Trying to put this story to paper is really strange for me, but not for the reason you’d think. Yes, I’m talking about sex and bondage, and if my mother, with whom I was just speaking on the phone while opening up this very Word document, knew what I was doing, she would probably go into cardiac arrest.

However, that’s not really why this is strange. It’s strange because I don’t feel strange about it at all.

Writing this doesn’t feel awkward or shameful — it just feels like I’m telling the story of how my ex-boyfriend and I had a wonderful, beautiful relationship that I will always look back on with fondness.

And how once I asked him to tie me down while we were having sex. More on that later.

My ex and I first got together in the spring of my freshman year. He was 22 and I was 18 — a fact that worried my parents for about two seconds, just before I convinced them of his absolute greatness.

Because let me tell you, he was the perfect first boyfriend. Not too clingy, not too distant. He took me out on the greatest dates, he had great taste in movies, he made me feel like a better person when I was around him.

My point is, our relationship was full of that sappy love stuff. I became that gushing freshman girl who the other girls were jealous of (“You’re so lucky!” was an exclamation I started to hear often). I was lucky, and I knew it. I felt lucky every day and I made sure to remember that, because, as my realistic brain would tell my ever-loving, sensitive heart, who knew how long this was going to last? And after it ended, if it did, who knew what my other relationships would be like?

It didn’t take long for me to feel comfortable with my new boyfriend — who wasn’t technically my boyfriend at this point yet, just to make that clear. Anyway, I felt comfortable with him, both physically and emotionally. Though we had sex pretty early in our relationship, he never made me feel pressured into it. And he never made me feel as if I had to hide my emotions from him; I remember once, when I was in a rather unhappy mood and didn’t know whether he’d want to hang out with me like that or not, he said, “I’d rather have a sad you than no you.”

All right, now for the good stuff. We were making out, things were getting heated, and I must’ve felt extremely confident in myself because, if I remember correctly, I put on my most sexy, mischievous smile, batted my lashes, and sweetly asked if he’d want to tie me down. He surprisingly said yes and set about finding appropriate materials to do so.

He tied my wrists to his bed frame with some of his ties (finally putting the strict dress code of corporate America to good use, if you ask me) and we got down to it. The sex was different than usual — it was fun to take my mind off the pressure of performing and impressing him, and so it allowed me to concentrate and explore my own pleasure.

All in all, the experience was great. An item crossed off the bucket list, a wonderful sex story to tell my very close friends (and, apparently, the entire readership of The Hoya as well) and, most importantly, an experience that brought my boyfriend and I closer together in a way that I’d never imagined.

It’s important to mention that this experimentation didn’t define our relationship by any means — while we joked about purchasing fuzzy handcuffs, he never did tie me up again. And maybe you’d think that’s because it wasn’t our thing, or it only needed to happen once for us to get the sexual and emotional benefit of it. In actuality, it’s because we realized that tying me down severely limited the number of positions we could get into, which would’ve ended up creating boredom for our particular sex lives.

Being emotionally comfortable with my ex was just as important, if not more, to the act of sexual bondage, as being physically comfortable with him. And that’s because tying me up wasn’t just some fun sexual thing for us — yes, it was sexual, and yes, it was really, really fun — it was a way for us to express trust while dating in a time period and environment that makes it all too hard for such a feeling to be expressed. To each their own, I guess.