I Ache to Connect With My Partner

When I started self-gratifying, before I knew what sex was, the stories and fantasies that played through my mind were about kings and slaves, being bound, and being forced to feel pleasure. Where the ideas for these stories came from, I have no idea. How does a 12-year-old know what to imagine? Children absorb it from everywhere it seems.

Fast forward a decade and a half, through hours logged watching mainstream porn, and I don't know how to turn my brain off. Even with my husband, if I want to come, I have to imagine I'm not me, that I'm with someone else. Maybe I'm a school girl being punished for being late, maybe I'm a maid being seduced by a lord, maybe a lot of things, but it's never about who I really am and who I'm really with.

What I wish more than anything else isn't a dirty, thrilling fantasy. What I want most is to feel a connection so strong with my partner, to be so in the moment that all I see and feel is us as we really are.