Fundamentally, opening our sexuality is opening to a certain level of uncertainty and insecurity. Here, we can begin to uncover the underlying beliefs we have about power. Some common ones are, If we express power, we will:
◆ Cause harm
◆ Lose access to love
◆ End up alone
◆ Look too difficult
◆ Go crazy, out of control, and say or do something we will regret
◆ End up losing all restraint and crawling for everything we hunger for
◆ Be damned by God
◆ Leave our life as we know it
◆ Lose the one power we do have: being likable
◆ Be punished
◆ Have to deal with the other person being angry or hurt
A corollary is the sense of unfulfilled expectations. This is common in the arena of sex and power where we have a lot of expectations and very little acumen.
We expect our partner to know what we want and how to do what we want. We expect them to handle our fear and excitement, to know our boundaries, to not have their own drives and hungers. We expect them to look the right way, to smell the right way, to finish when we are done, to say the right things before, during, and after. Or to be silent. Or to be turned on no matter what. Or to not be so turned on. All of these expectations are unspoken most of the time. In other words, sex is the arena where we have the highest hopes, the fewest communications, and the least capacity to communicate.
But beyond this, we expect the sex impulse itself to follow our rules and meet our expectations. We want it to fulfill our needs for love and intimacy and connection without cultivating it. We want it to only activate when we want it activated and to turn off when it disrupts our lives. We want it to be convenient. We want it only to exist in certain contexts. And when it strays, we punish it and demonize it.
It is good to take stock of the deep-seated beliefs we carry with respect to sex. From "Sex is evil" to "Sex causes wreckage," from STDs to pregnancy to infidelity. Women who are sexual are sluts or whores. Men who have sex are powerful or attractive. If we have too much sex we will go crazy, get drunk, end up gay.
There are also subtle and insidious beliefs. A woman may believe she can only be turned on if she is in love, or that if she has a positive sexual experience, it was because of her partner. She may believe she can use her sex to get a partner but afterward, feel she no longer has to carry that burden of sexuality. She may believe that sex dies with menopause. Men may see themselves as inherently craven. They may feel shame that they feel hunger and see that quality in themselves as dishonorable.
A sexual person may feel that they are cheap or less than. For many of us, these beliefs are the starting point of our relationship to sexuality.
