First published on Life On The Swingset - http://www.lifeontheswingset.com/22756/fan-fiction-saved-my-sex-life/
Like most couples in long-term marriages, our sex life has encountered some serious ups and downs--phrasing!--over the course of our 21 years together. We'd been in one of those down slumps approximately 2 years ago when I discovered the rich web of slash fanfiction dedicated to a TV show I was obsessed with at the time. I couldn't believe there was so much out there. Even more so, I couldn't believe how much of it was really good.
I started devouring everything I could get my fingers on by a few discovered authors, and gradually I started branching off to more and more writers, reading story after story after story. Sure, I found some terrible drek as well, and plenty of the mediocre, but for the most part, I read a lot of great stories that stimulated both my brain and my lady parts.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I started masturbating like crazy. Total wank fest! The stories were so hot and I was almost always turned on by something. And the more I read and sought out stories, the more I found newer, hotter stories. Then I found the ones that were dirrrrty and I was completely hooked. I could explore kinks I'd secretly held for years, and I was discovering new kinks I'd never considered at an astonishing rate.
Once I'd been reading for a few months, I got the idea for a story of my own, and soon I was madly writing fanfiction as well as reading it. And between all the necessary breaks for frantic self-abuse, I discovered that spending endless hours describing men's bodies in exquisite, pornographic detail made my husband's body more and more appealing. All the time I was detailing the texture, weight, scent, and taste of cocks made me want his cock more and more.
Up to that point, I'd bought into the lie women are told about how penises are ugly and silly (I could probably write a paper about the sociological reasons for this lie, about an oppressed group seeking power through ridiculing the symbol of that oppression, but I won't. You're not here for that. Bring on the dirty stuff!). Sucking cock had been a chore I did because I loved him, not because I loved it.
Writing extensively about cocksucking changed all that.
As I wrote more words dedicated to hot, messy, sticky, delicious blowjobs, I was discovering their hotness and I suddenly wanted cock in my mouth. On purpose. Cocks are beautiful and sexy and smooth and velvet, and they feel amazing on my tongue, and they smell good, and...well, I'm a fan!
My preferred porn has always been gay male porn, so I don't know why it was a surprise to me that I was a huge fan of peen. After I started writing slashfic, when I watched porn I began to focus less on the fucking and more on the oral and it was hot. Really fucking hot. Somehow, taking away the power differential that tends to be present in much of the hetero porn I've seen, the blowjob became an incredibly sexy act for me (not that power differentials can't be super-hot in sex when it's all consensual and hot for everyone involved).
Inspired by my reading, writing, and watching, I started initiating oral on Flick without expectation of it leading to other things, but because I wanted to do it. This, in turn, made him feel sexy and appreciated, and he started initiating more, which made me feel sexy and appreciated. The best kind of positive feedback loop.
Writing (and reading) dirty stories was also an exercise in discovering many unknown kinks, and owning those kinks in the written word helped me claim them in real life as well, which led to conversations with Flick where I revealed some of my deep, dark likes and wants for the first time in a two decade relationship.
By the time our discoveries and reveals came around to wanting to have some sexual adventures together, we'd had 6 months of the best sex we'd had in at least a decade, possibly our entire marriage. At that juncture, we both felt safe to reveal the deepest of the married person's deep, dark secrets: 'I want to fuck other people.'
As we pack our bags heading to Desire Resort and Spa with other Swingsetters, I can't thank those dirty stories enough.
