Expressing our virtual love language

Written by Frankie Beach

Photo by Oliver (Ochi UK)

Physical touch is my top love language. I like to speak with touch. A gentle touch on the arm says ​I hear you​, a head laid on a shoulder says ​you are special to me​. Touch can be an offering of love and care. It can convey a desire to be closer. In sex, touch can mean ​you’re beautiful ​or​ I want you to feel good, ​and at the same time it can often communicate more than offering of pleasure or a means to a climactic end. It often feels like a bridging of mind and body, of self and other. It feels like an expression of something I can’t quite access or explain, but want desperately to express.

With the transition to a virtual relationship, my love languages have had to adapt. I’ve had to find new ways of expressing intimacy, and sharing in pleasure with my partner. And it hasn’t been the most graceful transition. Beyond the general discomfort of shifting our relationships to virtual platforms, there is also an overwhelming sensation of heaviness about it all - the suffering happening in the world, the uncertainty, and the personal drama and discomfort with such an unprecedented global crisis. We all react differently, but we are all reacting.

There is miscommunication and missing, extreme sexual desire and sometimes none at all. Sometimes there is only a desire for the feeling of skin on skin, for that wordless communication. There are spaces between phrases over the phone that I want to fill with touch, and awkward FaceTime sex calls where the wifi keeps cutting out or I can’t hear his voice. There have been frustrations with sex toys and moments when I’m too aware of the distance between us to get in the mood.

In these various virtual forms of connection, some senses are missing and some are immediately activated and forced into presence. He is, in a sense, both present and absent to me. And I find myself feeling a lack, a longing. I find myself questioning the utility of virtual spaces. What does this transition to the virtual do to intimacy, and is it even possible here? How does it affect our ability to empathize? To have conversations? To feel close to one another? Yet I continue, virtually, because despite the heaviness and also because of it, we need people now more than ever. We need pleasure more than ever.

In these moments of doubt, I return again to the reality that sex is more to me than a physical act between two bodies. In these new moments with him, over the phone or FaceTime, or over text, I am reminded that sex is experimention, communication, connection. Sex is creativity. And so we find the kink and the pleasure in the new and in the experimental. We immerse ourselves in imagined sexual worlds. We feel the distance and closeness together.

I tap into the senses available to me. I close my eyes and listen to his voice and I try to focus on the melody of it, the rhythm of our back and forth, our call and response. We whisper to each other over the phone while we touch ourselves, allowing imagination to guide us. We send surprise photos and videos throughout the day, and sexy texts to each other when we’re turned on. We take off our clothes over FaceTime and watch each other pleasure ourselves, letting the desire of we can’t have stimulate our sexual encounters rather than hold us back out of a fear of the virtual sex not living up to the real deal. We allow our shared imagination to take us far away from the heaviness of this present reality.

I can’t claim that virtual intimacy is as good, or as pleasurable as the non-virtual, or has somehow revived our relationship, or has helped with our communication skills. It’s not as good, and I don’t think it will ever be. So for now I let myself mourn physical intimacy while embracing experimentation in this new virtual space. I do both. I feel the desire and the pleasure, the pain of missing and the joy of being with him in this virtual form co-exist inside me. I think in terms of ​new, creative, innovative, sexy, kinky, modern, ​while I let myself long for more. I embrace change, and I let myself acknowledge the reality that I feel a loss. Despite the emotional confusion, I allow for these dualities, because ultimately they are a very human response to such a moment in time.

And maybe, when this is over, we will return to our original forms of intimacy with a newfound sense of imagination and emotional strength, knowing that we were still able to experience pleasure here. We were still able to be have sex, be kinky and playful, and appreciate each other’s sexualities. And alone, we found a way to be together.

Frankie is a food justice advocate, musician, and yogi from Seattle, Washington. She currently teaches nutrition education in schools and is passionate about making healthy, ethically produced food accessible to all communities regardless of race or socioeconomic status. You can find their work here