My name is Amanda. I'm 28 year olds, and like many of you, Covid and Monkeypox have ruined my plans in life. Not from catching either of the viruses, but from avoiding them. Avoiding them by needing to call a halt to dating, which was how I was going to meet a husband and start a family.
Until the pandemic arrived at the start of 2020, my life was going swimmingly, just the way I had planned it. I was an honor roll high school student and got an academic scholarship to Ohio State. I kept my partying, and Facebook-Instagram time, to a minimum, and learned enough econometrics to get into a management training program at my mom's insurance company in downtown Columbus. And I started building a solid career there.
On the sex-and-dating front: I had a rputation, well-earned, of being a good girl who was just casually dating. I lost my virginity, willingly, after a high school Homecoming dance--a very Ohio way to do it for the first time. I had a couple hookups at Ohio State, just with "nice guys", and just enough to build a 'Beginner's Foundation', as I thought of it, of what I liked and didn't like about sex, how to tell a guy what to do to me in bed, and to make myself read to go out and land my future husband at around 25 or 26. (Little did I know that Covid would hit when I was 26; Monkeypox when I was 28.)
And while there were parts of sex I definitely enjoyed, and while I was also decent-to-good at it, and while my girl-next-door looks were more than sufficient to attract flirting (both the welcome and unwelcome kind), there were defintely some warning flags which I was paying attention to.
The first was that, while being a good girl had its obvious advantages (guys knew they needed to approach you respectfully, not like a tramp), it could sometimes give the mis-impression that you weren't interested in sex. So you'd get a good vibe going with a guy .... and then he'd ask you for advice on another girl. Ewww--especially if I thought I was WAY sexier than the girl he brought up.
And then, the act itself. I wasn't good at the wordless give-and-take in bed--cumming together, finding out he was 'done' when I was just getting warmed up--or vice versa. Did I need to 'practice' more.
I was just starting to do exactly that--practice sex just to get better at it--when the pandemic/s halted all dating for anyone single.
How was I ever going to get better at it?
A co-worker (Elaine) in my exact situation, or almost, was lamenting the dating dilemma with me.
Over drinks, she pitched an idea which seemed out of left field, until we started talking about it.
All pandemics end, but until this one does, maybe she and I could keep our 'game' from getting stale by .... catfighting each other.
To be continued.....