as a result.

As much as I have always loved sex I have found my own imagination to be much more fun than casual, passionless bonking. Another problem was that when I did get that connection with someone and we had a good time I would frequently and wrongly assume that they would want to continue, either as sexual partners or as friends and would be hurt if neither were forthcoming.

Recently I was looking on Google for a “sexuality” that categorised how I feel. Nearly everything has a classification these days (my favourite being Fictosexual, meaning that you only fancy fictional characters. So Harrison Ford is a damp squib but Indiana Jones is a rocket to Russia) but the closest I found was Demi-Sexual, meaning that there is an intellectual or emotional connection prior to a sexual liaison. I gave up and then, while looking for something completely different, I came upon not only a name for how I feel but also a flag.

Reciprosexual.

This means that you cannot find someone sexually attractive unless you know first that they fancy you.

Since I discovered this, I’ve felt a lot more relaxed and I realise that this is because I now know that this state of mind is shared by a lot of other people.

I’m not gay (I had a bi-curious phase 14 years ago) but I got a small feeling of what it might be like to finally be able to know where you stand with regard to your sexuality within the world of LGBTQIA+.

There’s a classification for how I feel and my emotions and libido are not some overly emotive anomaly within me but something shared and understood by other people. When I’m with someone in bed I want to look in her eyes and know she is there because of me, not for me. No sympathy shags here, just a strong mutual attraction. For me there is no greater compliment than someone typing “another pair of knickers ruined, thanks!”

As a bonus I also found out that my romantic side is Demi-Romantic, as the definition about emotional or intellectual connection definitely applies here. And I’m a Straight Ally. And Cisgender male.

Rock and roll.