The moment before an affair

Turn-on Tonic: Dose Seven

I was only wearing a little black thong when my teacher announced that today we had to get a pen and paper and write down the hottest things that had ever happened to us. Then we had to share them with the two other people in our group, and finally spend 15 minutes replicating the same situation between us as an exercise in learning more about the thing that had truly been at the root of our desire.

This wasn’t about titillation (lol). It was about tracing desire back to its roots.

I was sitting opposite a man who I had a crush on. He had tattoos all over his body, including his face, and I just knew he wasn’t a man who had played it safe sexually. He’d told me previously that he once worked at a tattoo place in Argentina where they would pierce his skin and hang him from the ceiling with hooks. If you do that, you don’t fumble in the dark rooms under duvet covers do you?!

So as I scribbled my “hottest” moments onto a piece of paper, I couldn’t help but panic that I was about to be totally shown up for just how vanilla my life up until that point had been.

You see, growing up in St Albans, Hertfordshire, I didn’t exactly have many tattoo parlours to hang off the ceiling from. And while I’d been slut-shamed for being a little minx in my teenage years, I’d never really explored my sexuality in a way that felt like a representation of my unbound self.

At that point in my life, I don’t think anyone had ever asked me:

What do you want?

Like… what do you really, really, really want?

It wasn’t a zig-a-zig, ah, whatever one of those are.

And mostly, I’d just been going along with whatever anyone else wanted of me.

Over a decade ago, when I was in a relationship with someone I really didn’t want to have sex with and found my mind wandering elsewhere, I came across a TED Talk that made me go “ooooh” by Esther Perel.

She spoke about how infidelity isn’t just about sex.

She named how affairs are often about longing, unmet emotional needs, identity, and loss. How they can be expressions of inner conflict, revealing something missing in the relationship: aliveness, novelty, emotional connection, or self-discovery.

Infidelity doesn’t necessarily mean a relationship is “dead.”

It can expose neglected issues and offer an invitation for honest reflection and renegotiation.

That talk gave language to something my body already knew.

Now, I want to be clear: cheating is a deal-breaker for me. I have a personal vendetta against it.

And I also believe that many affairs aren’t exactly about moral failure.

They’re more about relational illiteracy around desire.

Not knowing how to ask for what we need.

Not knowing how to speak the unspeakable.

Not knowing how to risk honesty.

And when we don’t know, desire goes underground and comes out in shadow, sideways.

So if you’re thinking about cheating on your partner, instead of going ahead and having a fling with an ex you once had a hot connection with, I see it more as an invitation to get down and dirty with your deeper desires and needs instead.

For example: during my first pregnancy, I had an unreasonable urge to go to DC10 and take a pill (lol).

I hadn’t been to a club or taken ecstasy for over ten years and of course, I didn’t do this. But the craving itself mattered.

It wasn’t the thing I actually wanted.

I was grasping for an old version of myself that I associated with freedom.

And because I was about to have a baby, I was frantic that all my freedom was about to be zapped.

So if you’re in the early throes of motherhood and having kinky fantasies about someone other than your partner (like the Turn-On Tonic submission I received this week), that makes a lot of sense.

After the huge identity shift that motherhood initiates you through, it’s incredibly common to reach for a time when you felt erotic and free. Especially when that can feel distant in a sea of nappies, sleep deprivation, and barely having time to pee alone.

Not to mention the hormones.

The total rearrangement of your physiology.

Your relationship.

Your life as you knew it.

So instead of getting caught on the obvious object of desire - me dreaming of DC10, high as a kite

OR

our Turn-on Tonic submission who is dreaming of other men…

it might be time to get a pen and paper, feel your cheeks go red, and ask yourself perhaps for the first time:

What do you want?

Like… what do you really, really, really want? Beyond a zig-a-zig ah.

And is there a possibility this could be met without burning your relationship to the ground?

My bet is that doing this consciously doesn’t shrink a relationship, it can actually expand it.

So let’s look at the submission I received this week:

“I’m in a relationship, and the sex has never been wow. But now I’m postpartum, off hormonal birth control for the first time in my life, and I feel like I need more. AND I’m dreaming of other men.”

First of all, I want to acknowledge how big this moment is.

I’m going to zoom in on the postpartum piece for a moment.

When we have a baby, the experience doesn’t just change our body, it reorganises our entire system: physiology, identity, values, and sense of self.

Often, the hormonal landscape of pregnancy and postpartum mirrors adolescence. So whatever the background hum of your teenage years was, it can start playing loudly again now.

Motherhood is a threshold experience.

And thresholds crack us open.

Wanting more.

Looking for aliveness.

Questioning what’s not working.

It all makes sense.

With my first child (nearly four years ago), I restructured my entire business around being a mother and the relationship I was in ended messily. To say I was rearranged would be an understatement.

Now I’m in my first year with Rocky, and once again I’m in a profound identity shift, especially around how I work, how I make money, and where home is.

I asked my Instagram community what changed for them after birthing their babies:

• 64% said they experienced a complete overhaul of their life

• 36% said their life became unrecognisable

Babies are new life.

And new life creates forward movement.

From what you’ve shared, it sounds like the place where that movement is being felt most strongly right now… is your relationship.

You said something important:

• The sex has never really been “wow”

• Now you’re postpartum, off birth control, and your desire is roaming elsewhere

So let’s get super clear.

This does not automatically mean:

“Leave your partner” or that “The answer is in someone else’s bed”.

Often, when desire starts roaming, what it’s actually asking for is change.

And that requires bravery.

Let’s begin with honest introspection: internally and relationally.

There’s a quote about long-term relationships I love (and can’t find right now 😅), but the essence is this:

We are married to many different people over the course of a lifetime.

We shed skins.

We evolve.

And relationships either grow with us, or start to feel tight.

Right now, it sounds like you’re meeting a part of yourself that wants more aliveness.

So instead of asking:

“Should I look elsewhere?”

Try asking:

When I say I want more, what does that actually mean?

Can you describe the thing you’re missing?

A dynamic?

A way you want to be loved, fucked, or made love to?

Can you name it?

Chances are, you’re craving a feeling, not a person.

Your dreams are giving you information.

What qualities do the men in your dreams have?

What situations are you in with them?

What deeper need is being met there that isn’t currently being met in your relationship?

When desires aren’t named, felt, and consciously invited into relationship, they don’t disappear, they go underground.

And when they’re underground, they tend to come out in shadowy way sideways.

This is why so many affairs aren’t about wanting someone else.

They’re about not knowing how to ask for what we need, especially when it might create friction.

So no, you don’t need to tell your partner:

“I’m dreaming about other men.”

But you do need to get radically honest with yourself about what’s missing and find a way to bring that truth to him with compassion.

The moment you’re in feels like an invitation.

Not to tap out. But to lean in.

Could this become a catalyst for deeper sex and intimacy between you?

To me, this feels less like a reason to jump ship… and more like a threshold.

Love,

Grace

P.S. do you want to step into an experience where I’ll support you to meet the underbelly of your sexuality?

The underbelly is the place that unconsciously shapes how you have sex, the pleasure you can access, and the desires that move you. If something in your sexuality feels sticky, blocked, or painful: that’s where we begin. We dive into this on Day One of Sex Is Medicine.

You can enrol for free, here.

Right HERE.