We must free sex from shame and fear | Sex

I I have never been afraid of sex. Of course, it has hurt me a lot over the years, but I remain pretty undaunted. I’m not afraid to talk about it, nor afraid to have it. Lots of different things, with lots of different people.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s because there’s something there, some kind of pathology that has numbed me to the terrifying realities of (some) sexual relationships I’ve had: trauma from childhood or my rebellion against the last vestiges of my now renounced Catholicism. .

I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out if I was defective and if that’s why I feel rather shameless in my sexual pleasure, but I just can’t seem to accept the negative responses I find. there seriously. The way I act sexually – i.e. “with abandon” and in a “kinda slutty” way – is something I actually find quite amusing about myself. As if I’m a Sagittarius rising! Kind of a pretty fabulous thing about me that has no real-world consequences (a Sagittarius rising would be say that anyway…)

It probably seems hypocritical that I write under a pseudonym, but after talking about it at length with my editor, I believe that a certain level of privacy excludes the feelings of shame that come from the eyes and mouths of others, when I express to me how much you love and want to fuck. What I am is none of your business, but maybe it’s your business how to enjoy sex more.

I want to share this with you.

I went to from the valleys of self-loathing and up to the heights of illusory self-esteem in my life, and my relationship with sex is not something that has changed much over time. I just like it. Really. I like to be desired, I like to desire. I like to be thought of, or eliminated, or thought of then eliminated, or eliminated then thought of. And I like doing that with others. All that sex stuff that makes you feel funny in your stomach – I really enjoy that.

But how is this possible? I’ve asked myself so often. Everywhere I look we seem to have a gender problem. And yes, there are problems with sex culture, rape culture, exploitation and the cultivation of power differentials. But it’s not the same thing as sex.

I loved the one by Lisa Tadeo Three women as much as the next person, but I closed the last page of this map of the desire of all 21st century American women and thought “God! How depressing! So, all American women hate sex?

You see, it’s very easy to get bogged down in a lot of shame wondering why we have sex the way we do; with whom we have it; the “Why do I like the idea of ​​my wife sitting on a giant cream cake wearing frilly panties?” “And yet, it’s so rare that we actually discuss how absolutely wonderful and absolutely possible to enjoy sex. Have good sex. To clap with joy as your wife dons those French laces and plops down on a plate of Mr. Kiplings.

This does not mean rushing into every sexual opportunity like a sexual bull who must, above all costs, prioritize pleasure – that is neither practical, nor likely, nor possible. Some sex is absolutely terrible, some sex is a bedtime orgasm given out of duty and panic, some sex is just plain pleasurable; All right; it will be fine. But so much of the sex is fantastic: funny, cringy and camp. And that’s something we have to try, something we have to work on.

This realization was a revolutionary step for me: you are not simply born with a good sex manual. We have to work.

About three years into our relationship, my husband and I started sleeping with other people — a change born (if I’m being completely honest) of our own deaths in bed. I realized how much I still had to learn about good sex and how much of that learning I could also take home. I thought: Here it is – the point where I could tap. Where I could stick to obligatory oral sex on Christmas and birthdays and say, “You know, we’re so intimate” every time sex between friends comes up. Or I could grab the penis by the shaft and learn something.

What I learned, of course, was technique, what sounds to make at what times, what different people wanted and what I wanted too. But I also learned about connection, immediate and prolonged.

It’s this last part that I realize I love sex so much. The connection. So much so that I wonder if it’s really the sex I’ve loved so much all these years, or is it the ability to study people, our relationships, with an orgasmic edge at the end?

In Hull, when I was living there to shoot a film, I slept with a farmer from a neighboring town. He was very, very attractive, twice my age. And the sex we had all over my hotel room was truly overwhelming. Massive hands and natural musk. Our bodies enveloped and enchanted each other, something brand new created in the space between us: a whole new entity and I knew he could feel it too. We stood there, out of breath, unable to comprehend what had happened – and, perhaps better, no need to.

Afterwards, he was getting dressed and I casually said, “Where are you going tonight?”

His mouth tightened, before folding in on itself, and he cried. I was surprised: until now, we hadn’t even exchanged names. I held him naked, us two strangers, and he told me his mother was probably going to die tonight. He was going to the hospital to spend his last hours with her.

He stayed in my arms for half an hour and cried and cried and kissed me, while I rubbed his arm and lower back and told him everything would be okay.

He told me he hadn’t cried about it at all, but something about the liminal, unashamed space our sex had created had opened what felt like a portal to a deeper human connection than ‘he had difficulty reaching. “normal” conversation.

Sex can allow us, momentarily, to shed the roles we play in our lives. It’s often after sex that my husband and I have conversations that turn more toward the big things — regrets, whether we should have kids, what happens when the stars collide? – as opposed to bills to pay or what we’ll have for lunch.

But it takes work, I think.

We don’t inherit a set of sexual behaviors or an ability to know how to achieve, or help your partner achieve, orgasm – or even connection. It takes work to not be afraid of sex too: of my body and the way it changes with age; of their body and all the things it has that I consider better than mine. Liquids that I otherwise try to dispose of down the drain and odors that I spend hours and pounds masking.

A sex life is worth investing in. Like everything else, it’s complicated; it takes grace, forgiveness, and dexterity, whether it’s with a one-night stand who bites your lip too hard, or with a partner of over a decade who doesn’t bite it hard enough. Maybe this also requires therapy, or at least this Esther Perel https://www.estherperel.compodcast (Where should we start? Recommend).

Sex really showed me that we all reach out, all the time. Like the poor farmer from Hull. And we do it in different ways. In sexual life, sometimes this reach resulting from the meeting of the two hands is not always successful; Sometimes sex can be a holding or, in fact, the opposite of a holding – a building of barriers.

And yet, it is there that I have seen the greatest breadth and depth of humanity, and it is in this very breadth and depth that my faith in it is often restored. People who are grieving, alone, happy or broken-hearted, striving to connect, to be more than flesh. To be the thing where you meet in the middle, outside of your body and you’re not always alone.

It’s not something to be afraid of. It is not a pathology. It’s something to appreciate.