Letting Go: Why Strong People Crave Surrender in Intimacy

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When you’re the kind of person who makes sure things don’t fall through the cracks, it’s easy for people to assume you want to be in charge. But do you? Or do you, like me, just step up because if you don’t, nothing happens? Because the alternative is a whole lot of I don’t know, what do you wanna do? until the plans dissolve and you find yourself ordering takeout alone?

If you’re like me, you don’t love leading—you just don’t want everything to fall apart. It’s tiring, right? Always being the one keeping things together, making sure everything runs smoothly. And after a while, you start to wonder—when do I get to relax? When do I get to let go?

For me, that place is intimacy. After spending so much of my energy holding things up, that’s where I want to put everything down. That’s where I want someone else to take over. But that always seems to throw people off. If I’m the one who keeps things together in everyday life, why wouldn’t I be the same in bed? If I’m always making sure the plans actually happen, why would I suddenly want to hand over control?

Maybe you’ve felt that, too. Maybe you know what it’s like to have people look at you and assume you must want to be dominant all the time—because you’re decisive, because you’re capable, because you don’t let things slip through the cracks. And maybe, like me, you can be that person when you need to be. But that doesn’t mean it’s always what you want.

It’s taken me a while to realize that none of this is contradictory. That needing to let go sometimes doesn’t mean I’m not strong. That craving surrender in one space doesn’t mean I can’t handle responsibility in every other. And that’s okay.

Someone making my decisions for me has always been a turn-on. I think it's the giving of that stress to another that does it for me.

The hard part? Actually saying that out loud. Actually telling the people I’m with what I need instead of expecting them to just get it. But hey, if I can run a business in a community where flakiness is practically our birthright, then I think I can handle this, too. Surrender and Intimacy may be my new mantra. lol