To think casual sex with men can be quite dangerous

[LadyH846]

I'm just making this post to vent. I'm a single woman who is nearing 40.

I've had a bit of casual sex with people in the past I met on dating apps and with friends/acquaintances. When I was in my 20s, no-one seemed to be into rough sex but I noticed when I was in my mid 30s, the men I met on dating apps were dominating me physically in a way that didn't feel good, e.g. grabbing me roughly by the neck during sex to the point where it felt a bit much, without us discussing beforehand if that was going to happen. I didn't like it and stopped them to explain this. No harm done, apart from how fricking weird it was to have my neck grabbed during sex.

I didn't have casual sex for a few years. Had sex with a friend of mine and thought maybe it would become a friends with benefits thing. Turns out he was into rough sex and didn't tell me. During the first encounter with no warning, he pushed me face down on the bed, really hard. It hurt. I remember I could hardly breathe and felt like I was being smothered. I asked him to stop. I noticed afterwards I seemed to have pulled a muscle in the area of my ribs. Several days later I had to go to A&E because the pain was so bad and I couldn't breathe very well.

Turns out I've got a badly bruised rib, which the doctor said only happens through trauma or an accident. Obviously it happened that night because nothing else has happened to me that could have caused it. This guy was over 6ft and a big, strong guy. I am only 5ft and very slight. I don't think he tried to hurt me, but still.

The sex obviously won't be happening again. I feel like I've been assaulted.

I now feel stupid for not discussing beforehand rough sex and what my limits are, given that I've been grabbed by the throat on numerous occasions in the past.

But why do I have to have this discussion? 20-25 years ago, no-one was doing this.

I don't know why I have encountered men being rough during sex over the last 5-10 years or so. Sex never used to be about this.

I feel like I'm done with casual sex.

I don't think I'm normalising it at all. If you re-read my original post, you'll see it basically says "this is not normal sexual behaviour!"

And if you read the entire thread, you'll see I'm not the only one who has experienced this. A couple of posters even talked about how they got whacked in the face with a penis during sex.

I didn't make any mention of porn up. It is other posters who have mentioned that. I do think 50 shades of grey and porn has something to do with this though.

@Mumtobabyhavoc When I wrote earlier on in the thread that my experiences are not out of the ordinary, I meant they appear to be commonplace and not unusual. I did not mean my experiences are acceptable, normal or anything along those lines.

To the people who are blaming me for "lack of communication" before sex, I actually had a conversation with him beforehand where I asked if he had any fetishes or any unusual sexual tastes. He did not disclose his preference for rough sex. This is a conversation I've had with other men before (including the ones who roughly grabbed me by the neck) and they did not disclose that they liked doing that during sex.

The communication lapse is 100% not on my end, it's that men are not disclosing that they have these unusual tastes either because they prefer to spring it on a woman so they has no say in the matter, or because they don't see it as "unusual".

In future I am going to go into sexual encounters with very clear instructions about what I do not do, or want done to me.

I'm also going to only have sexual encounters with men who love me in future. As I said, I'm done with casual sex. I value myself too much to take this risk in the future.

I also know full well I was assaulted. I don't need to "wake up". I know I was assaulted, and he knows because I told him.

I don't see any point in reporting it to the police. It will be a bunch of unpleasantness for not much justice. It's a case of he said/she said.

At this point I want to move on and just learn from this, so I can better protect myself in the future.

Thanks to everyone who shared their experiences and thoughts.

We’ve been sold a lie. The lie that sexual freedom and casual sex is a component of equality and anyone that disagrees is wanting to take us back to the Victorian era.

Our bodies and the inherent risk we take are different to men. We are the ones left with the risk of pregnancy / abortion or the raising of children alone if the man chooses to piss off , STI’s can be more harmful to us than they are to men and rough sex is only going to end up damaging women, sometimes permanently. So many women have been murdered through ‘rough sex’. I agree that casual sex is dangerous. It’s bad for women, society and the children it produces.

Casual sex is more likely to be rough and selfish sex

there’s no emotional involvement it literally selfish pleasure

I agree, OP. I separated from DP just before lockdown (we are back together) and when things eased up I did have casual sex that ended in rape. I don’t want to go into details but from the onset he wanted to keep slapping my arse and roughly pulling me and pushing me around. When I initially said no, I don’t like it, he didn’t seem to believe me. I remember him saying ‘yeah but it’s nice, lots of women like it’. It was horrible.

During the past couple of years some of my friends have had similar experiences. Anal sex is always expected. Choking is is always involved. It’s so miserable and grim.

I went into casual sex as I was lonely and thought as a strong and independent women I could just have the pleasure and company for an evening and back to my own space. Instead it seriously fucked up my mental health and I’m only really ‘okay’ now.

I hope you are okay OP and take the distance and time you need to recover.

Have you explicitly used the word 'assault' to him? I think he needs to know in no uncertain terms.

I can't imagine ever going near a man again frankly.

It's assault OP, I'm sorry this happened to you.

Sadly I hear this all the time from my girlfriends. They aren't into casual sex and go on dates but find more men see previous taboos as givens. E.g. anal, rough sex.

It's definitely due to the availability of porn and use of tech. Sadly we shouldn't normalise this.

I'm talking about a lack of communication, generally. Pre sex. You don't know these men very well. You have sex with them, and this only highlights the fact that you don't know them well at all.

You must have missed the part where I mentioned this guy was my friend. I did know him well, or so I thought.

As someone who has experienced horrible male violence, I am so scared for young women I know who haven’t had any sexual encounters yet. A young relative told me she is a little afraid of the future based on the sorts of things she has heard young men say - some of them influenced by the likes of Andrew Tate.

The other day I saw some young people hanging out and a young man had a young woman in a headlock. They were just joking around but I was struck by how he had her in the headlock and she just went along with it. I really wanted to give them a friendly lecture but decided against it. To them I’m just an old lady. But for me it was actually horrible to see that was their way of flirting/joking around. Makes me shudder.

I'm eary 50s and spent quite a lot of the last 18 months on OLD, with a lot of casual sex. The guys I went with were between 45 and 55 (and one in his 60s, because he lied.)

I've always been upfront that I don't do choking or anything round the neck - kissing is fine, but pretty much anything else starts me panicking. I don't even wear tight collars or necklaces. I had men asking for anal, but none pushed it when I said no. One guy was into rough sex, but he was also into consent, so wouldn't force anything without agreement. Most of them were just grateful to be having sex, as far as I could tell, and it's been fun.

I have probably been lucky, but I do wonder if slightly older men aren't so expecting to have choking and anal and so on as a mainstream part of sex. Or maybe I managed to filter out some of them at the chat phase without realising - if I don't enjoy chatting with them, they're not going to get to meet, let alone anywhere near my bed. Even the guy I slept with whom I knew before, we'd chatted a lot (about sex) before it happened, mostly because of geography, but we were fairly clear on each other's boundaries before we got there. I think maybe now I think about it, I have covered some of my boundaries before meeting anyone, as part of chat.

But I think a lot of it has been luck as much as judgement that I've had a great time and no bad events.

what's scary to me is that young children are watching porn on phones, like school kids, girls watching thinking that's what's done to them and boys thinking that's what to do. (please don't start gender convos please ;) but yes totally agree porn, has a lot to answer to.

I slept with a man in his late 50s who was an amazing lover and not into any of this BDSM rubbish. I wonder if older men are less likely to be into it as they haven't grown up with it normalised in the mainstream media.

"I slept with a man in his late 50s who was an amazing lover and not into any of this BDSM rubbish. I wonder if older men are less likely to be into it as they haven't grown up with it normalised in the mainstream media."

@LadyH846

This wouldn't surprise me in the least. BDSM was obviously around when I was young (I'm in my 60s) but it certainly was considered kinky and 'not in the norm'. TBH, I can't think of a single person of my acquaintance, male or female, 'back in the day' or since who ever said they liked it or wanted it.

But I have a feeling that another facet to this is that older men usually have more experience with women or may have been in a committed long term relationship. That may have taught them to 'go softly' and to wait for hints or cues from the woman that she's into that sort of thing. Or they may actually initiate a conversation about it at some point.

You sound like a great person OP.

I really hope you heal from this, and I do understand why you don't want police involved!

I think your attitude going forward is best and is one that I have adopted myself

@LadyH846 I expect you're right and that older men are the way to go.

I'm really sorry to hear this. What a disgusting, manipulative individual.

Thank you!

Best of luck to you x

Yes, my 3 year old daughter's dad is 54 and he never did any of this horrible hurting people during sex either. Hair-pulling is another one I forgot about.

About 4 years ago when I was dating I met a man who thought it was OK to grab and yank my breasts in a painful way, amongst other aggressive and painful behaviour.

Like you, I explained to him that it hurt and I didn't like it.

I find this approach a lot of men have to sex now of selfish aggression and domination horrible.

Another update about this sorry excuse for a man.

He is upset about the fact that I don't want to see him again or have sex with him because I'm not into BDSM, plus he hurt me.

He says he "knows I enjoyed it" even if I can't admit it. And that I'm punishing him and making him feel bad, which upsets him.

He insinuated I'm bad in bed and says he's too much of a gentleman to comment on that in detail.

Apparently I'm cruel and have hurt his feelings.

What an absolute twat. I didn't realise he was like this. If he wasn't someone I was going to see in my hobby group I'd report him to the police because damn he deserves it.

I told him it isn't my job to make him feel better about the fact that he injured me, and that it's not all about him. And said not to contact me again.