Woman on Fire (15 page)

Protective barriers can quickly come up after letting your guard down in this sexual vulnerability. What if they don't like me anymore? Or as much as they thought they did? What if they reject me? What if they don't want to be as close to me after this? What if they use my vulnerability against me? Such underlying fears might have you feeling agitated, nervous, scared, or angry after a sexual encounter.

Sharing sexual experiences with another person also creates a unique connection to them, and emotions can run deep. Strong attachments can form, and attachments can lead to overwhelming emotional states. Tracking your own emotions related to sex and the
partners you are with is important so that you make sure you are having sex with people you want to be sexually vulnerable with and that you are managing your expectations and, possibly, theirs.

When your emotions about someone get intense, you can engulf the person if you don't manage your emotions well. You can avoid displacing potent emotions or emotional expectations that are unrealistic or inappropriate on your lover. People have different ways of thinking about sex and different needs around it. If for you it's about creating a deep, lasting connection with someone and taking the relationship to a more committed place, and for them it's about having fun or releasing tension, that's a setup for disappointment and hurt if you aren't clear about the different needs sex is meeting for each of you.

Emotional inauthenticity is a huge barrier for many people when it comes to sex. In my work with women, by far the most common emotional pattern that prevents them from having what they really want is people-pleasing. It is astonishing how prevalent this behavior is among women. People who are codependent, or overly preoccupied with what others are doing, as people-pleasers are, will tend to have low self-worth and feel chronically insecure. They tend to be reactive caretakers and spend a lot of time in anger, anxiety, and fear because they care-take everyone but themselves and that is aggravating. Because a people-pleaser seeks outside approval from others and is overly determined by the moods, thoughts, opinions, and actions of others, they tend to lack control over themselves and their own feelings.

Sexually, this is a recipe for not being able to be present or enjoy pleasure because the focus is always on what the other person is
thinking or feeling, how much they are enjoying it or liking you, what they want and need, or being afraid of losing control. As a people-pleaser, sex will rarely be about you and your enjoyment, and you will never be fully present to the experience.

If you are someone who people-pleases, you are going to be emotionally inauthentic in sex if you don't look at how your people-pleasing shows up. People-pleasing sexually might look like:

• Having sex when you don't want to
  
• Telling your lover you like what they are doing sexually when you don't
  
• Agreeing to sex when you really want affection or something else
  
• Agreeing to sexual acts you don't want to do
  
• Resenting your partner for desiring sex
  
• Not asking for what you really need sexually
  
• Pretending to like sex when you don't
  
• Having duty sex or receptacle sex (you feel obligated and you only do it for your partner)
  
• Faking an orgasm
  

Ultimately your people-pleasing puts you at risk of emotional inauthenticity as you pretend to be okay about situations which you are not, and it can also lead to some deep-seated resentment that will not serve you or your relationship. It will feel like self-betrayal—and it is. That self-betrayal keeps you in a place of emotional self-estrangement and poor self-care. That doesn't feel good.

We plant our emotions in our bodies, and sex can tap into those energies and stir them up. Vaginal or anal penetration can tap into
emotions we don't even realize we are holding inside. There is some real credence to the term “anally retentive,” which usually means someone is wound up a bit tight or is controlling. We hold tension and can hold anger in our anuses, at our root. Sometimes a penetrative experience in either the vagina or anus can unleash a lot of emotion, which is one reason there can often be tears, laughter, or even rage during or after sex. If you don't address your anger, you will take it out on yourself, your partner, your body, or the relationship. Left untended long enough, the frustration and resentment will build, leaving you angrier.

“FUCK YOU JOURNAL”

When I went through my divorce I started a “Fuck You Journal.” When I was angry or at risk of spiraling down with my story, I would write everything I was feeling and thinking in the journal and get it out on the page. I'd write in big bold letters if I wanted, almost screaming at the page. The page could hold that for me and I got to get it out. I'd feel the release and move on. I kept it throughout my recovery and healing, and after it was over and I no longer needed it, I never looked at it again. It was an outlet for me and I didn't mean half of what I wrote, but I was angry and needed to say it all, unhinged and uncensored, which was incredibly cathartic.

If you are going through something that is bringing up a lot of anger, resentment, or strong emotion—or if you've never really gotten in touch with your anger, start a “Fuck You Journal” and let yourself have that receptacle for your worst feelings, acknowledging that feelings are temporary. It's an opportunity to recognize what your feelings are and express them. You can then choose to take some productive action with the energy it brings up in you if that feels like a next step.

In general, women need way more permission to be angry and need more tools to express anger in a healthy way. There is a lot to be angry about. Sexual inequality is a major issue that affects us all: the many ways women are subjugated to men; the inequity of sexual pleasure and enjoyment between men and women; women's invisibility and men's privilege; racism and the way women of color are impacted, to name a few.

We all need healthy emotional outlets. When was the last time you went into the woods and just screamed? Or stacked the pillows on your bed and beat your fists into them? In the day-to-day, working out or other physical activities can release anger. Many people use their art and creativity as a place to express it. Baths and swimming can help. Anger needs to be released in some way or it will implode on you or explode on someone else in careless ways.

The four basic emotions are anger, fear, grief, and joy. There is nothing wrong with anger. It is the energy that moves you toward action. Like all emotions, it is trying to tell you something. Nothing would get accomplished in the world without some healthy anger propelling it forward. If you stop judging your anger as bad and begin to see it as an energy, you can choose to use it productively and become more adept with it. You might have a lot of anger built up around sex. Let it out. Give it a healthy outlet and pleasure will have more space to exist.

When my nine-year relationship started to unravel, so began the most profound shift of my life, one that forever changed me. I became aware of my walls and of her limitations, and we went to work. As someone who was helping people with sex and relationships for a living, I still had plenty of my own blind spots. Anyone with an
abandonment wound will tend to stay too long in unhealthy relationships and give too many passes for bad behavior. I gave myself and my partner those passes.

We worked with two different therapists until the ultimate demise of our partnership. The point of our therapy was not to “save” the relationship. What was important was the process of that work and what it taught me about myself, what it taught her about herself, and realizing what we'd each accepted in this relationship that was unacceptable and in some ways even unwittingly cruel. Our codependent patterns exacerbated the core problems in our ability to relate. Her withholding and my control were the perfect match.

The pain of our breakup was immense, bigger than any pain I'd ever experienced because the betrayal was so complex and multilayered. I sank into a deep place of grief in my recovery from that breakup. I cried every day for a year. A friend would simply ask, “How are you doing?” and my eyes would well up. I felt so much loss, not so much in the relationship changing, because that possibility had been on the table for some time, but for the painful way it changed. For our inability to stand with each other in our own power to say what was true. But ultimately I accepted that we needed to experience the breakup just as we did in order to learn what we each needed to learn, to be able to grow. It was perfect as it was, and we were each freed.

To free myself, I had to change my story. I had to stop telling people what happened in the breakup. Every time I'd see a friend who didn't know what had happened and started asking questions, I'd feel compelled to retell the story until I finally realized I was just rewounding myself over and over. So I stopped telling it. And eventually the story changed.

I remember clearly the day I got to what felt like the bottom of my grief. I was home alone and I cried and screamed for hours in my room. I let it rip. The pain was so big. I had not only lost my partner, I'd lost my best friend, my travel companion, my favorite playmate,
and the woman I'd made a life with for nine years. I wanted to call her so she could feel how big my grief was. I wanted her to feel it too. I even dialed her number, but I hung up. I couldn't leave a message. I knew it was not about her. It was about me.

This grieving day was catalyzed by an old close friend who had written me a letter that was hard to read—but it was the most real and deeply loving thing anyone had said yet. He'd watched me be in pain and he knew that place himself. He also knew I needed to grow, let go, pack it up, and leave the pity party. He gave me a compassionate kick in the ass that propelled me to move forward. He cared, and he demonstrated it by showing up honestly in his letter. I knew the power of his words. They cut in wisely and sharp.

I read the letter a few times and let it sink in, burned sage to clear the air, lay before my altar, and wept like a baby. The grief was intricately connected to my mother leaving when I was seven years old. I'd done years of therapy about that, but I knew that original wound was the anchor to the deepest part of my pain. Everything about that early abandonment was triggered. There was a profound connection to the betrayal patterns in my family in my breakup.

Then something almost magical happened.

In that deep, seemingly rock-bottom part of my grief, I opened up. I felt profoundly connected to the world. My face was swollen and numb, my body heaving and exhausted, yet my yoni was tingling and alive. I know that anytime my genitals pulse like that, there is something I am supposed to pay attention to. I felt a deep place of oneness with humanity, with every person who had ever experienced a loss—every mother who lost a child, every lonely person who lost their love. It was comforting, for what experience is more human than grief and loss—besides love? I'd experienced the deepest love I'd ever known with this person, so naturally the other side of that incredible love was this deep loss and huge well of grief.

Out of all of that came incredible lessons about who I had been, who I had allowed myself to be in the relationship, and what was no
longer acceptable to me moving forward. I stopped crying on a dime or feeling so much anger at the painful flashbacks and memories that would pop into my mind.

As I healed and I saw how my friends and loved ones were able to show up for me (or not), I also learned on a soul level what I needed from those relationships and I was able to set boundaries—either just for myself or ones I communicated to those I loved. I learned who could hold me in that tender place and who could not. People tend to siphon themselves out quickly when you have a big emotional need as I did at that time. I didn't judge them for not being able to be there when they couldn't. In a mature move, I honored their inability or limitation without holding it against anyone and I honored my own needs by focusing on the people who
could
be there.