Sex for Fun

part I of II

You guys remember back in December when I raved about joining a dating app but it was actually part of the manic spiral/nervous breakdown which became the bottom that got me into recovery? Well this week I decided to take Feeld for another spin. It’s turned out to be a powerful mirror for examining patterns. It’s also helped me see just how much healing I’ve been through these last 6+ months. 

I spent the first night in the rabbit hole, swiping. I knew I was opening a door to potentially compulsive behavior because, let’s be real, we’re shopping for humans. I told myself it was an experiment, an opportunity to observe the mind.

It turns out that with nothing to lose and little bandwidth for communication, I’m fairly ruthless when it comes to judging people by their profiles. I consider this evidence I’m prioritizing my own recovery and for this I’m truly proud. 

Nope, nope, nope, nope—WAIT. Dreamy pools for eyes and a gold band on his pinkie? I have a gold band on my pinkie! This is serendipitous and must be divinely inspired and I should probably get on a ferry right now.

Compulsive what now? I’m in recovery for a reason. But I’m also getting much better at understanding in real time that moments of urgent necessity are not, in fact, directions from on high. When there is true magic behind an impulse, it will still be there tomorrow. 

I didn’t hop on a boat. I did decide this boy is deep and fun based on a few pictures and some cleverness I brought to our brief exchange. I did project an entire story onto a stranger, which is what we do and maybe a big part of what attraction is. Chappell Roan gets it: fell in love with the thought of you. But attraction is also real. You don’t have eyes like that without being deep.

But this isn’t about the stranger, it’s about what I’m seeking. Why’d I join the app? What started as an itch to expand the size of my world became renewed and serious contemplation about the role I currently want sex to play in my life. For years I’ve been circling the same central question and it’s still there. What, exactly, is sex for? 

Today the answer is fun. At 38, single and building my own creative life anew, I want sex to be for fun.

The other day I re-listened to a recording of my beloved friend Lisa reading my natal chart back in January 2024. Lisa says astrology makes her feel like she’s in on a huge secret, says another astrologer calls birth charts “personal permission slips” and obviously I’m all about that.

So because I’ve come to believe astrology is very important but still retain little, a simple lesson:

Sun: This is your main identity—though Lisa says to only know your sun sign is called lazy astrology. My sun is in Libra, which means that to me everything is relational, that I make friends easily and need endless conversations and crave peace and want to be surrounded by beauty. (The shadow side of Libra is codependency, but our January 2024 selves agree Serena has no problem with that. Insert eye roll emoji.)

Rising/Ascendent: This one is your lens on life, how you see the world. It’s what others experience when they first meet you. My Ascendent is in Taurus, which is about more beauty and comfort and pleasure-seeking—and addiction. Taurus also yearns for stability and safety. A firm foundation.

Moon: To me, the moon matters most. It’s what we need for our deepest spiritual well-being. When we lose our way, Lisa says, we have to feed our moon to come back. My moon is in Virgo in the 29th degree, which is the strongest degree possible. Virgo is The Helper, fulfilled by contributing to the well-being of those around them. Virgo moons are also deeply analytical and need their routines on lock.

Both my sun and moon are in the 5th House, which is why I brought you here today. The house of creativity and play and self-expression. The inception of this very newsletter exemplifies my astrological truth: if I’m not being of service to others through playful and creative expression, I’m spiritually bankrupt. Absence of play = lack of life force = depression & addiction. Play is what brings me back to life.

The 5th House is also all about sex for fun. What can I say, both my core Libra sun and my intense Virgo moon are here to tell me that to maintain my spiritual health I must be having sex for fun.

Before we get into that, a few additional sex-and-love-related anecdotes from elsewhere in my chart:

1. I have Venus in Scorpio. This means I love like a Scorpio and also easily love those with significant Scorpio placement. Scorpio energy is intense and magnetic and deep. It’s all about truth-seeking and transformation and also power and control. It’s true—I eat that shit up.

2. My Mars (where we find motivation/sex drive) is in the 9th house in Capricorn. Translation: I’m turned on by philosophy and learning and the deep sharing of ideas.

3. This one is less about sex, but still relevant. In the 1st House, the house of self, I have Chiron, The Wounded Healer. Shoots himself with a poison arrow, spends a lifetime trying to heal, heals others along the way. Lisa says you can’t hide what’s in your 1st House. People feel it about you.

4. Also in my 1st House I have Lilith. Full essays will be written about her, but for now suffice to say Lilith is the wild woman, raw feminine power. She does not tolerate being seen as less than, owes sex to no one. She is deeply in touch with her own instinct and sexuality and power.

5. Directly in opposition to Lilith, in the 7th House—the house of relationships—I have Juno. You know, the goddess of marriage in that essay I wrote. My big lessons in life come from the ongoing war between my Lilith and Juno. I need to be wild and also understand where the ground is.

I knew absolutely none of this when I wrote “Juno’s House Rules,” an essay about the confines of expected sex in partnernship. You guys, astrology is fucking real.

In other news, I’ve been loving Lena Dunham’s Too Much on Netflix. So good. For a long time, being “too much” was my deepest insecurity in relationships. I lived in fear of the glimpse of repulsion—of pity—in a man’s eyes when he encountered my big feelings for the first time.

As someone with ADHD and addiction and a philosophical operating system, I simply am so very much. But as I’ve been watching this show and processing what comes up for me around the app, integrating all that I’ve accomplished so far in recovery, I’ve realized something huge.

I am no longer afraid of being too much.

I’ve spent so many days of my life wishing I was less me and for what? I do contain insane multitudes, can be truly serene and absolutely unhinged and as unexpected as it is, I’m delighted to report I goddamn love that about myself. Too much suggests bypassing an agreed-upon metric for right much. It’s logically impossible to have too much of something that can only be measured against itself. There’s nothing else to hold all this up to.

Too much basically means some combination of too smart and too emotional. Too needy, too sad, too manic—too sensitive. Like Jess, I now know feeling deeply is one of my gifts. Friends in my recovery community regularly tell me my capacity to show up raw makes them less afraid to do the same. For ages I’ve studied psychology and done meditation and psychedelics and yoga and therapy—I’ve understood we have to feel to heal.

And yet. All the knowledge in the world ain’t shit when you’re running. Holding myself up against a tv show and a dating app has helped me see just how actively I’ve been doing the hardest thing. The thing nobody wants to do. For months on end, I’ve turned toward and acknowledged and felt into the emotional experiences of a real and very sad little girl that lives inside me. The one I pole-vaulted over for decades in order to tend to the hurt children I see in everyone else.

You see new patterns when you’re willing to cut the shit. In my dating life, it’s gone something like this: addict I adore, then trusted friend, addict then friend. The messy ones because they’re mirrors for my own insatiable hunger, give me permission to be untamed. Trusted friends for safety and stability after the rug is inevitably pulled out. Predictability becomes an unbearable trap, again I seek freedom and adventure. Another destabilizing experience, another scramble for safety.

To some degree I understood this in my relationship with Ken, was candid when the claustrophobia hit, worked endlessly to recreate the shape to include enough disruption I wouldn’t flee. Juno was content, Lilith had to bust free.

After our relationship ended and the pendulum did its inevitable swing to addict-I-adore, my creative thinking swung with it. How to ensure a little ground under two people obsessed with autonomy and freedom. Lilith savors hedonism and Juno searches for home.

It’s a lot, this battle, any way you run it. Too much, some might say. But Libra doesn’t think so, finding balance is like her whole identity.

But you guys, I broke the pattern. This winter, spinning out from a rejection all the strategizing in the world couldn’t prevent, I didn’t seek safety in the arms of a man. I mean, I joined an app for a hot minute, but the universe was having none of it. Sorry, babe, the buck stops here. I’m gonna have to go ahead and force you onto your literal hands and knees now and set off a few bombs in you. You need to do this now, and you can’t do it alone.

So I went to recovery. Instead of trying to soothe my anxious little girl parts in a new sexual relationship, I found bedrock that wasn’t another human body. Found structure. A community of messy and beautiful people. The source inside me.

Facing the wounded child within is a motherfucker. I didn’t want to look, didn’t like looking and many days I didn’t think I could bear the isolation and despair. It hurts, like physically, in the whole body. I cried and cried and started to believe it would never stop. I gave myself breaks in the form of naps and Netflix binges, but mostly, for months on end, I just carried on feeling.

My first day on the app I watched my brain ratchet up, trying to game out how I’ll build a framework that ensures I can’t get rejected again. But I don’t need to do that now. My first choice would be zero rejection, but I can handle it. I went through those emotions that tie back to when I was a little girl who suddenly no longer lived with her mom. I’m not embarrassed by her anxious spinouts because I love that little girl and also because I now find my safety and stability in my friendships and my fellowship.

Sex for fun is Lilith’s domain. Fun for me is being deep and silly and maybe a little tortured all at the same time. I love the boys everyone else loves to hate. I’m most deeply attracted to people who can’t offer safety and stability, may not stick around. But I don’t want reliable, I want adventure, to radicalize each day. When the ground shifts, and it will, I will be ok.

I love Feeld, love how it encourages open communication about what everyone is and isn’t looking for. Love how broad the acceptance is of what that might be—from asexuals seeking friends to non-monogamous couples looking for a third to guys admitting they just want to get laid to hardcore fetishists listing kink preferences.

After an hour or two of scrolling it can become easy to compare, to wonder if I should be more into this thing or that. I tweak my bio, start thinking I ought to give more people a chance. Then I set the phone down, remember my recovery checklist and the scale of my life and how we’re not extending toward others unless it’s in alignment with our recovery. I sigh and think about how nice it would be to just lay it out there, like all of it. Let that be the swiping.

Oh right, I can. Part II, Coming soon. Everything You Need to Know: A Prospectus

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

Today’s Optional Assignment:

Get an astrology reading. Ideally, see a human astrologer who loves this stuff because it’s a whole language and field of study and they know so much.

But at the very least, go plug in your birth info here and pull up your natal chart. Find your moon. Figure out which house it’s in and under what sign. Google that info and read for 5 minutes. You’re so likely to feel validated it’s not even funny. Permission slip, remember?