Most people fall into one of two sex camps: one is filled with happy campers living their sexuality to the fullest and the other is filled with people who struggle with insecurities, anxieties, conflicts, and fears about their sexuality. The latter people are often their own worst enemies without even realizing it. As I explained in Part 1, Madelyn was one of those people.
MADELYN NEEDED TO STEP OUTSIDE HERSELF TO SEE HERSELF
The first step was helping Madelyn to rework the story of her life for me, from childhood to the present. The hardest part of it was to talk about her early years because she felt guilty and ashamed about revealing family secrets. It seemed disloyal. It made her feel like an ungrateful daughter. The more she talked about her life, the more blame she laid on herself for mistakes, defending parents who were neglectful and men who abused her.
My Method: I suggested she try to imagine herself as a child she knows and loves. How would she feel to see that child treated the way she was treated?
As she thought about protecting a child, what kinds of things a child should hear from their parents, she had an awakening. It changed her life. Her family always made her feel like a trouble-maker and outsider. Now she realized the real story of her life was that her parents silenced and misdirected her, that she felt powerless and trapped in their home, and that the kind of man she was with reminded her of the man who hurt her as a child. These epiphanies helped us understand why she had developed a pattern of dating bad guys. The next job was helping her to break those patterns.
TRY THIS COGNITIVE TECHNIQUE: Reframe your life from an empowered adult point of view, as if you were the caretaker of that child. How would you treat them? What would you change? Build empathy for the child you once were. Calm their fears. Reassure them. Understand them. That is the gateway to breaking self-destructive patterns.
SHE CONFUSED PASSING LUST WITH TRUE LOVE
If the human clit stuck out from the body the way the human penis does, would women be more in tune with the reality of their genitalia? Definitely. They would know when they are aroused. They would masturbate more. Who knows, they might be sending clit pics with the same enthusiasm men send dick pics.
Genitals, regardless of gender, are as alive as the rest of our body. They do not shut off, even when they’re at rest. Your brain is awake to sexual opportunity 24/7 and where your brain goes, your genitals will follow.
Madelyn’s conservative background had taught her to suppress her sexuality. She had never masturbated. What little sex she’d had was not really good. Then she met a man who made her hungry with desire. She found her drug and she was hooked. It made her feel like a sexy woman for the first time, at least at the beginning.
Maybe that’s why lust fucks women up even more than men. Guys get accustomed in youth to random erections, so they don’t mistake lust for love as readily as women do. And, since men touch their penis through the day to pee, and as random erections make a guy aware he’s horny, he’s also more likely to feel natural touching his penis and jerking off.
My Method: Education Madelyn needed facts on female sexuality. Her upbringing instilled a sex-negative, patriarchal message about women’s bodies and lives. She needed to learn that it’s normal for women to want sex as much as men. I taught her that female libido is as potent and thrilling as male libido, and a woman’s sexual appetites are bigger than most men’s. I sent her articles and she bought books on female orgasm. Her entire point-of-view on her own sexual potential started to shift.
TRY THIS LEARNING EXPERIENCE: Educate yourself with facts. Depend on medical sites, psych papers, or hit a bookstore and pick books by experts that target your specific sexual curiosity: do you want to be an expert at self-pleasure? improve your orgasms? be a more active and giving partner in bed? Everything is at your fingertips on the Internet.
Be a good student: take notes, memorize anything you find really interesting, and then do something you didn’t have time to do in school — sit back, think about the new information, and let facts sink in. Then, you can go on to put these facts into practice, see how it feels, and learn to enjoy the body you have.
SHE WAS TRAINED TO BE PASSIVE
Madelyn’s upbringing made her see men as authority figures. From her father, she learned that women were second-class citizens. From her mother, she learned that there were nice girls and there were sluts, and Madelyn was going to be a nice girl if it killed her.
Ironically, the more sexually disempowered the woman, the more likely she will become prey to users, narcissists and predators who sense they can manipulate her the way her parents or authority figures once did. If you ever wonder why women are ashamed of masturbating, uneasy removing their clothes, and reluctant to have oral sex, chances are someone in their past made them feel that sex was dirty. They live that belief.
How many women hide their kinks or bisexuality and lesbianism? And how many still live according to what other people say they should or should not do? Women are often pushed to marry the first guy they really like, made to believe that sex is a duty not a pleasure.
Madelyn gave all her power over to her boyfriend: the power to make her feel like “a real woman” who had a “real man,” the power to give her an orgasm — and the power to hurt her without repercussions. When you give people that kind of power over your life before you establish a history of trust and friendship, you never know how it may turn out. In Madelyn’s case, it turned out depressing. (If you’re submissive, the stakes are even higher!)
My Method: Learning to masturbate to orgasm was Madelyn’s first step towards owning her own body. I advised her on good beginner toys, gave her an orgasm goal (2-3 times a week, minimum), and helped her get over her own body shyness. In other words, I wanted her to connect her pussy with her brain.
TRY THIS EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR YOURSELF:
I had her start with a relaxing warm bath and gently lingering every place she soaped, from toes and butt to groin and breasts. It did not take her long to realize how many good feelings she could get from her skin and her erogenous zones. The next time, she brought a water-proof toy to the bath with her and had her first self-stimulated orgasm.
THE BENEFIT
Nothing can replace the actual experience of sex. We learn our true capacity for pleasure by experiencing pleasure, not by imagining or fantasizing about it. We learn by doing.
In Madelyn’s case, masturbation taught her ownership of her own sexuality. Now instead of her genitals unconsciously steering her toward bad guys, she was getting what she needed. No bad guy required.
By learning to own her sexuality, she came to feel much less needy. No longer dependent on a partner. Now that she could make herself feel great whenever she wanted, insecurity vanished. It was replaced with confidence.
Looking for help exploring your sexual potential? I wrote a book just for you:
Get the tools and exercises to take ownership of your sexuality with EROTIC AWAKENING.
photo credit: Julien L. under Unsplash license
