I wasn't interested in sex until I touched the grounds of Howard University my freshman year. The men were different from the boys in high school. They were self-assured, intelligent, knew what they wanted when they wanted it, and, most notably, "had nothing to offer but sex.
" (At least, according to what people told me.) When people preached this to me over and over again, it set my dating expectations low. So, naturally, the first guy I had sex with on campus was nothing more than a friend with benefits.
Knowing that I wasn't going to be his "one and only" confirmed for me that he didn't have to be mine. Blame it on the fact that I'm an emotionally unfazed Capricorn or because of what everyone warned me about, but from then on, there was a natural lack of emotional attachment to most of the boys I was intimate with. This period of my life is what I now consider my "hoe phase.
" Jasmine Diaz is a dating strategist and matchmaker. Though my friends were a little judgmental about my hoe phase, the last thing I wanted was to be crying over casual hookups the way they did. They simply didn't understand how relieving it was to not feel tied down to anyone — or worse, not feel tied down to someone who wasn't tied down to me.
It was freeing to walk around campus hand-in-hand with whoever I chose and to wander off campus with whoever asked first. After college, I moved to Los Angeles, which steered my hoe phase in a different direction. Instead of using men to explore my sexual ple.