Why I Sometimes I Miss Sleeping Around

Let me start here: I really, really, really love my husband. We are in a 100% committed, monogamous relationship. Adultery is not on the table. We have plenty of sex — more than the average 18-29 year old who’s only doing it a measly twice a week, as we get it on an average of 4-5 times. It’s good sex. I feel attractive. He feels attractive. We are both plenty laid, plenty happy, and plenty in love with each other.

But sometimes? Sometimes I miss sleeping around.

Hear me out.

When I was in college, I slept around — a lot. I always had a boyfriend, was about to start up with a new boyfriend, or was fucking someone in between boyfriends. Or I was fucking someone while I had a boyfriend, because I was also sort of a serial cheater, because two-state rule (if he’s more than two states away, it doesn’t count), and both my exes and I traveled a good deal. I was also much cheated on myself. I was safe, used protection, and got tested regularly. While my sex number is much higher than the average American woman’s 7.2 people, I’m cool with that.

I slept with guys a little bit younger and a little bit older, but mostly guys who were like me, and I regret that. As I’ve gotten older, my tastes have widened. I find older men attractive — can any woman alive say she would kick Harrison Ford out of bed for eating crackers? He’s in his mid-seventies. Or how about Samuel L. Jackson? He’s rounding the base on seventy. Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, all those idols from my teen years: they’ve aged, and aged well.

My attractions have also changed and expanded, and I still find lots of men — men who are not my husband — smoking hot. Just because you’re in monogamous relationship doesn’t mean you surrender your ability to see sexy, after all.

I miss being able to scope out men with abandon.I miss the idea that I could eye a crowd, pick a man and decide: that one. Now I’m a thirty-something mom with a gaggle of kids and a husband who I share a bed with every night.

Which is cool from one perspective. From another perspective, it totally sucks.

I miss the anonymous sex, the one-night stands, the friends-with-benefits arrangements for the nights when the bar hunts turned up cold. Because they were fun. It’s fun to bang a new person, to figure out a new body, to feel someone else figuring out yours. That moment when you realize he likes to be kissed that way, and touched this way, and he moves like this and thrusts like that. It’s fun. Sex can be fun. It can be an intimate connection between two people, and when it comes to my husband and I, it is.

But sometimes? I just want the newness.

Because there are so many hot guys in this world. I’m not dumb enough to think they all want to fuck me. But they’re such eye candy. One of my friends calls them snackity snacks. I see them every day: at the Starbucks, at Target, at the gas station. Any time I’m not towing a bunch of kids behind me, I notice them, and I notice them noticing me. And I miss the days when I could chat them up, and then have a good shot at fucking them in the backseat of their car. Because I was that girl. And as much as you might call me a slut, as much as you might say I was a whore, it was fun.

I miss those days. I miss those partners. I miss sleeping around.

But I love my husband much more than I love sleeping around. I wouldn’t trade our partnership for anything.

So I go home. I turn off the lights, because I always liked it in the dark. We curl up against each other and make love. It’s better this way. We know each other’s bodies; the sex is better, certainly, after all this time and patience. It’s always better when you love someone — everyone knows that. I wouldn’t trade all the men in the world for him.

I make that decision every single day. But none of that means that sometimes, I don’t miss my own past. It’s part of who I am. I’m allowed that. Just as I’m allowed to curl around my husband and choose him, every single time, forever and ever.