Editor’s note: Today’s column is penned by ADHD sex educator Cate Osborn. She also hosts Sorry, I Missed This, a podcast about the intersection of neurodiversity and relationships.
I have always been fascinated with the idea of giving up control. Having someone tell me what to do. I used to play elaborate games of pretend involving made-up ‘bad guys’ who would find contrivances to tie me up and hold me prisoner. Even then, I liked the idea of somebody else having to make decisions for me.
I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until I was 30, which means that I grew up not understanding there was a neurodevelopmental reason why I struggled the way that I did. I just thought I was a fuck-up. I believed fully that I must just be fundamentally lazy or not driven enough or I just wasn’t trying hard enough, and THAT was why I struggled. If I just tried harder, if I was just better, I’d somehow stop being like myself and become someone who had her shit together.
And so I tried. I tried harder and harder and harder and became a people-pleasing perfectionist, transforming and transitioning into whatever and whoever I needed to be to be the best student and best friend and best girlfriend and best wife and best (dog) mom I could be. I had no sense of myself, not only because I barely knew what I liked or wanted or desired, but because when I would finally find something, when that sudden hyperfocus would activate and I would need to know everything in the world about Egypt or archeology or the sinking of the Titanic, one at a time … they would eventually disappear as quickly as they had come and I was convinced that I hadn’t “liked” playing piano or sewing or collecting stamps or learning magic ‘enough’ to make it worth the amount of money I’d invested in the hobby or activity of the month, hoping it might be the one.
Nobody caught my ADHD because I was an amazing student. Of course I was, school was a place where there were rules and metrics by which I could judge if I was trying hard enough, because 100% was possible, which meant there was a possibility to be verifiably perfect. It meant I threw everything into school, ultimately earning two masters degrees in Shakespeare and very nearly getting my PhD. I was involved in every club and organization I could, played sports, did theatre, won awards and scholarships and recognitions and I was so, so tired.
And all that time, I wondered. I wondered what it must be like to be told what to do, to simply be told to sit, or kneel, and simply just… be, waiting for an order or a request or touch, having one solitary thing to do in that moment in the world, waiting with every cell of my body, knowing that with perfect certainty and crystal clarity I was entirely safe? What must that feel like? What would it feel like to be certain I wasn’t forgetting somewhere, to be sure I wasn’t running late, just for a little bit.
At every moment of every day, I am in a constant cycle of noticing and then remembering and then being reminded of that thing I meant to think of, and then going in the other room and remembering that actually I had meant to do something else or bring that thing from there to here but now it’s been left over there and then looking over there reminds me of that thing I meant to think of and the cycle repeats itself again.
And all the while, even as much as I have built systems and structures and the best ways of doing things (all discovered through a minefield of failed attempts), I’m still surrounded by the physical manifestations of every time one of those systems fails until it is all I can see when I look around me, the dishes and the laundry and the clutter and the doom piles and the shoe I can’t find and the books I meant to bring back to the library but it’s been six months and now I’m just embarrassed and the weird number of cups sitting precariously on surfaces next to me at all times and my dinner of two ice cream sandwiches and Wheat Thins because I am too exhausted to cook.
As I learned more about ADHD, the pieces started clicking into place. Of course my fantasy was a person whose role functioned as external executive function. Of course I wanted someone who would hand me food and tell me to eat, I constantly lost track of time. Of course I wanted someone who would tell me to do things, I struggled with every part of a task: starting, finishing, doing the steps in the right order. I wanted someone to inflict pain and pleasure as part of it because it forced me inside my body. My sensory and emotional processing make it really difficult to know what I’m feeling, and physical stimulus, especially deep, thuddy pressure, was the best way to explore it. I needed someone who could somehow understand how vast the infinite void of Choice can be and just….simply…choose.
And then there were my sensory processing differences—how incredible it must feel to be blindfolded or hooded to get out of the bright lights and loud noises, to have earplugs put in to remove all of the background noise, to have someone tie me up and know I would be staying, right there, having to lay with my eyes shut and my body stretched, un-hunched from a day spent over my computer, not having to make a single decision, given the opportunity to really feel what’s going on in my body without rushing, to come over and over until I know I’ve done my best to be, if you will indulge the phrase, a very, very good girl.
And yet in spite of the challenges, like so many other late diagnosed women, I am wildly successful. Despite the constant current of chaos running through me, I have built a company that educates and advocates for people like me. Despite the huge cracks that so many tiny details fall through, I have a book deal and a podcast and I make enough money to pay my bills. I have become a person other people look up to and I try to take that seriously.
Despite struggling for so long on my own, I get letters from people who tell me they didn’t kill themselves after watching my content. I get photos of babies born because couples met on my Discord server. I get recognized at Target. I have become a person who balances the weight of responsibility and a Really Cool Job. Quantifiably and verifiably, hundreds of millions of people have seen my face and have heard me talk about my sex life on the internet. That’s a lot of pressure. Of course I crave the idea of enforced rest. Of course I enjoy the idea of a momentary weight off my shoulders, finding a place where everything is quiet, a white-hot moment when everything goes blissfully and impossibly silent and I do not have to do anything but simply be.
The glorious irony in all of this is that I feel this immense pressure because I wanted to understand the things I most wanted relief from, but the things I fantasized about having controlled were, of course, ADHD all along. I worry, sometimes, that I won’t ever find someone who could reliably provide that—I wonder if they even exist. I want the James Spader Secretary ending where life is just tenderness, love, simple rules (and occasional bratting).
I worry I’m pretentious. Being intellectually curious is the most important factor in my life, but I mean it when I say I want to argue Shakespeare because I want to be wrong, I want to be gloriously, viscerally tamed, body and mind. I worry that that no matter what, my desire and need for structure turns into either my being a burden, being exhausting, or them gradually losing interest over time and days slipping into months since the last time they tied me up and choked me. I worry about success, if the book takes off, if the podcast goes well, will they understand they need to push me? Will they understand that I need them to challenge me? I worry they’ll never hold my face down on my desk while they fuck me from behind. Will I feel guilty that I don’t believe I could do it on my own? Is that shameful? Am I a setback to feminism?
Everyone consents, everything is negotiated but even after seven years of therapy I still feel like I’m too much sometimes. I worry that this is a commentary on my ability to self-love. Am I the bad guy? Could I be my own Dom? Could anyone actually control *me*? And on and on my thoughts go, until I start thinking about how nice it would be to have someone to catch me in my thoughts and bring me back to reality with a good, hard spanking… and so we arrive at the beginning. Or, perhaps more specifically here, the end.