A man once told Alice she couldn't orgasm until she looked at her naked body in a mirror and said, "I'm beautiful".

That moment didn't just change her sex life; it ended her marriage. And ultimately, it changed how she saw herself. It woke something up inside of her.

It prompted her to open a " happy endings" massage parlour — for women. 

Watch: How Jess Catterly's swingers club works. Post continues below.

So, there's this archetype of a woman I keep meeting.

She's in her late thirties or early forties. She's competent, she's capable. She's carried a household, a partner, children, a career. She's held the emotional labour. She's kept things afloat. But she's tired.

She's convinced that she isn't desirable. That her duty is to be someone for everyone else. And somewhere along the way, she's lost herself.

It's not this big, drastic, obvious change. It's more of a quiet, systemic one.

Society doesn't blink an eye when women give themselves over to others. It actually applauds it. Just think: the selfless mother; the supportive wife; the low-maintenance partner.

And the loss of sexuality that comes with it? There's a neat explanation for that too.

"Women just aren't as sexual as men," people say. Or worse: women aren't supposed to be the sexual ones.

We're more widely rewarded when we're not. Society loves it when we're demure, when we don't want too much, when we speak only when spoken to, when we serve rather than take.

So when I sat down with Alice on the first episode of my podcast, The Sex That Changed My Life, I knew exactly who she reminded me of.

She was that woman… Until she wasn't.

I met Alice about a year ago at an event.

Someone pulled me aside and said, "you need to talk to this woman! She runs the most incredible business!"

That business is called Goddess Glow, and it's a female-run erotic massage service designed specifically for women. A place where women can receive pleasure without performing, apologising or rushing.

They focus on internal massage — a fancy way of saying elite fingering — bringing women to orgasm through embodied internal touch, at the (literal) hands of pleasure doms. 

But before she was running workshops teaching couples how to pleasure each other, and orchestrating one-on-one internal massage sessions that can uncover an unknown capacity for pleasure, Alice was a 15-year-old girl who met her future husband at high school.

"We were inseparable," she told me. "My path was set at 15." And they were. They were together for 23 years.

By her mid-thirties, she was a mother-of-two living in the suburbs, unhealthily overweight, feeling invisible and sexually unwanted. The bedroom had died long before the marriage.

"I like sex," she told me plainly. "And I wasn't having it."

During COVID, everything unravelled at once.

She lost her job of ten years.

Her husband came out as queer.

They opened their marriage.

She underwent bariatric surgery and lost 75 kilos in under two years.

On the outside, she was transforming into the woman we're led to believe will free us of all our insecurities. Who will finally be able to fit into that dress! Who will be chosen, confident, successful, desired.

But the reality was an entirely different story. 

"You'd think going from a size 22 to a size six would feel like waking up in a movie with a new body," she said. "But I felt confused. I still wanted to stay dressed all the time."

She described elaborate strategies to avoid being fully seen during sex.

High-waisted underwear. One-piece lingerie that couldn't be unclipped. Skirts she could pull aside in intimate settings. Even in sexual scenarios, she didn't feel comfortable to be seen. 

"Everything was about staying covered."

Even as she entered what she laughingly calls her "late slut era" — club hookups, one-night stands, holiday flings at rooftop pools, sex parties — she was still hiding.

During this part of her renaissance, she gravitated toward submissiveness in intimacy. At first, she thought it was about stress, that she was sick of being in charge and making decisions and being a person for everyone else. But in hindsight, she sees something more vulnerable.

"If I wasn't leading anything, I couldn't embarrass myself," she explained.

"If someone asked me to take my top off, it was like — well, you asked for this. I wasn't putting myself out there."

It was protection masquerading as kink, because in truth, she didn't believe that anyone would see her as a sexual being.

She didn't like how she looked or how she felt.

Coming from a marriage where she'd become used to feeling unwanted, it was a feeling she couldn't shake from inside of her, no matter how much weight had been lost.

That is, until the night that she went on a second date with a man she had intense chemistry with. They'd met on a dating app. He was rugged, sexy, but gentle and calm.

She knew she liked him instantly. That I-want-to-rip-your-clothes-off kind of feeling. He felt the same way about her, so they booked a hotel room mid-way through the date.

And although she really wanted to have sex with him, to be vulnerable and experience pleasure, she still tried to keep her lingerie on.

"He said, 'I can't do my thing if you're hiding. You're not here.'"

And then suddenly she was standing naked in front of a mirror, eyes closed, while he stood behind her.

"I don't think I'd looked at myself naked in a mirror in 20 years," she told me.

He brought her close to orgasm with his touch… And then he stopped.

"You can't cum until you look yourself in the eyes and say you're beautiful."

I absolutely cannot do that, was what was going on inside her head. "But I wanted to obey him, so I was sure that I was totally going to fake it." 

But when she looked up, something shifted.

"I wasn't looking at my body," she said. "I was looking at my eyes. I was looking at the desire all over my face. I was looking at a sexual being." And then she had a powerful realisation: "Oh my God. I am sexy."

It wasn't about her weight. It wasn't about perfection. It wasn't about how her stomach looked or the loose skin on her hips. She realised that it actually wasn't about her external shell at all. 

"It changed me to — who gives a shit?" she said.

"My body is a vessel. And it's a vessel for pleasure. And that; that is sexy."

That orgasm was her first that wasn't performative. It wasn't about pleasing him, it was about witnessing herself.

"For the first time," she said, "I came home to myself."

"And when you've felt that, how can you go back to something that doesn't allow you to feel that way?"

At 37, she realised how much of her sexuality had been tethered to one person since she was a teenager. How little she'd explored her own desire, and how often she'd been the supporting character in her own life.

"I think it gave me main-character energy," she said.

And then she started noticing the women around her.

Divorcing. Separated. Newly single after decades. Horny, yes. Curious, yes. But deeply ashamed. Not at one with their bodies. 

"It's almost boring in its commonality," she said. "How low their expectations are."

Women who believed they "just couldn't orgasm". Women who apologised for taking "too long". Women who thought pleasure was optional.

And so she built a business around dismantling that.

Alice doesn't want Goddess Glow to be seen as a novelty service, as something that is a fun extra. She wants people to see it as something integral. A re-framing of their own body, of capacity for pleasure and how sexy that can be.

Basically, she wanted to provide the same ah-ha moment that she'd had in front of that mirror, for other women.

"I don't want women addicted to us," she told me. "I want them to go and demand this in their everyday life."

She's seen women leave marriages after a session. She's seen others return to their partners empowered, saying, 'this is what works, this is what I deserve'.

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What Alice realised is something many of us are never taught: our pleasure is not conditional.

It doesn't hinge on how we look. It isn't unlocked by weight loss, wealth, confidence, youth or perfection. And yet we're raised in a culture that assigns pleasure a value, as if it's something you earn once you meet the right criteria.

But pleasure doesn't live there. Our bodies were built to experience it. Not as a reward, not as a performance, not as something granted by someone else, but as a biological, human right. Pleasure is something we're entitled to because we're alive. 

Alice still has insecurities. She still sees her "flaws".

The difference is they no longer dictate her sex life.

"I feel neutral in my body during sex now," she said. "I'm not posing. I'm not trying to look appealing. I'm taking my pleasure."

And sometimes, that's the most radical shift of all.

You can listen to the full podcast episode here .

Feature Image: @itsaliceunscripted.