Man Sleeps With A Different Person Every Day For One Year And Reveals How It Changed His Life

A performance artist who slept with a different person every single day for an entire year has spoken openly about the deep and lasting impact the experience had on his life.

Mischa Badasyan did not follow the three-date rule that many people stick to, instead choosing to be intimate with people shortly after meeting them for the first time.

As part of his controversial project titled ‘Save the Date,’ he committed to finding someone new to sleep with every day for 365 consecutive days.

The Berlin-based artist explained that he began the project in 2014 with the goal of exploring loneliness within the gay community, a feeling he said was rooted in the absence of romantic love in his own life.

"I wanted to make a piece that exaggerated my feelings and my emotional state at the moment," Badasyan told Vice at the time. "So far, I've never been in love. In this performance, I'm going to share and give all my love to people."

"Sex is just a method to express my idea It's a processional art that deals with the relational aesthetics - aesthetics existing only in the relationships with someone that I meet."

When Badasyan first announced the Save the Date project, it sparked a wave of backlash online, though many people also expressed genuine curiosity about what he was attempting to do.

Before the year began, he said he hoped the experience would help him better understand his relationship with sex and with himself, while also resulting in a meaningful piece of performance art.

Mischa Badasyan's year-long sexual experiment left a lasting impact on him Instagram/@mischabadasyan

Speaking about his expectations before the project started, Badasyan said: "I don't really know what's going to happen. But I'm hoping to have very beautiful and crazy meetings - romantic ones, or just crazy sexy ones."

"Anyway, I'm trying to be very honest to everyone and enjoy each guy I meet."

He compared scrolling through dating apps to picking items from a supermarket, while also explaining that he planned to meet people in more traditional, face-to-face ways whenever possible.

Two years after launching Save the Date, Badasyan reflected on how the project unfolded and the lasting effects of sleeping with a different man every day for a year.

The Russian-born artist said he spent six months preparing for the performance, starting with careful checks of his physical and sexual health.

He also spent significant time considering the moral and ethical questions surrounding the project, while mapping out how he would realistically carry out what he described as an extreme idea.

The performance artist had sex with a new man for 365 days in a row Getty Stock Image

"The beauty of performance art or art generally is that there is no right or wrong," Badasyan told the Huff Post in 2016. "It is always a life experience, which can teach you a lot."

"If you're always afraid to make a mistake, you shouldn't be an artist. I knew it is going to be a kamikaze mission and that I will suffer a lot, but the pain is a basement of my performance art."

Looking back on both the highs and the lows, Badasyan said the most difficult part of the project was dealing with rejection, especially when he had to immediately move on and continue searching for someone new.

"It is a very difficult - and I would say traumatic - experience if everyone rejects you at once and you still have to find someone to complete a goal for a day," he said.

"I taught myself not to cry and just keep saying to myself, 'Mischa, it is just a project, don't give a s**t about them'."

Badasyan explained that the experience led him to a wide range of new conclusions about himself and how he relates to others.

Admitting that he once became overwhelmed during an encounter, the artist said: "It never happened before and I was surprised how emotionally intertwined I became with my body."

He explained he experienced both highs and lows while completing his 'Save the Date' project Instagram/@mischabadasyan

"I was just meeting people who inspired me and that I would love to see again, and that gave me so much energy and power," Badasyan said. "But there was this 'but'."

"This project created a lot of negative energy that I had to deal with. It was very hard for me to say no; to let go the feelings and just to relax."

He explained that while he became more experimental, this also led to a desire for increasingly intense experiences, which significantly changed how he viewed sex.

"In my last 4-5 months of the project, I couldn't enjoy sex without violence," he admitted. "I had to punch, beat, slap in order to be high and excite myself. That was very new and strange for me."

On the positive side, Badasyan said the project taught him just how sensitive and powerful the human body can be, and he also went on several memorable dates that later turned into lasting friendships.

"Some dates became part of my work; some became my close friends," Badasyan added. "It is beautiful to be connected with someone who was just part of your art piece and now my life."

At first, Badasyan kept the true nature of the Save the Date project hidden from the people he slept with, but as media attention grew, he eventually began being open about it.