For Sex Lives, GQ speaks with someone about their entire sex life up to this point about how their sexuality has evolved. This week: Sam, 34, London, straight. 

I always had crushes on girls and a high sex drive, but it took me a while to put those things together. I remember at my eighth birthday party I caused a scandal because when I was inviting people, I didn’t just invite the whole class, or all the boys in class. I picked out three girls: Samantha, Jessica and Jade. My family still teases me about Samantha, Jessica, and Jade. I was definitely attracted to them on some level, but again, I was eight. 

When I was about 12 was when I started looking at porn. I think it was a Yahoo search engine and it was just searching for “naked girls.” I knew what I was looking for, it’s not like someone had to introduce porn to me. I was still getting crushes on girls, but the thought of having sex with them was just not there, like I wasn’t quite making that connection, and that remained true until I got my first girlfriend at 18. I went to a very academic school and it was an all boys school, and I don’t think most of the other students were having sex. But then I started dating this girl and we would have these sexual phone calls and I started connecting with this girl who I really liked with sex. Because of exams, we never actually did anything physically sexual, but we did have these phone calls. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was at university at 19.

I’m the child of immigrants; I come from a very traditional and very academic background. I'm of Indian heritage, and I was very much brought up to feel like sex or relationships were just something we didn't do. They were for other people. Public displays of affection, like couples holding hands—either my parents or other people who are married—that sort of thing just did not happen, I didn’t see it. And I struggled with that. Only one of my girlfriends has been Indian—the first girlfriend I had. I wouldn’t say that it’s hard for me to find Indian women attractive or anything, I just think that I find it hard to almost sort of make a connection with a possible sexual or romantic relationship with them. Honestly, I've never found myself attractive. I think growing up there was a real sense of like, this—sexual or romantic desire—is not for people like us.

At university, I had about one relationship a year—all very short, about two to four months. The first year was the girl I lost my virginity to. The second year was with a friend of mine; we fell into a relationship that was horrific. The reason it was so bad was because she was a really strong, powerful, very confident, very sure of her own opinions, very, very smart and was used to quite aggressive men around her. Her idea of flirting was being a bit of a dick to me, and I didn’t find that attractive. What she wanted—and I knew this, it’s just not me at all— was for me to pin her down and do what I wanted to her. We never talked about it. We had sex once and it was uncomfortable and weird. It was at the very end of our relationship. We literally broke up two days later. But a few months later we became friends again and we’re friends to this day.

I got into a relationship with a woman who identified as lesbian during my final year at University. She was very open and was very into things like casual sex and experimentation. Her parents were polyamorous, and actually they got divorced because her father had decided that one of his new partners was somebody he wanted to settle down with. But she had grown up in an environment where sex was just very free and easy and loose; very very different from me. We had a very tumultuous relationship. We had sex because she was just willing to open and experiment and try things and just do absolutely anything and everything; that was great. She would give me rimjobs, I'd love those. They were incredible. I've not had a partner that's been willing to do that to me since. I'd really like to do that again.

But the emotional side was a complete disaster. She was incapable of being in a monogamous relationship and I was trying to be in a monogamous relationship. She would commit to me and then she would go out and sleep with other girls. I got that; I was like, “I get that you are unclear about your sexuality and I'm not trying to put labels on this or anything, but I think that if you're in a relationship with me, you're in a relationship with me.”

A few years later, I was the best man at my friend's wedding, and I met the maid of honor. We got together that night, and that relationship lasted four and a half years, and has defined a big chunk of my current world. We were long-distance for a few years and then I moved to the town I’m currently in to be closer to her, and then we eventually moved in together and once we did it became immediately apparent that she had almost no sex drive. There was an awful lot of effort from my end, and an awful lot of effort from her end, but I could tell she didn’t want sex. There were times when she was dry. There were times when she was kind of forcing movements, and it was awful. I would try to stop things or slow it down or say, “Hey, should we try and do something else," but she would sort of make it happen because she thought that was what was important. I was talking to her about getting married and she was very anti-marriage. During the time we were talking about getting married, I was also looking up escorts. I was Googling and finding people and just looking at pages and not ever doing anything, not acting on anything, never calling anyone. I realized, hang on, sex is a really big part of my life that I'm missing. I'm daydreaming about escorts and daydreaming about this old college relationship that was awful. After that relationship ended, she became kind of abusive towards me and it took a long time to get my confidence back and learn how to date again.

I went on Tinder, which is where I eventually met my wife. My wife and I have a very open relationship when it comes to sex, so actually around the time that we started trying for a baby she also went on OnlyFans. You can't really see me in any way, but we had sex on camera. When she got pregnant, she came off OnlyFans; we decided to do that. But you know, that was great fun, and we really enjoyed it and we might be up for trying that again. We talk about fantasies involving other people a lot. We both like the idea of group sex, but she’s not comfortable with the idea of me having sex with other women. I'm much more comfortable with the idea of her having sex with other men. It's certainly something we fantasize together about, but that we have not done. But, you know, that might be something for the future.

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