So why haven’t you said it?
I got a call once from a woman whose husband had just set up a sex swing in their bedroom as a surprise. She’d come home from work, walked into the room, and there it was. Hung from the ceiling. Ready to go.
She wasn’t calling to complain. She wasn’t even that surprised, honestly, she knew him. She was calling because she didn’t know what to do next, and she didn’t want to look stupid in front of her own husband.
This man had researched swings. Bought one. Installed hardware in the ceiling. And she was standing in her own bedroom afraid she’d do it wrong.
I love this story because it is so completely, perfectly human.
We are terrified of looking stupid in front of the one person who has already seen everything
I know this fear. I have it constantly. I think I will look stupid all the time. It is genuinely one of my least favorite things about myself.
And I sell sex swings for a living. I designed one specifically because I was scared of the bar over my head. I am curvy, I know what it feels like to not want to be that exposed, and I built an entire product around that fear. I still have the fear. The product just helps.
Women carry this more than men, in my experience. Not because women want less. Because women have spent their whole lives being told their bodies are wrong in some way, too much in some direction, and then we’re supposed to suddenly be totally fine with being completely exposed in front of another person? We don’t fear rejection. We fear disappointment. We fear doing it wrong. We fear being seen wanting something and somehow failing at the wanting.
Men mostly just… want to try the thing. Which is its own kind of problem, honestly, but that’s a different article.
The right moment is not coming
I hear from people who have had something in their cart for three years. Not three months. Three years. The thing they want is still right there, still available, still exactly what they wanted, and they close the tab. Every time. Because the moment isn’t right yet.
The moment is never going to be right. That’s not pessimism, that’s just how this works. There is no version of trying something new with the person who has seen you ugly cry, eat cereal for dinner three nights running, and say something genuinely mean during a fight you’re not proud of, where it isn’t at least a little awkward. That awkward is not a warning. It’s just the cover charge.
The thing you’re waiting for is permission. And the permission is not coming from outside you. It has to come from you deciding that what you want is worth a few minutes of fumbling.
Most couples aren’t unhappy. They’re just on autopilot
The couples I worry about aren’t the ones fighting. They’re the ones who have quietly become roommates. Kids, jobs, school pickups, who’s taking out the trash, dinner, repeat. Sex happens on birthdays, maybe anniversaries. Nobody’s miserable. They’re just… parallel. Living next to each other instead of with each other.
My daughter said something recently I keep coming back to. Someone asked her what she puts first, her partner or her kids. She said her partner. Immediately. And the room kind of went quiet, because that sounds wrong until she explained it: her kids are going to grow up and leave. Her partner is the one relationship that needs daily attention for her entire life. Without it, you get to 47, the kids are gone, and you look at the person across the table and realize you have no idea who they became.
I see this. I see it with people whose kids are six. Already lost each other. Still good people, still love each other, probably. But they stopped reaching.
And the thing they want from each other is still right there. Just unasked.
And unasked is exactly how most of them describe the swing to me. Something they wanted for years, thought about, maybe even mentioned once and let drop. The hardest part is never the install. It is never even the first time. The hardest part is the gap between deciding to try it and actually trying it, that weird suspended moment where you’ve both said yes and you haven’t done it yet and the whole thing is just… hanging there. Literally and figuratively.
This is why I always say: do a dry run. Get in it with your clothes on. Figure out the buckles. Laugh at the buckles. Get the height wrong, fix it, get it wrong again. Do all of that before you need it to be good, so that when you need it to be good, you’re not fighting with a strap.
The woman who called me? I told her: he bought you a sex swing. He is not sitting there worried about whether you’re going to do it right. She laughed. That was it. They figured it out. They’ve been customers for three years.
So. The thing you want.
You already know what it is. You’ve known for a while, probably. Maybe you’ve opened the tab and closed it. Maybe you’ve almost said it and then didn’t. Maybe you’re reading this because some part of you is tired of carrying it.
The person who is supposed to hear it has already seen you at every version of yourself. Your worst, your most ridiculous, your least composed. They stayed for all of that. The version of you who fumbles through something new and laughs about it is not going to be the thing that breaks it. Trust me.
The awkward first time is not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s the price of trying something new with someone who knows you too well to pretend. That price is worth it.
Go say the thing.