Sexuality and sexual problems
We invite your comments, reflections and questions about sexuality or sexual intimacy.
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Your post
You are right about TV being fantasy. I had a relationship I thought was great. However, my sex life became the person wanting me to make movies all the time during sex and take pictures. I love that person because this has caused a problem and the person has not called me back. I can't aford to loss my job if these pictures are posted.
I feel all alone. I'm not into going from relationship to relationship I know that doesn't solved anything. Sex isn't everything. It is part of taking turns in an intimate relationship. The other person has problems with self esteem when it comes to sexually issues also but non of this gets talked about.
sexual growing pains
I was sexually curious from an early age which I think was due to a combination of natural inclination and also early sexual invasion. I never actually experience the type of ecstatic joy usually reserved for sex until my late teens with an older partner. My sexual experiences before that had been in black and white and now there was a whole new range of colour. However, with this new awakening also came a dependancy that turned into a darker side of myself going through the world with an idea that to experience that feeling again I had to find the right person and the ecstasy that I had felt was not something I could do on my own. I began using sex and sexual partners as a kind of drug or a "gotta have it" compulsion that guided me through life I based decisions on weather my sexual relationships were fore filling this need for that "sexual feeling" I was looking for. After some years now in recovery from other addictive behaviors and thinking I have had to really look at my sexual identity and retune my senses around arousal to match up with my personal integrity of today. All though I have previously thought of myself as a rather sexually experienced and open minded person. (BTW I've come to learn that it's not the number of partners one has that makes one sexually experienced or confident) I have come to understand that sex can never be based on previous experiences as when ever I do chose to be sexually active today either with myself or with my partner it is still at times incredible vulnerable, fumbley or awkward. At times mixed with feelings of fear, detachment or misgivings around allowing myself to truly connect with myself or my partner which may or may not lead to orgasm. Also taking the idea of orgasm as the goal to define sex through out of the equation has allowed me to explore how I maybe feeling in the moment. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that sex can be scary taking the leap into the unknown on a pathway of pleasure that may not feel pleasurable inside your own body is confusing weather its alone or with a partner whether it's done a lot or a little but I feel what has helped me is that once I discovered that I was the one in complete control over what kind of sexual experience I could or could not have things started to change. Oh and breathing excersize really help to relax the mind and body too especially since I no longer have the option of consuming alcohol or stimulants to do that for me.
Your post started me thinking
Your post started me thinking about my own sexuality. When I was younger, I considered myself fairly openminded and experienced - but right now, thinking about the range of sexual experience that is possible - I think that I may even be somewhat of a novice. I agree that it is the quality of experience that is most important. What used to give me the rush though, was the excitement of the conquest, of the first discovery of a person - of being with someone at the begining of a relationship. It was hard for me to stay after that wore off. I would start fantisizing about someone new. Now I am in a long term relationship and I find it challenging. I go through periods of time when I don't feel attracted to my partner at all. This makes me feel sad. I guess part of it is that I don't feel attractive myself. I don't have the same body that I did ten years ago and I feel a little ambivilant about it. Looking back though - my sexual adventures now feel shallow and almost - not sure how to put it - pathetic. I realize that I was afraid of true intimacy. I was also narcistic. More interested in myself and how the other was relating to me - then in truely knowing who they were. I might as well have been looking in a mirror. I feel a little ashamed about that now. My self image of being a free spirit is definitly tarnished.
Hard to look at my past that way. And not sure where that leaves me in the present. I've been learning how to be in relationship I guess. And it isn't easy. I've worked how to compromise and still stay true to myself. But when it comes to our sexual relationship - I feel as if I am a beginner. Non of my past experience is any help at all. On some level - I need to let go of some ideal/ or idea that I have of what sex is. But more then that - I think that maybe I also need to let go of who I think my partner is - and maybe begin again - both of us - learning to get to know eachother again. I'm not sure how that works but I have a suspicion that we don't know eachother as well as we think we do.
the complexity of sex
Thank you for your post. You have very thoughtfully and honestly communicated the complexity of sex. Thanks for sharing your vulnerability, it touched me.
Sexual Anorexia
I just read a headline today in some paper about sexual anorexia, apparently it's the other side of the coin of sex addiction. Another thing to feel bad about, my sexual anorexia. I think about being sexual with my girlfriend, but just can't get it up (to use a physically incorrect analogy since I'm a woman.) So afraid of intimate touch, always feeling like a failure in the physical intimacy department, wanting the release, but physically unable to bring myself to it even though I do masturbate (never to orgasm) and do dream and fantasize...something in me died a long time ago, or perhaps retreated is the better word....missing out on something that is one of the big perks of being alive....feel sad...sorry for this disorganized post....no solution to it, have been in therapy for years, no solution to it...
Re: sexual anorexia
This is a very brave post and I'm in awe as I read it. I've had bouts of sexual anorexia in the past and it is particularly painful when a partner is involved. A teacher of mine once said that at the root of struggles like these is trust and how safe people feel with one another. I think he hit the nail on the head and is right in this assessment. I also believe I am right when I say you're not a failure.
Sexual abuse and fantasy
I want to thank you for sharing your experience of sexual abuse by your mother - it's not often that we hear this side of the issue. I too was sexually abused by my step-father, and had difficulty handling physical intimacy and sex. For me, sexual contact would trigger flashbacks - no matter how much I loved my partner I couldn't separate past from present. As I worked through my past in psychotherapy, I went through a period of time where I chose abstinance as a way of allowing myself time to heal and come alive in my body. At other times, I would go into fantasy so that I could experience sexual pleasure. Fantasizing helped me hold a focus rather than flee or flashback, but I felt very ashamed about needing fantasy, especially because I felt like I was betraying my partner. My therapist helped me understand what was happening to me and why, and she helped me develop compassion toward myself in seeing fantasy as the only way I could experience sexual contact and intimacy. Interestingly, once I accepted this and "allowed" myself to use fantasy without shame, the less I began to experience it. Now there are times when I am able to stay with my partner and focus our sharing of sensual and sexual pleasure.
The idea of flowing sexuality
The idea of flowing sexuality sounds extremely appealing to me. As a man who was sexually abused by my mother it has always been a struggle to get into let alone maintain a healthy sexual relationship with a woman. Sometimes just the idea of being touched is repulsive. I used to use alcohol to help me let my guard down and things worked alright with very little memory of the actual experience. Since I stopped drinking 20 years ago being sexual in relationship has been an ongoing challenge. I am aware that when there is the possibility of having sex with my partner I have to work to calm myself and connect with her so I can stay in my body and not become hyper-aroused and flee. When I am clear and awake I do quite well and sometimes enjoy making love. When I am tired I usually flee. I have been working with this in my therapy for many years and I have learned to be patient as these physical and emotional responses to possible invasion and then demand were created from when I was an infant.
I also want to thank you for
I also want to thank you for such an honest entry on your struggles with sex and relationship. My background includes sexual invasion by a mother who was both distant and smothering. My physical reactions to these things sometimes come alive when I am with my partner, and so it is helpful to know I am not alone or abnormal.
I really want to thank you
I really want to thank you for your openness and vulnerability. As a woman who was sexaully abused as a child by a man I rarely, if ever have heard openly from a man his struggle with being abused by a female and the difficulties that it has caused. I still very much wrestle with feeling comfortable around men in any sort of "vulnerable" setting and automatically put walls up, not based on who the person is but rather simply on their gender. So thank you for allowing me and others into your world and your expereince, as it generated within me a real feeling of compassion towards you and your struggle.
I am amazed, and sometimes
I am amazed, and sometimes shocked and alarmed, by how fluid sexuality can be. I thought I had everything sorted out for years and now I'm almost 40 and it feels like everything is up for grabs again - I'm single and frankly not sure if I want my next relationship to be with someone of the same sex, or the opposite sex. It feels confusing and embarrassing to be trying to figure this out and my age. I am very grateful for the ongoing support of my therapist who is holding this unknown with me and helping me to not feel so humiliated that I won't be able to move forward the next time I fall in love - whatever that might look like!
I'm in my mid thirties and
I'm in my mid thirties and have been exploring my sexual fluidity for ten years now. I understand and can relate to the confusion you've expressed as I've felt it many times myself. One of the greatest challenges I face is trying to find space in a culture that still holds very rigid notions of sexual categories: If you're not totally gay you must be totally straight. For me, the labels we use to legitimize our place in the world are far less important than how we connect with each other as human beings. My capacity to fall in love with people regardless of their gender has taken different forms at different times in my life. Something that seems to work for me is choosing a partner who holds a unique balance between female and male energy (the yin and yang, if you will) regardless of their gender. In this way my sexuality is fluid because it moves along a continuum rather than being confined to one clear box. As helpful as it's been to experience things in this way it still does not guarantee any clear cut answers in regards to relationships because there are so many different facets that take over, such as personal history and how people communicate with one another. My exploration of it all has provided me with some exhilarating experiences, ones I'm not sure I'd otherwise be afforded had I ended up on either end of the continuum. Yet I can't deny that I don't sometimes wish for a resolution - some moment when I will come to terms with my so-called 'gayness' or 'straightness'. What I'm discovering is that sometimes there is no resolution, and so instead I am trying to embrace my sexual fluidity as a state and way of being that will allow me to grow and find myself with each new experience.
I really appreciate what both
I really appreciate what both of the above writers have written around the fluidity of sexuality. A number of years ago when my marriage to a woman dissolved and I was single again in my mid-thirties; I began to re-evaluate my own sexuality. Having felt fairly sure since my twenties that I was gay, I began to contemplate what my next partnership might be and it occured to me that what I was really looking for was the right "person" - it felt refreshing and free - while I know that it will likely be a woman, I am really looking for the right kind of person to share my love, loyalty and life with.
sexual fluidity and intimacy
I am very grateful for the two responses to my original post about sexual fluidity. As I move forward in this, I am coming to realize that most of my feelings of embarassment and awkwardness about being unsure about my sexuality are actually more about feeling basically uncomfortable with building intimacy with another person. For me, it has been easier to remove it one step and think about bisexuality and gender, than to work with my feelings about choosing another person to be intimate with.
I look back through my life at the way I would always skip that step in relationships, not making choices, 'letting things happen to me' and then either passing on intimacy altogether or rushing forward into an intimacy that wasn't real, that wasn't grounded in anything.
As I try to be gentle and take things slowly in my current approaches to relationships, I am aware of so many feelings coming up. I had parents who seemed to me very glamourous: creative, beautiful - and busy. When I was tiny, I was madly in love with them and they were always either catching me up in a tidal wave of excitement or abandoning me. As I got older, I had to shut down my heart because the endless disappointments (and the crushing heartbreak of their divorce) were more than I could bear. I felt that I was truly defeated in my attempts to love them and to win their love. Regardless of the gender of the next person I engage in a relationship with, my work will be to reopen my heart and unlearn and relearn a lot of things about intimacy and love.
further reflections on intimacy
I wrote the above post some time ago and I'm just sitting here this evening, feeling extremely sad about how lost I feel. I can see how my early experiences set me up to experience states of intense arousal, longing and "skin hunger". I am terrified of this fragility in me being opened up and visible in an intimate relationship with another person. And at the same time, I feel terribly lonely and almost overwhelmed by my ache for a meaningful, intimate, physical/spiritual/emotional/mental connection with a beloved person.
ambivalence
I really hear your sense of ambivalence - of wanting and not wanting at the same time because of the sense of danger and the sense of loneliness. I know for me, this is also a difficult terrain to negotiate and yet it is an essential one becuase at base it is how I love right now - with this mixture of longing and fear. I am slowly allowing myself to be with this and not condemn myself or withdraw entirely from the challenge of facing this...but it has not been and is not an easy journey.
No one has sex like it's
Sexual desire and activity
Sexual desire and activity plays differently in everyone's life, and to say that wanting a long-term relationship requires giving up sex is inaccurate. It may be that way in your life, but that bears no relation on the lives of others.
For me I am learning more and
For me I am learning more and more about the complexities of sexual development and understand that "Sex is a quintessentially psychological experience" Finding a good therapist or counselor to help with sorting out these psychological complexities is so helpful.