Trust is the sexiest language of all

Do you want to learn a new language?  Then find a lover who speaks it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about trust lately.  How important is.  How profoundly enriching it is.  To be trusted by someone can bring out the very best in us.  When we strive to grow and find our personal greatness, so often, there is a loving person who inspires it.  The love provides a platform, but the trust of that person in us is the motivating force.

Trust is also the foundation of community. What if we lived in a way which focussed on trust with everyone, so that community might grow between all of us?

When we are trusted by someone we respect, and whose respect, in turn, we need, we are changed.  This change is a deep need, not a casual one.  When we experience this kind of trust, we live up to it.  It brings out the best in us. And that is what it means to feel good about oneself, and also to be in love. We love because we are made better for it.

Sometimes we may betray ourselves.  We may be self-destructive.  Saboteurs of what we love best in ourselves.  Perhaps we don’t believe that we are worthy of that trust.  And do something to betray it.  This is not about being untrustworthy, it is about being incapable of self-love.

Trust is one of my love languages.  Perhaps it is the most important one, as it is bound up and forms the structural core of all the others. [I am aware that Trust is not an official love language, but for me, it is the most important one].  Things in my life of late have shown me this, but it is also something I have known since I was a baby.  Indeed, my peculiar way of connecting with someone, emotionally, physically, is born from the mother-baby dynamic, born from a desire to be able to just let go, to fall and fall and fall because we know that we will be caught.  Profound trust in the other.

I carry this in business, I carry with my friends, and I carry it in love.

Pillow talk has a way of carving out the truth.  There is a post-coital softness, a tenderness that flows from intimacy, that puts both people in a liminal space of dreaminess and wakefulness.  We are vulnerable, connected, open, curious, gentle.  This strangely delicate twilight zone is a state and place of magical beauty. It is the edge of the spirit realm.

Imagine yourself as your best self.  Who are you?  Who is this person that is always the very best version of who you are?  Who do you aspire to be?  What are the characteristics of this person?  What do they look and feel like, smell like?  What is the semi-divine version of you, or who?  Can you meditate on that, closing your eyes, breathing deeply, and getting in touch with this spiritual higher self?

This is the person who lies in bed with a companion, a friend, a lover, and with whom we share this dream-state.  We are most vulnerable at this moment, and it is our vulnerability that can both bring out the best in us but can also pose risks.  Pillow talk most often deepens the level of intimacy and understanding between two people.  Sometimes, however, something is said in that juncture, in that place, which is off.  The worst fights emerge from truths or misunderstandings that take place during these precious moments.  I don’t wish to dwell on these, as they are also moments that present an open door to better yourself, to listen, to be motivated to change, if for nothing else than to find yourself back in that warm closeness that speaks of understanding, “I am here, and I am open to you.”

In a recent moment of pillow talk, someone I am gradually getting to know, asked me, “why are you so shy?”  She meant sexually not socially, for I am anything but socially shy.  I can’t remember what I said in the moment, I remember using the word ‘respect’ many hours later as the question felt unanswered by my initial response.  Do you ever get that feeling?  An innocuous question transforms into something vast and incredible, and you realise your response was lacking?  This feeling of, “I didn’t quite get that right,” or “didn’t express what I meant.”  That can be because we might not know ourselves, or it may be that the feeling has too many flavours to be expressed simply.  Or perhaps both.

But her question to me was profound.  And it has bubbled inside of me ever since, and I realise that it strikes to the core of who I am.

The “person” who I most want to be trusted by is someone I “love”.  I put the words in quotes, because it can be many people, in all flavours from family to friends to lovers, and even to colleagues or strangers, and the love of which I speak here is a nascent form, characterised most by openness, innocent wonder, possibility, and just an awful lot of frisson.  The meaning and value of that love is in direct proportion to the intimacy of the relationship.  And the risk of failure exists in inverse proportion to the degree of intimacy which feeds it.  This is the Trust Equation, something I learned to use in a professional context, but which I now realise is core to my own identity.  Is it core to yours?

“Why are you so shy?” she asked.

Indeed, why?  Can you imagine an answer which begins with, “I have an existential need to be shy.  I can’t love or be intimate with someone unless I feel that they have to come to get me.”  There is something in that act, of being seen, of being understood, but also of showing that the seer is safe.  Does that make sense?  It is that small act of saying, ‘I see you, and I will wait for you.  I will take it slow.  But most of all, I will hold your hand.  I will come to get you’.  

What am I talking about?  Innocence.  To be innocent is to possess the conditions which warrant trust.  Babies are innocent.  A baby doesn’t harm.  They don’t want, they need.  And their need is slaked by the warm embrace of the person who holds them.  We can translate this into the adult world.

I am ‘shy’ because to not be shy is to make assumptions.  I don’t dare assume anything.  I don’t assume that my touch is welcome.  I don’t assume that intimacy is welcome.  I don’t assume that you like the way I kiss you, or hold you, or even talk to you.  This takes time.  It takes shared endeavour, shared experience, openness, and lot’s and lot’s of communication.

It is also totally and utterly dependent on boundaries.  A boundary has to be communicated to be manifest. Sometimes, we don’t articulate our boundaries with a partner, perhaps from fear of alienating them, of bringing up a difficult subject, or maybe just because it is awkward.

I dated a woman once who had a physical boundary of penetrative sex.  She had experienced trauma when she was younger, and her vagina was like a steel trap.  There was no chance of getting something in there, even though she desired it.  Her animal mind had closed the shutters, and her rational adult mind with an intimate partner couldn’t get through to her subconscious.

You might wonder what we did together, but there are few people who I had so much fun with.  Our relationship was sexed up in so many ways even though PIV was off the table…in a way, perhaps because it was off the table.

The first time she came over to my flat in London, she asked to go the bathroom.  I hadn’t really thought about it, but my smalls were in there drying on the line—oh, how European to not use a drier!  When she came out, the question on her lips was about infidelity, or did I have someone else.  She asked about my knickers.  I said, “they’re mine, in fact, I’m wearing panties now.  I always do.”  And suddenly she noticed that my trousers did not open/close in front, but that they zipped up in the back.  She put her hand on my ass, and then slowly unzipped me.  It was deathly quiet in my apartment.  The air was still.  I could see the dust flakes slowly basking in the golden glow of the sun through my enormous living room windows.  And her hand, gentle, curious, probing, found its way onto the firm globe of my ass, caressed it, teased with it, with the fabric which disappeared between my cheeks.

That was the first time we made out.

“Why are you so shy?” she asked.

I have an existential need to be trusted.  To demonstrate that I am worthy of trust.  I associate behaving in an innocent manner, without expectation, with a state of child-like innocence.  That I will not hurt.  That I will inhabit a space that we can carve out together, proscribed by your desire as much as mine.

Why are you so shy?” she asked.

Because consent is hot.  When you don’t assume anything, everything becomes a gentle exploration.  A gradual getting to know, and there is true beauty in that process of discovery.  By being shy, by not asking for anything, by doing my very best to empty my being of expectation, and simply allowing for touch and connection to happen, something far more beautiful arises.  The energy itself, and I am talking about divine spiritual energy, takes control and drives.  The energy is a river which carries us all.  And when two rivers merge, even if only for a while, a brief interlude, the joyful exploration and tender co-mingling of spirit, takes on a kind of beauty that is never there when you take.

The taken is the stolen, and taking is a breaking of consent.  And yes, by not asking, we may lose that which we desire.  I live this in my dynamic with my Queen.  I never ask.  Sometimes she tells me to ask, and I do, but I wouldn’t dare.  Mostly because I don’t want to dare to allow for those feelings, because those feelings create expectation.

How much more beautiful instead to just see where and how things go.  Assuming nothing, and instead exploring, better still, communicating while exploring, is hot.  Consent is hot.  Consent is not a distraction.  Getting to know someone is not a distraction.  Allowing for the time it takes for a natural evolution to occur is not a distraction.  And when things blossom on their own, they are far more resonant, impactful, and joyful to behold, to live, to feel.

While the existential aspects of this have been true of me since I was a child, it is really through exploration of BDSM and kink with others that has taught me the skills to make this process conscious and adult.  We spend so much time as a society shaming each other, and the kink community is filled with people who have received the ‘othering’ and projected shame of others, both at large and at an individual level.  And even if toxicity exists in the kink community, the mechanisms to deal with it, the skills we learn to communicate in relation, and to behave, are really useful, adult, and appealing.

Why are you so shy?” she asked.

Somehow, we have lost the joy of being child-like, of bringing wonder to every encounter.  A sense of play begins with curiosity.  When someone is intimate or offering intimacy, there is a fundamental curiosity which reveals itself.  But what beauty exists in the invitation to explore someone’s body.  To show your appreciation in reverential touch.  To not assume anything, to ask for permission, to be taught how to give pleasure to someone.

What if you are an experienced lover, but instead of assuming you know how to get someone off, taking every encounter as uncharted territory, learning someone’s body, learning their breath, how they respond, what they like.

And what’s the rush.  What if you take the idea, ‘we have a lifetime to get to know each other’?  That it can happen at its own pace.  That we can be gentle with ourselves and gentle with each other, and just let things unfold.

I find it so much sexier and pleasurable to not assume, to approach a body as a great unknown.  I don’t know you yet, but I am here and I do desire you, do desire to feed your soul with my touch.

These are all forms of trust.  Intimacy proceeds on a bedrock of trust.

When I think back in life about my relationships, whether intimate or otherwise, the ones I cherish most are the ones where the trust reigned.  The ones that ended, and usually spectacularly, were fell apart from an erosion of trust.

I started a company for a group of high-profile shareholders when I was about 30.  With their help, it became extraordinarily successful in a very short period of time.  In the process, I discovered, that although they compensated me in a manner which was consistent with the letter of our agreement, it was not at all consistent with the spirit of it.  They had total control if they chose to exercise it, even though I was founder and CEO.  They could pay me, or not pay me, as they saw fit.  I spent six months trying to get this fixed, and although they were always straight with me, and compensated me fairly, their refusal to close the loopholes was something which undermined my trust.  I walked, not willing to build something for a group of people who needed to be able to contractually f**k me if they chose to do so.  Not worth it. If the trust equation isn’t there, get out.

One of the greatest loves of my life, a woman I was going to marry, in some ways should have married, turned out to be a pathological liar.  About everything.  How can you embark on a joint process of life with someone you cannot trust?  You cannot.

My first real BDSM relationship foundered on trust as well.  In this case, her refusal to trust me. And that came from a place inside of her, having nothing to do with me.  For all the reasons laid out above, not being trusted is the number one buzz kill for me.  I experienced this with a person I met on a dating App recently, already on a second date.  In both instances, the emotional damage inside each of these people, perhaps founded on a lack of self-confidence or self-love, was enough to break things apart. How can you respect and trust someone who doesn’t trust you?  You cannot.  Because, in the end, they don’t trust themselves.  Something is broken inside.  You are asking for trouble when you invest time with people who don’t trust themselves enough to trust you.  And do you want to be the person who does the work with them?

Maybe.  But only if they are willing and able to grow with you, and wanting to do so.

Trust is sexy.  Trust is divine.  It is at once the portal through which we step to the spiritual realms and also the state of being which upon which innocent curiosity is founded.

“Why are you so shy?” she asked.

Because I want you to see me as I am.  Because I want to be trusted and for you to be trustworthy.  By being shy, I get to feel that I am not before you with any expectation, that I am here to be gentle, to rise to the place where you are wanting to go, or even just allowing ourselves to flow.  It is for us to discover where this river of energy that brought us together will take us.  No strings attached.  No expectations.  Just a genuine joy in play and discovery.

In Buddhism we learn that child-like innocence is Grace.  Why am I so shy?  Because trust is the language of the divine, it is the foundation of human bonding, and it is also aspirational.  It is what allows us to see into each other’s souls.

To not want anything, and to just allow things to flow…and to trust that they will flow as they should, requires two people to trust each other, to be open.  I am not shy.  I am naked.  That’s all.

To live fully, to live in truth, our default position must be one of trust. But life is a sequence of getting hurt. Most of us get up again. A few less might get hurt again, get up again…each time, we lose some of the triers. But to live fully, one must commit to baring your soul every time, further and further. Yes, you will be hurt profoundly, and often, but you will also grow. The only key, the sine qua non, the categorical pre-requisite, is that there be trust…by you in the other, and by them in you. What way will you be, to feel this and to be worthy of it?

Let’s all hold hands and stand on the edge. Let’s take the leap together.