Sex and Intimacy Project — Part 7

This set of answers comes from pop­u­lar blog­ger, Cur­va­ceous Dee, a 30 year old pan­sex­ual polyamorous and sub­mis­sive female in a civil union.

What does inti­macy mean to you? How do you define intimacy?

Inti­macy isn’t nec­es­sar­ily sex­ual. It’s an open­ness and a shar­ing that only comes by being close with some­one. And in order to get close, there needs to be trust, respect, hon­esty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. How do I define inti­macy? I define it as shar­ing aspects of myself with others.

Do you think that all acts of sex are nec­es­sar­ily intimate?

Not nec­es­sar­ily. They can be un-intimate, and those acts are the type I pre­fer not to have. Hav­ing tried both not-intimate and inti­mate sex, I much pre­fer the open­ness and shar­ing that inti­mate sex­ual con­tact has.

What about sex makes it inti­mate? Makes it not intimate?

Sex is not, in itself, inher­ently inti­mate. But what makes sex an inti­mate act is the desires and actions of the peo­ple involved. If they’re there purely to scratch and itch and get them­selves off? It’s (in my opin­ion) not inti­mate. If they’re there to share happy naked fun-times and orgasms with some­one, and to assist them in reach­ing that point (and being assisted in turn)? Then it’s prob­a­bly inti­mate.

When is sex intimate?

When the peo­ple involved care for the oth­ers involved, and want the jour­ney (and out­come) to be as pleas­ant and arous­ing as pos­si­ble. It’s the act of giv­ing and shar­ing that makes the inti­macy.

Are some sex­ual acts more inti­mate than others?

I think they can be per­cieved that way. Doing some­thing pri­mar­ily for the plea­sure of another per­son (ie: oral sex) can be seen as par­tic­u­larly inti­mate. But when the per­son giv­ing really enjoys it too (as I do) it can blur the per­cep­tions. I think any act can be inti­mate. From pour­ing juice to mas­sage, from brush­ing hair to turn­ing the mattress.

Is the act of sex an inti­mate act for you? Why or why not? Does it change depend­ing on who your part­ners are?

I pre­fer not to have non-intimate sex. In the past I’ve had sex­ual part­ners whom I didn’t have a close­ness with — my first three part­ners were exactly that. I wanted to learn to enjoy sex; they wanted to fuck. In none of those cases was I inter­ested in what they wanted, or them inter­ested in what I wanted.

These days I have many loves, and some of them are sex­ual part­ners. Sex with them can be fun, or sadis­tic, or hilar­i­ous, or roman­tic, or messy, or exper­i­men­tal, or any com­bi­na­tion of the above. But it’s always inti­mate.

How do you per­ceive the dif­fer­ing lev­els of inti­macy when mul­ti­ple part­ners are involved?

That’s an inter­est­ing one. What I have per­ceived is just how inti­mate two peo­ple can be, when I’ve been invited to watch rather than par­tic­i­pate. It’s always a huge hon­our, because see­ing two peo­ple I care for being inti­mate together (in a sex­ual way) is a dif­fer­ent way of shar­ing that inti­macy with me. When I’ve been invited to par­tic­i­pate in their inti­macy it’s easy to let it all wash through and around me. But sit­ting on the edge and being involved but not active really makes it clear.

What about sex with­out inti­macy, like sex between strangers? Can there still be a level of inti­macy that builds between two peo­ple because of the act of sex itself?

I’m sure that there can be. How­ever I find sex with a stranger or near-stranger quite unsat­is­fy­ing, and it’s (I fig­ured out even­tu­ally) because of the lack of caring/bond/friendship/intimacy. I pre­fer to be sex­ual with some­one who means some­thing to me.

What about inti­macy in vir­tual rela­tion­ships, like online where the sex itself may be virtual?

I have become close with many peo­ple online, but not to the point of sex­ual inti­macy (for the most part). While I’ve been invited to more than once, cyber-sex or vir­tual sex doesn’t appeal to me. How­ever, the few times I have done it with a RL part­ner it has been very arousing.

I had a cyber-encounter with an online friend recently — it wasn’t planned, but grew quite organ­i­cally. It was one-sided though: I was arous­ing them with my words to help bring them to orgasm. Because I was giv­ing, and doing some­thing for them (rather than scratch­ing an itch myself), to me it felt inti­mate. I’ve cer­tainly had no regrets over it.

Please tell me a lit­tle bit about sex and inti­macy in your own life.

I love sex. I love inti­macy. And the com­bi­na­tion of the two is mar­vel­lous. I have had sex with­out inti­macy with more than a few part­ners — but none in the last six years. Which is likely why I inden­tify as polyamorous rather than a swinger. There can be a large cross-over between the two, but in my case I place myself firmly in the polyamorous camp.