What do you want in sex?
Remember those four steps we talked about last week? Those four steps that help you move through purity culture and find connective, pleasurable sex on the other side? (If not, you can read about them here.)
Well, today we are going to tackle step number one in detail.
Awareness
In any type of intentional change, you have to assess where you are and know at least a bit about where you want to be in order to build an effective bridge from here to there. Imagine you are wanting to go back to school to get a degree. The first thing you would do is assess how many credits you have and how many courses you would need to reach your goal of graduating. If you are wanting to run a 10k, you would start by assessing how far you can currently run.
The same goes with sex. Remember that sex is a learned behavior like riding a bike. You have to learn how to do it and practice it to do it well. Sex is not automatically awesome if you simply love each other enough or are insanely attracted to each other. Sex is awesome when you have the skills to understand and ask for what you want.
So, the first step in overcoming purity culture messaging is understanding where you are and where you want to be in sex. Here is an activity that you can try. On a piece of paper, write down "Sex is..." and then spend 2 minutes writing down adjectives or phases about how you feel about sex currently.
Next, on a separate piece of paper write down, "My dream sexual experience would be..." and write down how you want to feel about sex. We use feeling words because every behavior that you do, you do it because you want to feel something. Once you understand what you want to feel, then you can begin to understand what behaviors help you feel the way you want to feel.
Here is an example. If one of the words in your "sex is" list is "dirty" and one of the words in your "dream sex" list is "free" then you can start to explore what types of behaviors you can employ to help you move from "dirty" to "free." In this particular example, I might suggest for the client to deconstruct the idea that sex is dirty and begin to embrace that sex is actually for her and within her. And embracing this can help her feel free.
Which brings us to our next step, which is deconstruction. Stay tuned as I will take you through that step next week!
Let me know how your awareness step goes! And if you need help, just let me know. I'm here for you.
SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Oriowo is a first-generation Nigerian American Sex and Relationship Therapist and author of "Cocoa Butter and Hair Grease: A Self Love Journey Through Hair and Skin." She focuses on the impact of colorism and texturism as well as helping Black women access and understand their sexuality.
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