LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX | Marking Your Territory
Asserting dominance over what you perceive as your own — whether a place or thing — is an innate, animal instinct that dates to the beginning of time. Dogs and cats scratch, growl, and pee to establish their boundaries. Humans put up fences and draw out property lines. The marking of one’s territory is only exacerbated when someone feels like their “possession” is being encroached on or threatened; when an established dominance is challenged, animals can get violent, and humans tend to sue. However, this biological tendency is not limited to physical space or objects; whether or not we realize it, humans mark their territory in personal relationships, too.
How we stake our claims in relationships changes with age and maturity. In middle school, we secretly held hands in the hallway when no teachers were looking, and boys wore scrunchies on their wrists to declare being taken. In high school, we sat together in class, posted staged couples photos on social media, and snuck off to kiss in the stairwells. As we grow older and our relationships start to mature, planting one’s flag becomes a whole new animal. And although the intuitive belief would be that our actions mature with our age, marking your territory as a young adult morphs into something subtler, pettier, and incredibly nuanced.
The first time I noticed just how complicated feeling established in an “adult” relationship had become was early in college. Let me start by saying that this story doesn’t paint me in the kindest light and isn’t something I’m proud of — but it’s true:
I had been sleeping exclusively with a guy, and one night he called me the wrong name mid-nocturnal extracurricular (should have been a red flag, hindsight is 20/20). Obviously I was stunned and hurt. But, after we talked about it, I truly believed that the one-time slip-up was a mistake, and nothing had happened between him and the girl. Clearly, he painted a great picture.
Even though I trusted this guy’s story, I acted completely insane about this girl for the rest of my fling with him — which I guess means deep down I didn’t trust his story. I typically consider myself secure, but when she was around, my confidence shriveled. I would catch myself doing crazy, uncharacteristic things subconsciously: I’d get insecure if they were together without me, even if there were other people there, I would physically place myself between the two of them in group settings, I’d suddenly become extremely aware of how I looked, etc. Worst of all, I wasn’t the nicest to her, which sucks, because she never did anything wrong.
It took me literal years to figure out the root of my resentment. While this was happening, I convinced myself that my distaste was because I didn’t like her vibe (not characteristic of me), but with time, maturity and situational distance I realized that the reason I was a bitch had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me and how her presence made me feel about my relationship: like I had to mark my territory.
That’s the complicated thing about marking your territory in an adult relationship: Most of the time, you don’t know you’re doing it.
To be clear, there's a difference between lovingly showing off your partner in a way that brings the two of you joy and declaring territory: The first is wholesome, kind, and non-performative, while the other is rooted in insecurity and often involves heavy overthinking. They are easy to tell apart from the outside, but are borderline indiscernible when you’re acting them out, because the mind is good at disguising the latter as the former; internalized jealousy and distrust can make us do ugly things masqueraded as healthy. Plus, no one wants to admit when they’re being toxic.
If I had a foolproof way to discern whether you’re “just being cute” or marking your territory, I probably wouldn’t have been a bitch to that girl my freshman year. Instead, the only advice hindsight provided me is this: If your actions involved a third party, you’re probably marking your territory. If you’re thinking about how someone will react when they see an Instagram post, being rude to someone for no real reason, or laying on PDA extra thick in front of a specific someone, it's worth asking why. Of course, there are situational exceptions when someone is blatantly disrespectful or there is underlying history, but as a general rule of thumb, a relationship where either partner constantly feels like they have to assert their position isn’t a sustainable one.
Relationships should be grounded in security and mutual respect. If you have a partner who brings out the territory marker in you, take a second to ask where that instinct is coming from. You wouldn’t pee on someone to establish them as “yours,” so don’t socially piss on your partner either; it isn’t cute and it’s definitely not a strategy that’s built to last.