Sex: Beyond Performance
Love and Sex
Does your sex life fulfill your need to feel loved? Are you able to have satisfying conversations with your sexual partner about your sexual likes, dislikes, fears, shame and need for both freedom and emotional connection? Are you able to listen compassionately and understand more when your partner talks about his/her sexual feelings, needs, desires and difficulties? If the answer to all of the above questions is “Yes” then don’t bother reading any further.
To those of you still here, join the crowd. Conventional thinking reduces sex to a performance designed to produce better sexual gymnasts. With all the advertisements proclaiming the wonders of pills that produce erection, aids to stimulate orgasm and enhancement surgeries, it’s no wonder that most sexual discussions focus on sex as merely a physical act.
Although sex talk is all around, most people remain largely ignorant about the role of sex in bringing us what we truly want. Frantically searching for the elusive prize of sexual satisfaction, while remaining clueless about the heart of sexuality, will never result in sexual fulfillment.
Kamala Allen, in her new book, A Woman’ s Guide to Opening a Man’s Heart, says, “By concentrating on genital sensations, with a kind of mind-blocking approach, some men and women attain orgasm and ejaculation, but miss connecting deeply and fully with each other.”
The heart of sexuality is a loving connection. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom creates many doubts about our masculinity/femininity and lovability. Bringing these doubts into the sexual experience results in wanting to get love rather than give love.
There is probably no aspect of life in which we are more wounded than sex. Where we most need to heal remains the hardest to have heart-connected talk. The intimacy that results from openly talking, listening and understanding connects us heart to heart. It is the learning that allows us to come together.
A sexual experience that flows from open hearts is not two competitors running in their own lanes focused on the finish line. Heart-connected lovers are creative dancers on a unique journey. There are no preconceived ideas of what a “successful” sexual experience would be, such as simultaneous orgasm, or even orgasm itself. There is only the moment.
Being totally present in the moment determines the next moment. The dancers weave their unique path depending on what each moment brings. In this way the route is never the same no matter how many times they dance together.
Conventional wisdom teaches that sex becomes routine over time. Experiencing the new dimensions that heart-connected conversations can bring to a relationship makes that idea obsolete. The more lovers unburden from their sexual baggage, the closer they get and the more delicious becomes their sex. Viagra is not needed when you keep your heart on.
What feelings and thoughts did this blog touch off for you? What has helped you unshackle from the limitations you were taught? What are you experiencing sexually that is fulfilling?
Jordan, you’re so right on. Even if we’re fortunate enough to have a partner willing to help us meet a need, if we can’t express it, they won’t ever know! Partners can’t see inside our mind to know what we’re thinking, let alone inside our body to know what we’re feeling. We have to be able to tell or at least show them. As in all of life’s interactions, communication is key.
For me, the daily Tantra practice that my husband and I share is so incredibly fulfilling that, as you know, I wrote a book about it!
Wow! wrote out a long statement and went to submit and it disappeared. Any ideas?
Your article is insightful and essence touching. Couldn’t agree more and what we can touch is a deeper part that gives us the space(universe), time(eternity), and energy (light) so we can presence our essence in the world. This deep connection with our inner self and our vulnerability is brought forth in a caring, compassionate, loving way so we can live in a higher, more connected and related self with others as well as ourself. Duality disappears and the formless takes on form as a newly discovered being emerges. Jordan Paul, Thanks for the gift of expression. Couldn’t agree more with what you wrote.
With Love,
Mike