In Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Committed,” she quotes, “[We] go through two puberties in life. The first puberty is when our bodies become mature enough for sex; the second puberty is when our minds become mature enough for sex” (105). In my own quest to emotionally understand sex, I came up with a personal analogy about the learning process.

This past Fall I took guitar lessons for the first time. My teacher was a talented musician who was very laid-back. I would come in for my lesson and we’d spend several minutes chatting before he’d ask, “what do you feel like working on today?” I would name an advanced song (my taste was way above my skill level) and he’d listen to the song and write it out for me. He’d show me exactly where my fingers are supposed to go to play the notes and chords, and I’d go home thrilled to work on my new song. I was never able to play anything well because my fingers didn’t move quickly but what sustained me was pure passion. It didn’t matter that I had no idea what notes and chords I was playing, because when I did what he showed me and followed my ear, I played the songs I’ve always longed to play, albeit slowly and out of tempo. He never asked me to play for him so he could track my progress; I was perfectly content to toil in the privacy of my home and skip the embarrassment of making mistakes in front of him. By winter, though, I began to feel unfulfilled and like I was cheating at learning the guitar.

In January I got a new teacher who could push and guide me through the basics from the bottom up. She not only assigns me exercises, she also has me play things in front of her. She has me learning the basics of sheet reading, chords, notes, rhythm, and everything else that real musicians learn. But we also do the fun stuff, only in a more organic way that involves me actually reading music. This means that I have to put the advanced stuff aside a bit, because I am learning songs that are actually within my reach that I can play at the correct tempo and with more accuracy.

How does all this relate to my understanding of sex? I’ll tell you. When I was younger (we’re talking 2-4 years), I experienced sex as a purely passionate act detached from feelings like love and respect. That’s not to say that there wasn’t respect in my sexual encounters, what I mean is that they lacked deep respect, the kind you experience when you truly love someone. Now this is not surprising as I imagine most people my age experience sex this way and not many people fall in love all that often.

Sex used to seem so simple. As intense as it is, it always seemed safe because no one ever broached my emotional barrier. You could even say that the way I enjoyed sex was very masculine because of how emotionally withdrawn I was. But now, everything is different. Now I am in love. I am in a strong, supportive relationship of deep trust and respect. Oddly enough, this has made sex more complicated than ever. I’ve always been good at talking about my feelings and understanding myself, but I’ve had very little practice with talking about sex. As it turns out, talking about it is just as important as talking about your daily feelings. Sex is often a representation for a couple’s emotional climate, but for some reason most people overlook this.

My earlier days with sex are much like my earlier experiences with guitar. In guitar I didn’t want to look at the underlying patterns and details of the music I was learning, and I certainly didn’t want to feel vulnerable in front of my teacher by playing for him. It felt much safer to struggle through the songs on my own, and instead of learning to read music I got a quick fix of pleasure and passion learning songs by imitation and memory. Since I started with my new teacher, I’ve experienced a surprising reluctance to play. It takes extra motivation to practice the exercises in my theory book and even to practice the simple chord progressions of songs that I myself picked. I long to hear myself play the harder stuff, and am disappointed when I realize that playing simpler songs with accuracy is actually quite difficult. On top of this, I feel vulnerable and self-conscious during my lessons because I am so afraid to make mistakes in front of my teacher. Suddenly, playing the guitar is not as simple as it once felt.

Similarly, when my boyfriend and I started to fall in love and the Pandora box of deep emotions opened, sex began to get complicated. It no longer felt like a simple act that merely satisfies a desire for passion. Suddenly sex was connected to intense love, sensitivity, vulnerability…I gradually started to feel naked in many unexpected ways. All manner of feelings started to come out—deep wounds from my childhood like my fear of abandonment, insecurities like my discomfort with giving or receiving affection, and the list goes on.

The closer my boyfriend and I grew and the more we talked about our deepest fears and insecurities, a funny thing happened. I began to feel afraid of sex. I began to understand that during sex, we were just as emotionally connected as any other time. The emotional wall that started coming down through growing closer could not simply just be thrown up again in the bedroom. I was afraid to acknowledge the underlying patterns of emotions coursing through sex, and afraid that I could no longer hide in the safety of emotional detachment. But just like learning to play the guitar the organic way, understanding sex in an emotional way is at first terrifying and exhausting but is eventually supremely fulfilling. That first moment of realization after struggling through the frustration is the most beautiful and rewarding feeling in the world, when you realize, “Oh my god…I am actually playing the guitar!!” Or rather, after weeks of trying to hold up a crumbling emotional barrier, the white flag goes up and you realize, “Oh my god. I am so loved and so in love…during sex!”