What does sex mean to you?
Do you enjoy pleasure for pleasure’s sake? Meeting a sexy someone, feeling turned on, and consummating the act with a fulfilling fuck?
Or are you more of a romantic, weaving elaborate fantasies about sharing a future with this person, as soon as you feel a spark of attraction?
Have you ever found yourself in a long term relationship with someone who you’re undoubtedly in love with, but not feeling super attracted to anymore?
Have you ever had a wonderful orgasm with someone, but then regretted it the next day, when you texted them a heart-moji and they didn’t write you back for 48 (or more) entire grueling hours?!
Have you ever let yourself imagine the sex you truly want, in great detail, as well as the type of relationship and attachment that you also really want?
Have you considered, or tried, alternative configurations?
Do you know where you’d even start?
When I ask you what you want, do you feel a little confused and blank inside?
Sex is For Attachment, Biologically
It is my belief that the biological function of sex, in addition to pro-creation, is Attachment.
We smell each other’s pheremones, fluid bond, and merge our energy fields together when we have sex. This results in a strong bond. There are chemicals involved (oxytocin), and on a spiritual / energetic level, there are also energy cords and ways that the energy fields of the people start being interconnected. Inter-dependent.
Humans need attachment because we are tribal creatures. We are not meant to be, or “do it” alone. We are healthiest when bonded to a community, family, or some sort of cluster of others.
In spiritual/energetic terms, this has to do with our Root Chakra. A feeling of safety, belonging, that someone has got our back, that we are supported. The root chakra must be healthy for all of the other stuff we are trying to do, be, and create to take off in a healthy way.
The nuclear family model is relatively new historically, more traditionally you’d see an extended family model or a tribal model of people living & working together.
Most of our cultural ideas about what sex and relationship are, and mean, are predicated on the nuclear family model. There is a concept of “the relationship escalator” — the idea of how things ‘should go.’
This looks something like:
Boy meets girl, woos her, beds her, puts a ring on it, buys her house with white picket fence, puts 2.5 babies in her, and the two live happily ever after as an emotionally and economically independent island with no real needs from others.
The destination of love, in this scenario, is the monogamous nuclear family model.
I have nothing against nuclear families. If anything, I’m a bit jealous that I’ve never had my own. I am sure that it is wonderful in many ways.
What I also know, because my clients are constantly telling me so, is that to end up in a monogamous marriage is not the end-all-be-all guaranteeing your happiness.
What I have had the blessing of, is abundant community. And safe, abundant exchange of sensual energy with friends and clients who I love in so many ways that there aren’t even enough English words for it.
To call them partners, lovers, clients, special friends, attachment buddies, walk-besides, soulmates, soul family, are things I could say. But these words lack a clear meaning. You might not know just what I really mean.
My experience is of opening to many colors and shades of love on a path that is certainly not for everyone, but which somehow I’ve found myself walking.
How My Time in the Alternative Relating Capital of the World Has Shaped Me
I’m talking about San Francisco.
A native Floridian, like most people in the country, I was bred to envision a successful relationship life as one wherein I was monogamously married, had a couple kids, and co-habitated with my partner.
Yet, for some reason, I said No to marriage and babies with my first serious boyfriend, and fled to San Francisco at age 23 instead to find… something.
What I found was many years of intense loneliness.
But it was interwoven with mind, heart, and soul opening workshops, trainings, ceremonies, initiations, and relationships and ways of relating that changed me forever.
And at the end of 18 years here, I’ve wound up living a very unconventional but quite satisfying life.
I have been in a SoulMate ‘partnership’ of sorts with a beloved man for 4 years. We have been monogamous, polyamorous, lived together, lived over an hour apart, ‘just friends’ who don’t have sex but still sleep naked together cuddling the fuck out of each other 2–3x per week and saying “I love you,” and sometimes even having 3 way sensual cuddles with other people, or facilitating tantra and intimacy coaching sessions together.
This man, my sweetie, is my attachment figure, and functionally, my best friend.
He is the person I turn to when I am in crisis, when I need to be held, and when I get triggered and need to work through some core wounding. He is my favorite person to sleep with and cuddling naked with him is one of the most blissful activities on earth.
And yet….
I do not want to have sex with him.
Nor cohabitate with him.
How We Aikido’ed Our Bad Sex Life
I used to want to have sex with him. Very much.
But as two people who each had a trauma history, some of that being sexual trauma and some being general trauma, we kept getting triggered or shut down in various ways whenever we’d try.
We tried many things, including taking a yearlong Sex, Relationship & Intimacy Coaching training together, to try to fix our sex life while we simultaneously learned how to hold space for others to do the same.
What we learned was that we were at a point where the amount of tension and trauma around sex was so high, that the kindest thing to do was to stop trying. Because trying was producing too much crying.
Reknowned sex therapist Esther Perel sometimes prescribes a “no sex rule” to couples who are having sexual difficulties, or too much stress around sex. We both felt a Yes to trying this. We needed a break.
I say that we “aikido’ed” it because the philosophy of Aikido is to meet your opponent with love. To only use violence to stop other violence. To embrace and invite in rather than try to push away.
My worst fear from childhood was to wind up in a sexless marriage, like my parents had been in.
I told my sweetie this.
Instead of re-assuring me that that would never happen to us, he — a practitioner of aikido — did the opposite.
He embraced it.
“Maybe that’s actually exactly what we should do. Be in a sexless marriage.”
I was pissed. And I resisted.
There was certainly yelling and tears involved.
But some months or some years later, I realized the wisdom of what he was proposing. Once I got out of my triggered scarcity mentality that said that he was the only person I’d ever want to sleep with.
And I realized, I have a huge asset here. A person who loves me, who I love, who will hold me, and be there, and 100% support my desire to also get my sexual needs met, even if that is with other people. Why not take advantage of that resource, and try this crazy thing out?
Experiment in Progress
I don’t have a happy ending to report. Nothing has ended.
I’ve had some other lovers, and experienced some of the flavors of sexuality that I was longing for, and that has felt good. And one of my favorite parts of it is always telling my sweetie about it, while he holds me and celebrates with me.
I’ve had jealousy and rage over his other lovers. But it’s been tolerable because he’s had the skill to hold me through it. And most importantly, not leave.
I’m happier living alone and running my business from a clean, beautiful, temple-like space, than I am cohabitating with someone who does not share my preferences around food, cleanliness, etc. And creating the space for another domestic partnership in my life — which may or may not include sex — feels right.
My friends sometimes ask me: “Don’t you worry that keeping him in your life will block you from magnetizing your partner, ‘the one’?”
The truth is, even though it’s scary as fuck to admit this, I am not sure if I am calling in Just One.
Judging from recent history, I seem to be Learning To Love The Many.
My job as an Intimacy Coach & Tantra Coach is to teach and share real intimacy and sensuality with people, which results in the creation of real love and care and sometimes even turn-on, even while it’s held within professional boundaries.
I’ve eaten from the fruit of the tree of knowledge — that I am capable of loving more than one person at one time, and of sooooo many forms of love, each of which comes with its own set of physical and emotional boundaries, and level of attachment and sexuality that feels right for that specific relationship.
After you experientially know this, it’s hard to go back.
The Delicious Feeling of Being Sensually Promiscuous
It’s like, when you’re making a new friend, in the Muggle world, you have in the back of your mind a menu of things that you may do together.
Share quality time by having a conversation about your lives and emotions.
Go to a movie.
Drink alcohol and dance at a bar.
Go shopping or on trips.
Make dad jokes and bowl.
Talk shit about your other friends.
Play video games.
Call them when you’re crying because you got dumped again.
Etc.
My Intimacy Menu
For me, when I am developing my relationships, my menu for how to share intimate bonding time with my loved ones is just a little bit different.
It is emergent based on the activities I most enjoy, and what I feel is organically arising in the space between myself and the other person. This is based on a Relationship Anarchy model of relating.
Some of my favorite ways of spending time with people are: quality time in deep, connected conversation, while lightly touching in a non-sexual way; cuddling by the fire on the giant bean bag; meditating together in Vajrayana Buddhist or Kundalini Yoga traditions; listening to or making music together; co-creating and eating delicious healthy meals in my comfortable and beautifully decorated home; doing domestic things and lovingly running a household together; co-habitating and being in the same house in different rooms both working on our own creative projects; and creating beautiful sensual and heart-opening experiences for other people together while getting paid for it!
So I based the ways I spend time with my friends on those things, which I enjoy much more than being in restaurants, clubs, or most conversation, which often feels superficial.
I have a class of friends who I enjoy cuddling with, but it isn’t at all erotic for me and I would not want them to be running sexual energy with me.
I have another class of friends who I cuddle with, and it is sensual and we both feel turned on, but we don’t engage in sex acts even though we may do a little clothed grinding, and there is the sexy potential in the air that maybe we will someday go further. And sometimes these do progress over time, and it’s quite nice.
I have another kind of friend who I start as being lovers with, but then we realize that dating or trying to be sexual is too triggering for us, so we cut off the sexual energy exchange but are so bonded that (after a break to reset our dynamics) we can then become close friends and attachment figures who become like family to each other.
I also enjoy the “sexy roommate” model, since domestic intimacy is part of what I enjoy but hasn’t worked too well with my main sweetie. So sometimes a person will enter my life and we live together and both feel nourished by tending and sharing the home, and exchange sensual energy while doing so, until that is over and then it becomes whatever it’s going to be next.
Oh. And we’ve barely gotten to sex.
There are also things that I like sexually.
Things that turn me on and make me aroused.
Those things seem to be more related to Newness, Romantic Feelings of having a crush, Awkward tentative secret attraction, and Forbiddeness, naughty-boundary-crossing type play (like having a crush on a roommate or coworker etc, where ya really … shouldn’t… but it’s so hot you do it anyway!).
Notice that those qualities are not so present in the typical monogamous LTR model.
Feeling pressured and obligated to
Be Attracted To This Person You’re Committed To and Figure Out How To Improve The Sex. (Now!!)
is literally the opposite of sexy to me.
There are other kinds of sexual feelings I’ve enjoyed that are built off long-term intimacy and love. They happen more rarely. It’s a newer skill for me. And ya know what? It’s really vulnerable and deep and requires a lot of energy.
So while I develop that skill, I am giving myself the gift of not depriving myself of the lower-hanging fruits of sexiness and pleasure.
Are you confused yet?
Do you think that all of this sounds awfully confusing?
It is.
It is 100% not for everyone!
But if you think it sounds kinda confusing, but also kinda amazing, maybe you’re more like me.
It requires emotional labor to invest in each relationship in my life and really mindfully study what shape best suits it.
The Relationship Anarchy Smorgasboard is a wonderful tool to help you consider what you actually want from the various people in your life.
Working with an Intimacy Coach like me is another super helpful tool, since that is an actual human who gets to know you, and helps you clarify your unique desires and create strategy and skill around pursuing them safely, with minimal damage to other people’s and your own heart, in the process.
Shame Share
It would be remiss of me to end this article without being real with you about the fact that I am a little scared to share this.
There is a part of me that is afraid that you are judging me, thinking I’m an idiot and a fraud, and that especially since I’m a Relationship Coach, I should have all this ‘figured out’ and have better / more blissful peak experiences of love, dating and relating to report. And probably should have just found “the one” and be happily married by now.
This part especially fears that other Relationship Coaches and Therapists will judge me. That they can see that the emperor is wearing no clothes.
So to this part of me who is afraid: I see you, and I hold you.
And I feel deep within my belly, another part of me that knows that I am not doing anything wrong by sharing. Or by living my life in the way that I am living. I am using all my tools and training to find love! And I’m regularly having experiences that feel loving, even if they are not perfect.
People probably *will* judge me. That’s ok! I judge other people all the time! :LOL:
*My* Happy Ending
I celebrate that I am living a life that is abundant with love, touch, connection, and care.
As a person with a trauma history, as well as a history of depression, social anxiety, loner isolationism, and “HSP” / possibly even being slightly on the spectrum with my unusual levels of sensitivity to noise, flourescent lights, other people’s energy, crowded public places, and the amount of slowness and attunement I need to feel safe being sexual with others, I think the amount of intimacy I’m currently experiencing is a huge achievement.
I’m proud of me for creating that, and standing boldy in it.
And I’m keeping an open mind too, about what’s coming next.
I take it one week at a time.
I know how to ground and root in myself and resource myself with my community of loved ones, not just relying on one person for everything and then being wildly disappointed.
And when angry, exhausted, sex and touch-deprived couples walk in the door of my office, wanting me to fix it, these are the skills I so often see are needed:
Taking it one step at a time.
Getting really present in your body in the moment.
Figuring out what you really want.
Monogamy, polyamory, relationship anarchy — none of them are easy.
The truth is, relationships are quite challenging for most people and whatever path we choose is going to bring up our core issues, but also — ideally — provide access to the medicine we need.
So I guess the medicine I need is a whole lotta love.
How bout you?