So this week I released a free call on the Damsel/Princess archetype, and the top 3 traps that this mindset creates for modern women. In case you missed the call, this week’s article is about trap #2.
The second trap that keeps you from stepping into your full power is that you wait on someone else to do it or to figure it out. It happens in big ways and in small ways. You might recognize it from something with your partner or family about things around the house: for example, that feeling of mentally growling every time you go to turn on that damn light bulb in the hall closet that burned out three weeks ago and that you haven’t replaced yet because it’s just out of your reach and you don’t know who stashed the ladder away where and you’re running out the door anyway—there’s no time for it today…
The same thing happens with sexuality. If you don’t invest time and energy into your sexual satisfaction, it becomes like that damn light bulb in the hall closet that burned out so long ago, you can’t quite remember; you just feel irritated and annoyed each time you go to flick the switch and nothing happens.
Sexuality is an incredibly important part of life for everyone. But for most people, it’s never urgent—until something catastrophically bad or traumatic happens, like an STI, an unplanned pregnancy, or an assault. Our culture’s approach to sex focuses on risk prevention: keeping the bad stuff at bay should be “enough”. We’re not taught to prioritize pleasure and to actively pursue the experiences we want to have.
Betty and Sally Draper from AMC’s “Mad Men”
Women in particular are taught that being a “good girl” means being the receiver, and never the initiator, of sexual activity. (I think of Betty Draper, the alpha-housewife of AMC’s “Mad Men”, snapping at her pre-teen daughter: “You don’t kiss boys. Boys kiss you.”) And of course, we’re fed all sorts of cultural BS about how true love is supposed to guarantee sexual compatibility and how great sex “should just happen automatically.”
It’s a tangle of terrible sex education, the ubiquity of sexual misinformation, a lack of role models around conscious sexuality, and good old patriarchy, but it’s EXPERIENCED as the frustration that comes from not asking for what you want and getting annoyed when you don’t get it.
Of course, no one is a mind-reader. It’s not fair to expect your lover to know exactly how you like to be touched without being told or shown. But the subconscious mind doesn’t care about what’s logical or fair. It just knows what it’s not getting. (I think this is what explains the virality of “50 Shades of Grey”, by the way: it satisfies the fantasy for the perfect lover who is handsome, sexually intriguing, confident, rich AND obsessively in love with you.)
Waiting for someone else to give you the sexual satisfaction you crave is like waiting for someone to finally change a light bulb that they don’t know has burned out. Learn to speak up for what you really want: be honest about what’s not working and what needs to change. And stop placing the onus of responsibility on other people. Find the ladder, make yourself a new one, change the damn bulb yourself. Until you do that, you’re just standing in the same place, flicking a switch in the dark.
