I'm In My Slut Era

“Send me photos of the positions you want to explore,” R, 34, instructed as I scrolled through the endless, eyebrow-raising Shibari examples on the website he’d sent me. R and I had started talking a week earlier — first on Hinge, then by text, eventually video chat. “Hmmm. Number 4 and 23 xoxo,” I replied. And just like that, I’d confirmed my first date from an app, ever, at 38.

This new dating era looks a whole lot different than the one in my early 20s. After a long marriage, three kids, and a partnership right after that traumatized me in ways I’m still unpacking, I am finally embracing selfishness. Those people, or maybe just the shape of the attachments, weren’t right for me, but it was clear my end goal needed a serious rewrite.

On the nights I didn’t have my kids, I’d lie awake binge-reading advice from post-divorced, approaching-midlife women, devouring female-centered porn and sex content by femme and queer creators, and running my vibrator so hard it deserved its own union and a bulk pack of batteries. The animal call of slut-town was screaming in my ear. It was guttural, like a siren: I was a rabid horny pervert, finally out of my gilded cage, foaming at the mouth.

Lately, culture around me seems to be tilting toward open relationships and ethical non-monogamy. And I found myself questioning my entire romantic history — was I monogamous by choice, or just by default?

So I started reading, writing, thinking, talking, engaging in dozens of conversations with strangers on a dating app called Feeld about attachment styles, kink, boundaries, and the endless ways connections could look. Some stayed in texts, some moved to FaceTime, where I explored fantasies with people hundreds of miles away, teasing and touching virtually in ways I’d let percolate in my fantasies for too long. A few led to in-person meetings, and every interaction was a little experiment, a lesson in what I wanted and liked.

Did I even know what I wanted from dating? Nothing was landing the way it was “supposed” to, over and over, like some cruel loop. I had to let go of even visualizing what I wanted in partnership, love, or sex and admit I had no idea. I texted my best friend K, my partner-in-life-and-rants for twenty years:

“I think it’s time for my new slut era.”

I booked my full-panel STI tests at Planned Parenthood, got my yearly physical, and started the Gardasil series. Like a clean bill of health for breeding; I had my papers, I was ready to go.

I kept thinking about Molly from Dying for Sex, the one that became the FX series starring Michelle Williams. Molly, who gets a Stage IV diagnosis, leaves her husband, and decides that if she’s going to die, she’s at least going to come first. Her sexual odyssey isn’t about shock value; it’s about reclamation and an unapologetic quest for agency. I don’t have a terminal diagnosis (that I know of), but something in me split open the same way — an understanding that time is finite, that waiting to feel chosen or safe or certain might mean never feeling anything at all. Also, I, too, wanted to be gently dominated by Robby Hoffman.

Turns out, there are a lot of people out there wanting safe, kinky, open-minded and non-committal fun, too. You just have to know where to look. But don’t tell your friends you’re about to meet a stranger online and get tied up. They will stage an intervention.

Like a tornado, I ripped through my small town. “Hey, I’m open for business…but no, not you, not you, not you. Actually, could all the men just stop talking to me and leave me alone, please?” I focused on one friendly, well-respected man whose wife I knew and liked. We fooled around a few times, spending hours on my porch talking about his journey, my journey, and everything in between—while I straddled him and he made me come through my clothes.

Scratch that off the list. Fun? Yes. But not what I’m looking for. Being someone’s secondary partner in a marriage wasn’t for me.

I added a man with 54 mutuals on Facebook because he was hot and looked interesting, asking a couple of friends to vouch for him. We almost immediately got to dirty talk after a bit of flirting, and he drove out to see me the next night.

There was no small talk once the door closed. He bent me over the kitchen counter and made me come within seconds. Then we tore each other's bodies to shreds in my bedroom. Then bent over the back of my couch. He called me a good girl. Told me to call him daddy.

Next, I entered a long-distance sub/dom dynamic with a 55-year-old man who, nearly fifteen years ago, had taken me to my first sex club when I was living in Brooklyn. Turns out, though, I only crave that in person.

In my early 20s, I thought I was sexually liberated. I was searching for connection, affirmation, and someone to pick me, validate my existence. That longing led to marriage and motherhood before I knew who I was outside of either. Now sex and connection are intentional. I know who I am beyond being someone’s wife or mother. My unsatisfying, vanilla marriage offered no safe space for exploration. I kept my head down, raised my kids, stayed comfortable, but inside I was dying.

No, I never went on that date with R. We never tried those Shibari positions (but I kept the website bookmarked for future partners, just in case).

My new slut era has turned out to be less about romance and more about revelation. I’ll be 39 this year, and I’m only now understanding what it means to belong to myself. If another partnership comes, it won’t come at the cost of my evolving identity. Maybe I’ll find someone to share that space with me. Maybe I won’t. But I’m finished acting like my pleasure is optional.