Valerie proposed we play a game called "The Gift of the Selfish Lover." In the first round, player one asks player two, "What would you like me to do to you for three minutes?" and then vice-versa. In the second round, player one gets to do whatever he/she wants to do to player two for three minutes, and vice-versa. The exercise, Valerie explained, heightens your awareness of your own needs. This sounded like just the right practice for me.

"Make sure you communicate requests by 'sandwich complimenting.' For example, I say to Bruce, 'Ooh, I really like that you're licking my pussy. It would feel really great if you sucked a little harder on my clitoris... yeah, just like that... that's nice." Valerie spoke in a low, sultry tone that I imagined you'd hear on the other end of 1-800-CUMONME.

By this point, Bruce had placed his hand on Valerie's knee, and smiled at her with a spark in his eyes. I wondered if that was a cue for me to leave the room for a couple minutes. Instead, I said, "Um, I guess I'll start by being the giver." This meant I had to give to Bruce on his terms. This was the part I was used to.

Well, Bruce wanted his head rubbed. Now, I have a thing with hair and scalps, and despite Bruce's lovely curls, the thought of running my hands lightly through his hair made me cringe. But rules were rules.

I was about to fail at a sex game.

"Your hands are so warm," said Bruce, "I like that. Can you do just what you are doing but a little harder? Yeah, mmm... that's great."

This, I thought, could be a sexy game... if I weren't playing it with someone's boyfriend while his girlfriend was sprawled out on the massage table a foot away. I also often have an urge to laugh in awkward situations that others are taking seriously. I bit my lip hard to keep from giggling.

But when it was my turn to "receive" from Bruce, things didn't seem so funny anymore. "I don't know what I want!" I said to Valerie, feeling hopeless. You'd think it would be impossible to be sexually active for over five years and still not know what felt good for my body, but I was stumped. I was about to fail at a sex game, which is only a step above losing at patty cake on the depressingness scale.

"Allow yourself to be completely selfish," Valerie said. It's hard to be completely selfish when you've never thought that way before. Since time was running out, I asked Bruce to give me a light massage. He proceeded to do just that and I found myself "mmm-ing" and "aah-ing" at the feeling of his soft, warm hands going up and down the skin of my back. This selfish thing was turning out to be kind of fun.

"Okay, time's up!" cut in Valerie, just as I started to close my eyes and drift off.

In the second part of the game, Bruce asked me to lie down on my stomach and stretch out on the bed, then rubbed his hands over my hip and down my legs and gently kissed the nape of my neck. I in turn wondered if we could go back to the part when I was painfully detailing my sexual past. We wrapped up the session by discussing what parts of the game were hardest for me, and I explained, "It was like he was taking away a part of me. When I am in a situation where I'm submissive to the other person, I feel like my body is being taken away from me. I guess that's how I feel whenever I have sex." Wow, I thought, I'd never told anyone that before.

"Try not to think of it as someone 'taking away,'" advised Valerie, "but as someone giving you something. Intimacy is a balanced relationship between giving and receiving. The point of this exercise is to break down those interactions to identify what parts are keeping you from being fully intimate."

I left their apartment with a fresh bounce to my step. Now that I could see the mess that had been burdening me for so long, I had a feeling that great sex was within my reach.

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Q&A with Debby Herbenick, author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman’s Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction