The Sex-to-Emotional Labor Exchange Rate Sucks

Photo by Charles on Unsplash

In the middle of a conversation with a friend about how our conversations had been a bit lacking lately, I realized that I’d pulled back my level of emotional investment in our conversations after I dropped the benefits portion of our friendship.

I can see why he’d feel like I didn’t want to talk to him as much, but I hadn’t realized I was doing it until he brought it up. It was eye opening for me.

I had become less emotionally available than I had made myself to him in the past — partly due to needing space around the new boundaries and partly because I’ve been really emotionally overwhelmed lately and naturally took distance in several friendships.

Investigating my feelings further, I realized that I’d been doing a ton of emotional labor with him when we were having sex.

I was talking through all kinds of issues with him, checking in on his progress in therapy, essentially life coaching him. But it wasn’t reciprocated emotional energy, which is part of why I decided to make things strictly platonic.

Reciprocating emotional labor

The need for reciprocal emotional labor applies to all relationships, platonic, romantic, sexual, familial, or otherwise.