The gender-expansive guy with whom I hooked up in the chorus & I both feel that our interactions have been “more than just hooking up”: we like each other and want to really build a friendship, leaving open the possibility of being “friends with benefits” further down along the road.
“Friendship with benefits” is something that I have done in the past and I know that it works for me, I know that I can do it well, given the right circumstances. And I really don’t mind if the people with whom I’m “friends with benefits” have other “friends with benefits” or hook up with other people or have romantic partners (as long as it’s all safe, consensual, ethical non-monogamy) — just the way I don’t mind if my platonic friends have “friends with benefits” or hook up with other people or have romantic partners, of course.
I’m not jealous.
Relationship anarchy works for me, among other reasons, because it releases me of the pressure that I feel if I’m “the only one for someone”.
Tuesday night I hung out with the gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus. He lives in a different town from me, about an hour drive each way, and for now I have always visited him there on days that I have some other errand or commitment in his town. Logistically it makes sense, since he doesn’t have a car and public transit between our towns isn’t great. So the other night, as we chatted about our respective plans for the rest of the week, he mentioned that he was going to visit another friend who lives in my town on Thursday evening and then spend the night there. Which again logistically makes sense because there would be no public transit for him to get back.
Yet something was nagging at me for the next couple days.
Was I jealous? I.e. did it hurt me or bother me to think of him visiting someone else in the town where I live? Or did it hurt me or bother me that he might be having sex with this other friend? Or would I have wanted him to visit me, in my town, instead?
No. It didn’t hurt or bother me that he was visiting another friend in the town where I live nor do I want him to visit me here. And no, I’m totally unfazed by his having sex with other people or other friends.
I’m not jealous.
And yet something in my heart felt painful. So I sat with it and let it unfold until it finally surfaced: I miss sleepovers.
I don’t want to have a sleepover with this guy in particular — I’m not ready for that, yet, and I’m sure he isn’t either, and it may never come to that for us two. But I miss sleepovers with other friends. And I mean also platonic sleepovers (most of my sleepovers have, in fact, been platonic).
There’s an intimacy & comfort to sleepovers that feel unique to me. Those late-night chats over hot cocoa or herbal tea or weed that somehow get more relaxed, more intimate as it gets later, as we get sleepier. The intimacy of seeing each other in our pajamas or underwear in the morning. The intimacy of seeing each other still groggy, “without makeup”, right out of bed or before breakfast. The intimacy of cooking breakfast together, of seeing what they eat, if anything at all. The intimacy of discovering if they’re a tea-drinker or coffee-drinker, or maybe neither. The intimacy of sharing a pot of hot tea to start the day together. And possibly the intimacy of sharing a bed, of pulling covers off of each other inadvertently while sleeping, maybe of spooning.
I miss that. I don’t get enough of that type of relationship, that type of intimacy in my life right now. I wish I had friends with whom I could do sleepovers more often than once every blue moon because I truly miss that type of intimacy & comfort.
And maybe now I miss it more than ever because of the hostility I feel from the external world and thus the extra need for closeness and comfort that I need even on a physical level, through touch and/or the physical presence of a friend nearby.
The Little Prince and the Fox 