Love and sex with people from the gym: the best and worst idea I’ve ever had

Guest post by Anonymous

Training jiujitsu is a great way to make friends. A lot of people I know, myself included, feel very lonely, isolated, or disconnected from community. Many yearn for more friendships and human connection IRL.

Jiujitsu often fills this gap for people. There’s something about going through the challenge of training that brings people together. There’s also a certain level of trust that happens on the mat that can’t be replicated anywhere else. When you roll with someone, you engage in a level of mutual trust and understanding with them from the get-go: I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me. Plus there’s a level of bonding that happens when you sweat all over each other and stick your crotches in each other’s face--you really can’t get much closer than that.

So I have become very close with a lot of the people I met through jiujitsu. I am more willing to be vulnerable with them than with people I meet in other parts of my life. There is a mutual contract of openness and trust that often translates from our rolls on the mat to our friendships off the mat. These are very special bonds of community and friendship that I will cherish for the rest of my life. I can be myself around them. I say what’s on my mind.

Some people even compare training jiujitsu with going to church because it provides the community that modern society otherwise so often lacks. Many of my teammates I see on a daily basis. I can rely on them to show up and drill, and help me prepare for competition. I trust them to call me on my bullshit: they criticize me when I’m doing something wrong, and call me out when I’m being lazy. I lean on them for emotional support, ask them for advice, and confide in them when I have a problem.

However, sometimes these bonds of community and friendship start translating into sexual relationships.

I’ve been involved in romantic (not necessarily sexual) relationships with six of my training partners (both male and female) from two different gyms. My deepest feelings of love and my best romantic relationships have come from those I’ve had with training partners.

I have learned many invaluable lessons from these sexual and romantic relationships. I have learned what it means to be respected and valued by a partner. I have learned to trust and to be trusted in deep and moving ways. I have witnessed what I want to have in a life-long partner someday. I have experienced love. I have experienced hot, passionate, love affairs that lasted one night, and stable partnerships that lasted years. Having a partner both on and off the mat is one of the most beautiful, thrilling, and fun things I’ve ever been able to experience in my life. I don’t regret any of it.

I’m not in a position to tell anyone what to do. However, after learning these lessons and experiencing this love, the first advice I have to give is to proceed with EXTREME caution.

Even though a lot of good things have happened, I’ve also had a lot of bad things happen as a result of my romantic relationships. Awkward encounters on the mat. Embarrassing moments at the gym. Spoiled training sessions. Broken hearts. Angry resentment. And the worst of all: a broken community. The community of people that I cherish so much is now fractured. Not completely destroyed, but broken in different places where ex-lovers have destroyed the trust that once held us together.

We can go back to making small talk and being civil at the gym. But we can never go back to that place when we drilled for hours and then afterwards went out on midnight snack runs and talked for hours until dawn broke. Maybe if we had just stayed friends we could still have those moments.

Sometimes people who were amazing friends turned out to be terrible romantic partners. Sometimes I just realized it wasn’t a good fit. I can’t say whether or not the sex was worth it. It just is what it is and I can’t turn back the clock. But I can make a conscious effort to be more selective, conscious, and thoughtful about my decisions in the future. And I caution you to do the same.

The second lesson I learned was: don’t rush into things. It seems really exciting at first. You think it’s perfect in the beginning: now you have a partner on and off the mat, and someone who understands jiujitsu! You might be afraid that you’re going to miss out on this opportunity. But if they’re really your friend, and will be a good romantic partner, there’s no rush. They will wait for you.

The third lesson I learned: don’t mistake the trust and bonding you form on the mat to be the same as the trust you build off the mat...at least not right away. Let those people earn your trust in other ways off of the mat. Some people are awesome training partners and you would trust them with your life on the mat, but they’re terrible friends or even terribly unhealthy, either physically or mentally. Or they might be great friends off the mat, but that doesn’t mean you can necessarily trust them with your deepest, darkest secret. Or they might be trustworthy people, but that still doesn’t mean you should have sex with them.

Remember you could lose a friendship and a training partner. Just like you have to take care of your training partner on the mat, you have to take care of yourself and your training partners off the mat. Otherwise you’ll end up with a lot of broken hearts, awkward moments, no more training partners, and no more community.

There’s an old saying: don’t shit where you eat. If you’re going to engage with love and sex at the gym, be prepared for the consequences. If things end badly, you’re still going to have to see that person on a regular basis. In my somewhat limited experience, I’ve realized that jiujitsu is a great place to form a community and meet friends, but not to find sex partners. It’s just too much close contact and not enough space for either person. Jiujitsu creates an environment of community, bonding, and trust, but leave all of that stuff on the mat.

What if you meet that perfect person through jiujitsu? In that case, friendship first. In my case, I will have to trust them on multiple and deep levels. And I will have to draw up some kind of agreement with them on what to do about training after we break up.

I used to be idealistic and naive. I used to think that having sex was no big deal, and that I could have sex whenever I felt good chemistry. I also expected my partners to avoid causing drama and to act like adults. I thought that if there were problems, we would talk them through. In this way, I thought my romantic relationships wouldn’t effect training. Now I know this not to be true.

It’s kind of like driving and wearing a seat belt. Before, I thought that because I was a good driver, I could go through life without my seat belt. But after getting into a couple accidents, I realized that maybe I was a reckless driver after all. And no matter how good of a driver I am, I can’t necessarily depend on others to be, and definitely can’t control whether or not other people are good drivers, too.

So I’m not saying we should go through life never daring to leave our homes or being too scared to drive a car for fear of getting in an accident. I’m just saying we should wear our seat belts. And being willing to wear our seat belts--that is, protecting our vulnerabilities--actually gives us more freedom to go where we want and do what we want.

TL;DR:

Love and sex at the gym will foster close friendships and enable passionate love affairs, but will also inevitably create drama. Proceed with extreme caution and be prepared for the consequences.

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