by Staci Haines
I find it rather repulsive. I feel this way about some of the more intense and
rough sex I have. I love it in the mix and feel guilty afterward sometimes. I try
not to judge it anymore or try to find the “right” answer. I try to give myself
room for all of it.
Melanie
Owning Your Desire
Sex is one of those aspects of human experience that everyone has an opinion about. Lots of people and institutions—such as your family, church or synagogue, the media, and even your women’s rugby team—will be happy to tell you what your desires are or should be. What it comes down to is this: Will you decide for yourself or have someone else do it for you? You may take some heat if your desire falls outside of the heterosexual, monogamous, married, missionary-position style for your sexual expression. Well, most people’s desires fall outside of this narrow frame. No wonder we so rarely speak up about our sexual desires! Even if married, missionary-position sex is your favorite—which is fine—you may have other desires that don’t fit this expression.
Sexual Diversity
Bisexual: Having sexual desire, interest, and/or activity with people of both sexes.
Celibate: Choosing to not engage sexually with another and/or with oneself.
Gay: Having sexual desire, interest, and/or activity with people of one’s own sex; often refers specifically to men.
Heterosexual: Having sexual desire, interest, and/or activity with people of the opposite sex.
Lesbian: For women, having sexual desire, interest, and/or activity with other women.
Marriage: A legal and/or social contract declaring an emotional and financial commitment to a relationship. In most of the world, only heterosexuals are allowed to be married legally.
Monogamous: Choosing to be sexual with only one other person.
Nonmonogamous: Choosing to be sexual with more than one other person.
Pansexual: Having sexual desires, interests, and behavior with all genders, sexual orientations and persuasions. Many people embrace this term in an attempt to broaden the categories of gay and straight, man and woman, S/M and vanilla.
Polyamorous: Poly means many and amor love. Choosing to have sexual relations with more than one person. Some people prefer this term to nonmonogamous.
S/M: Sadomasochism is a sexual practice which can include power play, intense sensation, pain, bondage, and role playing.
Serial monogamy: Engaging in a series of monogamous sexual relations, one after the other.
Tantra: A sexual practice which views sex as a sacred path of spiritual transcendence.
Transgendered: An umbrella term, including transsexuals and transvestites, as well as others who identify as being differently-gendered. A transgendered person may identify as gay, heterosexual, lesbian, or pansexual.
Transsexual: A person who identifies with and lives as a gender other than that assigned at birth. Transsexuals usually engage in some form of altering the physical body, such as hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery. Female-to-male transsexuals (FTMs) identify as men, and male-to-female transsexuals (MTFs) identify as women. A transsexual may identify as gay, heterosexual, lesbian, or pansexual.
Transvestite: A person who cross-dresses.
Vanilla: A term used by S/M practitioners to describe non-S/M sex.
Following are some examples of what some women find desirable.
People used to think that the world was flat. That is how I was about sex. I thought sex was a sin and bad. When you stand in the plains, the world does look flat; you have to look from a bigger perspective to see that the world is round.
Rona
I sometimes feel that my sexual desires are bad, grotesque, abnormal. This is connected to what I think a woman should be—my desires seem “unladylike.”
Louisa
Like other things we take for granted, our views on sex are influenced by social and historical forces, along with cultural heritage and religious beliefs. There is no “right” way of having consensual sex; rather, there are options you may or may not choose. Which options help to heal you? Which empower and support you? Owning your desire means that you take responsibility for discovering what fits for you sexually. You get to be the one who names the unique sexual expression that is yours. Grant yourself permission.
It was so amazing when I realized that I could really set up my sex life however
I wanted to…that I could run my sex life by my own rules. I had always felt
too guilty to like sex. What I really wanted was to date a number of people at
once, and I wanted to explore sexually. I did not know anything about me and
what I liked and wanted. I wanted to find out, so I started. Nonmonogamy has
been amazingly freeing for me. Oh, and I practice safe sex, too.
Rebecca
Sex Guide Exercises
Write about the following. Then, have a conversation with a friend or therapist about what you wrote.
1. Take a sexual self-inventory. What have you experienced sexually up to now? What did you like? What did you not like? What do you know about your sexuality? What would you like to learn?
2. Take a piece of paper and make three columns, titled “yes,” “maybe” and “no.” In the “yes” column, list all the sexual activities that you enjoy or think you would enjoy. In the “maybe” column, list all the sexual activities that you enjoy under certain circumstances or that you might be willing to try. In the “no” column, list all the sexual activities that you do not enjoy and do not want to explore. Include both masturbation and partner sex. Now, look at your lists. Which column most closely resembles your current sex life?
3. Imagine an activity that is physically pleasurable to you, enlivening to your senses. It could be walking on warm sand, feeling the breeze against your face, touching your partner, having oral sex. Imagine yourself in that scene now. What kinds of sensations are you feeling while you experience this specific pleasure? Where in your body do you feel them? How much pleasure or desire can you take in?
4. What sexual activity or fantasy would you like to try out? Be explicit. What’s stopping you?
chapter three
Dissociation
What do you, mean be in my body for sex? I spend my energy trying not to be there during sex.
Hannah
What I am really best at sexually is checking out. I can do it through fantasy, thinking about fixing the car, or wondering what school my kids should go to—and I don’t even have kids yet…
Kathy
Checking Out
Dissociation is “checking out.” It is crawling out of your skin to get away when there is no other way to get away. Dissociation is a normal and healthy response to trauma. It is a creative and self-preserving attempt to manage the experience of being abused. As a child, you tried to distance yourself mentally, emotionally, and spiritually from the pain, manipulation, and betrayal of sexual abuse. Dissociation is a survival tool, and a good one at that. You would not have survived as intact as you are had you not dissociated.
I have come to think of dissociation as a kind of emotional immune system response. When a virus invades your body, your immune system acts automatically to preserve your health. You do not have to send out any kind of alert or instructions. Dissociation also happens without us thinking about it or having control over it.
People experiencing very different types of traumas report the same experience of dissociation. Survivors of domestic violence and rape, war veterans, political prisoners, and torture survivors all use dissociation as a survival tool. If the trauma or betrayal is too much for the psyche to process at that time, some level of distancing from the event takes place.
The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.
The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized
people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event.
Judith Lewis Herman, M.D.,
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath
of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to
Political Terror
Dissociation over Time
The funny thing about dissociation is that it is a temporary survival technique. Although you get away from the immediate pain and fear, the trauma does not get processed or healed by dissociating. It remains with you, to be attended to at a safer time. Dissociation is designed to get you through and out of the traumatic event. The healing of the trauma comes later.
The emotional responses to sexual abuse remain in your body, awaiting your attention. During recovery you have the chance to reintegrate, to feel and come to peace with these bodily held traumatic experiences. You may experience a kind of thawing out as you return to yourself, melting back into your own body and reoccupying your own skin.
A tricky thing about dissociation is that it can continue long after the danger is over and its usefulness has passed. Dissociation becomes so practiced that you can find yourself leaving your body even when you are not in danger.
I have found so many “parts” of me that have no idea that the abuse has ended.
They are on continuous red alert, awaiting the next attack.
Shandell
Many survivors come to believe that being dissociated—or out of your body—is the safest and sometimes the only safe way to live. Even if you know you are safe, dissociation may still be your automatic response to closeness, intensity, fear, or sexuality. Dissociating comes to be what feels natural.
I still sometimes find myself floating outside of my body as if I am walking behind myself. This happens particularly when I am scared or startled. It’s like it is automatic, the first place I know to go to feel safe.
Henrietta
Dissociation: How It Works
Dissociation happens in lots of ways that are actually fairly predictable. Some survivors report floating out of their bodies and watching the abuse from the other side of the room. Others talk about going deep inside to a very small place, where no one could find them, touch them, or get them.
My brother abused my sisters and me. I remember several times I had out-of-body experiences. I felt as if I were sitting on the window sill, watching. That’s also what I felt like when I started having sex. I just wasn’t there.
Marie
My baby-sitter abused me when I was in first and second grade. He said it was a game and that I’d like it. He’d make me change into my nightgown and do a headstand against the wall. Then he’d stick his fingers in my vagina. I bought his story. I abandoned myself by not trusting my own instricts and feelings about what was happening.
Louisa
Still others tell about focusing on a very small speck on the ceiling or singing or talking themselves into another world.
I would hear my dad walking across my bedroom. I would face the wall pretending I was asleep, holding my eyes closed tight. No one taught me how to do this, but spontaneously in my mind I would start chanting, “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t my dad, this isn’t my dad.” Over and over again I would do this. This would help me leave, go into some kind of altered state.
Carla
My father often molested me after dinner when I was in my room doing schoolwork. Reading and schoolwork became my main means of escape. I would just focus on the reading or the math problem until he finished and go back to my schoolwork. I became so adept at this that one time I hardly set down the book.
Akaya
We do things with our bodies to dissociate. Pretend you are scared or startled—what happens? Most likely you tense your muscles and hold your breath. Dissociation usually involves shallow breathing or holding your breath. Holding your breath sends your body into a form of shock. Tensing and holding your muscles constricts the flow of blood and can numb sensations. When you are under attack or afraid, adrenaline courses through your body. This also helps to numb sensation and sends your body into a fight, flight, or freeze response.
I would freeze whenever my uncle picked me up. My body would get tense all the way down to the bone. It was like he touched me and I quit breathing.
Liz
Some survivors dissociated from the feelings of the abuse but visually remember exactly what happened. Many of these survivors believe that the abuse was “no big deal.” By dissociating from their feelings during the abuse, they tried to minimize its emotional impact.
I always remembered what my mom would do to me and my brother. I just shrugged my shoulders like, “Whatever…she was just weird.” What I didn’t get is that there was actually a reason behind me feeling like I was tainted or something was wrong with me. There was a reason I did so many drugs and had sex with so many people.
Carolyn
Dissociation can be as subtle as “spacing out” for a brief time or as extreme as blocking the memory of the abuse entirely. This is called traumatic amnesia. You may have no recollection of the abuse whatsoever or only a vague sense that something happened. Or, you may know that you are terrified of a certain person or place—but have no idea why.
As the dissociation thaws, memories can return in many ways. You may experience “body memories,” actually experiencing the pressures, sensations, and terror of the abuse, yet having no visual or narrative recollection of the events. You may remember disjointed pieces of information—places, people, or specific details. Some survivors have a full-video replay, remembering sights, sounds, feelings, and even smells. The specific type of recollection matters less than the healing that comes from it. Re-embodying and thawing from dissociation are vital to healing your sexuality. The numbers and types of memories are less significant.
Every survivor I have worked with minimizes the abuse in some way. “It was worse for someone else,” “I should be over it,” “What’s the big deal? He just made me suck him off,” are comments I hear over and over again. Minimizing sexual abuse is another means of dissociating or distancing yourself from the pain. To really acknowledge the impact of childhood sexual abuse, to really face how it has affected your life, means feeling the pain, anger, loss, and betrayal. The good news is that this heals you—and it gets you in touch with the enormous resources, resilience, and courage that got you through.
Dissociation and You
How can you tell when you are dissociated now? The ways that you dissociated in the past to survive the abuse are most likely the ways that you continue to dissociate today. It’s as if your nervous system learned a certain route and uses it again and again to bring you to safety. This can be frustrating when you consciously know that you are safe and that the person you are having sex with is not your perpetrator, and still you respond by dissociating. Your body is responding from habit.
The good news about this automatic dissociation is that you can learn to notice how it works and then work with it. As you learn what happens for you when you dissociate, you can learn how to find your way back.
To start, consider what it’s like when you check out. Where do you go? What are you thinking? What do you say to yourself? How does the world look to you when you are dissociated?
Following are examples from survivors:
When I am dissociated, the vividness of things fades. The colors are less bright and everything feels distant or separate from me.
Instead of telling the truth, I try to make everything look okay. It feels like I am the only one who knows what is going on, and I’m faking out my lover. This is how I can tell that something must have scared me and I am going into survival mode.
I am easily distracted, thinking of everything other than the sex I am having, like figuring out who’s going to baby-sit the kids next week, and what I should do about a problem at work. I start to think a lo
t.
I can’t really feel my body anymore. I feel like I am floaty. I can’t find me. Sometimes I look down at my arm and wonder if that is really mine.
I hold my breath and just go blank. I can’t think or feel.
Your Body and Dissociation
Now look for the body process that goes along with dissociation for you. What is happening in your body when you dissociate? Watching your breath is usually a good place to start. Is your breath shallow? Are you holding your breath?
What about the rest of your body? Can you feel your arms and legs? Do you feel any sensation in your back? Are you tensing the muscles in your shoulders, pelvis, or genitals? Does your lower body disappear? Scan through the rest of your body. Which places in your body are blank or frozen? Which areas do you not want to inhabit?