Beware the Pleasure Thieves
Sequencing the three pleasure thieves that would keep you from your orgasmic potential.
We talk about pleasure a lot around here: How filling your life with pleasure actually expands your ability to receive more of it. (“Really?!” you may be thinking. Yes. You heard it here.)
How we are self-sustaining organisms that are capable of bringing ourselves deep and life-giving pleasure.
How we live in a world that is suspicious of pleasure and that systematically tries to keep us from it. Having less pleasure — or indulging in it and feeling shame — actually makes us easier to control.
There are a few key things that prevent us from experiencing the kind of pleasure that we want. Dr. Emily Morse, the woman behind Sex With Emily, just published a book called Smart Sex — get yourself a copy! — and in it is a chapter called Pleasure Thieves.
Any guesses what these pleasure thieves might be?
Stress
Shame
Trauma
I have all three. 🙋🏻♀️ What about you, bb? There’s no shame in acknowledging where you are. The good news? It’s possible to heal and integrate all three pleasure thieves.
Stress
Some people when they’re stressed shut down. Sex is the furthest thing from their minds.
Some people when they’re stressed turn on. Sex is a way for them to regulate. If you were to poll the population, the results would be about 80/20, shut down/turn on.
Which are you? Comment below! I’d love to know.
I’m the former. If I’m stressed, it feels like being buried alive. I need to be relaxed and regulated to feel turned on.
Dr. Emily recalls stories from her early dating life. She shares a glimpse into date nights, where she would often rush home from work, quickly freshen up and head to her boyfriend’s place where they would usually start with sex.
Since she was carrying the residue of stress from the day, this made it hard to drop in and feel turned on, which led to feeling like she needed to perform. She had watched porn, so she knew the sounds to make, how to arch her back, how to be exactly what she thought her partner craved.
While her partner would often orgasm, she would not. (Hello, orgasm gender gap!) Instead of being deliciously embodied and open to receive, stress prevented her from being able to take in the sexy goodness from these encounters.
Embodiment tools like meditation help us to be more mindful in our lives and sequence the stress that we’ve been carrying for decades. My meditation teacher Emily Fletcher says that meditation isn’t about getting better at meditating: it’s about getting better at life.
Try this body scan meditation:
Start from the top of your head and begin to scan your body for any sensations that you may feel: this might be temperature, pressure, fluttering sensation, numbness, tingling, etc.
Where are you feeling the sensation?
Say aloud the sensations you feel and the location you feel it in your body
This helps to bridge the mind/body divide between your cortical thinking brain and your felt sense
By observing your sensations and experiences without judgment, you can start to enhance your ability to be present in your body. Over time, this practice can cultivate a deeper sense of self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-love.
Shame
Sexual shame is insidious and can show up in a lot of different ways, like:
“All I wanna do is settle down and have a family. Everyone else my age is hooking up. There must be something wrong with me.”
“Everyone else my age is getting married and having kids and all I wanna do is have casual sex. Is it me that has issues?”
“My sex drive is so much higher than my partner. I’m not normal.”
“My sex drive is so much lower than my partner. Do I have a sexual dysfunction?”
“I can’t seem to hack it in traditional monogamous relationships. What’s wrong with me?”
“I can’t get myself to squirt. Am I broken?”
“I can’t stop squirting during sex. I’m so ashamed of my body.”
Let me take a moment to set the record straight. There is nothing inherently wrong with you. You are whole and complete as you are.
When it comes to sex and pleasure, shame shows up big time. When it does, it’s a good idea to tend it lovingly.
Sure, you can push through, bulldozing your feelings to get to your goal… But is that a way to show love to the body that you call home?
Is that how you would encourage your daughter to relate to her body? (Funny how that question puts things into perspective.)
I recommend sitting with your shame and listening to what it has to say. See if you can get curious. Try a writing exercise of letting shame speak to you. Let it have a voice.
A few years ago, I had a funny feeling inside after a sexy encounter with my lover the night before. When I sat down with my feelings, I discovered a little Sarah at the root. In this liminal space, I invited her to come sit on my lap and get to know each other.
I introduced myself as big Sarah and asked who she was. How old was she? Little Sarah was maybe 4. She wore her pink velcro shoes on the wrong feet. Her hair was a little askew and matted to her forehead. She was shy, but once she warmed, very talkative.
(It me.)
“I feel funny. I’m not supposed to touch anybody’s else’s private parts,” she confided.
Somehow this inner child piece was aware of the encounter we’d had. While she didn’t have the words for it, the guilt and shame were palpable. The morality that she had been taught as a young girl didn’t know how to hold this.
“Oh, baby girl.” I invited her close and tried my best to let her know in terms she would understand that what we did was okay. He and I were safe. It was allowed. And as the adult in this relationship, I would take care of the adult things. I invited her to play so she didn’t have to be troubled by this anymore.
After this sweet encounter, the charge cleared. That funny feeling dissipated like clouds after a storm.
This is an example of the inner child / parts work I support clients with. People are sometimes surprised to learn that a Sex Coach doesn’t just work with them on their sex lives.
A lot of the work has to do with clearing out the cobwebs that would prevent us from being fully present and embodied. Parts work is wildly supportive to our aliveness.
Trauma
There isn’t a human alive that won’t experience some sort of trauma in their lifetime. The human experience sometimes includes “big T trauma” (a life-threatening situation) and “little t trauma” (distressing events). In case these terms are new to you:
The main difference between big T and little t trauma … is the event that catalyzed the traumatic response. Big T Trauma is generally related to a life-threatening event or situation. This could be a natural disaster, a violent crime, a school shooting, or a serious car accident. In addition, acute psychological traumas, such as the death of a parent, are part of the big T trauma definition. Chronic (ongoing) trauma, such as repeated abuse, can also qualify as big T trauma.
Little t trauma refers to events that typically don’t involve violence or disaster, but do create significant distress. For young adults, examples of small trauma might be a breakup, the death of a pet, losing a job, getting bullied, or being rejected by a friend group. While these incidents don’t threaten a young adult’s physical safety, they can produce the same trauma responses in adults and children as big T trauma does. In fact, there is now evidence that repeated exposure to little t trauma can cause more emotional harm than exposure to one big T traumatic event.
“Well, there’s no hope me for me,” you may be thinking.
Just because you’ve experienced trauma doesn’t mean you’ll never have great sex again.
Even victims of sexual assault can heal. My teacher Layla Martin suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of her biological father. After years of disassociating during sex, she invested in her healing, went to therapy and developed a methodology for unraveling the cords that would otherwise bind her. Now she is at the forefront of tantric sex education. Not only has she healed, she is showing other people how to do it as well. I am licensed to guide people through her healing somatic coaching methodology.
These pleasure thieves might be blocking you from living your best life, though it can be a stop on your journey and not your destination.
In The Alchemist, there is a principle that Paulo Coelho introduces called beginner’s luck. The idea is that the universe wants you to succeed, so helps urge you along the path by rewarding you with luck initially. It can be exciting to see the changes that happen so soon on your journey. However, this doesn’t always last. At a certain point it can feel like work. (And it is.) Even if your luck turns, be persistent.
While it might mean getting support from a therapist or coach, you can move through the pleasure thieves to claim an orgasmic life.
What if you could gamify your healing process? Instead of it being a chore, think of it like a video game: you’re the main player, slaying the pleasure thieves and leveling up.
It’s such a pleasure to have you here at Sex and Style! I’m a Certified Sex Coach that makes a safe space to explore and reclaim your desire. I hope you’ll stay a while.
“Slay the pleasure thieves and LEVEL UP.”
- written on a Post-it Note taped to my fridge
Thank you for this.