Sexual Authenticity Without Shame
By Dr. Alexandra Stockwell.
One of the biggest challenges we have as humans is shedding sexual shame. It’s no wonder that it’s hard because messaging contributes to it in pervasive ways. It abounds in religious contexts, rom coms, porn, and most families.
You might wonder how sexual shame is encouraged in such a wide range of contexts. The answer is a simple, easily understood concept, even though it’s complicated to heal and transform.
What is this concept? It’s authenticity.
Authentic sex is honest sex, sex that is real, based in emotions and sensations. It’s sex that’s erotically alive, mysterious, powerful, tender, intense, loving, expansive, sensual, and any combinations thereof. And if you’re not having this kind of sex, it does not mean you are broken. It means you haven’t learned how (yet).
Let me explain a bit more. I think we can all understand how religious teachings contribute to shame in sex. Making sex, and sexual desires wrong, problematic, dirty, and ungodly often results in people feeling their normal human urges are shameful and embarrassing. They must be overcome, hidden, and resisted as much as possible.
Rom coms don’t have the same intense agenda, but they contribute to feeling shame in the bedroom because they tend to convey that sex comes easily when the stars align. When you are with the right person, losing yourself in romantic kisses and joyful, passionate lovemaking is inevitable. When this doesn’t happen, or you don’t feel that way about your partner, you may conclude you are somehow deficient (or your partner is). Either way, we can feel shame that our yearnings seem unattainable.
Porn, on the other hand, is explicit about sexual acts and therefore seems to be a tool to increase viewers’ understanding and acceptance of sex. However, it too does a huge disservice for individuals and couples wanting to have sex, because the education it provides is false. Porn is problematically unrealistic. Typically a woman spends 45-60 minutes stimulating herself with lube and a vibrator before being ready to film with a man who has a ready erection. The result is that porn provides education about sex that is false. It misrepresents how it works, in that it leads viewers to infer that men touching women with a hardness and intensity, leads to gratifying intercourse, many orgasms for her, and pleasure for both of them. But that’s rarely how it works. It’s far more accurate to say that porn sex is essentially a performance (one that requires an extensive unfilmed warmup). So when someone watches porn, and thereby learns a great deal about how sex works, it’s a set up for disappointment when wanting to make love with another human being in real life. It’s quite understandable that the discrepancies between what is portrayed in porn, and how actual bodies work, would lead a woman to believe there’s something wrong with her because she doesn’t function as the women in porn do. Her male partner is likely to come to the same conclusions, wondering why his woman needs so much more attention to feel aroused and satisfied than he ever sees in porn sex.
She also needs to be treated with kindness and romance, and receive attention between sexual encounters, as the experiences outside of the bedroom greatly contribute to those in the bedroom. Similarly men need to feel respected and honored in order to be ready to have connected sex on a regular basis.
The result of all that I have written thus far is that 45-85% of women have faked orgasms while with a partner. In doing so, women are putting on a performance, and training their partners to think that something that isn’t actually pleasurable is.
What each of these situations have in common is a lack of authenticity. Individuals pretending to be what they aren’t, believing they should be something they aren’t, believing they should want sex more than they do, or less than they do, judging themselves for their skills as a lover, and any of the other infinite ways we can get in our own way about sex.
A lack of authenticity in your sexuality and sexual shame are intertwined. The good news is that when you work on one, the other also improves.
It’s often easier to work on cultivating more authenticity in your sexuality than to try to remove shame, after all cultivating something is often easier than trying to remove a belief, quality or habit.
So the question then becomes, how can you develop more authenticity in your sexuality? For that I have three suggestions.
1. Journal on authenticity in your sexuality. Feel free to use some of these prompts.
It’s valuable to be authentic while having sex because…
When I am not authentic and real about my sexual experiences it’s because…
When I imagine being authentic and honest with my sexual partner I feel…
2. In order to be authentic during sex, and about sex when discussing it, it’s essential that you know your own experiences, desires, challenges, and hopes and dreams. Take some time to write down some of your desires when it comes to sex. What kind of foreplay do you enjoy? How do you want to feel in order to relax enough to enjoy sex? What desires do you have that you’re afraid to express? What happens when you do express your desires?
3. Pick something that feels (relatively) small and tell your partner something true about you during sex, or about something you’ve enjoyed, or something you want to try. It can be as small as wanting the bed made before you have sex, or that you prefer you both shower before making out, or what kind of music turns you on. I am recommending you start small so that you practice with less confronting communications. Then you’ll be ready to do medium sized communications, and eventually bigger ones. Talking openly with your partner is a skill and it will grow with practice.
Alexandra Stockwell, MD, aka “The Intimacy Doctor,” is a Relationship and Intimacy Coach, best-selling
author of “Uncompromising Intimacy,” creator of the Aligned & Hot Marriage program, and host of The Intimate Marriage Podcast. She is widely known for her ability to catalyze immediate and profound shifts in high achieving couples who want it all–genuine emotional connection, sensual passion, and erotic intimacy. She’s deeply in love with her husband of 28 years and has 4 children.
If you’d like more tips on how to embrace your sexuality and enjoy more fun and pleasure with
your partner (and on your own) sign up to get 10 Tips to have more Pleasure and Fun in the Bedroom here: http://Alexandrastockwell.com/fun
