The Sex Comp

Dear Tethered Reader,

I’ve loved across genders, slept across labels, and learned, often messily, that the ache to be chosen doesn’t disappear just because you’re open-minded or well-practised in letting go.

I’m bisexual. I’m polyamorous. I’ve been the first and the last. I’ve been worshipped, forgotten, and watched the person I loved fall apart for someone else while I smiled through it. I’ve also spiralled over people I had no right to compare myself to. It’s human. It’s ugly. It’s tender.

I don’t offer perfect answers here. What I offer is the truth as I’ve lived it, and the permission to ask what you’ve been too afraid to name out loud.

Each week, Ask Rowan is a quiet place to sit with the things that get caught in the throat. The ones that surface when you’re watching your lover undress someone else. Or when you hear about the ex who still texts. Or when you realise you’ve been trying to win at something that was never a game.

This week, we’re talking about:

• the obsession with being “the best” in bed
• the trap of comparison, even in open love
• and how to stop performing worth through sex

If your body has ever felt like a battlefield, if your confidence has ever crumbled at the mention of someone before you, this one’s for you.

And if you’ve got your own ache?
Send it in.
Anonymous or not. I’ll meet it with tenderness, truth, and the kind of reverence that makes room for desire to be holy again.

Why do I want to be the best they’ve ever had?

Dear Rowan,
Why do I care so much about being the best my partner’s ever had in bed?
I trust them. I know they love me.
But whenever I hear about an ex, or even just watch them with someone else (we’re open), I spiral into this obsessive need to outdo whoever came before.
It’s exhausting. Why do I need to win at sex?

- Comparing

I. The Ache to Be Chosen

Dear Comparing,

Let’s begin with something simple, something raw. A truth that sits underneath so much of what we do in love, even when we’re trying to be evolved, open, generous.

You want to be chosen.

Not just once, not just with words. Not just as a partner or a lover or a companion. You want to be chosen in the way someone bites their lip when they look at you across a room. You want to be chosen in the echo of their moan when they touch themselves and your name is still burning behind their teeth. You want to be the story they tell themselves when no one else is around.

You want to matter.

Even in relationships where love is shared, where bodies are allowed to wander, there can be an ache for singularity. You may know your partner loves you, but part of you still wants to be the one they never stop wanting. Not just someone they choose, but the one they can’t forget.

We are trained to seek security through comparison. If I am the best, then I won’t be replaced. If I’m the hottest, the wildest, the most skilled, then I will be safe. That’s the quiet belief that drives it, isn’t it? The idea that someone else’s pleasure takes something away from yours. That love or lust is a zero-sum game.

But it’s not. And trying to win at it only hurts you.

II. The Myth of ‘The Best’

I’ve been there too. I have laid awake wondering if someone I loved was thinking about someone they used to sleep with. I have felt myself turn rigid with jealousy mid-scene, despite every part of me believing in the freedom we agreed on. I have tried to fuck better, harder, filthier, softer, smarter. I have chased that ghost of being “the best” like it was a throne I could finally sit on if I just earned it well enough.

And I have learned this: there is no throne. There is no ladder. There is no title.

There is only connection. There is only what happens between your skin and theirs. What you bring into the room. What they offer back.

Trying to be “the best” often means you stop being you. It turns sex into a performance. A test. A contest with no clear finish line and no applause loud enough to quiet your fear.

And most of the time, what your partner wants is not victory. It is intimacy.

They don’t need you to beat someone else. They need you to let go of the audience in your head. They need your presence. Your breath. Your permission to be fully there with them, without reaching for some imaginary gold star.

III. Reframing Desire Without Competition

So what do you do with the ache? What happens when that hunger to be remembered still clings to you after the lights go out?

You reframe it.

You remember that being unforgettable is not about topping some secret scorecard. It is about showing someone a part of you they have never seen before. It is about saying something, without words, that no one else has ever quite managed to say with their body.

You are not forgettable because you failed to outperform someone else. You are unforgettable when you stop hiding. When you trust your timing. When you lean into what feels right for you, even if it is not flashy or loud or perfectly executed.

Being wanted is not the same as being best. Being best is a myth. Being true is holy.

And yes, there will always be others. There will be past lovers and future ones, and people your partner feels something wild for that has nothing to do with you. But none of that subtracts from the space you hold. None of that erases the part of them that only responds to you.

You are not a replacement part. You are not a copy. You are a specific combination of warmth and weirdness, rhythm and softness, breath and edge. That is not something anyone else can replicate.

So instead of asking how to win at sex, ask how to meet your lover more fully. Ask how to drop the mask. Ask what it means to be chosen, not because you tried the hardest, but because you arrived as yourself.

That is the kind of presence that lingers.

With you, in the ache and the letting go,

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