for most of my 20s,
my date-night ritual was
always the same: a glass
of wine balanced on the
edge of the sink while I
was doing my makeup.
It’s what plenty of single
women do—and who can
blame us for wanting a
little liquid courage when
the dating world can feel
like The Hunger Games,
with hundreds of amazing
women all competing for
the same few men?
For me, suggesting a
coffee date instead of a
drink never felt like a
viable—or cool—option.
Sadly, I was partly right.
A 2014 study of 1.5 million
interactions between
online daters found that
women who report they
drink “often” were 13
percent more likely to be
contacted by guys.
And even if the date was
awful or just mediocre,
after five or six strong
cocktails, the guy acrosswhen drunk, but it affects
us differently. A study in
The Journal of Personality
asked intoxicated men and
women between the ages
of 29 and 32 to describe
what was happening
in pictures of people
in a range of everyday
situations. While the men
described stories of power
and competition, women’s
descriptions revolved
around connection and
intimacy. The findings
suggest that alcohol has
a way of ratcheting up
traditional gender roles:
Drinking to feel sexy can
be a sort of “femininity in
a bottle” for women.
Perhaps that search for
connection explains why it
was so easy for me to fallinto bed after dates and
why the sex itself felt like...
well...nothing. Such a high
volume of booze limited
my ability to feel pleasure.
Hooking up became a kind
of performance, one in
which I played the part of
a bold and confident sex
goddess. I felt so detached
from my body and from
the guy I was with, it was
almost like I was watching
the scene from above.
And in all likelihood,
that’s why I never
orgasmed with another
person while drunk.
Even so, this became my
pattern for years, until
I met a coworker who
became my boyfriend.
No surprise that our first
date was at a bar or thatfrom me would magically
morph into someone
taller and sexier. Which
was why I started getting
hammered on every
single date.
My behavior aligns
with the findings of
Sharon Wilsnack, PhD, a
professor of psychiatry and
behavioral science at the
University of North Dakota
School of Medicine and
Health Sciences. She has
been researching women’s
relationship with alcohol
for 40 years and has found
that women in their 20s
and 30s are “drinking
to get drunk” at an
alarmingly steady rate. “It
used to be that the biggest
pressure for young women
was career,” says Wilsnack.
“But these days, that’s been
outdone by the pressure
that society puts on them
to seem cool, relaxed, and
sexually free.”
Both genders experience
a loss of sexual inhibitionLike many women, Anna Breslaw used
alcohol to soothe her nerves in
bed—until her pre-hookup binges became
a serious issue. Read on as she
shares how she straightened up in
the sack.drunk
sex almost
ruined my
relationship”
92 Cosmopolitan • MAY 2017 WWW.COSMO.PH