A New Approach to Intimacy
I hear a knock on the door, and I smile. I know who it is, and I am happy he is here.
I've been preparing for his visit, intentionally arranging my space. Lighting candles, burning incense, playing music I love, moving my body to its beat.
I feel the aliveness in my body as I walk to do the door, feeling gratitude for an answer to the anticipation that has been cultivating.
I turn the door knob, slowly pull it open, to reveal a man on the other side of it who knows how to attune to my body, my sensitivity, and my emotional intelligence.
We look at each other and smile, this kind of smile that alludes to a unique history, a mutual knowing, and a pleasurable curiosity of the particular chemistry of our connection.
We are deeply intimate, yet clearly contained. We are rich in chemistry, yet clear on the boundaries of our connection. It is a relationship unlike any I have ever experienced, and I am so grateful for its presence and medicine in my life.
He facilitates intimacy and healing work with women. I facilitate intimacy and healing work with men. We each creates spaces for people of the opposite sex to experience a level of surrender and vulnerability that allows them to connect with themselves and fall more deeply in love with who they truly are.
It was a divine synchronicity that our paths crossed as they did, and as we deepened into exploring the nature of our connection, it became clear to each of us that there was an opportunity to create an intentional container for our relating in which we could:
1) Create a collaborative relationship to cultivate our professional skills in the art of facilitating deeply intimate healing spaces for the opposite sex to transform and grow within, through practicing with each other.
2) Create a personal relationship with each other where we could relate deeply and explore loving connection, sensual touch, and vulnerable communication without defaulting into a conventional relationship or romantic attachment.
Each time we came together, there was some form of intention, some type of discussion of the container, and what the purpose or desire for our connection was.
There was something deeply healing here for me. To be able to cultivate deep intimacy with a man I had immense attraction to and emotional chemistry with, and hold a container so clear and solid with him that the devotion to presence, attunement to the resonant action, and care for each others freedom, growth and happiness outweighed any desire for projection-based gratification.
We had shared several meetings together of this nature before this particular day when he arrived, and when our eyes met, I could feel the awareness of everything I have shared with you above, as an unspoken exchange of acknowledgment between our energetic beings before he walked in the door.
As he walked in to the space, I walked towards the tea kettle to begin boiling some water. He had brought a sacred tea set with him--as he had expressed a desire to create a tea ceremony for us. I loved the feeling of this intention.
The agreements for our relationship container were such that, unless we specifically spoke otherwise, there would be no mouth to mouth kissing, and we had never actually exchanged genital to genital contact, nor had other of our mouths touched each others genitals.
While we had shared different forms of genital touch with each other, these exchanges occurred in clear containers, where one was deliberately receiving, while the other was offering. There was something beautiful about this container that allowed me to feel turn-on in the subtlest of experiences.
I loved the feeling of safety my body felt in his presence. There was such a tenderness in our touch with each other. Such an awareness and devotion to sensitivity and energetic connection. The clear boundaries allowed for an evocation of our senses that, had penetrative sex been immediately on the table, we may have never been able to access with each other.
The water boiled, and as he prepared the setup for his tea ceremony on the oriental rug on the floor, I carried over the water with intentional presence, aware of my every moment as if in ritual. This was my ritual. Intimacy is my ritual.
I sat down, handed him the kettle, and he pour water into the abundant tea pot, overflowing gently as leaves of jasmine peaked above the rim. I loved his appreciation of subtly. His reverence for the delicacy of tea spoke to his reverence for the sacredness of touch.
Together we talked over tea. Sharing our experiences of connection with other women and men in our lives. The things we were learning through the connections, about how we want to love, about how we want to live, and about how to express and hold ourselves in such a way that we can intentionally create spaces that sustain those experiences.
In a moment of pause, he looked over at me and asked, "Would you like to come closer to me?" A pulse of earthy electricity coursed through my spine and into my pelvic floor.
"Yes", I said. I loved this question. I loved the feeling and simplicity of his request, creating such a clear invitation for connection in a particular way.
As I had been lying on my belly, I crawled over to his left side where he was sitting cross-legged on the ground. As I settled myself on the floor against his side, I placed the length of my arm along his thigh and knee, and began to kneed his calves and leg with my hand.
An unspoken mutually consensual invitation occurred for each of us as we began to massage and caress each others' bodies. He squeezing the flesh of my hips, the curve of my ass cheeks, a beautiful flow of energy, arousal and eros.
As I surrendered into the sensation of connection, I allowed the back of my body to organically arch up from the floor, rising to my knees, with the upper part of my body still pressed to the floor, presenting my bare lower body, beneath the purple dress I was wearing to adorn my skin.
He began a succession of fluttering spanks on my ass, my thighs, the inside of my legs. Not painful, just enlivening influx of sensation and awakening of my senses. I love how much my body trusted him, and trusted our container, knowing that it was totally safe for me to surrender to my desire, because we both had clarity of what our "yes" and what our "no" was.
As I deepens into heavier breathing and moans began to emerge from my mouth, he asked me if I would like to receive sensual touch and if he could enter me with his fingers. I said, "Yes, please, I would love that".
He always asked, and so did I. There was a genuine mutual respect and care for each others' bodies, knowing that no touch was assumed when it came to our genitals, and permission to enter was asked for first.
My body and heart had been getting aroused from the moment he walked through the door. One of the things we would often acknowledged to each other during the time we spent together, is how aroused we became in circumstances that had nothing to do with sex.
Because our relating was inherently intimate, with intention and clear boundaries around our connection, our mutual presence with each other was an inherent turn on, and I loved that.
So as he moved towards my flower, and gently touched the outer lips of my pussy, my body engorged into waves of deep, pulsing orgasms. That type of orgasm that you can feel deep in your body and soul, as if sourced the mother nature herself.
I allowed myself to fully surrender to my desire, my desire for pleasure, my desire to receive, my desire to climax, and my trust for him to hold the container of our experience together as I slipped consciously into my involuntary.
We had clear time containers for our meetings with each other. Knowing when our meeting together would end, we liked to have time towards the end for integration, for holding each other, for sharing or processing anything that needed to be spoken and released before we parted ways.
I loved this about our connection--that I could drop in so deeply, feel so seen, so safe, and so cared for, that I never actually needed to feel the anxiety of abandonment, rejection, or being taken advantage of.
We cared about each other, as human beings, as friends, as kin on the path of awakening through connection. And our agreement of those truths was deeper than any place where we could have defaulted into being ruled by anxiety or avoidance, rooted in the fear of being controlled, or the fear of losing love.
Our relationship is medicine. Our connection is magic.
And as we rode the wave of orgasmic presence and connection together, he tuning into the flow of my body, we found a place of resonant conclusion, leaving 15 minutes left in our container to cuddle, ground, and integrate our experience before we parted ways.
I allowed my body to rest fully unravelled upon the floor, us looking at each others eyes in another moment of acknowledging something difficult to describe yet impossible to ignore.
We laid together, integrating, appreciating, acknowledging, and as 2:30pm approached the clock, he rose up from our mutual resting place, gathered his things, and walked towards the door. He turned, we hugged, he moving towards the hallway with the door knob in his hand, smiled at me and spoke "Aloha". "Aloha", I shared in return.
The door closed, the container complete, and again, I smiled, feeling the beauty of how easy it was to say goodbye, trusting without doubt the solidity of our care and respect for each other.
Not worrying about when we would see eachother next, not worrying about "what the exchange meant", simple feeling gratitdue for the fact that it WAS, and that I was a better, happier, more fulfilled human being as a result of that individual experience. And that the beauty of our connection is simply a reflection of the love and abundance that innately exists within myself.
These are the relationships I choose to design. Ones rooted in mutual appreciation and respect for what is true in the now, redefining and exploring what it means to be in loving and resonant connection on a moment-to-moment basis, knowing that the deepest commitment I have is to the mutual experience of respect, compassion, and freedom to choose.
I am a woman on her path, attracting in resonant souls and remembered kin along the way, building a community of connection and trust. I am grateul. I am humbled. I am alive.
Photo by Hedi Alija on Unsplash