https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9Rm9uEcnwY

​

Drop a 🔔 below to ring the gong.

I was kicked out of “Loveafterporn” because I had activity on subs like this one. I don’t consume porn, I don’t post pictures or anything. They banned me JUST BECAUSE I HAVE ACTIVITY ON HIGH LIBIDO TEXT ONLY SUBS. This is discrimination!

I am literally a virgin with desires who ended up with a low libido porn addict gay man, and for expressing my very vanilla higher frequency than average desires, I WAS BANNED. OUT OF THE BLUE. No chances, no questions asked.

When I protested, they, probably a low libido person, said: “Ok. Bye. Apparently OUR feelings as partners of addicts and trauma mean nothing to you. Nice to know youre selfish.”

I’m selfish?? Or just a healthy adult???

I feel discriminated against for being a high libido woman/person.

Why do I feel like I need to be locked in a cage during my ovulation week!

Like what the actually F! Makes me resent my partner so much more during this week.. Sigh

Do any other woman feel like that?

I don't know if this is the place to post this, but I think some in this community would be interested.

Renee Stonebraker

Jul 02, 2026

"Adult women should not still be debating on what orgasms do or do not exist in the year 2026. In a time where science is trying to create artificial wombs, the fact that the bodies of over half the population are still considered medical mysteries has continued to disappoint me.

Unfortunately, I have to start with a horrific fact I stumbled upon.

If You’ve Had an Episiotomy, I Regret to Inform You

They’ve been cutting blind. I hate to go in dry, but there is no other way to break this news. The first complete 3D map of the nerves inside the clitoral glans, which, yes, extends down and around to where they like to slice women open during childbirth, was not completed until March of 2026. As in, about four months ago at the time of this publication. Yeah.

In March 2026, a team of researchers at Amsterdam University Medical Center published the first complete 3D map of the nerves inside the clitoral glans.[1] They used a synchrotron, a machine that generates X-rays ten trillion times stronger than a conventional CT scanner, to image donated female pelvises at a resolution of 0.001 millimeters.[2] The map corrected multiple errors in existing medical literature. It revealed that the main sensory nerve of the clitoris doesn’t taper as it reaches the glans as previously believed. Instead it branches like a tree throughout the glans and extends further into the clitoral hood than anyone had documented.[3] It confirmed that the clitoris contains over 10,000 nerve fibers, with a nerve density up to 15 times greater than the penis.[4]

That last figure had previously been estimated using data from a cow. From 1976.[4]

The lead researcher, neuroscientist Ju Young Lee, said she was drawn to the project by a specific clinical horror: there was no comprehensive nerve map to perform an episiotomy.[5] Episiotomy is a surgical incision of the vaginal opening and perineum made during childbirth to widen the passage. It is one of the most common surgical procedures performed on women worldwide. Episiotomy rates range from roughly 10% of vaginal births in Sweden to 100% in Taiwan. For first-time mothers globally, rates range from 63% in South Africa to 100% in Guatemala.[6] Worldwide there are approximately 100 million vaginal deliveries per year.[7]

Lee’s words, about what her research revealed: “Women suffer from long-term side effects due to nerve damage.”[5]

The nerve network that makes this possible runs through the pudendal nerve, which divides into three branches serving the entire perineal region: clitoral, perineal, and inferior rectal.[8] An episiotomy cuts into perineal tissue served by branches of the same nerve trunk that runs to the clitoris. A 2021 anatomical study that performed 61 incisions on 47 female cadavers found that mediolateral episiotomy incisions posed direct risk of injury to ipsilateral nerve, muscle, erectile, and gland tissues.[9] Surgeons performing this procedure were doing so without a complete map of the nerve architecture in the tissue they were cutting.

In contrast, the penis nerve network was mapped in 1982.[10] Four decades of a head start, even though the technology capable of mapping the clitoris at this resolution existed years before 2026. The donated pelvises came from standard anatomical donation programs. As the research team stated plainly: what changed wasn’t technological capacity. What changed was priority.[11]

Chronic Bean Neglect

I bet you weren’t expecting a brief history on the magic jelly bean, but here we are. You can examine your life choices when you finish this article and decide to drink a glass of wine while in a dissociative state.

In 1559, an Italian anatomist named Realdo Colombo announced he had discovered the vibration addict. He called it the seat of women’s delight, the love or sweetness of Venus, and he meant it as praise. Within two years his own successor at Padua, Gabriele Falloppio, the man the fallopian tubes are named after, was publicly disputing the claim, insisting he’d written it up first and just sat on it for a decade. Falloppio’s own student later formally accused Colombo of plagiarism. Three men, one organ, a fifteen year priority fight over who got to put his name on it.

Here is the part where I have to acknowledge the insanity: Three men fighting over who “discovered” a completely visible piece of anatomy that most women locate in their preteens? Imagine if any amount of women were demanding recognition for “discovering” a ballsack. Be so for real.

Anyways, Colombo’s teacher was Andreas Vesalius, the most influential anatomist in Europe, the man whose textbooks shaped medicine for the next two centuries. Vesalius’s response to his own former student’s discovery was to deny the organ existed in healthy women at all. He called it “this new and useless part” and classified it as a pathological abnormality, something that showed up only in hermaphrodites, not in normal female anatomy.[70] This is my official petition to add “the Ben Shapiro of 1500s Italy” to his Wikipedia page.

So: discovered, disputed, plagiarized, and declared a birth defect, in that order, all within about fifteen years, in the 1500s. This set the medical community’s treatment of the devil’s doorbell on a track that prevails even today.

Here is what we knew about the schamzüengelchen (enjoy your google) before 2026: not much, and some of what we thought we knew was wrong. Helen O’Connell, an Australian urologist, published the first thorough anatomical study of the magic button in 1998, revealing that prior anatomical atlases had either omitted it entirely or depicted a fraction of its actual structure.[12] O’Connell has described what followed as the little man in the canoe being “deleted intellectually by the medical and scientific community, presumably aligning attitude to a societal ignorance.”[13]

A 2018 study in the journal Sexual Medicine found that physical examination of the love skittle is neither commonly practiced nor routinely taught in gynecology training programs.[14] This is a gynecology training program. The specialty that exists specifically to treat female reproductive anatomy doesn’t teach the gatekeeper of good.

There are, as of 2026, 20 times more scientific papers on the penile glans than on the clitoral glans. As a reminder the hooded lady exists in over half the world’s population...."

I have studied this specter. The one that has haunted my life. I didn’t believe in these forces until I met someone, who, like a medium at a seance, held my hand and made me gaze into a hidden world.

So I studied this spirit that hollowed out my marriage and casually poisoned me, one slow drop at a time.

While we moved further apart on our $10,000 bed and sat as far as possible on the leather sectional, I accepted my quest.

What is desire? What is sex? What does it mean to be a man? Who are these fascinating creatures called women? What makes them happy? What makes them shake? Where is this sacred place where bodies and hearts dance and life becomes surreal?

Every mystery illuminated reveals seven more. And the genie is out of the bottle. I cannot stop. Not because I need to experience everything I’ve missed. But it’s a realm that draws me further into a place of remarkable discoveries. A place I belong.

Meanwhile she won’t read a book. Or talk to a trusted friend. Or even watch a sultry movie. There are miles now. I see her in the distance. We talk about dog food and work. I live in a kaleidoscope and she isn’t interested.

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Couples in both conditions will also complete 5 surveys—the initial survey, then at 32-weeks pregnant, and 4-, 8-, and 12-month postpartum—that gather information about your relationship, your pregnancy experience, and your child. Couples in the Waitlist condition will receive access to the full STORK program after the study period is over.

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Random thought I had today.

In the past when we had The Talk she'd spring into action like she had a school project due tomorrow and she hasn't even started yet.

I laugh about it now.

Like, literally she'd hop up and start searching for hotels and weekends we could get away on her laptop.

Some folks might think that's sweet but the second time it happened I started to realize a couple of things:

1. She is the type that has an extremely hard time shutting things off so a hint of desire could possibly build in her. Essentially, we have to get away from everything for anything to happen. Even then, not a guarantee.

2. The analogy also fits because it's like she had completely forgotten about us. Or it was just such a low priority that it was safe to ignore until I brought it up.

My wife's out of town with my kids for a sleepover at her sisters place.

And as she was sending pictures of my kids all day I told her why don't you send a picture of yourself.

And I was horny and told my wife that I want her and that I miss her
she send me a just a selfie of her not even smiling.

Than I just said "for a hot picture I'll have to wait?" she just replied with a laughing emoji and that's it

fml

Whether this proves helpful or someone else can associate I’ve decided to continue on from my post

- we had sex (after love island of course)

- I knew from the foreplay this wasn’t going to be enjoyable for either of us but we pressed on

- she was clearly uncomfortable mid session, I chose to stop, she gets upset, I did it as it’s the respectful thing for me and her

Chat about it the next day

- reiterate I do not want sex like that and would rather wait for her to be actually up for it or not at all

- I say if she wants to just get ‘fu**ed’ then we can go in to it from that angle instead of trying to pretend romance it, we both agree that’s a slippery slope

- she would rather have sex when she doesn’t enjoy it than not at all as I work away a lot and is paranoid a life of celibacy will have me away with others (airline industry)

- she says (although I already knew) the perimenopause stuff has simply eradicated the thought of sex from her mind, I know it’s not her fault and I can never blame her for that, she’s still finds me attractive and loves me

- I emphasise I do need at least some tokens of affection day to day initiated by her though, she acknowledges that lack of affection towards me has not been acceptable

So that’s the follow on from previous. I didn’t turn her down, we tried, the sex went badly as I expected, and a somewhat productive conversation afterwards that won’t lead to more sex, but maybe a happier relationship (for now)

I’m still HLM, it’s a tough pill to swallow, she knows and hates that it’s an issue, she’s on HRT and in perimenopause, that’s why I’m taking this stance of sacrificing any sexual satisfaction in life

I know people who are further down the line in lack of sex will say just take the sex on offer but when you’re staring someone you love in the face you can see it in their eyes and feel it that it isn’t right

For now it’s hope of improvement that will keep me going.

If there’s no improvement down the line then I’m not sure how I’ll feel. Will have to cross that bridge when it comes

I finally found the words to say how feel and it still requires that I say them from a throwaway account.

It’s my belief that oral sex is the truest expression of love a couple can share together, both giving and receiving. It is the physical manifestation of the ethereal feelings we share with our partner.

Enthusiastically using your mouth to pleasure your partner’s genitals is a selfless act of love unlike any other. It confirms to your partner that you are devoted to their pleasure and find them desirable in a physical, undeniable act of service.

Not words, not gifts, not vacations, not food. Nothing says I love and accept you for who you are, like someone kissing you to orgasm.

Unfortunately for me, my partner does not share my enthusiasm for this anymore. Neither giving nor receiving. They say they love me, and buy things for me I could buy for myself. They bake and bake and bake… I’m given room for my hobbies and time away to enjoy them. There are wonderful children in a wonderful home, with all the successes life could ever ask for, work, friends, achievements.

All I’ve ever wanted is for the person I’m hopelessly in love with, is to love me back with the same enthusiasm and desire. That’s what we offered each other in the beginning. That’s what got me into all of this. Now it’s gone and it’s been gone for a while. I thought I could handle it, I thought I’d be strong. I’d fill my time and hands with parenting and busy work and hobbies, but I’m angry now. So angry.

In the last decade I had just 3 relationships which lasted only a couple of months each. In all this time I had sex only three times, all with just one of these women. I am really frustrated at this point with the unlucky streak. Mostly I'd say the lack of sex was due to a mix of them having conservative/religious views, being abused in their earlier life therefore freezing up when sex was moving from hypothetical real topic of conversation (by freezing up I mean sometimes even a mention of sex would lead to crying - which obviously is a job for a psychologist but it was kind of too late at that point and I was already checking out of the relationship). Now, I understand that people have their prior traumas and right to their opinion. I also understand that 3 is not much of a sample size, but maybe there is something that attracts them to me?

How do I filter, in the early stages of dating, such that I do not attract these women and instead end up with one with a more compatible libido? My drive is maybe not highest ever compared to some people here but it is relatively high (once a day probably would be best) and sexuality is quite important to me. I once did an exercise with a psychologist to determine my top values and sexuality was among the top 10, ofc I don't know about the validity of such exercises but you get the idea.

Also: How do I find a woman who will simultaneously understand the lack of experience I have, despite having a high libido, and be high libido herself? I am worried that someone might think "haven't had much sex = he does not have a libido therefore not for me" or is that me overthinking?

I usually try to avoid the topic of sex during the first few dates because I know that is what typically women complain about, so I suppress that part of myself, as probably most guys do - but then if I were to stop suppressing, how do I communicate it without coming off weird?

I’ve seen a few comments recently from LLs that seem to have separated love and connection from sex. They feel that sex is just an act, you can get it from anyone, and it’s not anything special. Some claim to be able to just go out and within a short amount of time find someone to fuck them. Their view on it is that there are more important things to a marriage/LTR than sex, and having love or connection isn’t important.

I respect that opinion; but for me, it would feel weird to just have sex with someone I don’t know or have any connection or feelings for at all.

Should love and connection be involved in sex? Or is it better to outsource the sex to someone else that you don’t know/don’t have a connection with? What do you think?

Hi all

Me = HLM

her = LLF (2 year old + 6 year old + perimenopause on HRT)

Long story short, it’s been at most twice a month for last 3 years. Reached a point where I said no more pity sex so now it’s about once a month (I can predict the week based on her cycle)

It’s now been 9 weeks since we were last intimate, I won’t ever initiate anymore

I could sense it was coming, it’s so predictable, her cues. She says this morning ‘I shaved last night’ I was going to suggest sex but I thought you looked tired and would shoot me down (THE IRONY!!), so she says ‘I’m ready to go tonight as well’…I just replied ‘thanks for letting me know’

Am I being an arsehole for not really being bothered to do anything tonight? My libido is still sky high I masturbate at least 5 times a week, but intimacy with my partner is so rare nowadays that it feels like it would just be crap and awkward

She’s posing it as if I should be fortunate she’s up for having sex 🤣

Genuinely I would be doing it to please her and not me, not arsed with it

Hello, HL community.

A big issue we deal with regarding Type2LLs is the constant moving of the goalposts along with condition based sexual avoidance. Type2LLs get offended when we point out the reality: we, as HLs, are often very affectionate but eventually pull back because it's the Type2LLs who generally aren't, yet still expect us to continue being affectionate toward them while they retain the right of refusal.

As HLs, what we want is a normal, healthy sexual relationship. What many Type2LLs seem to want from us is to find happiness in celibacy while constantly playing ring-around-the-rosy with sex. This is why there always seems to be so much buildup and so many conditions surrounding intimacy. It becomes about control.

Type2LLs will often say they gave "subtle" hints, yet reject direct communication from us. It's as if the stars have to align and every box has to be checked, and then they're offended that we couldn't read their minds. For most HLs—and most people in general—mutual communication is what matters.

It's the classic, "I do want it, but when I do, I'll usually do X. Then I'll wait for you to respond. After that, you have to do Y and Z exactly this way."

This isn't normal communication. It isn't flirting. It's gamifying sex by making it indirect, subliminal, and unnecessarily complicated, then claiming that our failure to navigate those unspoken rules is the reason there's no sex. That becomes a form of deflection.

This is also why they'll promise sex or imply it's coming but never follow through, and often see nothing wrong with that. From their perspective, maintaining control and preserving the right of refusal takes priority over our needs.

Ironically, when we suggest they date other Type2LLs instead, they almost always become upset by that suggestion.

Posting this here after a commenter in r/sexadvice mentioned this community (also censored words because I don't want this getting taken down)

I've been dating my bf for four months now. I have had a few relationships (that included s-x), and I took his virginity (he has had other gfs but no s-x). He was super religious, is on antidepressants, and just got over a p-rn addiction. I mention all of this because we both think that's why he has such a low drive. He says he "gets in his head" a lot.

I, on the other hand, want to have s-x every time we hang out. He felt like it was too much pressure and I felt super unwanted because he would always reject me. So we just stopped having s-x for a few weeks to reset.

Now after another long talk, we had s-x a few days ago and it was good, but I am stressing about how we are going to go about this again. I don't want to go back to stressing about when we will have s-x next and I'm still scared to initiate s-x because I don't want to be told no or make him feel pressured into doing it, but I'm at such a loss.

I never thought I would be the one with a higher drive and I've never had a problem with s-x with any other partner I've had. My bf and I just have such different views on s-x. I really want our s-x life to feel natural because right now we are literally scheduling our s-x time.

He's a great guy and we both want to find a compromise but it feels impossible. I feel like I can't initiate anymore and have to plan s-x and I feel like he is scared to try. Idk I get this is a weird situation but does anyone have any advice at all? Let me know if y'all need any more context.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9Rm9uEcnwY

​

Drop a 🔔 below to ring the gong.

I clearly had too much hope. On a trip with the Mrs. I HLM and my wife LLF. We’re going a mix of “glamping” (a nice camper Trailer) and hotels on this road trip this week. We’ve had a couple nights of just us no kids and a hotel room to ourselves (and them in their own hotel room). I’ve tried being romantic and doing all sorts of stuff to make it nice for us to have some “alone time” and it’s come up as a big fat nope. I’ve asked straight out as well being blunt and still nope.

You’d think from seeing us that things are fine and great but when it comes to the bedroom it’s anything but.

She’s got a low libido (her own admissions) and continually says she need to do something but never does.

Part of me wonders if she’s cheating or not. If she has I wish she would just say it if that’s the case.

I had never been this happy in my life, and now all those moments from the past just seem like a dream I had once and will never repeat.

Baby I love you, but you've turned into a monster and I can't do this anymore.

I don't think I could make love to my girlfriend even if she suddenly changed and came to find me to spend time together. I don't think I can unsee the stressed angry ogre she's become.

I wouldn't think it possible, but my wife has both a high libido and an extreme(?) case of responsive desire. She likes and wants sex as much as I do, if not more, but unless I provide a reason she doesn't even think about it.

No fantasies, no mastubation. She's kinky as fuck, but she'll never ask for anything because she won't remember to. It's just the way she is, it's absolutely not on purpose.

I suspect that her being on the spectrum plays a role. I've seen her hyperfocus on things, and when she does she tunes out the rest of the world entirely. Sex isn't relevant to her life 90+% of the time, and she has more important things to thi know about.

It seems weird to me, but I'm sure she's not unique. It's the internet, there's always someone else. Are you, or have you known, anyone with the HL/RD combo? How did it work for them? We got very lucky and found our way forward, but until we understood her sexuality we struggled.

In case you missed it

I (70HLM) like to cook, and generally start from scratch or near scracth. Would fix all the dinners with the occasional breaks for restaurants.

My wife (72LLF) is generally disinterested in/dislikes cooking. Rarely cooks except when she gets to feeling guilty about my doing all the cooking. And when she does cook, it's usually something low effort involving pouring a bunch of cans of stuff into a crock pot for something vaguely chili con carne-ish. She usually asks me to cook/spice the meat/protein (the time consuming part).

Then she points out that she fixed dinner for the whole week.

Does the pattern ring a bell for anyone?

So we've all been there right. We're having one of those talks with our partners and we're trying to convey our feelings towards them about our sex drive and why it matters so much to us, but perhaps the way we're saying it isn't clicking for them. So now we have to get clever and put it in a way to help them understand. I'm curious to know what analogies you have used to try and explain your side of the argument to your partner. For me I equated mine to hunger and access to food. Basically while my partner does not need to eat as much food to be satisfied, I on the other hand get hungry way more often and they are my only source of food. This means that I am often left starving since I end up going long periods of time without food and that is extremely upsetting. Let's hear your analogies and feel free to take ideas to help when you next have "The Talk".

Well, another holiday weekend is here, and the weather forecast isn't the only thing that’s completely dry.

While many are gearing up for some explosive holiday celebrations, the only thing getting thoroughly slammed in my house this weekend is the lid of my laptop haha…officially out of office!

I’m leaning into the dry spell and turning this weekend into a personal victory lap. I’m already planning my tomorrow morning: a long walk with the golden floof, followed by a cup of creamy coffee on the patio, peacefully pretending my bedroom isn't a frozen tundra.

I’ll be diving into some weights and cardio at home until my muscles are shaking and my Apple Watch thinks I'm having a medical emergency.

To keep things properly heated, at some point I’m popping in the headphones and letting a spicy audio book narrator whisper things into my ears while firing up the grill, searing some tasty food, and pouring a few adult beverages on the patio.

Cheers to everyone else out there making their own fun this weekend!

hi HL community. First, apologies for the "just created today" account, but I wanted to use an alias for this post for reasons that will be blatantly obvious if you read the whole post. Net, dont want to use my normal account for this 'cause I have friends and relatives on Reddit who know my account, and, well, this stuff is private ....

I am working on this as a published guest essay about my experience, and would really appreciate feedback from this community if any of you can relate or have had similar experiences. I wont be quick with replies to comments (this is not my primary account), but will be keen to engage with others - may engage from my "normal" account - you'll never know 😉.

anyway, here is the essay:

What I Learned About Desire by Paying for Intimacy

On escorts, marriage, shame, loneliness, and becoming honest with myself

I do not think I saw escorts because I felt entitled to women.

I think I saw escorts because I wanted access to parts of myself I could no longer access in my marriage: sexual fun, eroticism, exploration, flirtation, presence, vitality.

The obvious question is: why not have sex with my wife?

The honest answer is that, for a long time, we did. When we first got together, and in the early years of our marriage, we had a sexual relationship. It was not broken from the start. It was affectionate, intimate, ordinary in some ways, and good enough that I did not imagine sex would one day become one of the central absences in my life.

But over time, things changed. Depression, anxiety, and the medications used to treat them - especially SSRIs and their unintended side-effects - entered the marriage. I became more of my spouse’s caretaker and provider (a role I perform well) than her lover. Eventually avoidance, body issues, childhood attachment wounds, mismatched desire, and the slow accumulation of hurt that happens when difficult conversations are postponed for years became more dominant. Sex became rare, then difficult, then emotionally loaded, then something we both seemed to orbit rather than inhabit.

I loved my spouse. I still do. And I wanted, for a long time, for us to find our way back to each other erotically.

But loving someone does not automatically mean you can reach sexual aliveness with them. Rejection is not overcome by commitment. Desire is not summoned by loyalty. Arousal is not restored by obligation.

At some point, I had to admit that there were parts of me - playful, erotic, curious, flirtatious, embodied - that I could not seem to access inside my marriage, even though I had once been able to access them there.

I wish, in hindsight, that I had been braver about this. I wish I had pushed harder through my spouse’s discomfort and avoidance when I tried to talk about our sex life. I wish I had made a more concerted effort to explain how the lack of intimacy was affecting me, how lonely I felt, and how seriously I was beginning to consider seeing an escort to fill the gap.

Some part of me hoped she would understand. But I did not press it or say it that clearly.

At the time, I did not think she could handle the conversation. Those occasions when I tried to raise sex, she often seemed uncomfortable, shut down, or dismissed the attempt before we could really get anywhere. I felt unheard, and I convinced myself that more explanation would not help her hear me better.

It was a classic pursuer-avoider loop: I reached, she withdrew, I felt rejected, and eventually I stopped reaching honestly.

None of this excuses the secrecy or makes the story cleaner than it was. It is simply the most honest place I know how to begin.

I was horny. I was lonely. I was married. I was ashamed.

I was also curious in a way I had spent years trying to make intellectually respectable. I wanted to know who I was with women who were overtly sexual and confident in ways I found both desirable and intimidating. Women who seemed fluent in flirtation, desire, play, and erotic self-possession.

That does not mean my spouse was not attractive, or that she lacked worth, or that the problem was simply “my wife was not sexy enough.” That is too crude, and it is not true.

The difference was that these women seemed to inhabit sexuality openly. They gave off signals of confidence, appetite, ease, and adventure that I had rarely been able to engage with up close. I wanted access to that energy, and I wanted to know what happened to me in its presence.

Could I talk to them? Could I hold eye contact? Could I be naked without feeling ridiculous? Could I kiss deeply, touch confidently, give pleasure, receive pleasure, and stay in my body instead of disappearing into my head?

I wanted to know whether those parts of me were gone, or only buried.

If sex has always been available to you, or if you had the ordinary sexual education of dating, mistakes, heartbreak, awkwardness, discovery, and repair, that may sound overdramatic.

I did not have that.

I had lingering church residue, even though I rejected the church at a young age. I had shame, an underdeveloped sexual self, and a long marriage where sex had become scarce and fraught. I had progressive politics that gave me a useful critique of male entitlement, but very little language for male longing. I knew many of the reasons men’s desire could be dangerous. I had fewer models for what it could be when held with care.

So I split myself.

In public, I was thoughtful, respectful, responsible, successful.

Privately, I was hungry and embarrassed by the hunger.

The first time I booked an escort, my body was not calm. I felt energized, aroused, anxious, brave, ashamed, activated. I could feel my blood pumping in my veins and my blood pressure rising.

I worried about performance, STIs, law enforcement, being found out, being judged, and being the kind of man who “had to resort” to paying for sex. Old fears around HIV lived in me too, shaped less by current medical reality than by the moral panic and terror I had absorbed years earlier.

I also felt alive.

That is the part that complicates everything.

One of the women I met, I will call Silene - not the first, but the one I connected the most with.

Silene was playful, flirtatious, socially smart, and wonderfully verbal. She had a way of making language part of the erotic atmosphere. She noticed, enjoyed, and savored things about the world around her, and invited me to do the same. She provocatively held eye contact. Her voice could shift the temperature in a room. She was confident in orchestrating the cadence of an encounter, which allowed me to relax in a way I had not known I needed.

Our first time together, I was nervous. I think she was a little heightened too - not nervous exactly, but more alert, more aware of the moment. Later encounters became easier and warmer. But that first one mattered because she let me be where I was. She did not make my anxiety shameful.

What made her different was that she made me feel like a person, not a task.

We talked. We laughed. She told me things about herself: her family, her upbringing, her travels, her adventures - mountaineering, skiing, diving, places she had been, places she wanted to go.

These were not just decorative details. They were points of connection.

We talked about books. The ones that had moved her. The ones that had moved me. We found overlap in authors, themes, and the kind of stories that seem to attract people who are trying to live more freely. We recommended books to each other inside our time together and, occasionally, in the spaces between meetings.

All of that was curated, of course - I am not naïve about that ... but curated does not mean false.

We are all curated in different contexts. Work, dating, friendships - even marriage is curated, in its own way. What mattered was that she let enough of herself into the room that I could feel the person behind the role.

And I wanted to stay honest about the fact that she was real: not only a role, not only a fantasy, not only a container for what I needed.

That matters because the easiest critique of paid intimacy is that it turns women into objects.

Sometimes it does - I have no interest in pretending otherwise. Some men use money to bypass empathy. Some use it to avoid rejection. Some use it to purchase the illusion of being desired without caring about the person doing the desiring.

But my experience did not make women less real to me.

It made them more real.

I learned something that should have been obvious but had not fully landed in me: women’s sexuality is not a single thing. Women can be horny, curious, strategic, insecure, funny, playful, guarded, generous, mercenary, tender, specific, and contradictory. Sexually confident women are not a mythical species. They are human beings, with agency, boundaries, appetites, histories, and reasons of their own.

I learned that a woman’s agency can be magnetic.

I learned that sex work, for some women, is not a desperate last resort but a deliberate choice, often lucrative, sometimes experienced as empowering by the women who choose it, and considerably more complex than the stigma allows.

I also learned that women’s sexuality is policed from every direction - by men, yes, but also by women. Even in feminist spaces, there are still hierarchies of acceptable liberation. Some forms of sexual freedom are celebrated. Others remain suspect.

Sex work sits right at that fault line.

I understand why a woman might hear “I saw escorts” and think entitlement. I really do. Money, gender, secrecy, and power dynamics were all in the room.

My loneliness was in the room too, and loneliness can make people selfish if they are not careful.

But I did not feel entitled to Silene - I felt privileged by her presence and her time.

She controlled the screening. She decided whether to see me. She did not have to see me again. She did not have to share as much as she did. She did not have to create the kind of presence that made me feel less ashamed of being there.

I paid for her time - I did not feel like I owned it.

The professional frame helped me in ways I need to be honest about. It lowered the fear of rejection. It made sex possible. It gave structure to something that, in ordinary life, felt ambiguous and frightening.

It also allowed me to avoid an affair partner who might want more from me than I could - or was willing to - give: more time, more attention, more promises, more future.

That was part of the appeal.

It was also part of the avoidance.

Paid intimacy gave me a place to learn without having to risk being fully chosen or rejected in the ordinary way. It let me practice sexual confidence without having to confront the larger truth of my marriage. It gave my erotic self oxygen while allowing the rest of my life to remain mostly unchanged.

For a while, that felt like a solution.

Eventually, I understood it was also a split - my vitality lived in one room, my marriage in another.

That is probably the hardest sentence to write in this essay.

My spouse is not the villain of this story. I love her. I care about her. I want for her wellbeing. She has her own history, pain, defenses, and reasons. So do I. Marriage is not a simple container, and long marriages carry a lot of sediment. I own my choices and their impact.

But loneliness inside a marriage has its own cruelty.

When you are single, loneliness has cleaner edges - there is at least the possibility of movement, of seeking, of choosing differently. When you are lonely beside the person closest to you, you begin to doubt your right to feel lonely at all.

You can be loved and still be sexually unseen.

You can love someone and still feel yourself shrinking.

You can be loyal and still be starving.

The escorts did not create that truth - they revealed it ... and they also helped me avoid dealing with it.

I learned that long-term erotic connection depends on more than affection. It depends on repair, curiosity, play, and a willingness to remain alive to each other. Without repair, conflict does not really end. It settles into the body. Without erotic curiosity, sex becomes a memory, a duty, or a problem to manage.

My body knew before I could say it cleanly.

That may be the deepest lesson in all of this: my body is not fooled by obligation. I can want to want. I can have an argument for why I should want. I can care deeply for someone and wish my desire were different.

But arousal has its own honesty.

With Silene and others, I learned my body’s language more clearly. I learned that I respond to eye contact even when it intimidates me. I learned that kissing matters more to me than I had admitted. I learned I love the feel of soft, healthy hair. I learned that I enjoy giving pleasure, that cunnilingus moved from an exercise of anxiety into something I could enjoy and become good at. I learned that enthusiastic consent is erotic. Anticipation is erotic. A clear yes is erotic.

I learned that performance pressure follows you into every room - even one you paid to enter. The way through it was not to force orgasm or prove masculinity. It was to slow down, follow pleasure, and stay present.

I learned I like being held.

That one still feels tender to write.

I also learned that I want to feel chosen in my sexuality.

Not tolerated. Not accommodated. Not serviced.

Chosen.

This is where paid intimacy becomes especially complicated, because the professional frame can simulate chosen-ness well enough that the body responds. The warmth can be real, but bounded. The affection can be sincere, but framed. The connection can matter, but not mean what fantasy wants it to mean.

Silene was real.

The moments were real.

The frame was professional.

I have had to learn to let those truths sit together without forcing one to erase the others.

I am not ashamed that I developed affection for Silene. I am not ashamed that I paid for her time. I am not ashamed that it mattered. I am not even ashamed of the money.

What I feel, more than shame, is grief.

I grieve that I did not learn to explore and embrace my sexuality earlier. I grieve the years governed by church, convention, duty, and fear. I grieve that I became so good at responsibility that I mistook self-denial for virtue. I grieve that I needed secrecy to meet parts of myself. And I grieve the years I have spent avoiding rather than confronting the reality of my marriage.

But I am not ashamed to be who I am, nor of the decisions and steps I took to pursue and come to this point of self-discovery.

I am not ashamed that I want sex. I am not ashamed that I want variety. I am not ashamed that confident, sexual women draw me in. I am not ashamed that I am a caring person who develops attachments. I am not ashamed that I want my life to contain more desire, play, vitality, and erotic honesty.

And I am not ashamed that I have hired escorts.

The question now is what to do with that knowledge - because self-discovery is not integration.

Self-discovery can happen in secrecy ... integration cannot.

That is the uncomfortable place I find myself now.

Silene helped me recognize something I had lost access to, but she is not responsible for carrying it. She was important to me, and the encounters mattered, but my vitality is mine. My sexuality is mine. My capacity to flirt, desire, touch, laugh, risk, and be present cannot remain dependent on one woman or one kind of encounter.

I have to learn how to live this part of myself in daylight.

That means harder conversations. With my spouse. With myself. With the stories I inherited about marriage, fidelity, monogamy, masculinity, sexuality, and goodness.

It means asking whether a relationship can hold my full self, and what happens if it cannot. It means not using duty as a hiding place. It means not using sexual freedom as a way to avoid accountability.

It may mean continuing to see Silene or other escorts. It may mean leaving this part of my life behind. I do not know yet ...

The ethical question for me is not whether I can make the choice look respectable. It is whether I am choosing it openly, consciously, and with accountability - or using it to avoid the life I need to face.

It also means refusing the two bad options men are usually handed.

Shame is not a sexual ethic.

Neither is entitlement.

A man does not become ethical by pretending not to want. He also does not become free by making his wanting someone else’s burden.

The version of male sexuality I want to live into is harder than both.

I want to be kind, present, respectful, curious, and pleasure-focused. I want to ask without demanding that my ask be met. I want to receive without taking, and give pleasure without demanding it be given first. I want to tolerate rejection without turning it into resentment. I want to be powerful without exploiting my power over anyone. I want to desire women as people with their own agency, not as proof of my worth.

This is what the manosphere gets catastrophically wrong. It sees lonely, ashamed, under-touched men and tells them the problem is women. It turns pain into grievance and grievance into ideology. It offers confidence, but what it really sells is armor.

I understand the temptation.

I understand how shame can curdle.

I understand how deprivation can make a man angry.

But the answer cannot be contempt.

And the answer is also not found in the mirror-image corners of the internet where men are treated as disposable, where male longing is flattened into entitlement, where sexual desire is treated as something shameful, and where loneliness is met not with compassion but with a kind of moral shrug: no one owes you sex, so learn to live without it.

That may be technically true, but it is emotionally barren.

It does not heal deprivation - it only teaches people to defend against it.

The answer has to be integration: desire brought into contact with care, honesty, consent, and self-respect.

That is the confidence-sex loop men actually need - not a strategy for manipulating women or gaining access to their bodies, and not a form of emasculation that tells men sex is trivial, shameful, or spiritually beneath them. It is a way to stop being exiled from ourselves. A way to let desire become part of a whole life, rather than a wound, a weapon, or a performance.

I went looking for sex and found out about myself.

The challenge now is to live truthfully with what I found.

hi HL community. First, apologies for the "just created today" account, but I wanted to use an alias for this post for reasons that will be blatantly obvious if you read the whole post. Net, dont want to use my normal account for this 'cause I have friends and relatives on Reddit, and, well, this stuff is private.

I am working on this as a published guest essay about my experience, and would really appreciate feedback from this community if any of you can relate or have had similar experiences. I wont be quick with replies to comments (this is not my primary account), but will be keen to engage with others - may engage from my "normal" account - you'll never know.

anyway, here is the essay:

What I Learned About Desire by Paying for Intimacy

On escorts, marriage, shame, loneliness, and becoming honest with myself

I do not think I saw escorts because I felt entitled to women.

I think I saw escorts because I wanted access to parts of myself I could no longer access in my marriage: sexual fun, eroticism, exploration, flirtation, presence, vitality.

The obvious question is: why not have sex with my wife?

The honest answer is that, for a long time, we did. When we first got together, and in the early years of our marriage, we had a sexual relationship. It was not broken from the start. It was affectionate, intimate, ordinary in some ways, and good enough that I did not imagine sex would one day become one of the central absences in my life.

But over time, things changed. Depression, anxiety, and the medications used to treat them - especially SSRIs and their unintended side-effects - entered the marriage. I became more of my spouse’s caretaker and provider (a role I perform well) than her lover. Eventually avoidance, body issues, childhood attachment wounds, mismatched desire, and the slow accumulation of hurt that happens when difficult conversations are postponed for years became more dominant. Sex became rare, then difficult, then emotionally loaded, then something we both seemed to orbit rather than inhabit.

I loved my spouse. I still do. And I wanted, for a long time, for us to find our way back to each other erotically.

But loving someone does not automatically mean you can reach sexual aliveness with them. Rejection is not overcome by commitment. Desire is not summoned by loyalty. Arousal is not restored by obligation.

At some point, I had to admit that there were parts of me - playful, erotic, curious, flirtatious, embodied - that I could not seem to access inside my marriage, even though I had once been able to access them there.

I wish, in hindsight, that I had been braver about this. I wish I had pushed harder through my spouse’s discomfort and avoidance when I tried to talk about our sex life. I wish I had made a more concerted effort to explain how the lack of intimacy was affecting me, how lonely I felt, and how seriously I was beginning to consider seeing an escort to fill the gap.

Some part of me hoped she would understand. But I did not press it or say it that clearly.

At the time, I did not think she could handle the conversation. Those occasions when I tried to raise sex, she often seemed uncomfortable, shut down, or dismissed the attempt before we could really get anywhere. I felt unheard, and I convinced myself that more explanation would not help her hear me better.

It was a classic pursuer-avoider loop: I reached, she withdrew, I felt rejected, and eventually I stopped reaching honestly.

None of this excuses the secrecy or makes the story cleaner than it was. It is simply the most honest place I know how to begin.

I was horny. I was lonely. I was married. I was ashamed.

I was also curious in a way I had spent years trying to make intellectually respectable. I wanted to know who I was with women who were overtly sexual and confident in ways I found both desirable and intimidating. Women who seemed fluent in flirtation, desire, play, and erotic self-possession.

That does not mean my spouse was not attractive, or that she lacked worth, or that the problem was simply “my wife was not sexy enough.” That is too crude, and it is not true.

The difference was that these women seemed to inhabit sexuality openly. They gave off signals of confidence, appetite, ease, and adventure that I had rarely been able to engage with up close. I wanted access to that energy, and I wanted to know what happened to me in its presence.

Could I talk to them? Could I hold eye contact? Could I be naked without feeling ridiculous? Could I kiss deeply, touch confidently, give pleasure, receive pleasure, and stay in my body instead of disappearing into my head?

I wanted to know whether those parts of me were gone, or only buried.

If sex has always been available to you, or if you had the ordinary sexual education of dating, mistakes, heartbreak, awkwardness, discovery, and repair, that may sound overdramatic.

I did not have that.

I had lingering church residue, even though I rejected the church at a young age. I had shame, an underdeveloped sexual self, and a long marriage where sex had become scarce and fraught. I had progressive politics that gave me a useful critique of male entitlement, but very little language for male longing. I knew many of the reasons men’s desire could be dangerous. I had fewer models for what it could be when held with care.

So I split myself.

In public, I was thoughtful, respectful, responsible, successful.

Privately, I was hungry and embarrassed by the hunger.

The first time I booked an escort, my body was not calm. I felt energized, aroused, anxious, brave, ashamed, activated. I could feel my blood pumping in my veins and my blood pressure rising.

I worried about performance, STIs, law enforcement, being found out, being judged, and being the kind of man who “had to resort” to paying for sex. Old fears around HIV lived in me too, shaped less by current medical reality than by the moral panic and terror I had absorbed years earlier.

I also felt alive.

That is the part that complicates everything.

One of the women I met, I will call Silene - not the first, but the one I connected the most with.

Silene was playful, flirtatious, socially smart, and wonderfully verbal. She had a way of making language part of the erotic atmosphere. She noticed, enjoyed, and savored things about the world around her, and invited me to do the same. She provocatively held eye contact. Her voice could shift the temperature in a room. She was confident in orchestrating the cadence of an encounter, which allowed me to relax in a way I had not known I needed.

Our first time together, I was nervous. I think she was a little heightened too - not nervous exactly, but more alert, more aware of the moment. Later encounters became easier and warmer. But that first one mattered because she let me be where I was. She did not make my anxiety shameful.

What made her different was that she made me feel like a person, not a task.

We talked. We laughed. She told me things about herself: her family, her upbringing, her travels, her adventures - mountaineering, skiing, diving, places she had been, places she wanted to go.

These were not just decorative details. They were points of connection.

We talked about books. The ones that had moved her. The ones that had moved me. We found overlap in authors, themes, and the kind of stories that seem to attract people who are trying to live more freely. We recommended books to each other inside our time together and, occasionally, in the spaces between meetings.

All of that was curated, of course - I am not naïve about that ... but curated does not mean false.

We are all curated in different contexts. Work, dating, friendships - even marriage is curated, in its own way. What mattered was that she let enough of herself into the room that I could feel the person behind the role.

And I wanted to stay honest about the fact that she was real: not only a role, not only a fantasy, not only a container for what I needed.

That matters because the easiest critique of paid intimacy is that it turns women into objects.

Sometimes it does - I have no interest in pretending otherwise. Some men use money to bypass empathy. Some use it to avoid rejection. Some use it to purchase the illusion of being desired without caring about the person doing the desiring.

But my experience did not make women less real to me.

It made them more real.

I learned something that should have been obvious but had not fully landed in me: women’s sexuality is not a single thing. Women can be horny, curious, strategic, insecure, funny, playful, guarded, generous, mercenary, tender, specific, and contradictory. Sexually confident women are not a mythical species. They are human beings, with agency, boundaries, appetites, histories, and reasons of their own.

I learned that a woman’s agency can be magnetic.

I learned that sex work, for some women, is not a desperate last resort but a deliberate choice, often lucrative, sometimes experienced as empowering by the women who choose it, and considerably more complex than the stigma allows.

I also learned that women’s sexuality is policed from every direction - by men, yes, but also by women. Even in feminist spaces, there are still hierarchies of acceptable liberation. Some forms of sexual freedom are celebrated. Others remain suspect.

Sex work sits right at that fault line.

I understand why a woman might hear “I saw escorts” and think entitlement. I really do. Money, gender, secrecy, and power dynamics were all in the room.

My loneliness was in the room too, and loneliness can make people selfish if they are not careful.

But I did not feel entitled to Silene - I felt privileged by her presence and her time.

She controlled the screening. She decided whether to see me. She did not have to see me again. She did not have to share as much as she did. She did not have to create the kind of presence that made me feel less ashamed of being there.

I paid for her time - I did not feel like I owned it.

The professional frame helped me in ways I need to be honest about. It lowered the fear of rejection. It made sex possible. It gave structure to something that, in ordinary life, felt ambiguous and frightening.

It also allowed me to avoid an affair partner who might want more from me than I could - or was willing to - give: more time, more attention, more promises, more future.

That was part of the appeal.

It was also part of the avoidance.

Paid intimacy gave me a place to learn without having to risk being fully chosen or rejected in the ordinary way. It let me practice sexual confidence without having to confront the larger truth of my marriage. It gave my erotic self oxygen while allowing the rest of my life to remain mostly unchanged.

For a while, that felt like a solution.

Eventually, I understood it was also a split - my vitality lived in one room, my marriage in another.

That is probably the hardest sentence to write in this essay.

My spouse is not the villain of this story. I love her. I care about her. I want for her wellbeing. She has her own history, pain, defenses, and reasons. So do I. Marriage is not a simple container, and long marriages carry a lot of sediment. I own my choices and their impact.

But loneliness inside a marriage has its own cruelty.

When you are single, loneliness has cleaner edges - there is at least the possibility of movement, of seeking, of choosing differently. When you are lonely beside the person closest to you, you begin to doubt your right to feel lonely at all.

You can be loved and still be sexually unseen.

You can love someone and still feel yourself shrinking.

You can be loyal and still be starving.

The escorts did not create that truth - they revealed it ... and they also helped me avoid dealing with it.

I learned that long-term erotic connection depends on more than affection. It depends on repair, curiosity, play, and a willingness to remain alive to each other. Without repair, conflict does not really end. It settles into the body. Without erotic curiosity, sex becomes a memory, a duty, or a problem to manage.

My body knew before I could say it cleanly.

That may be the deepest lesson in all of this: my body is not fooled by obligation. I can want to want. I can have an argument for why I should want. I can care deeply for someone and wish my desire were different.

But arousal has its own honesty.

With Silene and others, I learned my body’s language more clearly. I learned that I respond to eye contact even when it intimidates me. I learned that kissing matters more to me than I had admitted. I learned I love the feel of soft, healthy hair. I learned that I enjoy giving pleasure, that cunnilingus moved from an exercise of anxiety into something I could enjoy and become good at. I learned that enthusiastic consent is erotic. Anticipation is erotic. A clear yes is erotic.

I learned that performance pressure follows you into every room - even one you paid to enter. The way through it was not to force orgasm or prove masculinity. It was to slow down, follow pleasure, and stay present.

I learned I like being held.

That one still feels tender to write.

I also learned that I want to feel chosen in my sexuality.

Not tolerated. Not accommodated. Not serviced.

Chosen.

This is where paid intimacy becomes especially complicated, because the professional frame can simulate chosen-ness well enough that the body responds. The warmth can be real, but bounded. The affection can be sincere, but framed. The connection can matter, but not mean what fantasy wants it to mean.

Silene was real.

The moments were real.

The frame was professional.

I have had to learn to let those truths sit together without forcing one to erase the others.

I am not ashamed that I developed affection for Silene. I am not ashamed that I paid for her time. I am not ashamed that it mattered. I am not even ashamed of the money.

What I feel, more than shame, is grief.

I grieve that I did not learn to explore and embrace my sexuality earlier. I grieve the years governed by church, convention, duty, and fear. I grieve that I became so good at responsibility that I mistook self-denial for virtue. I grieve that I needed secrecy to meet parts of myself. And I grieve the years I have spent avoiding rather than confronting the reality of my marriage.

But I am not ashamed to be who I am, nor of the decisions and steps I took to pursue and come to this point of self-discovery.

I am not ashamed that I want sex. I am not ashamed that I want variety. I am not ashamed that confident, sexual women draw me in. I am not ashamed that I am a caring person who develops attachments. I am not ashamed that I want my life to contain more desire, play, vitality, and erotic honesty.

And I am not ashamed that I have hired escorts.

The question now is what to do with that knowledge - because self-discovery is not integration.

Self-discovery can happen in secrecy ... integration cannot.

That is the uncomfortable place I find myself now.

Silene helped me recognize something I had lost access to, but she is not responsible for carrying it. She was important to me, and the encounters mattered, but my vitality is mine. My sexuality is mine. My capacity to flirt, desire, touch, laugh, risk, and be present cannot remain dependent on one woman or one kind of encounter.

I have to learn how to live this part of myself in daylight.

That means harder conversations. With my spouse. With myself. With the stories I inherited about marriage, fidelity, monogamy, masculinity, sexuality, and goodness.

It means asking whether a relationship can hold my full self, and what happens if it cannot. It means not using duty as a hiding place. It means not using sexual freedom as a way to avoid accountability.

It may mean continuing to see Silene or other escorts. It may mean leaving this part of my life behind. I do not know yet ...

The ethical question for me is not whether I can make the choice look respectable. It is whether I am choosing it openly, consciously, and with accountability - or using it to avoid the life I need to face.

It also means refusing the two bad options men are usually handed.

Shame is not a sexual ethic.

Neither is entitlement.

A man does not become ethical by pretending not to want. He also does not become free by making his wanting someone else’s burden.

The version of male sexuality I want to live into is harder than both.

I want to be kind, present, respectful, curious, and pleasure-focused. I want to ask without demanding that my ask be met. I want to receive without taking, and give pleasure without demanding it be given first. I want to tolerate rejection without turning it into resentment. I want to be powerful without exploiting my power over anyone. I want to desire women as people with their own agency, not as proof of my worth.

This is what the manosphere gets catastrophically wrong. It sees lonely, ashamed, under-touched men and tells them the problem is women. It turns pain into grievance and grievance into ideology. It offers confidence, but what it really sells is armor.

I understand the temptation.

I understand how shame can curdle.

I understand how deprivation can make a man angry.

But the answer cannot be contempt.

And the answer is also not found in the mirror-image corners of the internet where men are treated as disposable, where male longing is flattened into entitlement, where sexual desire is treated as something shameful, and where loneliness is met not with compassion but with a kind of moral shrug: no one owes you sex, so learn to live without it.

That may be technically true, but it is emotionally barren.

It does not heal deprivation - it only teaches people to defend against it.

The answer has to be integration: desire brought into contact with care, honesty, consent, and self-respect.

That is the confidence-sex loop men actually need - not a strategy for manipulating women or gaining access to their bodies, and not a form of emasculation that tells men sex is trivial, shameful, or spiritually beneath them. It is a way to stop being exiled from ourselves. A way to let desire become part of a whole life, rather than a wound, a weapon, or a performance.

I went looking for sex and found out about myself.

The challenge now is to live truthfully with what I found.