Sex in a long-term relationship is the most complicated I’ve ever known. When my husband and I first met, dates were like a potent sexual ritual. The lingering touches made my clitoris tingle and my knickers wet; the lust was so overwhelming, I’d struggle to keep my hands off him.
But intimacy back then was less complicated. With strangers and new lovers, sex is unshackled from cohabitation; from the mundanity of asking each other what’s for dinner every day. Don’t get me wrong, I love the minutiae of our existence — that our lives are tangled together and that we’ve become family — but extrapolating the wildest, most sexual versions of ourselves has become increasingly difficult as the years go by.
And so, with the memory of these early encounters on our minds, one sunny Saturday afternoon, my husband and I find ourselves in sex shop in Soho, trying to reclaim this feeling of newness by picking out outfits to turn me into, well, a stranger.
With our bag full of goodies in hand — latex suspenders, a black bobbed wig, satin gloves that travel the length of my arm, a bra that pushes my tits together, a red silky dressing gown — we go for cocktails to talk about our past selves, and who we want to become this evening. I’ve always liked submitting, being told what to do, spanked; he finds that harder now that he loves me so deeply. But role play strips us back to our primal selves, communicating through the characters we create.
When we get home, we smoke in the garden. “Go and get ready,” he says, already trying on his character. He’s going to see a sex worker while his wife is outside in the car. I savour the ritual of getting ready, feeling the eroticism of each garment as they caress my limbs. I take a selfie in the spare room mirror. I look like a different person.
In patent red shoes so high I can barely keep balance, I totter out to the back door to call in my ‘client’. I can tell from the look on his face how hot I look. There’s a nervousness and apprehension; the kind that comes when you don’t know someone fully but really fancy them. It’s like we’re right back to our first ever meeting. He follows me to the bedroom.
Everyone's clicking on...
“Where does your wife think you are?” I ask, as I run my hand down his chest to his crotch.
“An appointment,” he says. “She’s waiting for me outside.”
There’s an electricity — we’re us in our bedroom but we’re also not. I push him onto the bed and we kiss deeply as I straddle him. He sucks my tits as they spill out of my bra. His fingertips circle my nipples before he pinches them. I gasp, enjoying the pain. “Do all of the things to me that your wife won’t let you,” I say in raspy breaths, our tongues in each other’s mouths. There’s something surreal and super hot knowing I am sort of talking about myself.
I undo his belt, pulling down his jeans just far enough so I can guide his penis inside me. “Don’t move,” he says as he holds my hips in place and thrusts hard inside me. My hands grab his hair and I bite his ears and I can already feel myself opening up. We come together (I can come from penetration, which I know is a rare gift). It’s exquisite and messy and sexy, and I love that as I climb off him, semen trickling down my thighs, that I am totally myself again.
“That was amazing,” he says with a wry smile. “You’re much hotter than my wife.”
We often revisit this particular role play: my husband picking out an outfit, and therefore a character that I’ll go and transform into (he recently bought me a sexy maid outfit, which I love dressing up in when we stay in hotels). I like submitting to his gaze. Knowing how much it will turn him on turns me on. It’s like a secret versions of ourselves.
We’ve been together for 13 years, and we’ve fucked as each other and as other people; it’s exciting knowing that tomorrow or maybe next year we could be entirely different people again.
