This chapter is for a subsection of women, and the people who want to understand those women better.
A therapist friend of mine once asked me if many of the women I work with ever confess that they’re just done with sex. My answer was, “yes.”
They’ve had the babies and many years of sex with their partners. They’ve never felt very sexual. It was never that important to them.
They’re done!
When I hear a woman make such a resounding statement, I imagine a long road of frustration, obligation, unmet desires, and unspoken words leading up to that absolute declaration. Sex is not about obligation, although women have been told this for eons of time
Until relatively recently women were considered the property of men. A woman’s role in life was to have a family and solely support her husband’s goals. In many parts of the world this remains the case.
In my own lifetime, a woman had to get her husband’s signature to get a credit card. Women weren’t allowed to serve on a jury or have access to Ivy League education! The list goes on.
It’s helpful to keep these facts in perspective as we look at the role sex plays in many women’s lives.
Birth control, access to abortion, planned parenthood, marriage of choice, jobs outside the home, financial independence, consent conversations, female sexual pleasure — all are (relatively speaking) game-changers for women’s independence and their relationship to sex.
It’s only been one generation since girls walked out of sex education with two takeaways:
1. Keep your legs closed if you don’t want to get pregnant, and
2. Boys only want one thing. (In other words, fend off the aggressors or your life will be ruined.)
Desire, pleasure, seduction, and intimacy were not at all part of the sexual
curriculum or conversation (and still aren’t, largely speaking).
Boys weren’t taught how to be good lovers, and girls resigned themselves to whatever happened. This was usually unfulfilling, due to the lack of understanding of the female body (and soul).
These days, women may consciously understand that sex is more than simply an obligation to keep a relationship intact. Times have changed, right? Not according to the numbers, sadly.
Low libido (or lack of interest in sex) is present in 26.7 percent of premenopausal women, and 52.4 percent in post-menopausal women.
Is it a woman’s nature to be less interested in sex, especially as she ages, or is it the kind of sex she’s having that leaves her cold?
If sex is just intercourse focused with minimal mental, emotional, and physical foreplay, a woman’s inherent nature won’t be engaged, nor will the pleasure centers throughout her body that awaken arousal.
If she’s not educated to view sex as a source of her own pleasure, she’ll lack the tools, and even the inclination, to identify what she wants in sex and to ask for it from a partner.
If the way a woman experiences sex doesn’t open her to connection and intimacy (whatever style of sex she’s having), she’ll eventually become resigned to feeling sex is more for her partner than for her.
Women are raised to be good at giving, at putting other’s needs first, but applying those skill sets to sex can eventually lead to low sexual interest and even resentment.
Obligatory sex isn’t just unsatisfying for women; it’s equally unsatisfying for their partners. I often hear them express their longing to feel desired by their partners.
We’re all learning as we go. Every generation is evolving our sexual awareness. Relatively speaking, we’re still in the early days of a sex education that represents female pleasure. Women’s sexual empowerment is now part of the conversation. We’re all doing the best we can to wake up to the mistakes and inequalities of previous generations.
But, behind the bedroom doors, conscious and subconscious attitudes and beliefs still linger. After all, we were raised by parents who were influenced by their parents and so on.
If you understand intergenerational trauma, you know that trauma experienced in one generation affects the health and wellbeing of descendants. This intergenerational download is almost all subconscious.
Ninety percent of our brain is a subconscious collection of unintentional thoughts, behaviors, and actions.
How many women were indoctrinated into;
* saying “no” to sex from a young age?
* taught to hate their bodies based on societal standards of the time?
* raised to believe that female sexual pleasure isn’t important enough to speak up about?
* told that to be a good wife, they should put their husband’s pleasure above their own?
* being called a “slut” and socially ostracized by their peers if they appeared to enjoy sex too much?
* faking orgasms or performing to please a partner? or
* never taught how to talk about sex with confidence and clarity?
Early messages about female sexuality combined in our subconscious minds create confusion and ambivalence around our own sexuality.
When I hear a woman say she’s done with sex, I hear her saying;
she’s done with a sexual paradigm that may have never worked for her in the first place.
She’s done feeling disconnected from her body and desires.
She’s done with a lack of intimacy.
She’s done with hardening herself to the belief that sex is not meant for her pleasure.
In other words, she’s done with sex - as it is.
In such instances I hope that ‘being done’ can be transformed from an
ending into a beginning. When one door closes, another can open.
Walking through that door can be a vulnerable journey.
A woman might need to transmute her resentment into a reengagement with pleasure and a discovery of her own sexual empowerment outside of the societal messages she grew up with.
Can she learn to identify her sexual desires? Can she embrace sex as an integral part of her womanhood, to be shared and celebrated? I certainly hope so. My coaching practice has taught me that at least in some cases, being ‘done with sex’ is a reaction but not necessarily an endpoint. What is ever-evolving is the desire to create something better.
If you or your partner are part of this subsection of women who’ve emotionally disconnected from sex, starting to talk about sex is where it all begins.
Share this chapter with one another and open up about your sexual histories. Ask each other questions about what it was like growing up:
* What were the messages you received (verbal or nonverbal)
about sex, masturbation, and nudity?
* How were you conditioned by the attitudes of family or friends?
* How did you learn about sex, and how do you wish you’d learned
about sex?
* What are your early memories of sexual feelings and
experimentation?
Understanding our partner’s relationship to sex, based on their life-history, is an invaluable part of a vibrant sex life. Be a good listener. Stay curious. Don’t judge or try to “fix”. Change occurs when we feel safe enough to share our honest thoughts, and when we feel loved and accepted, even in the midst of our current limitations.
If you want to learn more about working with me as your coach, let’s talk.
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