The Intersection of Sex and Everything

This is a post that's been on my mind for a long time and I still don't really know how to approach it. The thing is, I have my own convictions and they apply to what feels right for me. I certainly don't expect anyone else to have the same beliefs, and I would never dream of trying to convince someone else that the way I feel is better. This respect of everyone's personal beliefs is fundamental for me.

I guess in the same way that I don't believe there is a one-size-fits-all kind of relationship, I believe everyone should be free to seek and explore whatever it is they need to fill their spirituality or their internal space.

However the one part I have difficulty reconciling with this view is where religion intersects with sexuality.

It's just not right that people live their entire life with the huge weight of the repression of their sexuality or the shame of their sexual desires. If there are two things in life that are transcendent, it is love and sex. They are the two gigantic poles of light that make us human. They affect everything we do, they have the power to ease our pain, they can give direction to our endeavours. This is how we so often describe love, and why not sex? Why fear it?

I have always deeply believed that love and sex are equivalent in their importance. In the same way that I love my wife, I lust for her, and when I give her an orgasm with my mouth, it is no less meaningful than when I seal our love with a kiss. Each day of our life is propelled by the little bursts of care and affection and energy and mutuality. At the end of the day, whether those bursts fed your heart or your orgasms, you are still more alive for them.

I'm Canadian and I constantly feel like that is a defining factor in how I feel about sex. Especially because living right next to the United States is a constant reminder that things are not the same everywhere. The intersection of sex and religion is so prevalent there. Not only that, sex seems to be mixed with so many different things in the U.S., from politics to geography to parenting. It's as though all these separate things have a say in how sexuality is perceived and experienced. I just don't think that's right. One source can only feed so many different outlets before it becomes fragile, or simply impossible, lest it dries up.

It's hard enough in Canada to grow into a healthy adult when it comes to sexuality, I can't imagine what it's like for many people I know who live in the southern United States. It seems that every day I read a tweet or an article about the very serious dichotomy that exists between the conservatives and the liberals. And yet, people somehow find a way to have a sex life. I asked one blogger friend who lives in South Carolina what it's like, and her response was that people can do whatever they want behind closed doors. But to me it's not a question of finding a private location to do whatever it is you're into. Rather, it's about the challenge of finding the head space and the emotional strength—the conviction maybe—to allow yourself the expression of those sexual desires. How do you push all the negativity and the guilt out of your mind, so that you can have sex and feel good about it?

Sex is the aspect of being human that is the most affected by all the other human traits. Think about it, gender, education, beliefs, culture. There are so many ways that human sexuality can be slowed down, impaired, repressed. It's no wonder that we're in 2013, we can communicate instantly with anyone in the world and we can send probes to Mars, yet we are still struggling with one of the most basic human experiences, that of having sex with another person.

This isn't trivial. If someone told you they feel guilt for loving someone, you would probably wonder how that can be possible. Why is it a readily accepted feeling for sex? If someone told you they feel guilt for having sexual desires, I bet you would tell me that this is common. But you'd be wrong, because in all likelihood, nobody would ever tell you they feel guilty about sex. By and large, people don't talk about it!

Love and sex are both so important. They are the two poles that make our lives meaningful. They can be enjoyed together or separately. Some people like to have sex without love, and some people like to love without sex. Interestingly, or sadly, the more I learn about sex, the more I find that experiencing love and sex at the same time seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Angel

Some eyes will make you feel loved. Some other eyes, when you love strongly enough, can make you feel home. And then some eyes, if you are lucky enough to notice them, will make you feel as though you've been blessed by an angel.

I was on a several-hour flight, on my way back to the ones I love. Across the isle from me, one row forward, sat a young woman. She was maybe 19 or 20 years of age, with blonde air nonchalantly tied up in a pony tail, wearing a plain white tank top under a grey hoodie with some matching grey sweat pants. By most measure, she was an average young person. But I had seen her eyes back inside the terminal, glowing as they were from fifty feet away as she prepared to board. And those eyes… My goodness. And her face…

Some people have a power that you can sense from their expression. She was such a creature.

There are always those who insist that perfect beauty doesn't exist, except from within the pages of color magazines manufactured through the judicious use of Photoshop filters. I have never believed that, for beauty is much more than a static image, and perfection is much more than a rare set of measurements. It isn't the picture of a person that captures us but instead her imagined extrapolations. It is the way she moves, the way she is, the way she makes you feel when she looks at you…

Sitting diagonally from me, the young woman was radiating something special. At one moment during the flight, I happened to look in her direction and her eyes caught mine. She wasn't just looking distractedly in my direction; she was looking straight at me. She wasn't smiling nor glaring. There was no malice nor intrusion in her stare. Her face squarely turned toward mine, her eyes were perfectly and quietly focused on my presence.

It could have been such as the furtive look that strangers give each other in passing on the street, but it wasn't.

In that short moment where she graced me with her gaze, I didn't feel surprise or shyness. I didn't feel exposed or observed or revealed. It only felt quite natural. She was just looking at me, purely and simply, intently but without prying. And being captured by her big bright eyes felt soothingly comfortable. Instead of feeling like the looker was trying to take something from me, I felt as though she was giving me something.

In the matter of a few seconds it was over, and I remember smiling.

A few rows in front of us was a couple with a baby. He was about a year-old, and was really not fond of the idea of being propelled in the middle of the sky inside a noisy pressurized cabin. The poor child cried and cried. The tears eventually turned to screams, and the mother had no choice but to stand up and try to rock him to some level of quietness. However nothing would seemingly do. The distraught woman stood there holding the screaming child as we watched.

And then the simplest of things happened: the young woman across the isle looked up at him.

I saw it all happen. She first made eye contact with him, using her body language to grab his attention, opening her eyes wide and making her face bright. As soon as he locked his focus on her, her face lit up and her mouth opened in a beautiful, loving smile. And instantly, the baby stopped crying.

I was looking at him. She was several rows away, but he was staring back at her in utter fascination, quiet as can be. She was smiling, and instantly he was soothed, just like that.

The same routine occurred several other times during the flight. And every single time, no amount of rocking and loving care from the mother would do. And then the young woman across the isle would look up from her screen or from her book, and instantly the child would meld into a soft mid-summer breeze. You could literally see on his face the glow that she radiated. It was amazing and beautiful.

Later I started daydreaming of this young woman as a baby herself, held closely by her loving mother. In my mind there was no question that the girl's beautiful eyes had been even more pure then. I imagined her mother looking into them, and how striking those moments must have been.

How many thousands, millions of times did it repeat? Did her mother know she was giving this child a special gift? Or did she feel the same way we all did when graced with the gentle stare of this baby's beautiful gaze?

For a time I wondered if her mother knew that she had given birth to an angel.

A Week of Struggles

Writing has always been a way for me to get my emotions out, and even more so on Fruits of Libido. I used to have a regular blog—I mean, a blog where sex was not something I discussed—but I shut it down years ago. It's only by encompassing the intimate parts of me, including love and sex, that I most completely connect with myself through writing. It's either that, or this is the way that I feel most fulfilled by the act of writing.

This week was difficult.

It started with a dream where I woke up in tears. It was just an awful, awful dream, something that is not worth recounting here. Suffice it to say that it involved me defending some people from harm, and in doing so I had to kill other people who were causing it… After it was all over, in my dream, I lowered my head, feeling weighed down by the enormity of what I had just done. I began sobbing and I woke up in tears. The images from the dream were so vivid in my mind. Cate comforted me.

Talking with Cate later that day I realized what it was about. I can't go into details here, and I'm sorry for those who would like for this to be clearer, but it made perfect sense. It was interesting to me that I didn't put two and two together immediately upon waking up from the dream. Maybe it's just that I couldn't see the forest while clinging to the tree. In the end, the takeaway from that dream is that I am a sensitive man and that I love fiercely.

I felt a little off the rest of the week after that. Maybe off is not quite accurate… Maybe a better way to put it is that I felt a bit out of whack. I had to put more effort than usual into staying on track with work and with the usual stuff, but overall things went fine. I don't think anyone in my entourage really noticed the difference. Isn't it annoying when you're struggling and other people have no clue? I'm never sure if it's my failure of not being expressive enough.

Maybe that's why I stayed mostly away from commenting and tweeting this week. Well, more accurately, I continued reading what was going on, but I wasn't able to quip back and feel my responses like I usually do. So I kept quiet and out of trouble for the most part.

Cate and I are doing good. We haven't acted on our open relationship in so long, although we still feel as open as ever. An open relationship is not just about sex, it's also about making it whatever you need it to be at whatever point in time, independently of what stereotypes and ancient molds dictate. Right now, for us, it means concentrating on ourselves and making some important changes, so that we can be outwardly open in a more fulfilling way later.

We're not having much sex right now and I do have a difficult time with that. I recognize more than ever now how my mood is affected when I don't have sex enough or when I don't have enough alone time to masturbate. Sex is a central part of who I am and when I don't have enough of it, especially in stressful times, I easily become burdened and morose. I know this but with everything happening, life, work, kids, sometimes I'm not as assertive as I should be about my needs.

You're Mine... or Not

An acquaintance innocently declared "she's mine" recently, referring to his girlfriend, and that sparked a bit of a discussion. I think he meant it in an endearing way and there is probably nothing wrong with that, but still that woke up the relationship zealot in me. As I see it, the issue is that this kind of statement relates to a deeper issue where having a relationship with someone is conceptually tied to the idea of owning someone.

I know a lot of relationships are based on this dynamic of control, but it's just plain wrong and unhealthy.

The first problem is that such a relationship is reductionist. Instead of being the romanticized sum of the two of you, what happens instead is that you're both limited by what your partner lets you do. Since you're limited by them, and they're limited by you, in effect you have a common-denominator relationship. Everything that you both tolerate is kosher, and everything that one of you doesn't tolerate is not kosher. This implies that everything only one of you enjoys is out the window. You know how that feels. You get into a relationship, and eventually there are all these things that you used to believe or enjoy that are now unacceptable. In worse cases, you become less than the person you used to be because you've been trimmed raw to only the traits that the other person tolerates.

That can make for a pretty frustrating relationship, one where you feel stuck because you're so tightly bound by this intersection of the two of you. This "you're mine" attitude opens into the whole can of worms that is the question of control in a relationship. And this can of worms is a realm with a lot of very deep rabbit holes. (How's that image for you?)

Recently I read a fabulous and amazing and mind-altering (OK, maybe not mind-altering) piece about this, penned by Franklin. He refers to this as the "ownership paradigms".

If you haven't already, go read his piece now. Or later. But you absolutely must read it. To me it was mind and eye-opening. I read it a month ago but it has really stayed with me. I really think it's profound and that many people need to read this. It is a higher level of consciousness of what a relationship can be when it's based on, yes, trust.

And it's not because you're in an open relationship that you're immune to this problem of ownership. If your partner says you can have sex with other people but only without penetration, that's not you making a choice, that's your partner telling you how it's going to be. It really is control. Most people don't mean it to be bad, but it's driven by a lack of trust and boundaries.

In the parlance that I've used for many years, it's a lack of differentiation. The idea is that there are things you don't want your partner to do, so you cross the emotional boundary between the two of you, and you literally go and adjust the figurative knobs and controls inside the other person to the settings that you want.

The thing is, there is a big difference between saying "I don't want you to do x" and saying "I am uncomfortable with you doing x". The first one is an order, it's control. The second one is a revelation of personal feelings that come without any obligation. It opens the door to the recipient making a choice on how to acknowledge and react to the received information. It lets a real discussion occur, one where the two people are not playing attack and defence, but instead are trying to understand how they feel personally and how they can arrange something that works for both of them.

It's the notion of trust and choice. If I know you're not comfortable with x, and that you trust me (because you're not forcing me to agree with you), then I can make a choice. In such a dynamic, there is no control, only differentiation. I'm my own person, you're your own person, and we figure things out.

Again, it's the power of choice. (Now where did I hear that recently?)

Anyone who is interested in this should most definitely listen to Dr. David Schnarch in this interview by Tami Simon. (Transcript here if you prefer to read.) It is filled to the brim with bits of wisdom that make so much sense and that everyone should absolutely hear. It's time people have relationships as adults, not as 5 years-olds who complain that the other took their toy away.

Be your own person.

From a Woman's Perspective

The other day I was thinking about my desire for a fulfilling sex life—and really, don't I think about that pretty much every day—and after turning a corner in my mind I had that perfect moment where I saw everything, my life, my sex life, from a woman's perspective.

I've always envied women. It might seem strange if you're a woman reading this, but for all the uphill battles that a woman must face in a world defined mostly by men, today seems like a pretty good time to be a woman. Equality is still elusive in many if not most areas, but we are closer than ever before, and there are certainly aspects of womanhood where women have the upper hand that are very tantalizing.

I can only dream of what it's like to have access to the fluidity in sex that women enjoy. For many men, hearing their girlfriend or wife express the desire to be with another woman is not a problem. I can't help but wonder at what it must feel like to know that you have that choice, that such a freedom is accessible if you want it. Instead of homosexuality being something you secretly dream about, it's something you can play with, integrate to any degree you wish, even experience if this is what you want. The power of choice.

I was thinking about Bella who spent a weekend with a girlfriend recently for some quality lesbian playtime. It sounded lovely and wonderful and I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if the roles were reversed. What if a married man told his wife he wanted to spend a weekend away with his boyfriend for some quality gay sex? I'm sure it's acceptable to some women, but without a doubt there are a lot fewer women who would be willing to let this happen than there are men willing to let their wife have their same-sex fun.

Man-to-man sex just doesn't have the same allure. It's not socially acceptable, for a start, so right away a man who might be interested in that is blocked at the gate at the bottom of the hill because of all the stigma attached to "gay sex". It's less threatening to call it "bi sex", see, this way you can be sure as a man that you're not gay. Whereas for a woman, it doesn't seem like it's as big a stretch to wrap her head around the idea of being interested in "lesbian sex". I know it's ridiculous and I hate it, but it's the current state of things. And so, advantage women.

I was also reflecting last week on the fact that I follow mostly women and feminist sex blogs and twitters. In my world, sex is dominated by women who are showing that it's OK for women to like sex and that's OK for them to be assertive and that they can lead the way to sexual empowerment and enlightenment. And personally I'm all for it because frankly, men suck at being sex leaders, as the last few hundred (thousand?) years have shown.

I grew up at a time when it wasn't common for a woman to express her love of sex. Men could have posters of hot chicks on their walls, but women didn't have any equivalent mean of expression of their interest in sex. At first when I started dating I dreamed of meeting a girl who was into sex like, well, like a man. But I was sure that this was a pipe dream and so I settled for much less, because I really thought women who liked sex were so uncommon, that it was pointless for me to hope for it.

But then I started seeing women who did enjoy it. I heard the downstairs neighbor who was vocalizing her pleasure as she fucked her boyfriend. And I took notes in my mind when a girlfriend eventually masturbated while cuddled against me because I was too dead tired to do anything. And now I read women every day who talk about it on the radio and on Twitter, who advocate for it at conferences, who write books on the topic, who make videos of themselves, and who post damn hot explicit photos on their Tumblr accounts.

It really does seem like now is the right time to be a woman, when it comes to the enjoyment of sex anyway.

And thinking about it I had this vision of being one.

If I were a woman, I would love to hold my man's penis and feel it stiffen between my fingers. I would hold him while we're naked in bed, and tell him naughty words while I'm very gently stroking his erection. I would watch his face and kiss his skin, watching the tremors in his body effected by my revelations and the hot stories I would whisper into this ears.

If I were a woman, I would ask him if he minds that I invite a girlfriend to spend the night while he's away on business, just to keep me warm. And I would tell him that he can call us from his hotel, if he wants to, and listen in while we're playing with each other. I would spy the sparkle in his eyes when he would come home a few days later, and I would mount him in our bed and make him suck my tits while I extracted every ounce of white desire from his throbbing cock.

If I were a woman, I would read him stories of sex, show him movies of forbidden fantasies, and take him to places where he can fool around if he desires. I would masturbate imagining him simultaneously relaxing and getting hard under the knowing hands of the masseuse, and I would fantasize of him tasting another man's cock after I've been nicely fucked.

If I were a woman, I would pick a man that I trust and who I love, a gentleman who is respectful and perverted all at once, a man slut, one who loves to give without ever tiring of tasting me, and one who always acts as though his last orgasm was the best he had ever had. And once I'd found this man, I would be in the position where I can make the choices that I want.

The power of choice.

The Allure of Threesomes

If there is one thing that I fantasize about more than any other, it's threesomes.

I've been fascinated by them ever since I became sexually aware. I remember being a teenager and masturbating in my bedroom at night, imagining being with two girls from school. Somehow, for me then it was about geometry. I guess I didn't know any better. The two girls would lay parallel to each other and I would be the diagonal. That was it. It is a peculiar fantasy when you think about it. After all, in that configuration nothing more is happening than in a regular missionary twosome. Penetration action down there, kissing action up there; what difference does it make that the down there and the up there are not from the same person?

As it turns out, there is a difference. As a teenager I didn't know why that turned me on. As a 40 year-old, I know all too well what captures my imagination. It's not just more hands to touch and stimulate. Sex happens in your brain. Wanting to share someone with somebody else is incredibly sexy. That openness and freedom to pursue pleasure and orgasms without being constrained by the limits of traditions and beliefs is just… hot.

The other night, after giving Cate an orgasm with my mouth, I slid up to kiss her and she whispered how good I tasted. "I want to taste another woman's pussy on your lips," I told her. And just the sexiness of those words got us going for a while longer. Especially now that my cock was near her pussy.

There was also another time recently where I was fucking Cate from behind, laying down on top of her. She was able to turn her head and we were kissing at the same time, and even though it was an intensely intimate moment between us, my playful mind conjured up the vision of another woman laying down in front of us, legs spread wide, her pussy right there for us to sample together.

When I masturbate in the shower, I often imagine just making out with two curvy women. It's the idea of my cock rubbing against their soapy wet bodies that makes me get fully hard, and then I let myself go to orgasm imagining Cate helping me make the other woman come. That's actually a big portion of it for me: orgasms. I like trying to get as much pleasure as possible out of orgasms, and teaming up to drive someone to the brink of bliss is just perfect.

For some reason a lot of men are not interested in a threesome with another man but that's something I would be very interested in. The idea of giving Cate twice as much cock fun is a big turn on. What could there be not to like? I would love to lay there after coming inside her and watch the other guy have his turn with her. I would most definitely look at her face, admire her body moving. And if the guy is up for it, I would very much want to taste him covered with my wife's juices. Or team up with her to give him a mind-blowing orgasm.

A long time ago I was talking with a girlfriend about the possibility of having a threesome. She had actually brought it up herself, in an oblique but obvious way, and I was telling her that to me, that would be like a gift we would give ourselves. I still feel that way.

Sharing together another person is a gift. A very sexy gift. Way better than any toy or Valentine's treat.

NST: Erupting Into her Mouth

NST
abbreviation
Naughty Story Tuesday.

The scent of vanilla and cinnamon was floating in our candlelit bedroom. The silent, dancing flames were scattered throughout, standing atop every wooden dresser and night table available. On the unmade bed, the mess of the coffee brown sheets and the red and gold duvet provided evidence of the events that had unfolded thus far.

And there I was lying naked, on my back, my legs wrapped around Cate's head. After the extended love affair that I had previously entertained with her unfolded pussy and her engorged clitoris, it was now her turn to feast, and I was not intent on resisting her charms nor her talents.

My clear want had already spilled, or rather, overflowed, as usually happens when I'm left to eat her out for any length of time, and Cate was happy to initiate the process of cleaning me up in preparation to make an even nicer mess.

Fully satiated as I was from her rich nectar, I was content to lay back and let her have her way with me. I even felt a mounting inclination to refrain from caressing her, to let the uninhibited abandon wash over me. My mind, between two breaths, did produce the recollection of the black eye mask seen earlier in the night stand cabinet. But Cate was just getting comfortable, and her tongue was getting warmer, and at first I thought of foregoing it.

However long I waited for the thought to go away, I did not succeed. I wanted too much to restrain my actions, to channel my senses. "Hold that thought," I said, twisting my torso and reaching for the night table while attempting to preserve the perfection of our arrangement. Moments later, as I slipped on the satin mask, the twinkle of candles reflecting in her eyes is the last glimpse I had of anything that night.

There I was at last, at her mercy.

Cate immediately took me in her mouth. Whole. That sudden and welcome attack of insane warmth acted like a switch, and within seconds I was growing out from between her lips. Expertly, she was rubbing sideways the flat of her tongue on the cut just below the head of my penis, extracting appreciative sounds from me.

I lay there with my hands above my head, anchored in her mouth. I rested my legs on the back of her shoulders and closed them around her head, just enough to feel her wavy hair caressing my inner thighs. That was such a delicious accent to my sensations which were already alerted by Cate applying wet attention to the entire length of me.

One moment there was a rhythmic, engulfing movement directly on the head. The other, kisses that suckled more than they loved were drawing out every ounce of stiffness out of my shaft. And up and down the focus went, and my pleasure closely followed, pushing aside any other priority. Breathing became a function of helping the sweetness produced, of improving the deep extraction of sensations from inside me.

Eventually I did not want to contain Cate between my legs anymore, I wanted to be seen, to be revealed, to be sucked completely, and I opened myself wide, as much as I could. I had a vague sense of Cate moaning with delight when this increased the length of my erection and the possible coverage of her caresses. More parts of her were touching me, manipulating me, and thus the satisfaction I was experiencing.

Cupped so tightly and played so expertly, I doubt I stayed in this position for very long. Always seeking to refine the delight of my arousal, I had the urge to lift my legs up. I brought my hands down and wrapped them behind my knees, pulling back. My butt was slightly off the bed and I was not thinking anymore. Cate was not a mouth, she was an ocean swallowing me whole, flooding me and exalting in the roar from my throat.

The eruption that followed sent my head back into the pillow, my chest heaving with force. My hips, in an instinctive and primal desire to accomplish their task, were humping up and down rapidly. I was a body exploding into a stream of released desire.

Once Cate was done playing with me, after she had fulfilled the promise to make the mess worse, I passed out behind the satin mask and fell into the deepest, perfect sleep.