Is it intentional when you touch your penis to my hand? Lay it in my open hand so I can feel it grow erect. I like knowing that you feel turned on by touching my naked body. I don’t know if it means anything else. It seems like a silent way to communicate that you are turned on and possibly an invitation. It seems like our agreement though is you touching me and not the other way around.  I don’t feel permission to touch you. I just didn’t want you to think I was ignoring it… I wish I knew the words that go with this touching of body parts.

I think about the dynamic of you massaging me, me lying here receiving, passively. I feel surrendered to how you touch and move me. My eyes are closed, it feels incredibly intimate, and yet we don’t have the intimacy of eye contact. I can be a bit removed with my eyes closed. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, maybe how you or I might prefer it.

The tension of intimacy and distance is interesting to me. I think about it. I notice that when I consider what it would be like to touch your penis less passively, I feel anxious about possibly doing something wrong or what it would communicate to you.

I’m curious to hear your perspective on how erotic energy and sensual touch can be healing in this context. It seems like your area of study. Do you have boundaries around it with your clients that you communicate with? Maybe it’s always different?

In this setting with you, I’m letting my guard down and allowing deep traumas held by my body to surface and be felt. I’m allowing myself so much pleasure and letting go of needing to respond a certain way or “do my part.” I’m processing and going through a lot, but I feel like it’s not part of your job to witness or engage with that. I don’t know how to express it simply or concisely.

I wonder sometimes where the erotic energy could go between us. I don’t know what is possible. I’ve had sensual massages that led to sex, and orgasm, and it was always awkward and unnatural.

I want a slow, mutual, tantric connection. I need to know your boundaries and what you like. I don’t know your body like you know mine. I have very high expectations because of the quality of how you touch me. I feel anxious about losing that source of pleasure.

My intention, my prayer, is to feel safe and with agency and power connecting with you in my fully turned-on erotically heightened state. I want to bring my full self, my awareness of what feels good and is okay, and my ability to ask for things to slow down or stop as needed. I want to know how to respect your boundaries and what feels good for you. I want to understand the context and the intention of how this happens and what happens afterward.

When I engage sexually most of my experiences include some level of guarding or playing a role or dissociating/ignoring parts of me to focus on the shared experience. I have so much anxiety about if I’m doing it right, and if what I am doing is pleasing, and also so much fear about getting hurt and being abandoned. I sometimes am overcome with grief after an orgasm. I can cry really hard sometimes. It often makes things really awkward.

Orgasm feels so private to me, so intimate. I know it’s not like that for everyone. It’s like allowing you to see me in a moment where I’ve completely lost my ability to control anything and am so fully myself.

I made a promise to myself not to have sex without the context of a relationship. To make sure that I am with someone who really cares about me. But that so far has meant that I’m not having sex at all. Maybe that’s for the best? I don’t know.

My boundaries with you are for me so that I don’t become overly attached to you.

I feel sensual and erotic energy very strongly. It’s so powerful. I’m also afraid of it. I sometimes make choices from that turned-on place that feel harmful to other parts of me later. I allow myself to be hurt or don’t protect myself because of fear of rejection or awkwardness. Or for fear of hurting someone else’s feelings.

I sometimes allow myself to be penetrated too deeply too soon. I allow fluid bonding. And then I feel so much and find out that this person I felt so connected to doesn’t want to talk to me and isn’t interested in me anymore. That it didn’t mean anything or the meaning isn’t sustained.

What if the way that some men have the most pleasure is by having sex in a way that hurts me? Maybe they want a partner who likes to be hurt a little, who likes it rough. Maybe I am too sensitive to have sex. I worry about needing something that isn’t sexy, that’s boring, or allowing myself to endure pain and even tell myself it’s passion or excitement from the adrenaline and chemicals in the moment.

I have even been willing to allow the pain of rough sex so that I could create the opportunity for cuddling. It’s mostly too short and not as nourishing as I hoped for.

I play a role to try and make myself more attractive. I hide who I really am, how I really want to be touched and made love to because I think that would never be possible or acceptable. But then I am always hiding, never being my true self.

I must support myself in finding ways to stop hiding and truly let myself be seen and known exactly as I am.