For years, I experienced sex in a way that felt like I had no real agency over the pace or sequence of events, over how my body was touched and enjoyed, and around my feelings of pleasure, overwhelm, discomfort or whatever felt like too much, not enough, or more of what was just right. The moments I craved and longed for didn’t last long enough and the moments I wasn’t quite ready for came too fast and lasted too long.

Attraction would spark, I’d go on a few dates, and if kissing happened, it was almost inevitable that sex would follow. It wasn’t that I wanted to rush. In truth, I wanted there to be 150 steps between kissing and intercourse—but I didn’t know that was possible. I didn’t know I could slow things down, stay connected, and ask for what I needed.

Instead, once closeness began, my boundaries collapsed. I didn’t know how to pause, how to redirect, or how to say I want to slow this way down. It felt easier to abandon myself, to disappear inside the experience, than to risk disrupting the flow or hurting someone’s feelings.

So often, I let my body be used for someone else’s pleasure, pretending it was fine. I faked enjoyment to keep the peace, to make the other person feel good, hoping that if I gave enough, maybe they’d want me—maybe even love me. On the outside I was “into it,” but on the inside I was dissociated, rehearsing silent monologues about what wasn’t working and never saying them out loud.

That pattern left me empty. There was adrenaline in surrendering myself to the unknown—like Russian roulette—but when it was over, I felt depleted, unsafe, and unseen. My only strategy for safety became avoidance. I told myself I could only be sexual if I knew for certain that someone loved me, a nearly impossible standard that kept me out of intimacy altogether.

Working with M. has slowly been undoing this pattern. In the safety of our sessions, I’ve learned that I can ask for what I want. I can take things at my own pace. I can create the space for all those steps between kissing and sex—the ones I always longed for but didn’t know how to name.

Recently, something shifted. I let myself be fully authentic in my body, and he witnessed me there, holding me with steadiness. It was powerful in a way I can hardly explain.

My body began to shake—releasing years of what I had held in silence. Waves of soft and hard, fast and slow rhythmic convulsions moved through me, until I was in a whole-body orgasm. I held onto him, and he held onto me, because I had finally allowed myself to create this sacred space: a space where my body could let go, where I could feel what I craved and desired without abandoning myself.

Slow. Slower. More sensual. More sacred. More pause. More time to feel the deepening between us. Time to stop and savor the magnetic pull of our bodies—how they speak to each other, how they write their own love story. Time to feel the soul-level of how bodies relate, how they remember their divinity, how even the smallest cells long to meet and be together.

This is what intimacy can be: not adrenaline and abandonment, but communication, presence, and pleasure that belongs to me, too.

I used to think it was obvious—that of course you can slow down, of course you can ask for what you need. But for me, it was a revelation. It took years of unlearning, and the courage to admit that I need help, validation, and human connection.

The difference is everything. No more scraps. No more disappearing. I am learning to stay present, to ask, to receive—and it is changing me.