#2: Tolerating your sex life.
Some years back I was doing a private workshop for about 30 married women in a living room in the Oakland Hills and in a moment of self-effacing honesty, one of them said: “Sex is my last chore of the day.” In other words, they’re just tolerating their sex life.
Ugh. My heart sunk.
I said something like, “Sex shouldn’t be a chore you feel obligated to do. It is something that gets to feed you and feel good to you so you look forward to it. If it feels like an obligation to please your partner, you get to look at how to develop your sexual life together so that you feel you are each being nourished by it.”
The shocking part was that when I asked who else in the room felt this way, most of the hands went up. I thought, “Damn, what is going on here?”
Sex is not an obligation and it is not something to tolerate. No one needs to give their body over to someone else and lay there tolerating it because they feel like it’s what they are supposed to do.
I hear about the things people are tolerating in their sexual lives a lot. Things that, a lot of the time, they don’t even realize they are tolerating.
We sometimes get so used to something being there or it being a certain way we cease to even notice what we are doing.
Examine what you are tolerating in sex.
As in the above example, the thing I think heterosexual women, in particular, tolerate is not having the pleasure in sex that their male partners have. And if there isn’t a lot of pleasure to be had for you in sex, it’s no wonder you would avoid it or just do what you can to have it be over as quickly as possible.
There are many ways we tolerate sex:
- Are you tolerating things about your relationship that you really shouldn’t be tolerating?
- Tolerating things about your body or your health that you shouldn’t be tolerating?
- Are you tolerating a lackluster sexual life that has very little energy being put into it?
- Or are you not getting the sex and/or pleasure that you want?
- Are you not even masturbating, connecting to your own body, or your own pleasure–much less your partner?
Your sexuality can become a dormant part of the self, something that you don’t even acknowledge anymore when this kind of toleration becomes habitual and on-going.
Are you sacrificing sex for your relationship?
Many couples settle for whatever they have, thinking it’s normal. They don’t get any help or talk to anyone about it, and just stay in their unhappy bubble, convincing themselves that all the other things they love about their partner are enough. In a word, they sacrifice sex.
Many people make tradeoffs with sexuality for other things—to be secure in a relationship, and to have other things they want in their lives.
I often hear from people:
“I really want to be with this person, they have all of these wonderful qualities.”
“We have fun together…I really care about them but there is no sexual passion.”
“There is no real good sex or pleasure, but we are best friends!”
For some people, they had that sexy juuj in the beginning and it fades; and for others, they never had it at all. This is something to look at, and ask yourself if having that joy and that pleasure is important to you. If it is, why are you tolerating not having it?
Why are you tolerating no orgasms or not as much pleasure as your beloved? Or on the other side of the coin, why are you allowing your beloved to repeatedly not be satisfied?
If at the end of the day, it comes down to choosing your sexuality/sexual happiness or your relationship, which would you choose?
Most long-term couples sacrifice sex
Sacrifice is what many long-term couples do when it comes to their sexual life.
They sacrifice sex, pleasure, fulfillment, and ecstasy so they can have a comfortable life and not have to disrupt the routine they are used to. They tell themselves they stay together for the kids, and that they really enjoy their partner and have fun together. And that may be true.
The question is, at what price? And are you okay with that? There isn’t one answer…maybe you are. That’s okay if it is.
But if you really want to have a vibrant sex life and you are in a monogamous relationship, then it will require working on it with your partner and getting out of your comfort zone.
You do not have to sacrifice sex AND, it’s not going to be comfortable.
How to stop sacrificing & settling
I believe wholeheartedly you can have it all. You really can. Stop telling yourself you can’t or that you don’t deserve it or that it’s just not in the cards for you. It is.
But you have to do the work. You have to bring it to the fore and keep it there and you can’t bury your sexual issues. You have to address them head-on with compassion, vulnerability and honesty.
When you don’t settle, the world opens up
Settling is just not living fully. Why would you choose not to fully live your one precious life? It goes by fast and there is so much to experience and explore!
Your sexuality is a gift you were given to allow yourself to experience life more deeply, passionately, sensually, and meaningfully. The transformation that can happen when your sexual vibrancy is alive and fully expressed is astonishing.
When you have mind-blowing sex that transcends this world, you are unstoppable in your ecstatic living. When you are so present in your ecstasy, you feel and experience your body in a totally new way.
Who wouldn’t want that? Who wouldn’t want to explore the road to sexual ecstasy? It’s there for you just as much as it’s there for everybody else.
So if you are settling, you have to ask yourself what exactly you are settling for. What is being exchanged? Why do you believe you have to accept this unsatisfying exchange? What would it mean to not compromise all you want to have in a partner/lover/relationship?
You are an erotic being and your erotic energy is what you use to create everything in your life. When you don’t tend to it, it dulls your energy, vibrancy, and life force. It dulls your creativity. It makes everything less fun.
Let’s go for more fun, more ecstasy, more play, more pleasure. Let’s go for being in a sexually vibrant relationship. That doesn’t mean it will be perfect but breaking through your tolerations will go a long way.
(Read Part 1)
