Sara is 35 years old and she’s not in an open relationship or polyamorous or anything. She is monogamous, very happy to be so, and beyond sex, she especially loves tenderness.
“I don’t recognize myself at all in the testimonies of people in my age group,” immediately confides the young woman, met earlier this month in her small kitchen, where toys, colored pencils and other items sit. figurines. We are with a young family and it shows.
“I know lots of people in open relationships, not heteronormative. Me ? I would describe myself as flat in my sexuality! “, she said with a burst of laughter. Let’s agree: “I don’t find it dull,” she adds, “we are very happy in our very normative, very vanilla little comfort. That suits us. »
She has been in a relationship with her boyfriend for 10 years, and ideally for life, she continues. “Ideally, he would be the man of my life and there would be no others!” »
It must be said that he is her first “real boyfriend”, and vice versa. Before him, she had certainly had a few relationships, but nothing very significant. “I was always on my guard. ” On guard ? Because her very first “penetrative” relationship, as she says, around the age of 18, while she dreams of it being “magical” (“want, don’t want, we put that on a pedestal…”), didn’t happen. does not go exactly as planned. “I felt like a hole,” she says. It really wasn’t tender. He was not attentive to my needs. I had to tell him twice to stop. […] And it took those two times before he stopped. So I was on guard after that. »
And then “bad” ones dates » and other “flat moments” of the kind, Sara has experienced several of them. But she doesn’t see this as aggression. “I would call it… violence,” she adds. Because it was violent. ” Example ? Another time, in a party, a guy wants to kiss her, brings her to a corner, and it ends… in “fingering”! “I said no, but he did the same!” I had to run away…”
Another example: while traveling, somewhere in her twenties, a guy tries to force her to kiss another girl, by holding them both by the heads. ” Uh no ! », she illustrates. “I really feel like I have to be on guard in vulnerable situations. »
Does this explain it? The fact remains that during all these years, Sara seeks above all “a hug, this tenderness, a gesture of affection”.
If I don’t feel that tenderness, I’ll look elsewhere. Because for me, that’s what’s most important.
Sarah, 35 years old
As for the rest, she knows: “The sexual side, I can do it on my own! If I want an orgasm, I can masturbate! » Whereas a hug is done by two people.
In her mid-twenties, friends introduced her to a young man, her current boyfriend, the father of her children. “You would go well together,” they told him. You have the same values, the same goals. » And listening to him confide, we understand that they saw it correctly.
That said, it’s not exactly smooth from the start. In bed, in their early days, it’s even “special,” Sara continues. “He and I had a lot of things in our heads,” she analyzes. We had a lot of stress, and I had all my fears. […] And I think that when we are too much in our heads, the pleasure goes away. »
She just thinks: they must have had trouble letting go, and it ultimately takes them a good year before they get there. “But we still had fun doing it! » And then they each went “a part of the way”, and above all communicated a lot: “how do you like it? do you want me to do this? how ? », she illustrates. Since then, everything has been going well on that front.
On the tender side, moreover, there was never any problem, it was always there. “We are very affectionate, we like to cuddle and hold hands,” she illustrates. It was especially with the arrival of the children that they put their finger on it. Twenty minutes here and there, snatched away, “these are our little moments where we stick together. […] Little moments just enjoying being the two of them together. And it does us both good! »
Their bubble can last 20 to 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, “and it’s really a relaxed, uncomplicated moment, where we share caresses. […] The arms, the legs, sometimes, yes, the buttocks.” But sometimes not. “Sometimes it’s genital, sometimes it’s not. » Especially when they are tired, as you might have guessed. “Sometimes we don’t have the energy for sex, but we just want tenderness. »
Everyone is different, she knows, and everyone has varying needs too. “But for us, it responds to a need for contact, for physical love, other than sex. » If older people often express it, Sara has the feeling that people of her generation are more into action and “performance”. The “prowess”, that is. “And that’s correct,” she said, “but I have the impression that we talk less about this tenderness […], that it is less valued. »
And maybe we should? At least that’s his opinion. “This is not to be neglected,” she argues. No, we are no longer in the passion of the first days. We’re just trying to be good and happy in our relationship. […] In the end, passion can leave, come and go; tenderness is what allows you to get through times when there is less passion. This, in the end, is what makes a relationship last, she concludes. Well, that’s my vision…”
* Fictitious first name, to protect anonymity