Why I’m too scared to have sex sober
She was a promiscuous party girl who gave up drink at 30. Now she’s celibate for a very surprising reason
Our day had been perfect — a long lunch that led to drinks, constant laughter, flirty arm touches and even a kiss.
Then we were at my house, having a final nightcap (wine for him, tea for me) — the crescendo in what had been the definition of a slow-burning romance.
This was Tim: tall, blond, with a mischievous smile, the man I had been in love with since meeting him at school more than 15 years earlier. He’d been a constant friend. In my eyes, he was The One.
So you might imagine that what happened next was all too happily predictable.
Not quite. Tim went up to the bedroom, but I couldn’t seem to follow him, instead remaining paralysed with fear downstairs.
Tim fell asleep in bed, waiting for me to come up. The next morning, I pretended I’d somehow fallen asleep on the sofa — the truth being far too shameful to admit.
I was sober, and the thought of having sex without a drink was just too terrifying for me even to contemplate.
It was mid-December and I had given up alcohol two months earlier. Ironically, it had been partly because of sex.
Despite my bedroom jitters described above, at 30, I’ve had more than my share of sexual encounters. Indeed, before I stopped drinking, I would have described myself as very sexually confident.
Yet many of my relationships — if that’s what you can call some of my fleeting affairs — were not only entirely based on sex, but also fuelled by alcohol. I’m not sure I knew there was any other way to show love and affection, aside from a drunken tumble into bed at the end of the evening.
My attitude to sex was the same regardless of the kind of relationship I was in. Whether it was a new man, a long-term boyfriend or even a husband (I married a man named Steve in 2014 and we split in 2018), I rarely had the confidence to be intimate without alcohol.
Today, I find myself in an entirely uncharted zone: ready to launch myself into what I hope will be an emotionally fulfilling, honest and mature sexual relationship — but unable to do so. SO PROFOUND is my fear of becoming physical with a man — no matter how kind and lovely he is — that the absence of alcohol has thrown a massive spanner in the works when it comes to starting a new relationship.
I can’t seem to quell the inner voice that nags at me. What if he hates it? What if I’ve lost my knack in the bedroom? What if he regrets it the next morning? What if he doesn’t like my body?
Most of all, what if I let my guard down and our relationship doesn’t work out and I don’t have my usual get-out clause, of it ‘just’ being a drunken fumble, to fall back on?
I didn’t foresee this sudden sexual fear as a potential consequence of giving up drinking because I had always been comfortable with my sexuality and what I could gain from using it as a bargaining chip.
I discovered that, while definitely not perceived as being mode l pretty in my teenage years, being tall and curvy with a mass of ginger curls was viewed quite differently in the adult world. I was adept at hiding my insecurities and shyness behind a sassy exterior (my mum liked to call it ‘Hat-titude’).
By 20, I was an old hand at deploying my sexual prowess to get what I wanted; using it to get into nightclubs in my teenage years, and managing to avoid spending any money on nights out thanks to the men I would pick from the crowd.
I lacked such confidence in myself that I relied on my image to pull me through. I suppose, deep down, I felt that the sexier I seemed, the more confident I was.
Here was a Titian-haired goddess at ease with her body and able to go from relationship to relationship without a flicker of nerves. Although they weren’t relationships, not really. They were flings at the most — one-night stands is a more accurate description, with the odd few relationships when I inadvertently let my guard down.
I’d had sober sex with my husband. I don’t recall the exact time frame — it was quite far into our relationship — but I do know I was really nervous. I remember how he had told a friend when we first started dating: ‘I’m not sure I can handle this’, in reference to how often I instigated sex, and this stuck in my mind for our entire relationship. Isn’t that what men wanted? A girl who wanted to have sex all the time?
I was 24 when we met, and we married a yearand-a-half later. It was a huge black-tie affair at my home in Devon, and people still regale me with stories from the wild party that went on until midday. We ended up splitting around three years later, when it became obvious the marriage was simply no longer working. We had been young and chaotic when we got married, and not much had changed.
We were both exhausted from trying to hold it together, so we decided to separate.
At the time, it felt like a weight had been lifted, and I quickly returned to my old selfish behaviour of partying hard and staying out all night.
My heart was shattered and I didn’t know how to cope with that, so I did what I did best, and hid all my feelings and emotions behind a wild persona.
I felt I was hard-wired to push away those who tried to get close to me, and I did that with sex; I could give them my body as long as I didn’t give them my heart.
The final straw came after a rather promiscuous trip to Ibiza last October, where I engaged in several holiday romances. When I got home, I had a night in, catching up with an old friend.
After a few bottles of wine between us, we began to discuss children. I wanted them, I drunkenly declared (this much, certainly, is true), but because I couldn’t find a man to have them with, I was just going to do it on my own, maybe with the aid of a sperm donor.
Men, I remember pronouncing, were all awful. None of them wanted to settle down, none of them wanted a relationship. THE next day, hungover and brittle with vulnerability, I found I couldn’t brush off the conversations from the previous night like I normally did.
Instead, I felt empty. Of course no man wanted to be with me — I was a mess.
I decided that I never wanted to feel like that again. I was not going to have a drink for the foreseeable future (I don’t like to say for ever, as it feels an awfully long time).
My journey to sobriety and getting to know myself again has not been easy. Stopping cold turkey meant my anxiety rocketed. My edginess was only worsened by social fears.
Suddenly, though, people started being nicer to me: they were interested in what I had to say, and I noticed that they hung out that little bit longer after supper just to chat.
I was complimented on what ‘good form’ I was on. I had always got drunk in order to be liked by everyone — and here I was sober, suddenly more accepted and liked than I had ever been in my life.
Gone were the fairweather friends, in it only for the parties. Gone were my hangovers, and my shame at drunken sexual misdemeanours.
Gone, too, however, was any sex whatsoever.
I suppose, at its heart, the reason for my sudden celibacy is that, without alcohol, I’m now more in touch with my feelings than before.
Newly aware of the emotional exposure real intimacy necessitates, I find myself running scared.
And so, despite believing I have met The One, my fear of revealing my body and feelings is so crippling that I’ve decided to hold fire on pursuing this relationship with Tim; I’ve lost my sexual confidence, but I would hate to lose my friend more.
In time, I am hopeful I will rediscover my mojo and get used to sobriety in the bedroom. But, for the moment, I’m going to relish the fact that sex does not define me any more. Sex, now, is a reward, a goal, not a mindless activity.
first, I have to get to know a person — and let them get to know me. Both of us will have to be willing to be vulnerable.
Only then will I be able to let my guard down, and embrace sober sex.
Tim and Steve’s names have been changed. This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on getthegloss.com