“You don’t have to fall in love with everyone you have sex with.  Really.” — a former lover

I consider myself demisexual, in that I really don’t enjoy transactional sex without some deeper connection. (Okay, it can be enjoyable, but not nearly as much as the other kind.)

Touch is always welcome and does not require the same level of connection as sex to be rewarding. (I have thus managed to avoid marrying all my massage therapists.)  It’s when things get more intimate and likely 1-on-1 that connection really matters.

But too often, I have confused connection and commitment, thinking that if we played together even once, there must henceforth be an ongoing relationship. Even now, with virginity more than three decades in the rearview mirror, internalizing the notion of a middle ground will take work.

In a way, it gets to that old devil oxytocin. That rush comes on, and we are wired to think that Aha!  This is love! And, societally, love requires commitment, devotion, the writing of ballads.  Changing one’s life utterly can be a high price to pay for a small chemical spill.