Sex: Talking Can't Be Silent

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It's hard to talk about sex. Always. I usually ask clients at one of the first meetings - what is their sexual experience? Sometimes this question shortens the path and leads to the place where it hurts. And sometimes they answer me: "Yes, everything is fine with me, I don't want to talk about this at all." We do not even say - six months, a year.

And then, sooner or later, we start anyway. And the words scatter, do not give in, and clients with anguish look at me in the hope that I will prompt these secret words, help to overcome embarrassment and horror. And at the same time they tell such incredible stories about sex, masturbation, orgasms, pregnancies, which blows pagan antiquity and stove ash.

Words and pleasure

Sex is something that most of us fail to talk about. At first, you can't talk to your parents, then it's awkward to stutter about it in public space, then it turns out that there are no words to talk with lovers, husbands, wives. With children, too, does not work. The maximum of parental liberalism is a short conversation about "where did you come from." Sperm, eggs. Contraception, AIDS. But contraception isn't really about sex, is it? This is not really about the pleasure that we can give each other?

"I try to make sure he doesn't watch porn on the Internet," a friend of mine tells me about his teenage son. And I guess that an invisible drama is unfolding in their relationship right now: one carefully hides even a shadow of interest in sex, the other is ready to cut off this interest at any moment, that is, literally - to castrate. One does not risk talking about his experience, which does not seem to him successful and "victorious", the second feels like a spy in his own home.

So sex turns into an enemy, which is everywhere, from which you need to hide small children, who need to be driven out of the house somewhere in the backyard, where it will roll around in a lump of shame, anxiety and excitement. But everything pushed into the background - no matter whether at home or consciousness - can rush back at any moment. And the absence of words creates a special magnetized zone where myths and fantasies get stuck. Moreover, these are not affectionate grandmother's tales, but, as a rule, disturbing horror films.

Over the past 100-120 years, if you count from Freud, we have created a "culture of sex" that did not exist before. Just like a few centuries ago they created a culture of cooking. And, perhaps, in three or four centuries, the desired simplicity, clarity and lightness will arise in the sexual sphere. In the meantime, we make our way in the twilight, all the time coming across the fact that, as in a children's song: "there is a priest, but there is no word."

Magic or project?

For example, a rather new idea for our culture that sex must be present in the life of a "normal" person. There is no sex, therefore, the person is abnormal. And here some of us fall into a neurotic clinch, because it is embarrassing to have sex, it is impossible to talk about it, but it is also impossible not to have it. Some of them taxi out somehow, but it is obvious that for our psyche this is a non-trivial task.

Or an even more controversial idea (by the way, not directly, but follows from the previous one) that sex "is needed for beauty and health." Here sex takes on the features of a magical object, a panacea for diseases and ills, an elixir of youth and beauty. More often women believe in this myth, attributing to sex the meaning of a magic wand that can make a woman "real" and fill all her inner voids.

And here a disappointing discovery awaits the woman. It turns out that sex is not a magic wand that turns Cinderella into a princess, but a project involving two, more like growing carrots together. Okay, orchids. If you successfully distribute roles and responsibilities, study the characteristics of the soil and experiment, then after several seasons (days, months, years, everyone has different ways) the harvest will be excellent. But this, alas, does not guarantee us a wonderful harvest in every season. Heavy rains, droughts, thunderstorms, diseases happen, and our "carrots" (sorry, orchids) react to all this.

Overkill or the norm?

Or, for example, the myth that a family can be considered complete only if it has sex. But this is not the case either. The family - to use the definition from systemic family therapy - is a shared life, time spent together and an experience that all its members share. Families are not grounded on sex, but on a completely different, much deeper foundation. You will be surprised how many families in Russia live without sex, let alone months or years. And they don't stop being families. And they do not become "abnormal", because the concept of the norm is very flexible here, and sex is still an excess, a luxury, without which a family may well do.

But out of our excitement, we really want to regulate everything that relates to the field of sexuality, and rate everything. And the desire to give an assessment as soon as possible is always a sign of great anxiety, when it is impossible to think calmly. Homosexuality is horror. Sexual experiments are dangerous perversions. But not experimenting is scary: suddenly the partner gets bored and starts experimenting on the side. It is indecent to want sex, think about it and fantasize. Not wanting is dangerous. In general, we endlessly walk through the minefield.

Pill for fear

The most soothing fantasy about sex is that you can learn something about it. Read somewhere, memorize, and then everything will go like clockwork. I read several articles about erogenous zones, or how to excite women correctly, or how to excite men even more correctly, or about the G-spot, and everything is protected by knowledge.

You come to sex, buttoned up. As invulnerable as a skier. Technically prepared. Unusually proud of himself: no one taught us, but we ourselves figured it out ourselves, and now we will demonstrate the most competent, most professional sex, with caresses, orgasms, acrobatic quirkiness of poses, certainly better than that of our parents!

And where the hell is that embarrassment and fear from. Nowhere and never is disappointment so complete and so offensive. Because, and you understand this gradually, the G-spot is in your head. And good sex requires practically no technique, but it requires you to listen very carefully to yourself, and your partner even more attentively. And ask. Is this how you like it? And here? And stronger? And slower? And pat? And pinch? How's that for me? And lick? And sniff? Can you pet me here now? What else? What do you want now? And what do I want now?

The more we talk about it, the more arousal, after all, the brain is the main erogenous zone. And what excites most of all is not lacy underwear, a pumped-up torso, chest, not legs, not abs, but the trust that we can experience in a partner. This is a simple rule, but often overlooked.

Unbutton all buttons

Trust is even more complicated than sex. Sometimes I ask clients about him. In response, they ardently and reasonably explain to me why they cannot be trusted. The partner and his good intentions, children, doctors, food, weather. In principle, you can't do it yourself either. Someone honestly says that they do not understand at all how it is to trust. What does it look like? And this is really difficult, almost impossible to explain how impossible it is to describe the taste of parmesan or cloudberry to a person who has never tasted them. Trust also has a taste - when your body is not overexcited in the presence of your partner, but relaxed, when you are physically better with him than without him.

If you go a little deeper in inquiries, it usually turns out that you cannot trust your body either. By definition, everything that it may want is harmful, vicious, it must be kept in mittens and not allowed to "bloom". He, too, cannot have good intentions, and, of course, there is a catch in his sexual desires. This story is mostly female, but in the last ten years it has been increasingly male.

Suppose a hostile distrust of the body cannot be overcome. You can leave this crossroads along different paths, but there are two most used roads, and, as they say, "both are worse."

Or our inner conflict is projected onto a relationship with a lover, and then sex turns into a battlefield, passive aggression, watchful tracking of others and covert manipulation. And then we can ask what he likes and what excites. But only in order to know the weak points of the enemy.

Or we mix sexual desires with others, much earlier - the desire for maternal affection and tranquility. Then the sexual partner becomes not just someone who, like us, is excited and wants pleasure, but also someone from whom we expect reassurance and confirmation that everything is in order with the body. That which is called in psychology "mother object". And either he does not stand this role and the relationship ends, or this role is assigned to him, and then sex ends in the relationship.

Sex is tricky. And those who urge "not to complicate" actually get the least pleasure from it. Good sex requires us to completely unbutton, trust, and obey. To the lover. Your own instincts. Provide your body for the use of another person. Feel free to use his body. And to believe that it will not harm us and will not destroy anything. This is not possible with every partner.

It's incredibly scary. It is both difficult and beautiful. But what kind of orchids are blooming in this field.