When Alice*, 41, called it quits from her 15-year relationship, she described her next-level sex as an “otherworldly” experience.
“Rather than just feeling orgasm as a superficial thing happening around your clitoris, it [was] more like constant waves of pleasure through your entire body,” she told the ABC podcast Ladies, we need to talk.
But sex hasn’t always been so good for Alice – in his previous relationship he had become routine.
“We just lost the passion,” she says.
Alice started having “life-changing” sex a year and a half ago when she fell in love with a woman during lockdown.
“I will never be the same again”
Before her current partner, Alice lived abroad with her ex-husband and children.
Without a work visa, she found being a stay-at-home mom an experience of isolation and seeking the affection of her ex-husband “emotionally exhausting”.
“We were like ships in the night really trying to avoid each other,” she says.
“I don’t think any beautiful, passionate kisses have happened in about 10 years.”
As Alice’s desire for love and passionate sex was ignored, their connection faded.
“We had a little routine and [would] doing the same thing because we were so exhausted as parents… there was no spontaneity, no care and love, it was like work,” she says.
“It got to the point where he wanted to watch porn to turn himself on and there was no connection. It wasn’t like two people were coming together to share this amazing, intimate, loving experience.”
When Alice separated from her partner and moved back to Australia with her children, she started connecting with one of her good friends during the COVID lockdowns in an unexpected way.
“She was a very good friend, and it was obviously more than that, but I hadn’t quite taken it on because I had never been interested in women before.”
Naturally, as the feelings began to build, their desire to have sex also increased – and during their first kiss, Alice felt the passion she had been missing all along.
“It was really beautiful and there was so much passion and energy behind it.”
Alice says her “next level” sex comes down to the connection she shares with her partner.
“Our bodies merge into this oneness that I’ve never known before…it’s very deep, it’s very loving, it’s a very equal playing field, and I feel very safe to be so open , honest, vulnerable or perverse than me Like.
“I’ll never be the same again and I’m so proud of myself for making these really tough decisions that led me to experience this level of joy and pleasure, because it’s very hard to leave a marriage, even if you are very unhappy, especially when there are children involved.”
“Our chemistry was so intoxicating”
Carrie*’s big leap in sex came after she left her husband of 13 years.
She describes her former sex life as “shallow”.
“[I had] precisely zero [orgasms] with him and some by myself. [Sex] was purely for his enjoyment,” she says.
“I knew I was missing something, but I was also on my career path and mostly just wanted to have kids and settle down. So I thought, that’s it.”
After her divorce, she decided to give online dating a try and that’s when she met John*, the guy who took Carrie from mediocre sex to ‘mind blowing’ sex.
“[Our] the chemistry was so intoxicating that everything seemed on fire,” she says.
“We weren’t going towards an orgasm goal for either of us, it was just the pure pleasure of the other’s body and paying attention to me.”
They had been together for six years and that superficial feeling never returned.
“The sex, the kissing, everything got better,” Carrie says.
“We did it at least twice a day, it was a minimum, if not three. No one ever did it out of duty to the other, we were both always 100 per cent.”
Before John and those six years of transformation, Carrie realized she was having performative sex.
“I [was] following a script trying to make the right sounds, trying to look in the right direction. I wasn’t particularly confident in my body and neither of us were good at communicating either.”
“I can identify different types of orgasms”
Before meeting her current partner Mark, Mel* says the sex in her 15-year marriage faded and she became responsible for her own pleasure.
“I was aware of trying to make sure that [sex] is not dead, [but] the sex we had was totally unsatisfying for me,” the mother-of-two says.
“It wasn’t about having fun and it wasn’t something I looked forward to…it was like two people focusing on their own outcomes; it certainly wasn’t a group project. “
When Mel heard her friends talk about their sex life, she assumed they “had this version of sex”, not realizing that their experience was vastly different.
“I just assumed they liked him more than me,” she says.
“I assumed that if I weren’t to be in this marriage, I would have this same [version of] sex with the next person and the next person.”
Mel eventually separated from her ex-husband, and when she did, she says she was happy to remain single.
But after being with the same person for over a decade, Mel was curious about the great sex her friends were talking about. Like Carrie, she tried online dating.
“I looked in the mirror and thought, you know, maybe it was too soon to retire and maybe I’d like to have sex again just to check that I didn’t have didn’t miss all the fuss,” she said.
After two terrible dates, she found Mark. There was an electric chemistry to the first kiss – a chemistry she felt “in every part of [her] body”.
Mark gave Mel a whole new sexual experience and after being with him she realized what she was missing.
“The difference is someone else is focusing on you.”
“I can [now] identify different types of orgasms and they start in different parts of my body,” she says.
“You don’t know what you don’t know, and there still has to be a plethora of experiences and options to explore and I find it all very exciting and delightful at the same time.”
And the dynamic wasn’t just about their bedroom chemistry, but the role Mark plays in other areas of Mel’s life.
“When we’re together, he absolutely carries more mental, emotional and even physical load in my house than most men I see in other straight relationships.
“I feel very supported in this relationship, and so I have room in my heart and body to initiate sex or receive his initiation into sex.”
Names have been changed for privacy reasons.
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