The Joy of Sex(ting)

I thought I'd hate it. It unshackled me.

Earlier this summer, I went on a brief solo trip to escape the chaos of my disintegrating marriage. I drove to a hotel in a small town, arriving in the late afternoon. After checking in and eating dinner, I retired to my room, sat down on the bed, and sent a group text to five close girlfriends.

“Bored,” I wrote.

One of my friends — a very cool, single, early 40s friend — immediately replied: “FEELD.” 

I had no idea what she was talking about. After several confused texts back and forth, I learned she was talking about an app — what she described as “a sex positive dating app where you can prioritize whatever intimacy experience you want — kinks, singles, couples, flirting, sex, threeways, whatever.”

My first reaction? Absolutely not. My only experience with online dating was Match.com, which I joined for about three horrifying days in 2006. A sex app in 2024 seemed like it would require a jump into a different dimension. A futuristic alien sex dimension in which I was a frumpy old lady holding church brochures. Plus, technically I was single again, yeah, but I didn’t want to jump right into the deep end with a sex app.

My friend texted me assurances. I could just peruse the merchandise, she said. I didn’t have to meet anyone. Or even chat with anyone. Unless, you know, I wanted to.

Okay, fine. Maybe part of me did want to jump into the deep end — or at least dip a toe into the water. But I definitely wasn’t going to meet up with anyone, that was for sure. I downloaded the app and set up a bare bones profile. I set a search radius of 30 miles to see who was nearby. Then I started perusing.

Suddenly, I was inundated with photos of bearded men in their 60s sitting in cars. (The sitting-in-the-car shots — and the shirtless-in-front-of-the-bathroom-mirror shots — seem to be men’s favorite choices, but are definitely not mine.)

Swipe, swipe, swipe. Eww. Swipe, swipe. Wtf?! Swipe. Swipe.

Ohhhhhh.

A cute one. A 43-year-old guy, dark hair, charming smile. Seemed a little affected, but I could deal with that. I took a screenshot and shared it with my friends, who decided he looked like a cross between Paul Rudd, David Duchovny, and Richard Gere. Not bad, right? Especially for the first hour on a sex app.

I “liked” him, freaked out for ten minutes, tried to sleep, had fitful dreams about people being mad at me, and awoke to discover he’d liked me back and had sent me a text that simply said: “Morning!”

OMG. WHAT DO I DO.

I felt a massive surge of fear. And excitement. And ….. guilt? It somehow felt wrong to be texting with a guy on a sex app. My marriage was over, but I had spent more than decade steeped in an institution that demanded my commitment and fidelity to one person. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t just flip a mental switch and feel single again. I was annoyed at my guilt, but it lingered.

A text I sent my friend group chat that morning

It didn’t stop me, though. I replied, letting him know he was my first match on my first ever sex app. I thought maybe that would slow him down a little. Alas, it did not! The conversation quickly turned sexual. When I told him I was staying at a hotel, he asked if it was because I was hoping to take advantage of my new freedom. Then he said that he felt a responsibility to make sure my first sex app experience was a good one. Every text he sent was dripping with: Let’s meet up and fuck. I felt ecstatic. I felt queasy. I texted my friends that there was no way I was going to meet up with this guy, and then promptly texted him to ask how he felt about meeting for a drink at a hotel bar.

What was I doing? I had no idea. But soon, we were sexting.

Readers, I’d never sexted before. I’d never even had phone sex before. My life before marriage was a series of vanilla monogamous relationships. Yet suddenly, this hot guy I didn’t know was asking me how I liked to be touched and what my fantasies were. Once I got over the bizarreness of telling a complete stranger how sensitive my various body parts were, I realized that what I was embarking on was pretty fucking amazing.

In my 20s, first nights with a new man were always a shitshow. He’d be too forward or too passive; he would do stuff I didn’t want or particularly like. I was too shy to offer suggestions or corrections — in part because I didn’t want to seem too demanding or make him think my body was weird. I didn’t want to scare him away, because who knows, he might be My Future Husband. Every guy was my potential Future Husband, so I wanted all of them to like me, to think I was easygoing and fun.

Not anymore. Now I don’t give a shit about scaring men off. Sexting, I realized, was a way to transform my relationship with sex — and, maybe, men. I could, in advance of meeting up, tell a guy exactly what I liked and didn’t like. In fact, I could tell him exactly what to do. If I came off as “overly” assertive, so what? He would deal with it, or he would ghost me, and who the fuck cared either way? I’m not looking for a boyfriend or a husband. I can find another guy who’ll sleep with me if this one doesn’t want to. Instead of filtering everything I wrote, I started texting what I actually thought and felt.

It was transformative. I found myself coming out of a shell I hadn’t even known had been constricting me. I told this guy how my body worked — that I loved deep penetration yet wanted the gentlest of touch on my nipples and clitoris. I laid out a fantasy I didn’t even know I had in which he would meet me for a drink at the hotel bar, remain perfectly restrained, and then acquiesce when I instructed him to come back to my room (which, yes, actually happened — stay tuned for that story). I told him exactly how I wanted him to touch me, to lick me, to fuck me.

I even gave him feedback on his sexting. When he became too explicit for my taste, I told him to chill. When he used phrases I didn’t like, I told him to stop. When he sent me a dick pic, I was like OH MY GOD WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK NO.

And you know what? He listened. He responded. He didn’t ghost me.

It was so liberating — to center and communicate my desires for the first time in my life, and to discover that doing so was absolutely fine. This guy — and I instinctively knew there would be more like him — was happy to listen to and accommodate me. It was a true role reversal after all the listening and accommodating I’ve done on behalf of men for many decades.

I found myself recognizing and rejecting all the silly preconceptions I’ve had my whole life about sexting, too. I’d always thought it was vulgar, crude, classless — but that was just the voice of The Patriarchy. To me, now, sexting is pure, authentic, and empowering. And I plan to do a lot more of it.