It’s 11 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and Nate* has just left my studio apartment. Five minutes after he’s gone, I’m back in my usual state of equilibrium: fuzzy robe on, red wine in hand, with my vibrator collection strewn around in organized chaos.
This was my first time sleeping with Nate (we’d been on a couple of dates), and I’m pleasantly surprised — he’s generous in bed and skilled at dirty talk, and he didn’t balk when I made a joke about reading his tarot cards before we had sex. Now I’m happily chilled out post-orgasm, and I get to sleep alone in my queen-sized bed, decked out in a bonnet and mouth tape with white noise on blast. This is the life, I think to myself. Not the one I planned for, but the one I deserved all along.
I used to fantasize about something wildly different: I had a Pinterest board full of A-line dresses and mason jar floral arrangements. I figured I’d lose my virginity to my future husband in college. I certainly never would have predicted the slutty, bisexual Brooklyn writer I’ve grown into at age 30, but I feel lucky as hell things went this way.
“Being independent and not having to answer to some loser is priceless.”
Being a single adult woman, fully-formed prefrontal cortex and all, is more common and less stigmatized now than ever. The median age at first marriage in the United States has steadily risen since the 1960s, reaching 28 years old in 2024. That puts 30-something unmarried women past the typical trajectory, but eschewing expectations means we get to forge a new path.
Despite what sex recession truthers and the men on Love Is Blind may want to believe, many women in their 30s are finding themselves in an era of sexual exploration: discovering their queerness, trying out new kinks, and learning to advocate for themselves in and out of the bedroom — in short, having (and enjoying) casual sex without commitment.
“I’d rather be having fun than sitting at home swiping on apps, being like, ‘I hope Mr. Right calls me,’” says Megan*, 33, who lives in Nashville. After a string of back-to-back LTRs that ended six months ago, she’s rediscovering how thrilling it is to play the field. “If I wanted to, I could be going on a date every night of the week,” she adds.
She’s been fielding DMs from guys she knew years ago and is sleeping with a 24-year-old DJ she met on New Year’s Eve. “I get what Samantha Jones was talking about when she was dating younger men, about them being energetic,” Megan says, laughing. “Before he pulls out, he’s ready to go again. The sex is 10/10 — I have no complaints.”
“You should always have three boyfriends: one to make you laugh, one to spend money on you, and one who’s great at sex. If you find all that in one person, great, but you probably won’t.”
Her life is booked and busy, and she’s much happier now than she was with her exes. “I feel like I skipped my first divorce,” Megan says — not that she’s got anything against the divorced guys in her dating pool. “I’d date a divorcé, I’d date your dad, I’d date your little brother, whatever.” But she has no plans to settle down unless she meets someone who sweeps her off her feet.
For Isla*, her 30s have been about doing whatever the hell she wants, even making controversial hookup choices. For two years on and off, the 33-year-old Brooklynite has been seeing a guy who has a girlfriend, and although she acknowledges it’s a “moral gray area,” she says she feels fulfilled in terms of sexual exploration. “I have freedom, I have money, I have my own place. I know how to take care of myself,” she says. “So yeah, I’m going to say say f*ck it, because I’m allowed to.”
“I feel like I skipped my first divorce.”
Jennifer*, 39, from Los Angeles, experienced an unexpected glow-up this decade. “I remember turning 30 and I was devastated. I was like, ‘I am so old,’” she says. “Then something happened around 32, 33 — I’ve never been hit on more than in that era.”
She’s had a few serious relationships since then — “I turned down [a proposal from] a multimillionaire two years ago” — but she’s happiest on her own and “will absolutely go out and have a one-night stand” when she feels like it. “Being independent and not having to answer to some loser is priceless.”
She’s gotten more selective with whom she sleeps with because she’d rather get herself off than repeat the mediocre hookups of her 20s. “I’m less willing to give a guy who’s not that interesting or not that good at sex more chances,” Jennifer says. She shares some wisdom: “Ideally you should always have three boyfriends — one to make you laugh, one to spend money on you, and one who’s great at sex. If you find all that in one person, great, but you probably won’t.”
“When else is a tall, beautiful stripper going to be like, ‘I want to make you come?’”
The past decade has also seen a rise in the number of adults who identify as queer — according to Gallup, 9.8% of millennials considered themselves LGBTQ+ in 2023 versus just 6% in 2013. This is also evidenced by the thriving “late in life lesbian” corner of TikTok. For many women, myself included, being single for longer made this coming-out journey possible. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I discovered the magic of lesbian sex, and as a bisexual woman, I’m not sure I ever would have slept with a woman or nonbinary person had I gotten married young.
Emily*, 31, from Brooklyn, has fully stepped into her queerness in the last year. “My first aim was to go on a date with a couple and use that to explore seeing women,” she says. After her first threesome, she felt more confident identifying as bisexual, and since then, she’s gotten comfortable in sexual interactions with women one-on-one.
Thanks to changing cultural norms, even women who don’t consider themselves queer are feeling more open to experiment. Danielle*, 35, moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest a year ago, and she went through a phase of “wanting to bone everybody” — including, to her surprise, a female stripper she met on a night out. “At the end of the night, she was talking to me pretty close and said, ‘I’d love to make you come,’” Danielle says. She seized the moment and went for it. “I was like, ‘That’s fun. Why not?’ I’m not super into girls, but I was curious about it right then. When else is a tall, beautiful stripper going to be like, ‘I want to make you come?’”
That especially hit home when she met up with an ex from 15 years ago. “We ended up getting a beer and talking about our lives, and it turns out he had married the girl he started dating when we broke up,” Danielle says. “I couldn’t stop thinking about that — I was the last person he dated, and I was a f*cking child. What if I got married right after him? That seems insane to me.”
She’s living her best life, no partner needed. “It would be great to find someone I want to spend a lot of time with, but if that doesn’t happen, I don’t feel like I’ve failed at all.” The hot stripper was just icing on the cake.
*Name has been changed.
The post I’m Single & Having Great Casual Sex In My 30s appeared first on Bustle.
