Sometimes we want to make love, sometimes we want to be f*cked.

I saw a post from a woman I follow on Instagram the other day that I immediately resonated with. It said, “sometimes we want to make love, sometimes we want to be f*cked.” I almost hit that re-share button, but then overthought it, or perhaps thought about it the exact right amount and just sent it privately to a friend instead. No matter how true that statement is for me, it’s also easy for a declaration like that to be completely misconstrued when you have a million followers. So instead of sharing it openly, I got quiet and private about it.

But who am I serving by being discreet about my desires? I’m a sex educator who waves around dildos and tells people how to give good oral on the Internet. Like what exactly am I being shy about? And if I’m reluctant to share, me the dildo-waving sex educator, then how on earth are other people navigating this?

Desire isn’t always well behaved. Sometimes you want to be held tenderly and preciously, but sometimes you want to feel entirely primal and alive. Always, with consent at the center.

But because women’s safety, desire, and consent have been so disregarded historically, it’s like the onus has been placed on us to curb our desires, in order to stay safe from both harm and judgement, instead of on those that create the dangerous and judgemental environments that make it unsafe for us to express ourselves in the first place.

Last week I posted a carousel about the Wheel of Consent. It’s a diagram that was created by Betty Martin, a somatic sex educator. It was born out of a game called the 3-minute game, where two participants ask each other two questions. 1: How do you want me to touch you? And 2: How do you want to touch me? They each get 3 minutes to answer each question.

I think that all partners should play this game early on in their relationship, and then again and again and again and again, from time to time. You can keep it the 3 minute game, or turn it into the 30 minute game, or even the 3 hour game.

But too often partners don’t actually talk about the sex they’re having (or not having.)

Most people I know who’ve been together 10+ years are having very little sex, and I’m pretty sure they’d be having more if they actually talked about how they’d like to be touched and whether or not they feel seen and understood by their partner.

Unfortunately though, people are often quick to judge desires, especially if they don’t fit into neat, pre-determined categories. So even if you are creating the space to share your desires or fantasies with a partner, if the information isn’t being received with an open heart, then the point is totally lost. Nothing kills the mood quicker than if a partner were to pull a face when you told them about your desires. Now I’m not saying you have to love every fantasy that your partner has, but it sure helps to be able to listen, and to create a space in which both of you feel 100% comfortable telling each other. (Actually acting on fantasies is something we will talk about shortly.)

It’s difficult to say what we truly desire because that can be and sometimes is weaponised. Saying you want to be “fucked” can be misunderstood as, “I want to be disrespected.” Or as, “I want to be fucked, so you don’t have to ask for my consent.” Or as, “I want to be fucked always.”

Plus, what we are expected to desire and what we actually desire are not always the same. Most of the time a man is expected to be dominant and a woman submissive. When those roles are reversed it’s often labeled an anomaly. “That’s no way to be a man.” “That’s certainly no way to be a woman.”

Even more unexpected is asking for what you want. No respectable girl asks to be fucked, but a good wife ought to let herself be. Female desire and sexual agency are frowned upon but marital rape is legal. What the actual hell.

Some days I’m horny and ready to go for hours on end. And some days work has had me on goggle meet for six hours and my brain is addled from looking at a computer screen and all I really want is a cold mango and my couch. Some days I want to be fucked. And on other days I want a slow, delicious makeout session and cuddles. These desires are not mutually exclusive.

Wanting to be loved and cuddled can be different from wanting to be “fucked”. But they can also be feelings that co-exist. Wanting to be rid of the notion that women always want to be handled like delicate roses is perhaps a desire that many women keep secret because of the points I’ve laid out above. And the same goes for men who might want to be dominated. OR for men who don’t want to be rough.

There’s so much shame built into expressing our desires. People are rarely having these conversations openly and honestly and so we end up believing that we must fit into one of the boxes or else we’ll be labeled freaks, deviants.

The boxes we have been slotted into don’t serve us. Exploring and expressing our desires, as well as how they may evolve over time, is a profound aspect of self discovery. What we desired in our twenties may not be the same as what we want in our thirties. Things can change. What I thought I wanted five years ago is vastly different from what I want today. I’ve been lucky to have a few wonderful relationships over the last 15 years (I’m nearly 36 now!) with partners who have been willing to go on the journey with an open mind and heart to figure out what we want together. But I’ve also had a few partners who were unable to do that. Men with whom I really truly did not feel seen, especially sexually, and whom I realised in fact seemed quite incapable of really truly fully seeing a woman for who she is rather than from the lens of how society makes women feel they ought to be.

Anyhow, let me now come back to that point I’d made earlier about creating a space in which you can speak your truth about what you desire and then figure out how and if you want to actually act on your desires. Because while on the one hand we often leave our desires unexpressed, on the other hand, what we may fantasise about isn’t always or necessarily what we want in reality.

For example, one may be drawn to the idea of having sex with multiple people at once. Just the thought of being desired by several people, the sights and sounds of all those bodies, the sensations of multiple forms of stimulation being administered just the way you like, all at once, is the fuel of many a masturbatorial fantasy. But the thought of actually participating in an orgy may sound quite overwhelming, even off putting. For me personally, a control freak and germophobe, the reality of it is just too many variables. What if they haven’t washed their hands? What if they’re all really stupid? I don’t actually want to do the thing. It’s just fun to imagine.

Whether we want our fantasies to become realities or not, it’s important to feel like we can voice them to our partners free of judgement. How we act on those fantasies is up to us. There are many ways to make fantasies come to life in a safe, meaningful and consensual way. Desire doesn’t live in a box. It’s a lush forest overflowing with hundreds of blooming flowers, towering trees, soft moss covered paths, and gritty sandy ones as well. It’s not one thing. It’s a thing that changes. And our relationships and sexual experiences would certainly be richer if we could safely explore and express our desires without filtering or flattening them, while also making it abundantly clear that no one is ever expected to do anything they don’t actually want to!

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