I Started Orgasming For 10 Minutes At A Time. Then 30. Then An Hour.

There is no research on this, but I am fairly certain that for every minute I orgasm, I extend my longevity by a day. At this rate, I will live to be 197.

I first heard about extended orgasms, or the ability to climax for 10+ minutes, in the context of kink. At one point, I thought I was submissive, until I remembered that I hate following instructions. That’s when I stumbled upon the term “pleasure dom.”

Evidently, it's when someone makes it their job to orgasm you into heights of pleasure you never thought possible, while you give in to wave after wave of ecstasy without needing to worry about reciprocity. In the lesbian world, you’d call this a “stone top,” and the receiving role is called “pillow princess.” This is apparently not vanilla or selfish — it’s actually very kinky (I found it on a kink website, after all).

Sometimes the term is misused by men who think that they can insult a woman into topping them. “You just want to lie there and be a pillow princess,” they complain, but let me assure you: If you’re pillow-princessing correctly, you will not just be lying there. You’ll be writhing-swearing-screaming, getting the kind of workout that is typically reserved for Olympic sprinters.

So I decided that although most kink weirds me out a little, in this instance, I am kinky to a fault.

But this didn’t solve the real problem, which was, where in rural small-town America does one dig up a self-described pleasure dom who isn’t just some social reject posting about it online to try to get laid? When it comes right down to it, where do you find anyone if you’re a 40-year-old single mom with a baby?

If you’re pillow-princessing correctly, you will not just be lying there. You’ll be writhing-swearing-screaming, getting the kind of workout that is typically reserved for Olympic sprinters.

Step one: Meet someone who makes you feel safe, who also happens to be a generous, world-class intuitive with his hands. This step is very easy, if you’re me at this exact moment in time. At all other times and places, this step was apparently impossible.

I met him — let’s call him Mario — and felt immediate chemistry. He was attractive, in a precise, nerdy, creative kind of way that made me feel a little feverish. He smelled like summertime. The mental connection came first, but our electricity wasn’t just mental either. The first time he touched my face, subtly, intentionally, I realized that most men do not understand the power inherent in touch... and he did.

Mario had decentered his dick, meaning whatever we did, his penis was something of an afterthought. As a result, I never enjoyed dick more. I never cringed away from it, metaphorically or physically. He was perfectly happy to orchestrate my pleasure and give himself none, which I found confusing, and then reassuring. He gave me permission to just relax, no strings attached. Hard as it was to believe at first, after three years, I sort of had to.

In my 30s, I’d dated a guy who determined that I should squirt for the first time with him. He listened to sex podcasts, and bought me two separate courses from female sex gurus who could theoretically teach me how to do it. His enthusiasm went hand in hand with his expectations. The more he gave, the more he wanted in return, even if I hadn’t asked for anything. In a twist that will surprise nobody, he inspired zero squirting. I had to unlearn the expectations I absorbed from him, unlearn transactional thinking, and it did take time.

I dated another guy afterward, someone who knocked me up and then bailed when I got too morning-sick to keep running the household. This, too, I had to unlearn: the danger of being useless.

I told Mario that being useless scared me. “You’re never useless,” he said. “Even when you’re a puddle, you’re a charming puddle.” This was the biggest relationship difference: He liked me as a person. Accepted me, wanted to please me.

He didn’t mind the messes created by my toddler; he did the dishes with her, bringing us seasonal berries and our favorite treats. He didn’t mind the awkward, intricate dance of bedtime; didn’t mind waiting when I had to stop kissing him to go soothe a crying child. The price of an orgasm, when you have a toddler, is sometimes six jellybeans negotiated through a crack in the bedroom door so the kid will stay in her own bed until morning.

Three years into my relationship with Mario, an interesting thing happened. I’d orgasmed already, and he came on my stomach — and without being touched at all, seeing this rare display of pleasure, I came again. This felt so shocking, and I scream-laughed, “Why am I coming?” Turns out you don’t have to be a new-age hippie for energy to work on you; you just have to really crave dick. When they say “consent is sexy,” that’s because it’s difficult to feel attraction for a dick that’s made you cringe too much.

A few months later, I started having longer orgasms: three minutes, then 10, then 20, and then half an hour. The longer it went on, the easier it was to come. I licked his skin; I came again. He made a joke; I came again. The orgasm came in waves, some so intense I thought I might actually puke. My muscles contracted until I farted; I had no control over this and could only laugh helplessly. I wondered briefly if I had developed a medical condition. Perhaps orgasm-induced tourette’s — I had to hold my breath not to swear, scream, caw like a parrot. I could do it, but it was uncomfortable.

And then, finally, I started coming within seconds of him putting anything inside me. I’d never had a purely internal orgasm, and then, overnight, I had them easily. I came faster than a teenage boy. My entire adult life, it took me 20 minutes to get to a 20-second orgasm, until it reversed. It took 20 seconds to get to a 20-minute orgasm. The highly efficient use of those 20 minutes helped me get to sleep by 10 pm and bounce up at 7 ready to navigate my toddler’s reluctance to don her school socks.

Then it got even more spontaneous. During a stolen two minutes while my daughter played in the living room, I orgasmed in the bathroom when Mario pinned me to the wall, kissed me, and slid his hands up my shirt. I drenched the sheets when, later the same night, we did it for real. I came for an hour. He’d totally rewired my brain.

I started having longer orgasms: three minutes, then 10, then 20, and then half an hour. The longer it went on, the easier it was to come. I licked his skin; I came again. He made a joke; I came again. The orgasm came in waves, some so intense I thought I might actually puke.

Although he’d always been good with his hands, I couldn’t point to a specific technique he’d done to make all this happen. It seemed largely neurological. Incrementally, over three and a half years, I'd formed new neural pathways and reinforced them until, all at once, I was capable of things that I thought only existed in extremely unrealistic pornography.

I tried Google to see who else, at 43 years of age, had started accidentally having orgasms from penetration that lasted for as long as they wanted to go, and found nothing. I wondered: Have I died and become a sex goddess?

I had to chalk it up to Mario, because I wasn’t able to replicate things on my own. He had a calming effect on me that put me at ease; he never cared if I’d shaved, and swore my breasts were the most beautiful he’d ever seen. Touching him was foreplay in itself. He was beautiful, lean, muscular, graceful, loyal. We never fought — even when we disagreed, we could disagree and still be kind to ourselves and each other.

Sometimes I’d ask how he was doing it, and he couldn’t tell me. “I listen” is what he said most often.

So, how can you tell if a man is intuitive with his touch? Not by surveying them, certainly, because they all think they’re exceptional. If a guy is loudly proclaiming that he loves giving women oral, or works “sexual chi” into the initial conversation, this does not actually mean he will give you a 10-minute orgasm; it means he finds sexual pleasure in inflating his own ego.

In my direct experience, it is important that when you’re close to climax, you can peek from behind your concentration-shut eyelids and feel both intense love, via his eyes, and intense lust, by observing his abs. But any way you slice it, women are capable of ~everything~ when you let them relax and enjoy themselves for three years — so any "how-to" needs to start there.