To quote one of my favorite movies of all time, The Holiday, “Sex makes everything complicated. Even if you are not having it, it makes things complicated.” In all of the movies, TV, fiction, etc. that I have watched (or read), sex isn’t really a question. Two attractive people in a movie equals sex. When the couple has sex, the female protagonist of the story orgasms. Period. It happens every time. Even if it is the couple’s first time together, she will and does orgasm without any discussion of what would best work or how it feels. However, when one person (male or female) has an issue with sex for whatever reason in real life, it really just makes sex complicated. Let’s just say that my experience with sex could be neatly summed up by the word complicated.
In order for you to understand where I am coming from, I need to put everything on the table. I have never had an orgasm from sex. After having sex with my partner for close to three years, it still has never happened. See? Complicated. For nearly five years, the only orgasms I have achieved have occurred through awkward dry humping. And who wouldn’t describe the idea of dry humping your ex-boyfriend as romantic? Well, me.
In rom-coms in general, sex is a fun thing that two people do after a night of drinking (Knocked Up), or after they realize that they do love each other after fighting for the whole movie (The Ugly Truth), or because someone said something just so inspiring that the couple cannot help but have sex (Moulin Rouge). What I have never seen in a movie is a tearful conversation after sex about how the couple will deal with sex when one person consistently orgasms and their partner does not. I’ve never seen the self-doubt, crying, questioning, or concern for health and happiness between the partners in a movie that I have experienced with my partner.
Complicated relationships are seen in movies all the time (rom-coms and not), but the complications of the act of sex are something that are rarely, if ever, seen. What I have learned in those discussions about my sexual health and happiness is that even if I don’t orgasm like all the couples do at Exactly. The. Same. Time. with my partner, I still can enjoy sex and the romance and the passion that can come along with sex. It just may not be the way that others can enjoy sex. It has taken me years to have enough real life experiences of intercourse to learn that feelings can be, but do not need to be, attached to the physical act. I can feel the feelings without having the “mind-blowing” orgasm that is always seen in the rom-coms I love to watch, and my feelings for my partner, that sex has helped form, do not mean any less because I cannot have the orgasm that many leading ladies have in movies.
