Ahh…those intense, bewildering, breathtaking, confusing, scary (or downright terrifying), outrageously illogical but exhilaratingly visceral, crazy moments where EVERYTHING that we thought we knew and understood and had worked so hard to figure out about ourselves and believed that we wanted above all else and with absolute clarity is completely thrown into question! Whoever this man was, and whatever the circumstances or depth of your interaction, all I can say is DAMN! I don’t mean to make light of how disruptive such an experience can be, but anyone who would deny that there isn’t some real and essential meaning to be taken from such an occurrence is in my mind delusional. I guess all I can say is welcome to the club – and in case you are getting blank stares from any of your closer confidants that you may have casually mentioned “this man” (even if you significantly filtered and downplayed the depth and strength of your reaction for your audience), get used to it! Seriously, it has been my experience that most people NEVER experience anything close to what you describe so they have no context to relate to it much less understand it. It took me a while to realize this (most of my life), but the insanely intense and raw unfiltered chemistry thing is rare – not because it can’t and/or shouldn’t happen, but because most people shut themselves down (both consciously and unconsciously) to the point that it just can’t register. By way if example, I have met a surprising number of women who are wildly sensual, but not particularly sexual. More specifically, they were really open minded and free spirited and up for just about anything, but bizarrely not overly interested in exploring or broadening their sexuality or the vast oceans of sexual expression.

This was really confusing to me. It seemed illogical (more like impossible!) for someone to so distinctly isolate those two, in my mind, inextricably linked characteristics. Needless to say, only over time, what I came to discover was, that despite being active and enthusiastic sexually (as any highly sensual person most surely would be), it became clear that they had never really had amazing orgasms. They scratched an itch, gave a good release and that was that…the end of the story so time to move on. Despite having had a variety of boyfriends and partners and lovers over the years, and having great vanilla sex (with some VERY mild explorations into kink here and there), and regularly and repeatedly orgasming from those activities, she had never been particularly impressed by what an orgasm was capable of. She placed a fair level of significance to orgasming and enjoyed it, but there were LOTS if things that she enjoyed equally well and a few that she even enjoyed more. MORE?!? Now I was really confused, I mean there is a very wide range of pleasure and joy which can be achieved through having an orgasm, but there is is very little in this world that I find even close (much less BETTER) than a really good orgasm, and nothing even in the same ballpark as an incredible orgasm. The more we talked about it and she relayed her lifetime if experience and conversations with her female friends and confidants about their orgasms, she was convinced that her perception of the importance and value of an orgasm was absolutely commonly held by many or most of her friends. Now, we were having a sexual relationship and it was really good, and there were lots of other “interesting and promising” dynamics (lets just call it good chemistry coupled with intelligence and maturity and similar outlooks and adventurous spirits) and I was 100% clear when we met that I had all sorts of interests and desires and areas of my sexuality that I wanted to explore, so this situation was ripe for one of us to learn the truth. Maybe I was unusual in my beliefs. Maybe I had deluded myself into over valuing the frequency and intensity of sexual activity as a measure of success and worthiness in a relationship. Maybe all of the other things ARE more important. So fast forward a week or so, and we had finally gotten to the piping where I was no longer going to nudge around the edges on pushing her where I wanted to go, and she had grown comfortable and confident enough with me and that I wouldn’t hurt her (at least not unintentionally) to give me the room to let me take the lead. Needless to say, we each had one of the most remarkable sexual experiences of each of our lives together. The details are insanely HOT to be sure, but not really the point I am trying to make here, but it was without question a mind-blowing, transcendental experience. I can recognize it as such and be in awe of what happened, but I had experienced something along these lines before (and plenty of insanely good if not transcendental experiences/orgasms), but she had never experienced ANYTHING even remotely close to this before in her life. I actually wrote about it here on this site under the title of SuperNova Sex.

It’s not about that particular sexual experience per se, but the inspiration to write it up definitely occurred after this experience (and there is a fair bit of “examples” given which paint a pretty good picture about what happened!), because of how profound and impactful it was for HER. [If you can’t find it, send me a message, and I will try and find it and forward it to you] The point I am trying to make, is that until you have experienced just how earth shattering and profound and essential – something which literally makes you feel as if you had just been plugged in to the core life force of the universe and had 1 trillion volts of electricity coursing through your body – then you can not possibly fully appreciate just how relevant and essential our sexuality is to our health and happiness and well being (or how far we really might elect to go in order to find another of those Supernova Sexual experiences)! Long story short, she finally experienced something that made it clear what others, who to her at the time seemed so misguided in their focus and attention and importance that they seemed to place on sex and sexuality, must have been talking about. That they might have known a hell of a lot more than her all along, and that she finally realized, No…this IS really important and I WILL commit more of my time and attention to exploring it. And explore it we did!!! She literally would well up with tears or joy just thinking about it for WEEKS afterwards…and don’t even get me started on how many times we tried to reconstruct the events from our foggy recollections of what had happened at her insistence. I was more than happy to participate in such a recap/review exercise with her however many times she wanted, because it really was so awesome, but deep down I always knew that it wouldn’t lead anywhere…it was a fools task…because there was NO WAY to actually make sense for any of it….to this day, I couldn’t tell you more than a few snippets if what happened and what I thought it meant…from where I sit it absolutely happened, it was incredible, it was a culmination of each of us opening ourselves up as fully and completely as possible and allowing it to occur, much more than anything else. It was one of thousands of things (sexual and non-sexual alike) that have convinced me that we really do know so little and any perception or belief of real control or mastery that humans have over the universe really is deluded, so the only reasonable conclusion is that we are better served by letting go of a lot of those temporal aspects of control and opening ourselves up experiencing the wonder and awe of the universe (while being as thoughtful and practical and considered about how we live our day to day lives in a way that might also make us happy and fulfilled in the meantime. I was just so grateful enough to have had that experience and others like it (they are never the same…FYI!), and to have confirmed what I had always felt in my heart and in my soul was MY TRUTH, even if it isn’t shared by anyone else.

That is part of what gives me the strength and confidence to pursue this part of who I am without reservations…and I am very glad that I no longer have to wonder and guess as I did when I was younger.

You have to make your own fully informed decisions about what you want or need to do to explore your own sexuality and how important it is to you, but I will say, if you already know how good and beautiful and amazing really incredible sex can be, then you are probably in the distinct minority (since I am convinced most people have never had a truly great sexual experience!) and that should give you a great perspective to make your call. On the other hand if you have not had that “blown wide open” sexual experience and you are STILL struggling with lingering thoughts and urges and concerns that it seems like your sexuality is much more fundamental and important to providing you the happiness and fulfillment that you want (or need) out of life, then you have a much harder decision to make, because IF you explore this and IF you find that incredible sexual connection/experience, you most certainly will find it VERY hard to ever ignore your deeper wants and needs again.

Now, that could be a good realization or a bad one depending on your outlook on life. Personally, I am a rip off the band-aid quickly person…rarely dwelling on the past and steadfastly working to not have regrets. I believe that for better or worse, whatever happened and whatever the consequence, in all likelihood it was for the best (even if I would like to believe that I handled myself in as respectful and honorable way as possible in the process because I do believe I am a good person). But it could be that impactful…

-James

PS: God help you if you were to have a transcendental sexual experience during your explorations BEFORE making any final decision about which direction you want your current relationship to head!!!

PPS: I certainly wouldn’t judge if you happened to be lucky enough to have an experience like that that made your decision that much more clear and unquestioned!!! Just say’n…

@lurkinglady – In my life there have been two times I had this immediate and overwhelming feeling (much as James has described… utterly compelling, irresistible, profound) and where it evolved into relationships. Both relationships did have a heavy BDSM dynamic, but here is the interesting part; these are the only times I have had that type of relationship, and both times we met in a vanilla context. Neither of us were aware the other had this type of interest (in the first I had no real idea I had this interest), yet the dynamic was there from the very first interaction, and both times we both knew immediately. There was 12 years between the end of the first and the start of the second. Both changed me forever. I have theories on what it is, what it means (at least for me) but certainly don’t know, however I do believe there is something that is sometimes just inexplicably there, it is real, and when it is there it is unmistakable.

@alix-james, Thank you for your amazing sharing on this, this is an incredibly personal topic and one that is very challenging to articulate. One of your more subtle points (and please forgive my crude paraphrasings of your writing) on finding balance between sustaining a fundamental level of expression, freedom and discovery, and managing a successful, stable day to day existence is a major focus for me right now, as I have never had so much to maintain or so much potentially available to me on both sides of the equation at the same time before. Lets just say, I do understand your, ‘be careful what you wish for you just may get it’ innuendo.

Related to that note, I have a personal question for you (should you be inclined and choose to answer). You’ve mentioned this has become something that is fundamental for you, something you desire, even need to have in your life. How do you balance the fact that you now have this need, but may not always have what sates it without letting that introduce negative energy? For example a fear of losing it? Do you escape the negative by staying focused on the positive? Do you find your peace with it by resisting attachment (i.e. perhaps philosophically, as in something like ‘what will be will be, if I no longer have what I need it will be because I no longer need it’ or maybe via confidence perhaps something like, ‘I know I can and will do what’s required to get what I need and therefore I will always have it in one form or another’)? or do you allow for specific attachments and just trust your partner\s to be there? or something all together different?

By attachment here, I’m not talking about love or affection. I mean attachment in the, ‘if a butterfly lands in your hand let it go if it comes back to you its yours if it doesn’t it never was’ kind of way. I hope I am still making sense… it is getting late.