I love sex! I think about sex—a lot. I think about desire, attraction, arousal, pleasure, romantic connection, chemistry, sensations, and all the ways sexuality shapes our experiences of ourselves and one another. A component of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is the ID, the most primitive, instinctive, desire fueled component of our personality. If I were to solely act from the primitive part of my mind, our lizard brain, I would be fucking, sucking, kissing, licking, touching, dancing, and playing when I wanted, where I wanted, and with who I wanted (consensually and safely of course). Just now, I’m sitting outside on my patio and spotted a man standing in the window facing towards me. I wondered, “is he looking at me?” “Has he watched me before?” “Does he like what he sees?” “Should I perform for his attention?” “Does he want to fuck?” “What if he is the love of my life?” I have these thoughts pass through my stream of consciousness dozens of times a day. I fantasize over the possibilities that exist from a brief interaction with someone in the wild. The truth is most of my life I have been fixated on finding love, connections, and sex (more on this in a later post).
Sex is complicated. There are so many factors that go into desire, attraction, arousal, and pleasure. I am in the process of exploring the needs I get met through romantic and sexual connections. Not just the obvious ones, like pleasure, intimacy, or companionship, but the deeper needs that sometimes hide beneath. What does it mean to me to be sexually attracted to someone—and, perhaps more importantly, to have someone be sexually attracted to me? What does it mean to receive someone’s attention, to feel their desire directed toward me, to share my body with another person? I’ve realized how much is happening beneath the surface of these experiences. There are times when I have engaged sexually with people when I didn’t want to because I felt pressured, I feared rejection, I felt disconnected from my body, and internalized narratives about being a woman and prioritizing other’s pleasure.
Most of my life I have spent “performing” sexually. Engaging in sexual behaviors that I thought were sexy, would satisfy other people, and what I am “supposed to do” (per media (cough Cosmo), sexual health classes, friends, family, etc.). I spent more time worrying about what I looked like, sucking in my stomach, making noises to insinuate that I was enjoying myself, and playing a role than participating in the collective pleasure. It wasn’t until I started to explore my own body, what felt good, what I enjoyed, my fantasies, that I started to actually experience solo pleasure and partner pleasure. I started to ask for what I wanted and cocreate the spaces where pleasure can be shared. I stopped worrying about how I looked and if the other person was being pleasured and started to prioritize how I felt and my pleasure (most of the time – old habits die hard). My motivation for sexual liberation and reclaiming my power came after 7 years of bad sex. I am making up for lost time, one orgasm at a time!
More to cum (see what I did there 😉) on my journey to reclaiming my Oh’s, my sexcapades, the trouble my dirty mind gets me into, and my recovery as a people pleasure with anxious attachment and low self-esteem (phew) in relationships.
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