There’s always the one that got away – that one person that you really thought you could make it with, but for one reason or another it didn’t work out. Doesn’t everyone have a story like that? Here’s mine…
Once upon a time, long, long ago, I fell in love with a prince of man. Well, he was barely more than a boy, just as I was barely more than a girl, but in the way of people in their late teens to early 20′s, we were extremely mature. At the time I was engaged to a man who had suddenly decided that girls were icky, but he wanted to marry me anyway and have a family. I would be free to take lovers for my sexual gratification. It sounded dubious. The Fiancé and I both fell for the Prince. I left the Fiancé, desiring romance over a sexless marriage and became roommates with the Prince.
There was a time that I made love with the Prince while the Fiancé watched, making suggestions from the sidelines, but the Prince very politely rejected the Fiancé’s advances. I think each of us wanted something we couldn’t have. It was all very sad and poignant. Still, I had incredible energy with the Prince. When the two of us were in a room together everything focused on us. We were on fire.
I wanted the Prince desperately, but he wouldn’t commit. We could fuck like crazy, but he didn’t love me – not like I loved him. Before long he fell in love with someone else. It was painful to watch him be in love, waiting to hear her voice on the phone, seeing his face light up at the thought of her. I spun into depression. One morning while I was planning my suicide in the shower, I realized that plotting my death had become a habit, one I wanted to shake. I decided to live.
I went and woke up the Prince to ask him to drive me to the hospital so I could commit myself. He pulled me into bed with him, holding me while I cried. He nuzzled into my hair and whispered, “You know, you are really sexy when you’re depressed.” And he proceeded to make love to me. It was very bittersweet (not to mention less than ethical). It was also our last time – 17 years ago.
It was a difficult transition after that. I was focused on turning my life around, starting the work that’s consumed my adult life, both personally and professionally. I moved. I moved on. I’ve found happiness. The Prince married his Princess and they started their life together. They have lived happily ever after.
Fast forward to present day. It was with a little bit of trepidation that I invited the Prince and his wife over for drinks a few nights ago, when Harold and I happened to be in their area. I’ve been on Facebook with both the Prince and his wife, but it’s not the same as sharing space with someone. I imagine that they must have been a bit cautious themselves, but we ended up having a great time.
I know that I felt hurt and confused so many years ago, but I don’t even remember why any more. Having the Prince sit across the room from me, I was reminded of why we had been friends originally. He is still all of the things that I liked when we were young, but he’s developed maturity to temper it, and the depth of experience grants him solidity. After the initial uncertainty, we all relaxed and had a good time. Maybe it’s just that I drank more than usual.
I had a few moments of unreality, where I thought, I have had sex this man who is now a stranger in my life. But then he would make some teasing comment to me and I would be amazed at how well he knew me. I was surprised to realize that the only thing I feel towards him now is a certain fondness. No hard feelings. I like the man he is now. I like his wife. He has chosen a different path than mine and that’s good for both of us.
I’m just not sure what the protocol is for old lovers. Hopefully, if you’ve had sex with someone you want to stay friends, but I’m really only friends with a few lovers from my past. I think we navigated the situation pretty well. I sat next to the Prince in the hot tub, hugging the corner out of politeness, trying not to let our skin touch. Then I thought, fuck it. We have been way more intimate. I once gave him a hand job in a movie theater. And I didn’t worry when the back of my hand came to rest against his arm. I would be way more familiar with a friend I hadn’t had sex with. Once I stopped worrying, it was all good.
I am so thankful to have had this opportunity to reconnect. It feels very healing to realize that there is happiness where there was once pain and anger. I am very fond of the Prince and pleased at his successes. We found a lot of common ground in discussing parenting and sex. I think I need friends like this – people who remember spreading rumors in our circle about me being a pro domme. And as the Prince’s wife reminded me, I was holding a bull whip the first time she met me. I guess that makes an impression.
I don’t know if we will ever be close friends, but I feel like we’ve finally cleared up enough of the past that being friends is possible. It hurt like hell to be young and have my love rejected. I’ve learned so much about myself since then. Once I would have thought that making amends with the Prince would involve his apology, but it turns out that by making amends with myself, an apology isn’t necessary. We’re friends.
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This morning I had a flash of inspiration, when I realized that something I’ve worked on for years in my sex life would really benefit me in general. I guess sex and life really are intimately related. Basically, I’ve been meditating on being present, being here now.
Even during sex, being present can be difficult. I struggle with letting go of the past. Occasionally flashbacks hijack my experience. I try to acknowledge the feelings and remind myself that I am no longer trapped in that situation. I don’t have to respond as I would have in the distant past, or yesterday. This is so huge – I can affirm that as a constantly evolving person, what really matters is not then, but right now.
The future is even harder to come to terms with than the past, though. If I’m thinking of initiating sex, I worry about all of the things I ought to be doing instead. My everyday worries rob me of the joys to be had right now. Even when making love, thinking too much about what comes next can put a damper on my pleasure. I find that I only truly lose myself in sex when I am wholly in the moment, not limited by who I was or who I think I ought to be.
I’ve worked on being present during sex for years. I think it’s why I’ve been able to enjoy myself so much. So why haven’t I seen that the same concept could be applied to every other aspect of my life? I find myself constantly focused on next steps rather than where I’m at. That can be helpful, but not if I can’t let myself be happy now. Not if it is a distancing technique.
The main thing for me today is that I feel bad over things that are in the past, from childhood abuse to the fight that Harold and I had a few nights ago. Everything is basically resolved, but I’m holding on to the emotions. The events are sticky. I need to remember that I am not a child, not a partner with hurt feelings. Those things are part of my past – they contribute to the person I am – but I am constantly expanding. Everything I experience makes me bigger and gives me more resources with which to act in the world.
Related to this idea is the concept of forgiveness, something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I finally understand that forgiving someone is something you do for yourself, not them. Forgiving a person means you can let go of the sticky parts – whatever that person did to you can’t hurt you any more. Forgiveness means you can be present in the now.
It’s woo-woo, but I’m finding it helpful. Remembered hurts and the fear of future pain can sometimes distract me from everything else, which is sad when I’m surrounded by beauty and joy. The next time I’m feeling stuck and struggly, during sex or otherwise, I am going to breath deeply and remind myself to be here now.
The Autumn leaves are gorgeous. I noticed them in all of their unique fiery glory this morning while I was walking. I want to collect them – pick them up and take them home, but I know that they won’t look as nice after a day or two. They look better outside. Each day offers a fresh beauty. In a month I will admire the bare branches stark against the sky. In two months, perhaps snow. Nature is always offering me her best face. I see beauty everywhere. Yet it is a beauty that is impossible to hold onto.
Human beauty is like that too. The leaves had me thinking about myself while I walked, about my body image. I tend to focus on some time before or after now as a time that I have been or will be more attractive than now. I was very proud of my body as a young woman. After having children I worried that my breast sagged too much, or that I was too heavy. I wanted my pre-baby body back and judged myself by society’s standards of young beauty. I see now that my transformed body was simply the changing of the season. A different kind a beauty – one of lush fullness and fertility. Today I noticed, for the first time, that there are lines by my eyes when I really smile. It’s another kind of passage, one of having lived and known joy.
I realize that it’s like noticing the leaves and seeing the beauty of today. I want to stop judging my own beauty based on what I should look like and instead stay open to experiencing what is beautiful about me today. I may still want to lose 15 pounds and I may need a haircut, but today there is a sparkle in my eyes and something playful in my manner. It shines through. Tomorrow will be something new, a fresh beauty.
Sometimes I just become aware of something I love about my body – like the hollow of my knee when it’s bent or the curve of my breast near the armpit. I experience love for myself in small ways. It helps that we take so many pictures for the website. I get to see myself in new ways. In a few years I will look different and I will have these photos of now to remind me of the beauty that is today. Life is always about catching a perfect moment as it passes. I won’t regret the loss of today’s beauty because I know that tomorrow brings new wonders.
I love you and I love your body. I feel honored and happy that you choose to share it with me sometimes.”
We were talking on the phone, having stolen away a few minutes to share with each other how the day was going. When he said these words to me I was only half listening, but something about them spoke to some hidden part of me. As though he had uttered magic words, I have walked through the rest of my day feeling a slow metamorphosis change me from the inside out.
There are things that I believe utterly and hold sacred. That each person owns themselves is one of those truths. Yet, it’s hard to overcome the programming of sexual abuse. Sure, it’s great to own one’s self and body, but if no one else believes it and violates your right to choose, it is very difficult to feel empowered. If he had said anything about me owning myself I would have mentally gone, yeah, yeah, yeah, and moved on. But no, he expressed gratitude that I have chosen to be with him. His appreciation goes straight to my heart. I weep that I am so respected and valued.
The next thing I noticed was that he had no expectations. There was no implication that I was now required to meet any kind of need for him simply because I have given myself to him in the past. His love is not dependent on me meeting his needs. There are no assumptions that I will choose to share with him again. He is simply grateful for each and every time we make love or talk on the phone or make dinner together. I am my own person and he is happy to have me when I choose to give myself.
This brings up the issue of consent for me. I’m not very good about giving clear consent and I think it’s hugely important. In his way, he has always made sure that I was giving full and clear consent to our sexual encounters. I have blossomed in this environment, but it has also confused me. Having given myself initially, I felt that he could do what he wanted with me. When he refused, it felt like rejection. All of a sudden today, I feel like I understand. Even though we are in a serious relationship, we gift ourselves to each other anew, every time we make love. We don’t necessarily have to negotiate, but we do offer consent. This concept makes sex so much more powerful and emotionally driven. We make love because we have something to share. We each bring something to the other and we choose to be there.
When I contemplate his statement some more I am struck by how lucky I am to have him in my life. Like all of us, he struggles to balance too many things. Sometimes I am resentful at how little of his time I have, but when I think of it in terms of what he said to me today, I have to believe that every moment he spends with me is out of choice. He is with me because he loves me and wants to give himself to me. Strangely, this makes me feel better about the times that he is not with me – both because I can choose to devote myself to something else (not being tied to him) and because I feel more confident about him coming back to me. It makes being polyamorous easier. It means that all of us in the system give ourselves where we will, out of love and desire.
Photo by David Steinberg 2011
I feel so special. I want to hold on to this feeling – like maybe I’m 50 feet tall. I have known intellectually that I owned myself, but I haven’t been able to break away from the culture I grew up in. Whether these were the magic words that transformed me, or the key in the lock that turned the truth golden, I feel freed from a trap I didn’t know I was in.
Darling, I am grateful for your words. I am happy to share my body with you when I choose. I feel so blessed to have you give yourself in return.
Why am I so turned on by the things I am afraid of?
Not everything scary is a turn-on. For instance I don’t get aroused by being afraid that I can’t pay my bills or thinking that my children are in danger. But a fair number of things seem to be hard-wired into my sexual system. Is it that fear and arousal both activate similar processes in the body – preparatory processes to respond appropriately to the present situation? Did my wires get crossed through traumatic sexual abuse? Is being turned on a normal response to living through something terrifying? Is sex a way of resolving an irrational fear? I’m just not sure.
I think other people deal with some fear/sex dynamics too. I’ve noticed it with one of my current adventures – a CBT (cock and ball torture) photography project. Some of the men I’ve talked to are really turned on by the thought of being, say, kicked in the balls, largely because there is an innate fear of being kicked in the balls. They think about it almost obsessively.
It must also have something to do with fantasies and masturbation. There is a wealth of whacking material that focuses on things so outrageous that most people would never consider actually doing them, yet people find intensely hot to fantasize about – things like incest, cannibalism, necrophilia, or mind control. How do these things become part of a healthy sexuality? I think fear.
I’m finally beginning to understand some things about myself. Harold and I have been struggling with finding a power differential or a Domination/submission context that would work for me. I think I’m an awesome Top, but there is a certain place in myself that I can only access in a submissive role and I want to go there with Harold. We’ve tried painfully and unsuccessfully to get to my sub space. Today Harold asked me what I was afraid of sexually so he could use that in our play. I realized that I am afraid of submitting.
I fear loss of control. I’m afraid of going wild and doing something I’ll regret. I’m terrified of giving another person power over me, of finding myself willingly performing acts I would not normally consent to in order to win favor and more arousal. I fear becoming animal, full of unreasoning lust. So of course I am breathlessly, moistly, obsessively turned on by the prospect of handing control over to someone I trust and letting myself go wild. Normally very self-possessed, now I want to feel wanton and ashamed.
It’s kind of a circular problem, this being afraid of submitting. I want it desperately, but I can’t get myself to let go. Harold won’t take me without my consent. So we go round again. Actually, today I’m feeling optimistic. We will have our date in a couple of days and we will see if we’ve managed to figure out a way for me to submit. In the meantime, my fear is turning me on like crazy.
I’ve had a revelation. It’s nothing that millions of people haven’t already discovered – some of them at least once a week. But I feel changed. I have found balance and bliss. And about damn time, too.
It happened on my date with Harold. We were concerned about having penetrative sex because I’ve been bleeding profusely and just got it stopped. I would have risked it anyway, but I’m not one to interrupt the flow of something good. So, we were debating different options and I was having fun tormenting Harold’s cock and balls. Then he was past articulate thought, except for begging for my cunt.
I had some vague thought of pushing Harold to the edge of orgasm over and over then riding him until he came. I may have managed to bring him right up to the edge a couple of times before conceding to his wish that I straddle his face. Now, I love receiving oral sex, but 69 tends to drive me wild because I can’t concentrate on myself or my partner fully. I tend not to come. I lose track of what I’m doing. Essentially, I can’t focus enough to be a control freak.
I don’t know what was different about today. Perhaps it was feeling Harold’s excitement. Or the fact that most of our sex lately has been in public and today we were alone. Or maybe it was just time for me to be enlightened. Whatever it was, as I lay down on top of him and his tongue made contact with my clit, it was like closing an electrical circuit. I took his cock in my mouth. It felt so good. No, it felt perfect.
I still thought that I would stop at some point and we would fuck. Then I came. And came again. And I stopped thinking anything. I was all nerve endings. Harold had his arms wrapped tight around my back. I squeezed his balls and sucked his cock, moaning and writhing back and forth. Everything felt divine. I suddenly understood why Zeus shows up as a shaft of golden light when he seduces girls in those myths. I was a shaft of golden light. In a path from mouth to cunt.
It was one of those moments that you hope will last forever but you desperately strive to pass on the way to the goal. If I had been capable of thought I would have gotten up and fucked him hard. But we were in a zone. All was warmth and light. Everything opened up and I poured out. We came in each other’s mouths. Total balance and bliss.
So here’s my revelation: this is what the yin-yang symbol is all about. 69 even looks like a yin-yang. I’ve even thought about this in sexual terms before, but today I got it. I felt it. You have to give up control to achieve balance. The energy cycles through both people and builds, creating something more powerful than two individuals. Bliss.
This epiphany comes at a good time for me. I have been hurting so much emotionally that it’s hard for me to reach past myself to connect to someone else. I’ve been isolated. Not in any overt ways – just in the deep important ones. This golden bliss and balance gives me enough strength that I was able to talk to Harold about a relationship thing that’s been between us for weeks, deepening our connection when I feel heard and important. But I had to give up my desire to control the conversation.
All in all, I feel more whole. I won’t be looking at yin-yang symbols the same after this. I hope the sight fills me with a shaft of golden light, reminding me of electric sex and both of us filling each other’s mouths with come at the same time, balance and bliss.
I had one of those revelations while driving. I guess my life is so busy and hectic that I really only space off enough for big insights to occur to me while I’m driving. And I promptly called up Harold, who of course had already had these deep thoughts, so it’s not an original idea. But it helps me to understand everything.
What if sex is how we access our souls? There seems to be such a strong link between people’s religion and how they express their sexuality. I’ve been trying to understand that because it seems so separate to me. What does the church have to do with sex? Why do they care who I love and how? Why would so many religions try to limit or prohibit people’s sex lives if they are interested in the soul? If people could work out their problems on their own using sex… Oh… I’m suddenly seeing the difference between faith and institutions of faith.
I totally feel that sex is sacred, and I often go to spiritual or meditative space during sex. That’s my point, that’s when I am most clearly expressing myself – everything that I am. Sex lets me access my soul. Without a spiritual institution to guide me. It’s all there for me to explore – a spectrum of sexual spirituality.
The way I visualize it, most sexual interactions take place in the middle of the spectrum, working through day-to-day things, building intimacy, releasing stress and tension. Some sex opens up the soul to loftier ideals, like romantic love and chivalry. Also on this end are practices like Tantra. These are the sexual explorations that bring us closer to the divine. On the other end are the practices that let us open, release, and explore our darker natures and baser instincts. Here we learn that we are all animals. Here we have permission to feel anger, sadness, pain, and fear. Through a variety of BDSM methods, we can heal damage done to the soul. We can walk through the fires of the soul and return to ourselves undamaged.
I just wonder, what would happen if the spiritual institutions suddenly started treating sex as a legitimate and sacred way to the soul. Would priests stop molesting choir boys? Would instances of rape go down overall? Would sex-addiction seem pious? Would prostitutes and pro dommes gain respectability as the spiritual healers that many of them are? Would churches campaign to legalize same-sex marriage? Would people love their bodies more if they knew that God gave them a window to their soul?
