Sex and HeartHow I transformed devastation into love and loving lust

Confusion can feel so awful.

You can feel so uncomfortable when immersed in this. You don’t know which way is up. You don’t know which way to turn. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what to think. You don’t know what to feel.

You may feel like you’re drowning. You can’t see. You can’t breathe. It can overwhelm you. It can make you feel helpless and hopeless. Panic may set in.

Yet…

Confusion can be delicious. There is a lovely and wondrous order within this chaos. So much can be worked through, brought to the surface when confusion descends, arises, envelops. Much clarity can be gained.

IF you can summon within yourself in any way you can a way to relax into all the myriad of thoughts and feelings eddying through you, and they can be quite daunting, frightening even. IF you can stop yourself from resisting them. IF you can take a deep breath, close your eyes if you must, and lay back in it all. IF you can allow yourself to REALLY sink DEEPLY into this. IF you can just BE with whatever presents.

And IF you can stay within this, what can feel like a swirling maelstrom, as awful as it might feel for as long as it takes, and it might feel like a seemingly endless time, something WONDERFUL will happen. All the ickiness WILL fade and simply float away.

The waters were murky, and now they become clear and still with barely a ripple. And when they do, you can think clearly. You can see. You rise to the surface, and you feel so GOOD, peaceful, filled up, and love pulses within you. Everything seems brighter, the colors sharper. Everyone appears more beautiful, and maybe they are.

The world is your mirror, so what does that say about you?

xxoo

Do we ever feel completely free from all the demons that plague us? Do we ever completely tear down our defenses? Do we ever heal completely?

This will depend on your definition of healing. To some progressively feeling better is healing enough, so the answer would be yes. To others being completely healed means suffering no more in which case they will never heal all the way.

Please understand this; healing is an an ever moving, evolving, living, breathing thing which would make it a lifelong process, and the process IS ever so REWARDING.

As wonderful an upbringing as someone may have had, and these people are very much in the minority, there will still be fears which accrue, doubts, little gremlin voices that whisper in their ears now and then.

And there will always be residue, remnants, traces of who you were and still are in part bearing the scars of your old wounds, as you work to heal.

BUT these scars need not impede continued movement forward nor growth. Scars CAN be minimized to become a barely visible white line.

There may very well be times when you ARE able to let everything go altogether and stand in all your glorious glory, nakedly vulnerable, your heart beautifully bared, and this will feel unbelievably good. But to be in this state in every moment is not possible.

You as a very much alive creature are feeling feelings all the time, and these are constantly shifting and changing, and this how I would imagine you would want it. Yes it will feel incredible to be utterly, absolutely open and free, especially if you are able to share this with a beloved. But this cannot be sustained. I’m not saying it’s not possible to be in pure bliss indefinitely. You may or may not be able to withstand so much pleasure, but the likelihood of it occurring is very, very unlikely. Even saints experience something other than nirvana if they can even achieve it.

And we may be goddess like, but we are not perfect whatever that is, and even the gods and goddesses from mythology had  plenty of troubles, foibles and falterings and fumblings and falling downs. And this is really okay.

The missteps, the awkwardness, the second guessings, the voices inside, they are all WONDERFUL. They show us from where we have come and to where we can grow, expand even further, discovering experiences that can enrich us. And they keep us from being static.

Being in a place of perceived perfection may sound really good, but in truth very quickly it will become tedious. Most of us thrive on excitement, thrills, and chills, at least a little shake up now and then, and status quo will not provide you with this. Taking risks, making mistakes (which really aren’t, for there is no such thing, but for want of a better word I will use it), stepping sideways makes you feel fuller and lusher and just more delicious.

Additionally protections ARE appropriate making a permanent state of ecstasy even less possible. The world is full of elements worth protecting yourself from, so to avoid destruction or at least unnecessary trauma, carrying a degree of wariness is preferable.

When it comes to healing yourself, when you are out there searching for answers, ways to help you through your process, please be cautious of methodologies touting instant gratification. I just cannot agree with someone who says I can heal you absolutely. I can take it ALL away quickly or otherwise. Sometimes sudden jolts are useful to jump start the process, but if you do feel great after a session with someone who has made a promise as this, believe me it will be short lived.

Healing doesn’t work that way, and you wouldn’t want it to. There are so many layers. You can’t just sweep them all away in a few minutes or even a few years. It’s more complex than that and far more subtle and nuanced. And you need the time to integrate new things, ways of being and feeling.

So what then does healing look like? It feels like pain sometimes. It feels like wonder at other times. It can feel like anything imaginable. But mostly it will feel like periodic senses of relief followed by a period of feeling really good, and then another layer starts to peel back, and it hurts again, maybe. It doesn’t always have to hurt.

And as more and more layers fall away, more of the time than not, it will feel like your heart is swelling with yumminess mostly, maybe tinged with bittersweetness, and this feels lovely too.

Healing can and often does hurt at times, for you are peeling away layers that have been with you a long time. It can feel like tearing away a scab from still raw skin. Stepping into unknown territory can also be painful and sometimes scary, but when you do go through it, and the ache subsides, the feeling of joy that pervades you is almost indescribable.

And you can still be revisited by hurt now and again, whether it be an old wound that decides to throb a bit as a reminder that part of you needs a little attention or love or whether it’s something new.

And when it does hurt, over time as you become increasingly familiar with your process, when the gremlins do come to visit, if you’re feeling strong that day, you can laugh at them and shoo them away. If you’re feeling low that day, they may overwhelm a bit for awhile, but it WON’T last long, for you now know them. You recognize them for what they are, so you can let them go far more quickly and easily.

You know they are just showing that you’ve come such a long way away from the dark abyss that once was.

I tell women repeatedly, and I really don’t want to sound pessimistic or negative, but we don’t completely heal from those childhood issues, and maybe that’s not a bad thing. I don’t think it is.

Yes you can heal a great deal, but some of this stuff is so deeply ingrained, has become so much a part of who you are, so bits will stay, and again I say this is a GOOD thing. If you have the courage to go inside and face those demons, fears, whatevers, you can gain an AMAZING sensitivity, a compassion, and a LOVE like no other.

You CAN heal an ENORMOUS amount, more than enough to feel really HAPPY and fulfilled, whole and as you were born, PURE LOVE.

xxoo

I dedicate this piece to Maria who was my inspiration, and to Daria who was apparently being channeled through us both, for she is the QUEEN genius of these feeling speeches.

Yup, I DO feel cold but only in response to and around THAT man, that sad man. I LOVE my coldness towards him. AND I deserve to FEEL it because it keeps me safe from him.

My feeling cold towards him feels GOOD because it lets me know I care nothing for him.

AND it shows me how WARM and filled with love I feel being with the RIGHT man, my K, and how f-king HOT and HORNY and SEXY and SENSUAL I feel with HIM. And how safe and CHERISHED and adored I feel with HIM.

I do feel sad for poor, poor sad man. But I also feel dismissive of him and what feels to me as his manipulative games, and it feels good to dismiss him no matter how angry and nasty he can be.

Thinking about him makes me feel icky and teary, but that’s good because it helps me see how FABULOUSLY my life has blossomed without him – how grateful I feel for this – how thankful I feel that he set me free.

For I feel SO AMAZINGLY good now in my hot, sexy life with my hot sexy man. I feel SO HAPPY. YAAAYYYYY ME!!!

xxoo

How do you offer advice to your man?

You don’t. Unless he asks.

What do you do when you know you have a really good idea, something that will undoubtedly help your man with a problem he’s wrestling with?

You keep quiet. Unless he asks.

And even when he does ask, I suggest exercising caution in your word choice, as in, “what do you think about this….?” or “I have a thought. Would you like to hear it?”

I understand how frustrating this can be, feeling like you can help, thinking you have the solution, knowing how efficiently and easily your way would be, but this IS NOT your department, to fix things for him. To continue on this route will shift the energy between you. If he’s a masculine energy man, this will feel in a sense to him as emasculating. It’s you taking up the oars and rowing the boat, not something you want to do if you want to be the feminine energy in your relationship.

This isn’t an easy thing for many women, especially if you have had previous experience, feel qualified, are an expert even with a particular thing or issue he may be dealing with. But unless he requests it, unsolicited advice is not usually well received.

Even if he asks you for help and then dismisses or ignores your suggestions, but then he goes ahead and does what you advised anyway without acknowledgment, please refrain from saying anything.

Even if you find out later that someone else offered the same advice you would have had he asked, and he followed it, please bite your tongue.

Yes it can be irritating; yes it can hurt, but it’s a small thing really. You CAN learn to smile to yourself and accept that yes you know the answers, knew them all along, and that can be enough. You can learn to take comfort in this, have peace around that thought. You can also learn to tell yourself, and believe me when I say that this IS likely TRUE, that somewhere within himself, your man knows you know, and in his own seemingly strange way has said thank you by doing it your way after all.

It’s HIS job to fix things, so let him do it his way in his own way on his own time table, even if they are sometimes your ideas.

Men like to figure things out for themselves. It’s part of their masculine energy, searching for answers, being on a mission. And it makes them feel good. And I strongly believe that there is a part of him that seeks your approval in this.

I do suggest melting after the fact, telling him how amazing he is. This will make him feel really good. AND this will make YOU feel good. Isn’t that worth it? More so than being right?

There have been times when I have felt dismissed, unimportant, stupid even when offering potential solutions to K’s problems, but it was never any of  that. And now I know this and don’t have to feel badly. It’s just how men are usually.

I understand this may a difficult thing to take sometimes, but that’s just how it is. You must learn to remain quiet when you observe him struggling with something you know everything about or even a little. It does gets easier, and once you accustom, it can be rather entertaining in a sweet, endearing sort of way.

No on the other side of this, let’s say your man offers you unsolicited opinions on something of yours. Sometimes he will come up with a brilliant idea, and then you can praise him to the skies, tell him what an excellent mind he has, what a great help he has been, how he saved you. This too will make him feel SO good. And YOU too.

Or maybe he offers an idea that doesn’t sit well with you. It could just not be YOUR way of doing things. Maybe you know a better way, a more efficient way, or just a way that fits your personality more neatly. Sometimes you know it just won’t work for you at all. Or it could just be a really bad idea. Whatever it is, smile, open your heart to him, and say thank you, and then go do it your way anyway.

If you have chosen this option and gone ahead and done something totally different, he will likely have forgotten all about it anyway, so not to worry.

I have noticed too that the more I have kept my mouth shut, the more he has come to me asking for my thoughts, opinions. Not a surprising shift really.

All of this may sound like men have such fragile egos, and we need to tread so carefully. This is not what I want you to take away from this. What I want to say is that we ALL have fragile egos. And we all love praise, support, and love. Men and women just have different ways of showing these things.

So if it means swallowing your pride every now and then, is that such a bad thing? You may just find him holding you closely, soothingly just as you love and want when you are having a hormonal meltdown. That’s not such a bad trade off.

xxoo tinque

Are you desperate and in pain over your man’s porn viewing habits? You are not alone. This issue has become almost pandemic.

I want you to know first and foremost that his enjoyment of porn is NOT about YOU. If nothing else registers here, please let it be this. Your man’s porn viewing has absolutely NOTHING to do with YOU.

Unless he’s an addict, and this would be an entirely different situation than what I am discussing here, then your man’s porn viewing is simply a pastime or a habit which YOU are having a hard time with because it’s triggering some things deep within you.

This is also something that you will not resolve within yourself overnight. This will be a process, and this part IS about you, NOT HIM. If you find yourself deeply troubled over it, it’s an indication that you have some things to deal with that go far deeper and beyond porn. You have some insecurities and maybe other issues that finding your man’s porn has brought to the fore. This is an opportunity for YOU to HEAL.

It will likely be a struggle. It will likely be painful. And there are many ways to ease the journey as you sort this out and work to shed old issues. Learning how to communicate with your man so he can not only hear you but maybe help you with this is a key piece, but most importantly you must find a way to heal your old wounds.

And you may also have to come to accept, at least mostly, that porn will likely never go away, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

I know the last part you probably don’t want to hear. I didn’t, and honestly I still go through spells albeit briefly now when I do wish porn would poof go away.

Now I’ve been in about as bad a place over porn as you can imagine. It triggered my most profound and darkest insecurities. It shook me to my core. I felt as though my entire world and all I believed was true about relationships and love had come crashing down into tiny pieces around me. I was as low as a being can be.

BUT still, somehow, I knew that my man was and is crazy in lust and love with me, and this confused me greatly. I was having enormous difficulty reconciling this in my addled little panicky brain.

What I did know though and from the beginning was that this was a tremendous opportunity to look at and release old habits and patterns, protections that no longer served me and in fact hindered my growth as a woman, a sensuous creature.

These “safe havens” which I had accumulated, hid things, things I had pushed away, ignored, or didn’t even know were there. I had created them, these walls of varying thicknesses, barriers, curtains which I started putting into place starting at a young age. And it was time to let them go if I wanted the kind of life and love I had only dreamed about up to that point.

There are numerous tools and modalities available to help with the process, many of which I tried. Some worked for me, and some did not. Try anything and everything that attracts you. I detail many in my e-book. Things that didn’t work for me may very well help you. I found meditation and journaling wonderfully helpful as a catharsis and as methods to work through emotions, ease the pain as more and more of my stuff rose to the surface asking to be cleared away.

Having someone close to you, someone you trust with whom to talk is a hugely hurt abating practice. Finding like minded individuals via the internet is tremendous for not feeling so alone, and the women on a good site will be unbiasedly supportive.

You need to keep the communication going with your man as you work on your healing. Confrontations or even a “can we talk?” will cause your man to shut down. Speaking your feelings from the heart on the other hand will not. Briefly, just tell him how you feel. That’s it.

He may or may not respond. It doesn’t matter. This is about you. As an example, “I feel really nervous bringing this up, but it’s been bothering me and making me feel bad. I feel so insecure and just so not good enough when I think about you looking at pictures of other women, especially naked ones. It just feels so awful.”

That’s really all you need to say. Don’t expect anything, not resolution or even a reply. If you get one great, but don’t expect it. Keep talking about how you feel using those words exactly, “I feel…” You can also ask him for his help with this. Men love to help.

No matter what your man tells you, that he will stop etc., he probably won’t, and believe me when I say you would much rather have it out in the open than hidden from you. This creates secrets between you two, and SECRETS are DAMAGING. They will cause rifts between you.

You may never feel totally okay with porn, and that’s okay. You CAN come to a place where you are mostly okay with it, and you may even come to embrace it sometimes if this is what you want. You may not want this yet, but if you really love your man and he you, and this can have its place in your life with him as in not being a deal breaker, this is somewhere you may want to consider going. You will have to accept that porn is not going away, not likely.

Men are just wired differently than women. Men are far more visual than we in that they are far more easily aroused by visuals, and they enjoy being aroused.

There is a big difference in how they respond to visuals though as compared with women.

Most of us women, when we see someone who attracts us whether in a photo or on a computer, TV, or movie screen or in the flesh, are far more prone to go off into fantasies about this person. We very quickly create an emotional connection which can include all our senses in our imaginations.

Men on the other hand become briefly aroused, and that’s the end of it. He’s onto the next thing, a news article, business at hand, sports. The OBJECT of arousal is forgotten already.

We can linger with our memory of this person we saw briefly for hours, days, months even.

This is not so for men. Now I used the word object on purpose. If a man loves and is in love with his woman, someone to whom he is devoted, body, mind, heart, and soul, other women are simply that, objects of arousal. When he sees or thinks about his woman on the other hand, she is his FIGURE of DESIRE, a REAL life, three-dimensional woman, a figure he ADORES.

This will sound strange, but OTHER WOMAN ARE GOOD FOR  US. Other women keep our man’s juices flowing for US. Men can get quick buzzes of arousal, drops of hormones building throughout the day or a couple of days to bring to us, and thus they come to us with far greater desire. Other women fuel the fires of their lust for US. They do not want those other women. They want US.

Porn is a funny thing. Men are not so much programmed socially to look at porn, though that can certainly play a role, as men are hard-wired to look at women. It’s the biological spreading of the seed far and wide thing. In eras past men would act on this all the time, far more than now, for the most part. Nowadays men look at nudie pictures or video clips, movies. It doesn’t mean anything.

And it isn’t a boys will be boys thing. I hate hearing that. That’s a lame excuse for bad behavior, strip clubs as an example though some women see those as an extension of porn and not a threat, but for me this is too real and not okay. Men simply love to look at women. It makes them feel good, but again there is NO emotional context, connection, not even likely in their fantasies.

Of course your man wouldn’t have a problem with you looking at pictures of naked men and not because you probably wouldn’t be into it, and he knows it. It’s because his looking to him is no big deal, so in his mind your looking would also be no big deal. Now if you put pictures of you out there which to me is much more the equivalent of a man’s porn viewing habit, then that would be a big deal. Double standards indeed, but some things for the most part cannot be changed and just have to be accepted.

Please don’t make any quick decisions. Work on your own healing first. You will go up and down for awhile, and this is okay. It’s part of the process.

You do have to decide at some point though if you can learn to live with porn. If your man loves you, is attentive and loving towards you the vast majority of the time, what does it matter if he likes to warm himself up with porn, FOR YOU?

Now if it becomes something where he neglects you or gets himself off with porn more than with you, then you have cause for concern. My man very, very rarely goes all the way looking at porn. He would much rather save it for me, but he is also a little older and has slowed down some. So don’t worry or fret too much if your man does orgasm to it now and then.

If he has been backing away from sex but has been anxious and stressed, this will affect a man just as much as it affects us, and patience as well as an open heart would be the suggested medicine.

Men also like variety, and I use this term loosely. I too get easily “bored” probably far more than my man does. I like to spice things up. I love gorgeous lingerie, and so does my man, but honestly he’s more into just seeing my nakedness.

I also like to make naked pictures for him and short masturbation clips on the webcam which I will leave on the computer for him to find. Sometimes right before he comes home from work, I will wait for him in the bed or at the door all hot and ready for him.

He’s not into the dress up thing, but I think that would be fun to try. Nor does he like lap dancing or pole dancing, but many men do. It’s something to consider introducing into your sex life.

Most men love to watch us touch ourselves, so if you feel uncomfortable or shy touching yourself in front of him, start small. You will get over it eventually, especially when you see how much it turns him on. You HAVE to know that he WILL NOT notice the parts of you that you don’t like. He just sees the woman he loves and is hot for, and that’s all he sees, so please LET all of that GO.

Know that you CAN HEAL from this. It may take time, a little patience, but if your man is truly a good one, then it will be worth it.