It’s a new year, and I am feeling a new, subtle texture. A quiet settling that is unfamiliar to me. I have been trying to locate the feeling. Is this sadness or loneliness? Maybe grief. No, none of those.
The absence of noise feels a bit unsettling, so my mind rushes in to fill the space. Ah, there it is. It’s spaciousness. In that slightly disorienting silence, there is space; there is room to expand and hold more. More sensation, more feeling, more desire.
Most of my life, desire has been wired to longing, pursuit, and proving. It registered as a low-key hum of electricity—sometimes mistaken for passion, other times more obviously revealed as dysregulation.
That dysregulation came with a constellation of behaviours I didn’t fully understand, at least not at the level of the nervous system. Longing felt like chemistry. Intensity felt like connection. And pursuit masqueraded as desire, even when it was really my body searching for equilibrium.
These days, I feel different. Desire is at home in my body. It’s welcome and embraced, and that has radically changed the texture of Eros. I was recently asked about sexual preferences, and I was a bit embarrassed I didn’t have much to say. Sure, attraction has its quirks, and I do recognize my own idiosyncrasies. But in my exploration of the erotic, however, I have landed on something unexpected: trust.
Trust, when freely given, is an offering of vulnerability by choice. And when desire moves through that space, it softens into something resembling surrender. It’s an invitation to see without scrutiny. To hold without management. To desire without consumption. When a lover trusts my pacing, trusts my touch, trusts that she won’t be rushed or used, she’s offering true orientation, and that’s erotic in a way that is deeply nourishing.
It’s nourishing because it quietly confirms mutuality, it allows my desire to stay slow and intentional, and it invites my care and reverence without demand. My desire, my Eros stays expressive, rather than strategic and striving. Eros stops being about outcomes, and becomes about inhabiting the moment together in a way that is relational.
And so I remain here—unrushed, attentive, and willing. Not chasing desire, not managing it. Just listening. Letting Eros move at the speed of trust.