Creating a foundation for growth: On ever-evolving identity

For a long time, I believed self-discovery was an isolated, internal process of reflection that resembled a kind of monastic commitment. It was a solitary journey with a clear ending. You simply journaled until you uncovered your authentic self, then presented that self to the world, free from any impediments or trouble that might have ailed you before. At least, that’s what I hoped would happen for me. I spent years thinking about coming out before I came out, and once I did, I assumed the decision alone was enough to change how I felt in the world. Most people probably know this isn’t how self-discovery works. In reality, it requires an evolving back and forth, in which you think you learn something, apply that knowledge, and—in the ongoing process of understanding yourself—sometimes you discover you couldn't be more wrong.  

What I mean is: I’m trying to talk about sex, a topic I’m finding surprisingly hard to discuss, despite how freely I’ve written about it in the past, in fiction and in essays. Not just sex, but the pleasure we associate with sex. That’s the whole point, after all. My relationship to pleasure still feels pretty new—blame gender dysphoria, or eating disorders, or simple pathological grouchiness. I’m not new to sex, but I’m new to sex in a particular way: as a non-binary person. I came out when I was 30, and the following year I moved to New York, recently divorced, during the first summer of the pandemic. In my early days of casual hook-ups in the city, single for the first time in 8 years, I felt beholden to the sex I’d been having before I came out, partly out of habit, partly because I didn’t know how to want anything else. 

Desire, like most imaginative acts, arises out of a mix of speculation and memory. There is only so much I knew how to imagine without seeing it first. I hardly knew the blurry outlines of what I might like, much less the interior textures. My desires were fashioned out of movies and books and reconstituted experiences that no longer aligned with my gender. 

I recently explored the Reflections self-discovery tool on Feeld, and left the experience wishing I’d had it during my first few years in the city. The desires and kinks I saw reflected back to me, after answering the questions, have been hard-earned through encounters with lovers. There were surprises, too. I don’t normally think of myself as someone who has strong boundaries, but my responses implied the opposite. I was pleased to reflect on all the work I’d done over the years to fortify my sense of self, and proud to recognize the boundaries that arose with that effort. How much more confident would I have been, I wondered, if I’d had a better sense of what I wanted during those earlier hookups? And how fun is it now, years later, to see the expansive potential of what I might want in the future?

Seeing and feeling seen

I’m embarrassed to admit how long I continued having sex in a manner that didn’t align with how I felt about my body. But I didn’t know I was betraying myself. My desires outpaced what I could articulate wanting or needing, even to myself. It was hard to recognize the divide between my desires and the sex I was having, in part because I believed coming out was all that was required for me to have sex authentically. Finally, I was myself—and I believed this was the same as being seen by a lover. 

There are just about as many ways to feel seen as there are ways to have sex. It can happen when a lover shares a similar kink, or they care for your body more tenderly—or roughly—than previous partners, or they know where to touch you before you’re able to tell them. It’s an ambiguous feeling, as much an intuition as it is a tangible sensation. I didn’t realize I’d never felt it because I had no way of knowing I’d been going without it. Only its presence helped me feel its previous absence.

When it finally happened, I was 34 years old, in a new lover’s bed. She didn’t do anything specific. It wasn’t her asking how to refer to me or my body, or asking me what I liked—past lovers had done the same. Instead, there was a sense of immediacy in how she spoke to me and about me. She wasn’t translating my gender. And noticing that she wasn’t, I realized that past lovers had. Those past lovers had all been gentle and kind and respectful. But there had been a split second of caution, a space between how they saw me and how they referred to me. They worked to align those two versions of me. This was supportive, appropriate work. In hindsight, I’m glad they were doing it. But it was still work—and I perceived it, no matter how subtly. 

Before that night, my understanding of pleasure was limited by the experiences I’d had before coming out—and even after, I wasn’t magically transformed by coming out on its own. Self-discovery, while productive, couldn’t reveal to me everything that I wanted. I still needed another person, and the affirmation they provided, to reflect on the type of sex I most wanted to have. I left the encounter hungry for what now seems like the most basic requirement. 

Future reflection

Predictably, that lover and I didn’t last very long. Good sex can lead to its own slew of problems. It was a hectic affair, in part because of the very thing that made it so powerful for me: how seen I felt. I treated the relationship with a Golem-like sense of scarcity, prioritizing the transformative nature of the sex over other obvious incompatibilities. What that relationship taught me, though, was that I could feel seen with a lover. Sex didn’t need to exist in a state of negotiation and unrecognized disappointment. Rather, it ought to begin with recognition and evolve outward from there. 

In the years since that relationship ended, I’ve drastically changed what I expect from a lover. I’ve gotten better at intuiting how someone sees me before we get to the bedroom. It isn’t a perfect science—and I’m sure I’ve prematurely dismissed partners out of hairtrigger caution. But it’s given me the confidence to explore the very desires I didn’t previously know how to name. It’s so much easier, and safer, to explore what I might want when I feel I am aligned with my partner. 

Before, sex existed on uneven ground. I couldn’t explore my genuine desires because they didn’t emerge from me, but from a version of me balanced between my lover and the person I presented to them. Since experiencing sex while feeling truly seen, every encounter has opened new possibilities. Now, I find it so much more exciting to explore and play. My range of pleasure has increased dramatically—confirmed by Feeld’s Reflections tool, which reminded me of how my kinks and desires have evolved over the years, as I’ve become more comfortable with my partners. Even when I play the occasional hits, from decades ago, I do so from a foundation of self-confidence rather than self-abnegation. I engage from a place of potential growth. I know so much more about what I want, now, than I did only three years ago, and there’s so much I can’t even begin to fathom about what I might want in the future. 

Curious about uncovering more of your own desires? You can explore with Reflections—a free self-discovery tool. Go beyond your surface with Feeld.