“What about your first boyfriend?”

My first boyfriend was someone I dated for literally a week, also when I was 18. We didn’t have sex. I wanted him to go down on me once, but he was also very young and wasn’t comfortable with doing that yet. I ended up scaring him off before anything could happen. Definitely wasn’t him either.

“Well there’s no way you could’ve got it from me.”

I implored him to look at the statistics. My ex was a borderline nymphomaniac. He was extremely sexually active, having had sex with almost thirty people before he dated me. He would have unprotected sex with both men and women, and even persuaded me into letting him not wear a condom. He persuaded me into a lot of things, actually.

Dejected, my ex angrily hung up the phone. I got back in the car and told my friends what happened. “I never liked him anyway,” said one of them.

There was no way it couldn’t have been him. A few months after we started dating he cheated on me.

Finally, he decided to get tested. I knew and he knew that there is no HPV test for men, but he insisted anyway. No surprise, the next day he told me he was clean. He insisted that his doctor said he didn’t have it, and continued to gaslight me.

It took me a long time to stop talking to him. Still vulnerable, when I came back to the state he lived in, we immediately had sex. I insisted on him wearing a condom if he “didn’t have” HPV, but he still didn’t. This time he gave me bedbugs. At this point I decided it was time to cut him off.

After a year the HPV cleared up. I went to a new gyno and they called me a few days after my appointment, telling me the news. I was so relieved. I was excited at the prospect of being able to have sex without prefacing every act with “I have HPV”. As common as it was, it was annoying and difficult to live with, and being constantly invalidated by the guy who gave it to me just added to my fear. Gaslighting in sexual situations is a very real thing.

Before having sex with a partner, be sure to get tested immediately. And if they cheat on you, get tested again. A partner in denial is them refusing to admit their own mistakes, and it can make it seem like you are at fault for your misfortune. Stay safe. And, perhaps more importantly, stay strong.

What are the benefits for you outside the gifts?

I have a higher self esteem and sense of self worth because of these relationships. For me, this provides a safe place to explore and indulge all carnal and sexual desires. It’s a respite from the daily grind of being a tough, ball-busting woman who can ‘handle everything on her own’. At the end of the day, it’s a game. A role-playing fantasy that I find to be much more efficient and satisfying than casually dating and dealing with all the double talk and emotional head games people play.

Do you ever feel shame about this sexual fetish?

Oh my god, never. I have felt more shame getting all dressed up to go to a guy’s place and having ‘just one drink and then dinner’ turn into getting smashed and ordering pizza. That’s a waste of a dress AND my fucking energy and time. There is a handful of ways you can quantify importance or value: time, energy, money. I feel more respected by my Daddy than any guy I have ever dated normally. And it’s not always being naked except for a collar and leash. We go out to eat all the time, he’s taken me on vacation, he takes me shopping if I need anything. I feel more valuable now than I ever have. He will bring me a gift if we meet for coffee or a quick lunch; sex is not always involved when we meet. My self esteem is more easily shattered by a date or a boyfriend checking out other chicks when we’re out; I have honestly never noticed my Daddy do that. He is hyper-focused on me because he has ascribed a value to me. He is sexually dominant, but I am (as should be all subs) the one who reaps the most benefit. He treats me like a treasured jewel.

What’s something that people wouldn’t necessarily expect from this lifestyle?

Most people would be surprised about the amount of affection and respect that is in involved in these relationships. Also, most people would be surprised to learn that subs can dominate from the bottom; if we don’t approve of or consent to something, it does not fly. And the majority of us refer to sex as ‘playing’; we understand that the role playing is a game. These relationships have consistently been the most functional, straight-forward relationships I’ve ever had. No emotional head games, no bullshit.

Sexual activity is on the rise, but physical connection is practically nonexistent. Another single girlfriend of mine put it best when she said “These days men don’t have sex with you, they have sex AT you.” We are teaching children that this is how “adults” have sex, like animals. A blowjob has become as innocuous as a first kiss. Could violent porn be the impetus of the rape culture we are currently living in? It’s ok to abuse women in porn, so is it ok to abuse them in real life? If you were a young boy growing up watching this kind of violence wouldn’t you be influenced? Would you grow up to be Brock Turner? I’m not saying watching porn makes you a rapist, but viewing women being disrespected on a daily basis is certainly not going to make you respect women. When your average college athlete sees a woman passed out by a dumpster and the instinct is not to call for help but license to sexually assault, we have a problem.

88% of porn scenes now include physical aggression towards women and female sexual subservience. Porn has gone from “making love” with a dreamy man in some palatial vacation setting to one woman being slapped in the face by 15 different penises in a studio apartment. It’s out of control and nobody is doing anything about it.

How do we stop it? This is America; we can’t ban porn, but can we regulate it? It is going to take a significant amount of effort from women, who are basically responsible for any changes in society with regard to women. Check out http://www.endslaverynow.org/act/action-library/stop-watching-violent-porn

Ask the men in your life to help spearhead the movement against violent porn. We have been conditioned to view this as “just porn” but it’s much worse than that. It is having a direct effect on society and our children. Lack of intimacy is prevalent nationwide. People are fornicating but aren’t connecting. In every major city in the country there is an epidemic of single women struggling to find love off Tinder. If we don’t change the way we view sex in modern society, it is going to make out for a pretty sad and lonely future for our children.

My husband and I have very different tastes in porn, which is why we don’t watch it together as a way to get ourselves revved up. We have tried actually to see if it did the trick, but in the end I found his a bit boring and he kept saying “ow…ow” while watching mine, so we just ended up watching Netflix and falling asleep. I’m of the firm belief that it’s healthy for your male counterpart to masturbate and him watching porn does not bother me in the least. If he didn’t I would think that was weird! We have a friendly banter about it where we both laugh and it’s never been an issue.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, being a woman who is turned on visually by things she would not necessarily be into in the flesh, but I wonder what that is. Is it that the thing I like looks a little too scary or adventurous, and on some occasions, painful? Or is it the difference between making love and simply f**king? Perhaps it’s the fear that my husband would be SO into it we would never have sex the way we used to?

Who knows? For now I’m just going to keep this little occasional treat for myself, and maybe one day test out that that last theory.

The feeling of being on the receiving end of this ultimately did not appeal to her. It took a lot of preparation, and a lot of the time it simply didn’t feel good. She also felt very pressured into doing it, agreeing to it because she thought it would make her partner happy. That was the first and last time she tried it. While it may be actively wanted by one person involved, it just may not work out for a couple the way that one desires it.

If your partner wants to involve a third person, make sure you are one hundred percent comfortable and not just agreeing to it to appease another person. Whether it’s an open relationship or a threesome, involving another person can be risky if one of the parties isn’t entirely willing. Maintaining monogamy may be very important to a partner, and losing that may make them feel they’re not being entirely true to themselves.

My ex was very much a polyamorous person, while I was and still am very much monogamous. A few months before we broke up, he stated that he wanted to be in an open relationship. Initially I agreed to it, but after about a month I vocalized my concerns, telling him I didn’t feel like I was being true to myself and my desires. This was one of the main reasons why we had to break up. It was certainly for the best, as not seeing eye-to-eye on this matter can dictate the entire dynamic of the relationship.

At that point, I came up with a great idea! I asked, “What’s in that oil?!” He picked up the bottle, looked at it, and started reading off the ingredients. Before he could finish, I got up and said, “I think I’m allergic!” and ran to the bathroom. I hopped into the shower, turned it on, and pretended to wash myself. My partner came in with a great amount of concern asking if I was okay. I smiled and said, “I’m not allergic, can you get him to leave though?!” What a trooper my partner is! He told him that I was washing it off and that it was okay, but that he should probably go. So, “Tantra Todd” we’ll call him, called himself an Uber. As we all waited, I pretended to keep showering. I felt bad about the amount of water I was wasting for this silly cause, however I did wash my vagina quite a bit, mostly to get rid of the ick factor, so I guess it was worth it.The guy finally left, thank the Uber Gods, and my partner and I made a vow, then and there, to always meet in public first.

What I should have done was been honest with him and made him leave from the get go, probably some time around when he said, “the Mexicans.” I hate that people, women especially, feel obligated to be “nice” in uncomfortable situations. We so often trade politeness for our own well-being. We should stop doing that. I should stop doing that. Part of making sure something like that can’t happen is to not allow yourself to get into those situations in the first place. I knew full well that this could have been trouble, and I know that I am very lucky it wasn’t a different kind of trouble. To be met with someone who was just offensive and unskilled rather than violent or dangerous is actually one of the better circumstances I could have been caught up in. While I’m not a fan of living in fear, I am a fan of making smart choices. This is a lesson that I only need to learn once. I hope.

The point is that meeting in public doesn’t just help you avoid a murderer or a rapist, it also helps you avoid a liar, racist, and really bad masseuse.

“HOLY SHIT!!! I’M REALLY GOING TO HAVE SEX!!!’

This was the thought that kept popping up over and over again, on a constant loop, as we rolled around in my bed. It was just so unbelievable to me. I couldn’t grasp that it was actually ME that was half-naked and making out while practically running down the hall to get to the bedroom. I kept thinking maybe some random fire alarm would go off for no reason, or someone would knock at the door, or my roommate would come home randomly from being out of town for the weekend.

When you first become widowed, you literally think your life is over. And it is. Well, the life you knew is over. Because that person is no longer here, so you can’t ever get that life back again. And for a long time, you can’t really picture having any other version of life, or ever even wanting one or caring. So to be in the midst of the throws of passionate and fun and hot sex about to take place, and to suddenly realize that not only are you NOT going to get all weird and emotional and depressed during this – but that you will actually REALLY enjoy it – is pretty goddamn awesome. It’s a “holy shit!” kind of moment. Or, at least it was for me.

“There is a human man in my bedroom right now who ISN’T my husband, and he is looking at my naked and old and NOT skinny body, and he isn’t running away in terror. How is this a real thing?” 

When you’re an overweight girl to begin with, like I am, you get pretty used to rejection, or just plain old apathy. When you’re fat AND widowed, it doesn’t exactly do wonders for your self-esteem. All you can think about is who the hell is going to want ME ever again? Why would anyone find THIS desirable? And yet, here someone is, in my room, right this minute, and he is somehow turned on, by ME. I kept expecting him to bolt out of there any minute, make up some excuse why he had to get home. But that didn’t happen. He wanted to be with ME. And whatever shitty and deplorable way our relationship came to an end later, (and it WAS extremely shitty) in that moment, on that night, during my first time after the last time, he wanted me. And that felt good.