Turns Out I Might Be a Middle

It’s the kink that explains so much

I slept with a stuffed animal until I was 27. At the time, I had no idea it was part of my kink.

It was a stuffed elephant that I named Robert.

Mr. Austin bought it for me in the first months we were dating. It wasn’t the only gift he gave me during that time, or even the first one, but it’s the one I cherished the most.

I loved everything about Robert. He was adorable, soft, and comforting to hold and cuddle. Everything about him just spoke to me.

I even got a little territorial over him. When I had kids, I kept it out of their reach so they wouldn’t ruin him. He was mommy’s toy, not theirs.

I eventually stopped sleeping with Robert in my arms, but it’s not because I outgrew him or realized that a stuffed animal shouldn’t be part of a grown-ass woman’s bedroom. I only stopped because I had worn him out beyond repair.

I had literally loved my stuffed elephant to death.

After making the hard decision to get rid of Robert, I thought about getting another stuffed animal to replace him. But I managed to talk myself out of it. I told myself that buying a stuffie at my age would be kind of embarrassing.

I reminded myself that the only reason I slept with a stuffed animal is because it was the perfect shape and size to snuggle with. I could replace it with a small pillow — which is exactly what I did.

But now I think it was more than that. And even though I never grinded, humped, or tried to fuck my stuffed elephant, there was an underlying sexual edge to the reason I clung to him for so many years.

Like so many of my personal sexual discoveries, this one started with me struggling to find porn I could enjoy.

The Right Kind of Virgin Porn

I’ve always had a thing for first-time sexual experiences. Sexual discovery and the thrill of finding out all the different things your body can do and feel are two of my biggest turn-ons.

I love getting off while trying to put myself in that headspace where I’m shuddering with pleasure and feeling someone’s touch for the very first time.

I’ll often masturbate to memories of my first sexual experiences — losing my virginity, getting manhandled for the first time, the first time I had sex with a strong emotional connection. Not because they were the best but because those moments threw me into something completely new and unfamiliar.

I’m aroused by other people going through those things, too. I’ve had sex with a few virgins when I was younger, and leading them through their first time was incredible. I got to see how amazed they were that they were inside a girl. Witnessing them experiencing something so mind-blowing made me feel genuinely privileged to be a part of it.

Naturally, I’ve tried finding porn that depicts the same kind of thing.

That was tougher than I thought it would be.

Looking for first-time experience videos didn’t get me the kind of thing I fantasized about. Mostly, it turned up videos of older men examining young pussies to see how tight they were before fucking them. Those creeped me out instead of turning me on.

I had better luck searching for virgin porn, but that was still hit or miss. Most of the stuff labeled as virgin porn is just a regular sex scene with girls who weren’t old enough to be MILFs yet.

There was nothing virginy about most of it. None of them were roleplaying the excitement of a new experience. None of them were making it seem like they were going through that first-time euphoria. Most of them were very experienced with cock and didn’t do enough to hide that fact.

If I was going to find the kind of porn I was really into, I would have to figure out what my fetish was called — if it even had a name.

What was the right word to describe that beautiful mix of being overcome with pleasure when you experience new physical sensations, naively exploring something you’ve never done before, and feeling like your eyes have just been opened for the first time?

That’s how I discovered DD/lg.

DD/lg stands for Daddy Dom and little girl. It’s a subset of BDSM in which the domination takes a nurturing and caregiving style and the submission takes the form of a regression to a younger mental state.

Sometimes, it involves actual age play, with the little pretending to be a child and the daddy acting out the role of an actual caregiver.

For most littles, though, it’s more about capturing the right kind of feeling and immersing themselves in a much younger headspace.

It looks different for everyone who practices it, but some things about it were immediately appealing to me.

There was so much of the innocence that I fetishize. There is a lot of sweetness and playfulness in the way littles interact with their dominant partners. I especially identified with the way they approached sex with such wide-eyed wonder.

And I’m really into daddy doms, too, so there’s that.

I had finally found people who got the appeal of making youthfulness a part of their sex play. The only problem is that there was too much youthfulness for my personal taste.

The more descriptions I read of girls who liked to wear onesies and suck on pacifiers while getting fucked, who found comfort in coloring with crayons and baby talking, or who could spend hours watching Disney movies while cuddling their teddy bears, the less I could identify with their kink.

I liked Frozen just fine when I watched it with my kids, but I’m not into watching cartoons or Disney movies on my own. And if I’m going to color anything, it won’t be with wax crayons and it better have some nudity.

It was really cool and fascinating to see all these people embracing what works for them. But these little princesses were either roleplaying at being children or enjoying a space that let them be childish, and that wasn’t exactly what I was going for.

But it turns out I was on the right track. Because it took an even deeper dive into DD/lg for me to come across the concept that unlocked everything for me.

I may not be a little. But I’m pretty damn sure I’m a middle.

Finding My Middle Ground

Middles are a subset of DD/lg. Unlike littles, they don’t regress to a time when they were playing with stuffies while watching The Little Mermaid.

They go a little older than that.

There’s no strict consensus on what counts as a middle, but it basically involves a desire or need to live as a tween or a teen, or to inhabit and fuck in that headspace. Like other forms of DD/lg, it involves a kind of regression, but to where you were (or wished you were) somewhere between the ages of 11 and 17.

My middle space is decidedly on the older side. I love things that make me feel like I’m 16 or 17 again. I’ve seen that referred to as being an adult teen, but most people still seem to refer to gals like me as middles.

The more I explore what being a middle means for me, the more I realize that there are a lot of different facets to it. Some are sexual, but others aren’t.

I’ve never fully outgrown the teen girl aesthetic.

I’m drawn to all things cute, bright, and colorful. I love pinks and pastels. I go nuts for bubblegum decor.

I’ve got a constant internal style struggle because of it. I feel like I’ve got two sensibilities. There are my adult preferences and then there are my middle ones. They both coexist and play nice for the most part, but sometimes my middle desires feel like they’re being snuffed out by my grown-up choices.

I sometimes daydream about having a whole room in my home dedicated to my middle side. I want it to look like a sixteen-year-old girl was given a stack of gift cards to shop with and absolutely no rules about how her room should look. It would be colorful and pretty, soft and plushy, and everything in it would feel vibrant and energetic.

And then I could just sit in it when I need to spend time in my middle headspace.

That conflict played itself out with my hair color, too. I spent my teen years dyeing my hair in different bright colors. It was a big deal for me. Every dye job felt like an expression of the real me.

But as I got older, I was sick and tired of not being taken seriously. I wanted to be treated maturely, so I would go back to brown. But fuck did I ever miss those bright colors. I’d admire women my age or older rocking fantasy hair colors and it would fill me with envy.

Now, I’ve fully embraced purple. People take me seriously enough and I’m better at not giving a damn about those who don’t. And it’s a relief because the bright colors help me feel like myself because they feel like an extension of my middle mindset.

My middle space is also where I go to balance myself emotionally and find comfort.

When I’m having a bad day, I get sick, or I just feel grumpy, my favorite thing to do is lie in bed and watch things that are aimed at teens. I’ll watch vloggers who have an audience mostly made up of people who aren’t old enough to vote. I’ll watch drama-heavy reality TV. And I’ll binge seasons of YA TV shows.

Those are my guilty pleasures, but they’re a little more than that. They’re the kind of thing I used to watch when I was in my last years of high school. And watching all the teen drama, the dishy gossip, the overblown tension, and the naive sexuality brings me back to that place emotionally.

It gives me a vivid reminder of all the things I loved about being seventeen, when everything felt like a new discovery and everything I did felt like an exploration.

It’s something I need to do fairly often. It soothes me. It’s my version of coloring books and pacifiers.

But the thing about being a middle that makes it feel more like a kink than a quirk is the way it permeates my sex life.

Middle Sex

My middle nature has a strong influence on who I find attractive.

With women, I mostly gravitate to others who share my sensibilities. I get the most turned on by girls who have a cute and sweet vibe to them.

With men, though, my preferences are more rigid. I’m attracted primarily to daddy figures.

I can only sustain an attraction to men who are nurturing and giving. They don’t need to be older, but they have to have a caring attitude and carry themselves with a lot of empathy — right down to the way they fuck.

I’m attracted to men who have a confident and dominant attitude, but I’m turned off by men who are domineering.

I’m not into submissive guys because the youthful middle in me needs a guy who can take the lead. Someone who can let me sink into the fantasy that I’m being taken by someone with more experience. I need them to create a safe and comfortable space for my shy, submissive way of exploring sex. They need to be comfortable being the bigger person in our play.

But anyone too aggressive, domineering, demanding, commanding, or imposing rubs me the wrong way. When I was seventeen, I craved independence and that’s part of my middle headspace too. For a guy to turn me on, he has to respect my autonomy, my brattiness when I want to assert it, and my need to explore on my terms and discover things on my own instead of being told what to do.

Being a middle doesn’t just influence who I want to fuck. It also changes the way I fuck.

I’m not into age play. I don’t like to pretend I’m actually seventeen or have my husband tell me he’s spanking me because he’s disappointed with my report card.

It’s more about inhabiting the right attitude.

I want to have sex in a way that allows me to be bubbly, playful, sweet, and cute all at once.

I want everything to feel positive. I want to get giddy. I want to feel overwhelmed with attention and affection.

I get off on approaching sex like I haven’t quite figured it out yet. When my husband fucks me, I want it to feel like he’s showing me how good sex can be. When I give him a blowjob, I act like his cock is a toy I’m exploring with my mouth.

Putting myself in that space makes me more responsive to everything I experience. I have big reactions to the pleasure I’m getting. I channel my enthusiasm for every touch and sensation I feel.

When I get in the right middle space, everything that happens feels electrifying — almost like I’ve never experienced it before.

On those nights, my husband says I react to every orgasm like it’s my first one.

Sometimes, that’s because it’s exactly what I’m fantasizing about.

I’m not into roleplaying or acting out my kink. But I do love to get lost in those fantasies during sex. It happens especially when I’m getting a pussy massage because that gives me enough time to play out long, drawn-out scenarios in my mind.

When I’m doing something, I’ll often fantasize that it’s my very first time trying it — even though I know I’ve actually done it hundreds of times.

I look for the things my husband says or does that make it feel like he’s leading me through the action. Not just because I love the feeling of him being in control but because I can imagine he’s introducing me to new sensations.

When he says “spread your legs for me,” I might pretend it’s because I have no idea what I’m doing and need to be told.

When he brushes his hand through my hair when I’m going down on him, it helps me imagine that it’s the first time a cock touches my tongue and he’s patiently allowing me to figure out what to do with it.

When he blindfolds me, it makes everything he does to me a surprise — and I use that to fuel the fantasy of discovering how it feels to be touched a certain way.

Basically, I’m always trying to bottle up that feeling of experiencing something sexually for the first time and the way it transforms you. I do whatever I can to relive those moments, even though almost all of them happened twenty years ago.

Exploring My Middle Mind

I’m still exploring what being a middle means for me and figuring out how I can use it to have better sex, the right kind of self-care, and create the relationship dynamic I find most comfortable.

But learning that I’m a middle has already helped me understand myself so much more. It took different aspects of my personality that I thought were unconnected and linked them all together.

The kind of decor and art I’m drawn to, the porn that turns me on, the way I comfort myself when I’m down, the people I’m attracted to, the way all my attempts at being sexy end up being cutesy and juvenile, my experience gap fantasies, and even my love of praise and sensual domination are all products of my middle mind.

Whether it’s curling up to watch Vampire Diaries because I’m in a mood or closing my eyes during a pussy massage so I can fantasize it’s the first time a guy is touching me down there, it’s all finally making sense.

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