It started with porn. We watched porn together sometimes, more his desire than mine, but whatever, it was kind of hot. I mean, porn is weird and unsexy and a bit depressing if you think about it too much or pay a lot of attention to it, but if you can find a good one and pay attention for the beginning only, it can be good. It’s like watching a horror movie and you tense up and your blood pressure rises even though you know it’s fake — given the stimuli, your body can’t help but produce a physical reaction.

Anyways, we watched porn together sometimes and I knew he watched it alone. I’m not like, “the cool girl” who’s totally okay with her boyfriend watching porn but I knew it was an uphill battle and one that wasn’t going to end well for either of us, so I tried to use it to bring us closer together. One night, loosed by a few stiff drinks over ice we drank on his balcony, watching the city lights come on and turn off — the full metropolitan life cycle in one night — I asked him what he liked about porn, and whether access to me or all the other women in the world (hotter ones, I even gave him) would be better, ideally.

His answer surprised me, it wasn’t about quality or quantity, but about availability. With me, (and he loved me very much, he clarified), he had to woo me, constantly. Sex was never a given, and this is a biological difference between men and women. He was trying, all the time to make me think of him sexually and to initiate sex and even my higher-than-average female libido couldn’t keep up with him. As loving and as open and assuring as I was towards him, he was still getting rejected by me in this way, often (and even more often if he would be honest about how frequently he wanted sex).

And so watching porn made sense to me in a way it never had before. The fantasy, the real fantasy, was a world free of rejection, from the tired trope of the guy who wants sex more than his girlfriend does. I felt bad about it, to be honest, as much as I loved him, why did he have to suffer these feelings that he was somehow not enough?

By personality, I am a maximizer. I am the kind of girl with checkmarks and to-do lists and the one who breaks her New Year’s resolutions into “action items.” So I took this sort-of imbalance in our sex life as a challenge — what kind of system could we get on that would work for both of us?

The very first thing to do was to switch places. If our sex life was currently running solely on Adrienne-time we needed to switch it to Boyfriend-time, at least to try it and see what it was like. So we decided that for one week, we would do just that. We would be running our relationship on his biological frequency instead of mine. I could try anything for a week. Boyfriend was too cautious to be excited, as if I would change my mind if he showed too much enthusiasm.

We started on Monday with morning sex before he left for work. I was in the habit of spending the night at his place (it was nicer than mine, albeit less homey — and I’m a writer so I don’t have to get up and get dressed at the crack of dawn like he does) and usually he lets me sleep and I talk to him dreamily while he gets ready, without really waking up. But today was the first day of Sex-On-His-Terms week and I woke up to his breath on my neck and his hand running up my leg, grazing the boy-cut panties I wore to bed — and running back down again. He was ready to start.

I opened my legs to him immediately. There was something freeing about the choice already being made. I was going to have sex with him, I was necessarily “in the mood” because I’d already decided I was going to be. For an overly-analytical maximizer like me, decisions are a lot of work, and knowing this one was already made felt relaxing and luxurious. Like morning sex. I made him 45 minutes late that day. He blamed it on a faulty alarm clock.

I napped afterwards and woke up to several text messages from him, rare for having just seen him off a few hours ago.

This morning was so hot. I can’t wait for more.

The second was more forceful than complimentary:

Stay in bed. I’m coming home for lunch.

I laughed. This was part of a fantasy he had about my schedule. When we first started dating he thought that a freelance schedule meant that I would always be available to him. He talked about lunchtime rendezvous — coming home to pillage me and then leaving me naked there while he returned to work. I filled him in on the reality of deadlines and the hours of uninterrupted focus it took to produce something really good. He got it, but it was like telling a kid Santa isn’t real. Today was going to be his redemption.

I have to admit, it was hot to snuggle back into his linens, smelling him, waiting for his return — to be instructed not to dress. It was the kind of thing where I might usually touch myself and think of his hands instead of mine, but his return was coming so soon that I didn’t, I just waited for him and smiled my cat-who-got-the-mouse smile when he walked in, already unbuckling his belt. I was wet for him, more than usual — it was all the waiting. He felt like a stud, I could tell, as I crawled across the bed towards him, still naked from the morning sex, and climbed on top of him. I rode him without even unbuttoning his pale blue work shirt. I wondered if it would smell like me for the rest of the day.

I didn’t go home after he returned to work. Usually I would have let myself out long ago, gone home and showered and have several hours of work at the corner coffee shop under my belt. I used his shower and didn’t bother dressing, simply draping his t-shirt over me while I helped myself to his much fancier computer. I had to save time somewhere, and he was probably just going to undress me again when he got home anyway. (He did).

Tuesday morning I told him I was going to go home and work, and that I would make dinner for him that night if he wanted to come over. I wanted to keep going with my promise, but I also needed to get some work done so I figured the added promise of a home cooked meal would be enough to tide him over through the day. I made a lasagna so I would have plenty of time to get ready after I was done cooking. I showered and sprayed perfume in all his favorite places. I dressed in lingerie instead of clothes and then when he texted me that he was leaving work, I tried something silly I’d read in Cosmo once. I was kind of sexed out and I needed to get back in the mood so I put on some relaxing music and laid in bed. Without trying to get off or do anything other than relax, I placed my vibrator inside me and thought about him — again, nothing too intense, just kind of opening myself up for the evening. As robotic and forced as the action seemed at first, when I put it away and got up to pour wine for dinner, I was in an entirely different mood. I wasn’t tired anymore, I was desirous, the knock at the door was one of promise instead of obligation.

I kissed him, open-mouth, in the stairwell, surprising even myself with my unwillingness to even walk up the stairs before I touched him. I was already ready, already wanting him and he, in turn, was turned on by my suddenly elevated interest. I wanted to feel his weight on me, and I placed my hands on his lower back, pulling him into me and feeling his jeans rub against the thin fabric of my negligee. I turned, finally, to lead him up the stairs to my kitchen and felt his hands left the back of the slip and grab my ass fully in his hands. I almost couldn’t keep walking, the needing-him sensation inside me about doubled with that touch. While we ate, his hands never stopped touching me — rubbing my thigh, pulling me into him by wrapping his arm around my shoulder, brushing my hair back from my face. It was, oddly, an extremely romantic meal we both prolonged because the tension building between us was so fun to play with. Every touch was becoming unbearable.

After dinner we didn’t go to the couch or pretend we were going to do an activity for a bit. We went to my bedroom. We kissed like we hadn’t kissed in forever — long, deep, high-school kisses. He walked me back to my bed and laid me down beneath him, kissing my collarbone and murmuring sweet nothings between breaths. He slid a finger inside me and held his face above mine, watching my reaction, cherishing my reaction. He told me I was beautiful, that he loved watching me respond to him.

His confidence at this point was intoxicating. He knew I was on board with whatever he wanted to do and instead of it turning him into a greedy tyrant, it relaxed him, it opened him up. I felt closer to him than ever before.

When he pulled me to the edge of the bed and entered me, it was slower and more lust-filled than usual. This wasn’t get-it-over-with sex. This was vacation sex on a Tuesday night. He took a pillow and I obligingly lifted my hips so he could place it underneath them and return to pushing himself into me, deeper now. He places his forearms next to my arms as he leaned over me, maximizing our skin-to-skin contact.

Convinced now that this sex session would be leisurely he pulled out of me and bent down, flicked his tongue over my clit as my eyes rolled back into my head and I squirmed before him. I wondered if he could taste himself in me?

His finger was inside me again, swirling around, feeling the width of me while he kissed and flicked me on the outside. He stimulated me all at once, like an expert. Every erogenous zone was on fire. I heard myself begging him to fuck before I realized that was even what I wanted — and he was on top of me again, thrusting into me like I asked, like I needed, filling me, driving me over the edge.

For once, I came before he did — in a hot sticky dizzy wave that came roaring out of me.

He came next, catapulted into it by me spasming around his dick. I felt his heat inside me and his breathing slow, finally. Lying supine next to my breathless match, I couldn’t believe there were five more days of this.