An open letter about sex, consent and self-esteem to a young Gunnar
Dear Gunnar,
You're only 14 years old, and I know how it feels to have so much longing to be seen, loved and desired. I know, because I was you once. And even though I'm about to turn 50, those needs are still there. They may never go away.
That's the bad news.
But here's the good news: It somehow gets better.
When I was you, 36 years ago, I didn't know that girls could want me. It would take almost 20 more years before I realized it.
In six years, you'll have your first girlfriend. You'll touch your first boob. You'll have your first kiss. You sleep with a girl. Not exactly an early debut, but there are people who debut later too. And almost all the cool people at Sirdal High School who you think have sex all the time are largely still virgins too.
Shocking, isn't it? You're not as alone as you think.
But here's the thing: I know you're horny as hell all the time. Horny, yes, such a degrading word, in many ways. So animalistic and dirty. But horniness is not alone. It's a primal instinct wrapped in a dream that a girl will like you. That a girl will want you. That someone can look at you and fall in love with you. Like you for who you are. To love overweight, soon to be very pimply, weird, introverted, silent, nerdy and quirky you.
At the same time, you're also very horny. Of course you are. You can't ignore that. You want to experience what you've seen in movies and magazines. What your hormones are constantly reminding you of. And while music is blaring out of the clock radio, and porn magazines are being pulled out from under the mattress, your sexy English teacher is in bed with you every single night. There's a lot of fantasy and horniness in a fourteen-year-old.
All the wanking in the world isn't going to change that. Not ever.
Luckily, you're currently too shy to do anything about it. Which is probably just as well, because God knows what you'd do if you had both that horniness and self-confidence. Luckily, you don't, so you're just hiding. And longing.
Longing.
It may seem strange to receive a letter from yourself far in the future. But I want to tell you a little story. A story about you, about self-confidence, and about consent. The latter, the one about consent, will come eventually, but first I need to give a little backstory - or future insight - so you understand how you ended up where I am now.
You'll probably never read this, unless the multiverse theory is true and you've already read this letter an infinite number of times. Written by an infinite number of variants of future-you.
But in this particular universe, I know what's going to happen.
You turn twenty-some years old, and you've had a bit of sex with a woman or two. But then you want more. Not everything that happens in the next few years is as beautiful. Or okay. Seen with more mature eyes. But you were far from the worst.
But not the best either. And that's what I want to talk to you about, because if you'd understood what I now understand, you might have both behaved less stupidly and been more successful with the ladies.
However, I don't think I would be who I am today if I hadn't also been who you were. Because just by making those mistakes, feeling that longing, experiencing so much loneliness, feeling so much shame, I might never have been forced to think these things through.
Today I have a daughter. You will have a daughter, Gunnar. She's 17 years old as I write this. Our daughter is growing up in a world that is very different to where you are now, in the late eighties, without the internet, without Tik Tok, without that pressure to be mature and grown up and successful so early. You might think you have it bad there in 1988, but believe me, if you'd grown up today you might feel even more left out.
I want my daughter, your daughter, to have a safe and happy life. A life without people like you and me thinking that we deserve something. Entitled to something. The right to have sex. The right to have all the sexual experiences we imagine others have.
But everyone else gets to have sex, you might think. I know what I thought when I was you. You thought the solution was to be more forward. Be braver. Take more chances. Grope a little more. Make it very clear that you wanted them. Or maybe hope they didn't notice what you were doing when you tried to feel some boob...? Isn't that how all the other boys scored?
Well, maybe. It can work too - for one party at least. But it's far from unproblematic. Fortunately, there is a better and simpler solution.
It's not as complicated as you think.
I know that in your head, only a certain type of guy gets all the women. The sporty ones. The cool ones. The ones who dare to go to parties and drink. The confident and unsympathetic ones. The selfish ones. The ones who are brash and push the envelope.
You wanted to be like them. Yes, think about it. You, innocent, sweet Gunnar, wanted to be more shitty to get women. Luckily, you didn't really manage to be that. Well, in a way you did, but you did it by being weird and strange. In your eternal longing for someone, a girl, the girl you were always in love with, to let you into her life, you did everything you could to stop her from doing just that.
Being so sure that no one could like you, you did everything to confirm that impression by being inedible and unapproachable, through ultra weird humor, quips and a cold shoulder. Because it's always easier to set yourself up not to be loved than to do your best to be loved - and fail.
The years passed, and the beauty of years passing is that they mold you slowly into someone new. You become a little stronger. You give a little fewer fucks. You magically gain a confidence that you never had before and haven't yet realized where it came from.
I think it has something to do with disappointment. With how life constantly disappoints. How people almost without exception disappoint. In the end, you only have yourself and the few who have shown that they are worth spending time with. There aren't that many. But these eternal disappointments make you grow together with your body. You get bigger inside to fill the volume you now hold.
When I finally came out of my shell... or wait a minute. Let me rephrase that. I want you to know how this is going to go.
You will finally come out of your shell only after hitting 30 years. Almost 35, actually. A very delayed puberty. A youthful rebellion twenty years too late. But better late than never. And when you finally start living a little, and with a little more baggage, you'll discover that everything you thought about women and sex was wrong.
The first, and finest, thing is that you're also fuckable. Yep, Gunnar. You still have many years to live before you will realize this fact, but you are fuckable, Gunnar.
I'm not sure if those who actually fuck a lot in their teens reach that realization earlier, or if there's no necessary connection there. After all, I'd had sex many times, good and vigorous sex, even. Perhaps a little later than many others, and not with as many people.
And worst of all, mostly only with women who had first started to like me as a friend, before they eventually developed feelings for me. And then we ended up in bed together, eventually. But that doesn't really count. They slept with me because they liked me. God, how pathetic! You don't need mojo to be desired by someone who already loves you! And I wanted mojo.
It wasn't until I was thirty-something that I had my first experience of meeting a woman who I fell head over heels in love with, and who after our first meeting, albeit after writing and chatting together for a few weeks, actually fell for me. Right then and there. Sight unseen. Almost.
That is mojo. That's what counts.
Ot that's what I thought. And what you are going to believe. And maybe we're not wrong. There's something special about experiencing that someone just likes you. Right out of the box. It certainly helps the self-esteem of a formerly pimply and fat teenager. (And your pimples will go away eventually. That's at least something.)
But best of all, one day, way down the road, you're going to have alot of sex. A disgusting amount of sex. The kind of sex where you have three women in one weekend and have to make sure you get the Friday fuck out the door on Saturday before the Saturday fuck rings the doorbell.
That particular scenario probably seems completely absurd to you as you sit listening to Samantha Fox and reading a blog post before the internet exists. But it's true. I promise.
And the big question then is: What are you doing that will change you so much that you go from thinking no one wants you to being embarrassed when you go to the STD clinic to fill out a form about how many sex partners you've had in the last three months, and you feel like the world's biggest slut?
What happens is that you start to believe that someone might like you.
It's that simple. And yet so difficult.
But after many disappointments and setbacks and with a heart that there's barely enough glue in the world to hold together anymore, you meet a girl who makes you believe that you can be liked too. A girl who will admittedly break your heart harder and more times than anyone else, and who takes advantage of your naive goodness over many years until you have almost nothing left to give to anyone.
But it's worth it.
Because when you start believing that someone can like you, you make it possible for someone to like you. And if someone can like us, Gunnar, then we can all be liked by someone.
Loved, even.
We're not so bad, you and me. But with sex comes responsibility. And yes, you have to be willing to be liked before you can be liked, and you have to get someone to like you before you can have sex. But once you're there, there's one important message you need to take on board.
Just because someone wants to have sex with you doesn't mean you have to have sex. It certainly doesn't mean that you can expect to have sex, or that she can expect you to want to have sex with her. Or him. You do you.
This is where the now slightly hackneyed, but oh so important, word consent comes into play. Not just consent, but enthusiastic consent. You need to know that she wants to have sex with you, and she needs to know that you want to have sex with her.
You shouldn't believe, or suspect, or hope, or expect, or demand... You should know.
In a few years, you're going to start writing a blog, Gunnar. A blog that will actually be quite popular. Because even if no one wants to fuck you, they like to read your weird thoughts.
In that blog, I wrote a blog post a few years ago about how not to become a sex offender. Here my main message was also consent. Enthusiastic consent. It felt like a cliché to write, and yet I was saddened and shocked when I read the response. Because in the comments section and on messages, I heard from men who were sure that I could hardly have had much sex since I didn't realize that asking for consent was seen as incredibly unsexy by women.
That's how wrong they can be. Both about how much sex I've had, and about what women think about this. And men, for that matter.
Because if there's one thing more than anything that makes women want to have sex with me, it's that they know I respect a no. Not just after we first get to know each other. Not just after we first meet. Not just after we start making out. Not just after we take our clothes off. Not just after we start having sex. But at any point in this process.
And you know what? That consent you got yesterday when you had amazing sex that you were both happy about doesn't have to apply today. Or two months from now. And the consent you got to have vaginal sex at 11:14 pm is not an implicit consent to have anal sex at 11:22 pm.
Just because she wanted you to dominate her and spank her tits hard last week doesn't mean she wants the same tonight. It's your responsibility to know what she wants, and what she wants can change over time. In a very short time, even.
And of course, it's also her responsibility to tell you. But that might not always be easy.
One day you'll be lying close to a woman who's so horny for you that she's shaking. You stroke her, outside her clothes, and she moans with horniness. But you know that even though she wants to, she doesn't really want to. Because life is complicated and it's not all about you. So you're going to stop there. Even though you're rock hard and she's a lump of jelly between your fingers, you say “maybe we'd better not go any further”. And you stay awake talking through the night instead.
You might think that oldie-Gunnar is a fool who thinks he knows better than a grown woman herself? You might be thinking that there are limits to how much responsibility you should take for other adults' decisions about your own life at the moment?
You're probably not alone. But I can guarantee you that you'd rather be “overprotective” and mansplaining in your internal dialog, and thus miss out on a fuck, than go the next day feeling that you did something you shouldn't have done, just because these damn hormones are the greatest force of nature of all.
If it's meant to be, a new opportunity will usually present itself. If you're unsure, it's worth waiting. In this case, there was never a second chance, which makes me confident that my decision was the right one for both of us that night.
But it also goes the other way.
Our horniness, Gunnar, and our lack of self-esteem also mean that you're going to sleep with some women you don't really want to sleep with. Women who you feel you have to sleep with just because you've said A. Then it feels cowardly, or awkward, or mean not to say B. And that's fine, because people like us don't take it so hard. OK, it was sex with a woman you didn't really want to have sex with, and she may have pushed you to play along against your will, but there are worse things in the world.
You're going to think that way because you've lived a life that happens to make you capable of it. That's fine for us. But not everyone has lived the life you're going to live, Gunnar. For some, such an experience will be really, really painful and shitty. Devastating, perhaps. Traumatizing. So make sure you're not the one doing it to others.
Heh, it's funny to think back that if a whole host of women in your future, or my past, had been more keen on enthusiastic consent themselves, we wouldn't have had those experiences.
And yes, while I remember it: You're going to get raped. OK, maybe that's a bit overdramatic, because it's not going to feel like rape. But in the strictest sense of the word, you're going to be raped by someone doing things to you in bed that you haven't consented to. Things you don't dare say no to. Because you're a man, and you're a horndog, so why not just go for it? A little unwanted sex never hurt anyone, right?
You'll meet women who you make out with, end up naked with, and who suddenly just shove your dick inside them, without a condom, because they suddenly feel like it. Without it being your plan. You've got the condoms ready in the bedside drawer, and you wanted to wait a little longer, but she wants you now. On the sofa in the living room. So you suddenly start fucking.
And it wasn’t a big deal. You can handle it. The chick was hot and the sex was good, so hey, who's complaining? But you'll find that while I'm sitting here telling you about the importance of consent, as a boy who will soon become a grown man, that message is deafeningly absent when it comes to girls. Understandably so, perhaps, given what the statistics show about the gender distribution of sexual abusers. But the unreported figures are huge.
Anyway. Enough about that. Let's get back to something more pleasant.
Where were we? Yes, remember that you can be liked. And know that you will be desired one day. But that doesn't mean you have to put up with anything. You are also allowed to say no. You're also allowed to say that this wasn't fucking okay. You should also be able to expect a woman to take responsibility for you and your feelings. That she waits for your enthusiastic consent as much as you wait for hers.
Because enthusiastic consent is sexy. Confidence is sexy. It's sexy to be seen and heard. It's sexy to know that the person you're lying next to cares about what you want. It's sexy to show your partner that your primary concern is that she feels safe and comfortable. Not that you're a porn star or sex athlete or that you're man enough to take her.
Consent is sexy.
But it's also your job to make getting consent sexy. It's not as hard as it sounds. You don't need a mobile app. You don't need a form and a signature. Just read her body language, feel her signals, and at some point before you go too far, look her in the eyes and ask: Are you okay? Is all good? Are you sure you want to do this? You can stroke her cheek while you do it. Maybe kiss her lightly on the lips. And if she nods and says yes, then you've both won.
It's a good start, but it doesn't stop there. It's easy to lose yourself during sex, but remember that you can and should check in with her several times to make sure she's still okay. That she wants to continue with what's happening. It may sound dry, but you'll find a way. Your way.
It's sexy, and it's worth it.
It'll make her want you even more - if she actually wants you. And if she doesn't, it's your job to make it easy for her to tell you - without fear of her feeling stupid, or you being visibly disappointed, whiny, or even worse: angry.
And yes, I forgot to say, and this is perhaps the most important thing: For this to work, she needs to know that you mean it. She can only know that if the gaining of consent started subtly long before you even started touching each other.
How that happens depends entirely on context. But through conversations, chats and flirting, you should make it clear to her that you will always think it's perfectly OK if she ever regrets something you've started. That's the only way she'll know you really mean it when you ask for her consent after the clothes are already on the floor.
You're a smart guy, Gunnar. You'll figure this out. I know you will.
Consent is sexy. And it's absolutely, positively necessary. Not only will you avoid hurting someone, harming someone, and screwing yourself. But it will even make you more attractive to a partner. You might think I sound cynical. Like this is a tactic or a game to get someone into bed. I know you hate tactical games, and even though I've gotten a lot older, I haven't changed in that regard. These are not cynical tactics, because the beauty of caring about consent, of genuinely, truly caring about consent, is that it has the wonderful side effect of making you a more attractive partner.
That's not just true in your sex life, but in the world in general. Caring about other people's wellbeing and them not feeling run over is generally a good thing. So all we need is for this to apply in bed too.
You'll probably never read this, 1988-Gunnar with walls covered in posters of a-ha, Madonna and Bon Jovi. But I wish you had, because if you had realized that you could be liked, realized that you could be desired, and realized that by really believing in all that, you would also be confident enough to really be a man that women want. That would be something.
Because only by knowing that you can say no, and that she can say no, can you both really say yes. In a way that feels right there and then.
Because enthusiastic consent is sexy. And believe it or not, Gunnar, one day there will be women out there who think you're sexy too.
Fucking weirdos.
Sincerely yours,
Gunnar, soon to be 50 years old