Sex: You're Doing it Right

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The truth, though, is that nothing is really wrong. Nothing is ever wrong and nothing can be wrong. It’s not even wrong to believe that something is wrong. Wrong is simply not possible. As Alexander Pope wrote, ‘One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.’ Wrongness is in the eye of the beholder and nowhere else—Jed McKenna, from Spiritual Enlightment: The Damnedest Thing (The Enlightenment Trilogy)

I’ve faced a mountain of resistance every time I sat down to write this article. Suddenly I would get a thousand Facebook notifications, texts, emails, voxes, insert-your-own-21^st-century-distractions, which would take urgent precedence over putting my thoughts to the page. When asked what I thought was getting in my way, the answer came easily:

It’s still so hard for me to believe that I’m actually doing it right.

For example, the other night I was with my lover slowly riding the tip of his cock. The sensation was a low, subtle hum, like sonar pulsing through dense water. A tenuous thread connected us. I often felt lost. An uncomfortable scratching began to grate the left side of my pussy. The scratching suddenly ripped and out of the delicate webbing poured an ocean of hopelessness. I collapsed into tears onto my lover’s body. As we lay caught in the briars of our building orgasm, I looked over at him.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Angry,” he replied. Angry and, based on the electricity vibrating off of him, getting angrier.

The surface layer of my thoughts went something like, “Oh no, I’ve done it again. I’ve fucked it all up. I let the ball drop. I made him mad. I’m too emotional. I’m clumsy. I’m a bad lover. I’m going to lose him.”

But at my foundation, I knew everything was happening exactly as it should. My hopelessness was right. His anger was right. My spiraling collection of thoughts was right. Each crackling moment was right and provided a fascinating glimpse into the hidden powder kegs of our hearts.

As I surrendered into the ‘rightness’ of the experience, my body expanded, my breath deepened and my skin prickled. I knew our sex was big enough to hold everything.

When he had finished speaking, I said what I knew to be true:

“I love you.”

And with those words, we re-established the connection and my capacity to feel intensified.

This sort of ‘orgasmic derailment’ is not an uncommon occurrence in my sex these days. Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t always this painfully overdramatic. In fact, some of the sweetest and most powerful love-making I’ve ever experienced occurred in the days following that incident.

However, the trade-off for sexual authenticity and expanded pleasure is the complete annihilation of everything you thought you knew about sex. The old tricks of seduction no longer apply in the realm of orgasm. The old movies in your head about peak experiences are just that: old and in your head. It’s like an actor trying to copy a performance she once saw or replay one from a previous time. It’s stilted, forced and not rooted in the present.

Heraclitus once said:

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

Nowhere is this truer than in sex. ‘Beginner’s mind’ and curiosity aren’t just lofty ideals—they are vital to the immediate experience. You can’t fake sensation. It’s either there or it’s not—and if it’s not, there is usually a lie in the way. The work is to be honest when you can’t feel and be willing to reveal your desire.

The power is in vulnerability, surrender and death.

Which feels completely antithetical to everything we’ve been taught. Control, accumulation of knowledge, trophy collection and survival of the fittest all contribute to the current framework of sex. And if you’ve been operating in that paradigm, don’t worry! You’re doing it right. It’s natural to associate these momentary hits of validation as ‘proof’ of your worth. It’s all we’ve ever known.

It’s also natural to hide the wounds around our sex, since most of us adopt a belief early on that who we are and what we desire is somehow ‘wrong’ and that we must ‘earn’ the love for which we hunger in order to atone for this ‘wrongness.’

This is at the heart of what most people who work with me face. It’s never about the ‘problem.’ The fact that they lose their erections, have never climaxed, are addicted to porn, haven’t had sex in 20 years, prematurely ejaculate, experience lack of desire, etc., is simply evidence of an unconscious coping mechanism for handling high sensation. That’s it.  And they’re doing it right.

To go one step further, I challenge the notion that there was ever a problem in the first place. What if we left behind the idea that sex is a life-or-death dilemma (lest we die alone or trapped in sexless marriages) and adopt the idea that sex is a playground where all parts of ourselves are invited to play? The princess, the pervert, the virgin, the drug addict, the master, the scared child, the needy co-dependent, the king, the devotee, the betrayer—the list goes on. Is it possible to raise the white flag on the battleground of sexuality and expose the weapons we’ve kept tucked in our hearts?

I know it’s tough. Changing perspective feels like swimming upstream. That’s why I’ve been dodging writing this piece for so long; if I admit my inherent ‘rightness,’ then I have no more excuses for withholding my love. And within my emotional nakedness, I run the risk of pain, criticism and ridicule.

In Scott McPherson’s play, Marvin’s Room, Lee says to her son:

My feelings for you, Hank, are like a big bowl of fishhooks. I can't just pick them up one at a time. I pick up one, they all come. So I tend to leave them alone.

If you replace ‘Hank’ with ‘Sex’, it’s obvious why we run from it or try to cover it up with toys, techniques and romance. Fear warns us to avoid these volatile places and keep them hidden; so who in her right mind would venture in willingly?

Yet the fortresses we’ve erected are the very things preventing us from having the sex we want. We’ve protected ourselves from parental wounding, social rejection and feelings of profound loneliness, which sits on top of the fundamental lie that we are ‘not good enough.’

And, as if we don’t have enough work to do on our own, society capitalizes on this lie by reinforcing it and trying to sell us their ‘cures.’

I recently read a fashion article on the internet (obviously geared towards women) and on the same page, the following four pieces were listed as something I ‘Might Also Like’:

How to Touch His Penis - Sexy Penis Play Techniques (Cosmo)

Sexy Clothes for Women – Clothes Men Like (Cosmo)

How to Make Sex Last Longer - Romantic Sex Positions (Cosmo)

How Much Should You Really Weigh? (MyDailyMoment)

Every one of these suggests that unless a man sexually validates a woman, she isn’t ‘good enough.’ In this case, not being ‘good enough’ looks like ignorance, ugliness, incompetence and corpulence.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to please our partners and look our best—but if our motivation comes from the fear that we are not lovable, then we are setting ourselves up for resentment.

Men don’t have it much easier. Since it’s practically scientific fact that every man on the planet watches porn, and for a great majority of men, porn was their first education in sexuality, there is a formula for sex that is being continuously reinforced. It’s a one-sided script that goes from kissing to massive hard-ons to penetration to loud, simultaneous climax and cum-on-tits money shots in less than seven minutes. Cut. Check the gate. That’s a wrap.

If you know me, you know I am not anti-porn. Again, we’re doing it right. And if we use porn to escape intimacy and validate our egos, rather than in the spirit of entertainment and play, then both men and women can get locked in the pressure-filled world of ‘shoulds’:

I should be hard all the time

I should want to fuck him the moment he wants it

This sex should be more passionate

I should be making more noise

I should make her cum hard and loud

I should have a huge ejaculation

Anything that doesn’t look like this can cripple someone into thinking there’s something ‘wrong’ with him or her. In reality, most of our sex doesn’t look like porn and most of us don’t look like porn stars. But to cover his shame at not being ‘man enough’, a man may avoid sex or blame his sexual partners. And a woman may take on the false belief that unless she can take it hard and climax fast, she must be broken.

On the flip side of porn, we have what’s known as ‘sacred sexuality.’ What that world has to offer is also valuable, but where we often get caught is in always trying to ‘touch God’ and ‘be one with the light’ and ‘avoid negativity.’ Again, this implies that what is labeled as ‘negative’ is ‘wrong’ and that any experience where you aren’t ‘communing with the Divine’ is also ‘wrong.’ It becomes another pressure-filled world of ‘shoulds’—just with a lot more chanting, eye-gazing and sarongs.

And since none of us wants to look stupid, scared, inadequate or bitchy, we’ve become master pretenders: pretending that we’ve conquered sex; pretending that we know what we want; pretending that our desires aren’t that important; pretending that it’s ok to only have sex 10 times a year; pretending that it’s always the other person stopping us from having what we want; pretending, pretending, pretending.

Pretending: You’re Doing it Right

The good news: sex is big enough to hold your pretender. Your pretender has valuable information—most likely regarding your truth. And, well, there’s just nothing sexier than the truth, in my opinion.

And that’s all this article is, really. My opinion. My experience. My perspective. And if it all gets flipped on its head tomorrow, that’s ok. I’m still doing it right.

And so are you. As hard is may be to believe in the moments of embarrassment and confusion, there really is no problem. Stay connected. Feel. Play. Get thrown off track. Laugh. Cry. Hide. Come out. Hide. Come out again. Be willing to share your fears, your heartaches, your joys, your hungers, your love, your gratitude…everything. This is where the most nourishing ‘get-off’ is: in the messy, mixed-up combustion of all that you are. And if it hurts, just know that the hurt is simply a message pointing you in the direction of your deepest desires.

Just keep going. And remember to breathe. You can’t do it wrong.

The Hazards of Being an Orgasmic Woman

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There is a beast inside of me right now. She’s been neglected for a very, very long time. She’s pissed, starving and demands to be fucked.

If she’s like most women, she’s a sexual anorexic. This is NOT to be confused with a sexually hungry person. A sexually hungry person knows what they want and will do what they need to feed themselves (even if it’s living off Ramen Noodles for a while). A sexual anorexic, on the other hand, has too much pride to admit she’s hungry and gets off on having superior control. She looks down on all those creepy guys in the Tenderloin who stare at you as if you were a dripping, succulent steak. She’s fresh, pure and hops straight off the cover of Cosmo in her size 2 Prada dress.

All that changes when you open your orgasm.

Many guys joke when they hear about it. “Geez, I wish my wife/girlfriend had that problem of wanting to be fucked all the time.” Really? Most men don’t know how to handle a woman when she’s in the throes of indecision of what to order for dinner. You want to throw a 20+ year backlog of unexpressed desire, anger, resentment and trauma into the mix? Good luck.

The current perception of igniting a woman’s sex comes attached with pink feather boas, blossoming flowers and rainbows shooting from vaginas. There also seems to be the annoyingly ubiquitous use of the word ‘juicy.’

Let me set the record straight: forget Barbie and her Sex and the City entourage. Say hello to your dirty, skanky heroin addict.

The other day I woke up in the grips of this otherworldly thing that demanded climax and would stop at nothing to get it. I had just enough consciousness to acknowledge the beast and created the space for her to emerge—and then I plunged pussy-first into the darkness.

I did something I haven’t done in years—I watched porn. Now that may not sound like anything shocking, but what was powerful for me to observe was how utterly helpless I felt in the moment. I needed the drug so bad that I wasn’t going to step out of my room until I had it. I grabbed my phone (which was closer to me than my computer) and searched for ‘free porn.’ I found a video, but when it took too long to download, I gave up and ran for my laptop like it was sexual crack. With shaking hands I flipped up the monitor, typed in my password and found what I needed. The Visitor 3. “I don’t give a shit about parts 1 & 2,” I said to myself. “I just want to get straight to the cock-in-pussy pounding.”

Three minutes later, after I had climaxed, a little bit of reality started to settle back into me. My belly felt swollen, like I’d just wolfed down three Big Macs. I was watching this video of two people clearly not connected to each other. And it was set to some of the worst music I’ve ever heard in my life. I started laughing at myself.

“Have I really become that kind of person?” I thought. “I feel more like a scared, pre-teen boy than a 31-year old woman.”

Then it hit me: this was who was rising to the surface—my hyper-sexual teenager—and she was pissed at being chained in the basement for so long.

There was a period in my life, from ages 11-13, when I would masturbate almost every day. Yet in the midst of that sexual exploration, I also felt profound levels of shame. I saw members of my family struggle with sexual addiction and unhealed sexual abuse. I grew up in the South where young, Christian ladies didn’t do things like that. I had heard boys joke about masturbation all the time, but girls never talked about it. I thought I was a pervert—and yet I couldn’t stop.

Until I was 13 years old and got suspended from school for drug possession. I will never forget the look of abject fear on my mother’s face when she got the news. I felt like this horrible, out-of-control animal that had brought shame upon her. A straight-A student fallen from grace. I made a vow that day to suppress anything that was ‘wrong’ or ‘immoral’—which included my sexual appetite.

Fast forward eight years. I’m 21 years old and I’ve just started dating the man I would eventually marry (who was, incidentally, also the first man with whom I’d had intercourse). I’m away for the summer and I meet someone else—someone who rouses that slumbering beast within me. And I fuck him. And again, I feel like this out-of-control animal. And again, I make a decision to tamp down that wretched appetite. I can’t bear to see the look of pain on my soon-to-be husband’s face.

So for the six-year duration of my marriage, I buried that secret along with my shame and my sex. It’s also no surprise that for those six years, I lived as a food anorexic. If history had taught me anything, it was this:

Appetite = People Getting Hurt

But in the back of my mind, I knew that starving it wouldn’t help. In fact, the harder I pushed it down, the harder it smacked me in the face the moment my attention drifted elsewhere. I had to confront it head on. So I left the marriage and decided I would do whatever it took to recover from anorexia.

The months following the separation from my husband were some of the most humiliating of my life. I felt so insecure sexually that I seduced men just to prove to myself that I could, even though I was clueless about my own desires and hadn’t menstruated in over two-and-a-half years. I cried for five months straight. I found myself, on many occasions, standing in my kitchen pantry at 3am gobbling three or four bowls of cereal in a row, not even tasting what I was shoving into my face.

Yet through it all, I knew I was giving my body exactly what it needed. When you hold a pendulum all the way to the left, it has to swing all the way to the right and back again, multiple times, before it finally finds its center.

And this is how it feels right now in my sex. In spite of the junk-food orgasm and the predator-woman who is ready to jump on anything in her path, I simply have to trust how the path is unfolding before me. It feels like I am going down again, only this time the well is deeper. I have fear of losing everything: my money to the credit card company; my credibility to people who know what they hell they are doing; my fiancé to a younger, skinnier, more sexually-embodied tantric goddess.

And here’s kicker: even with all this sexual appetite, I’m bumping right up against my ineptitude. It’s still so difficult for me to ask for what I want. It’s painful to admit to my lover when I’m faking my own turn-on. It’s agonizing to watch as I lie and withhold my love and gratitude again and again and again.

I recently had someone tell me that fucking me was boring. BORING!?

Dear God. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me I’m out-of-control. Tell me I’m too much to handle. But boring?!?! With my ego thoroughly eviscerated, I had reached a new low.

So this is orgasm in its rawest form. No sparkly glitter parades or rose-scented sheets. Just a searing burn and unbearable pressure as I sit in the crucible of my sex.

But as I sit here, the words of Anais Nin rise to the surface:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

And I am reminded of why I chose this path and how lucky I am to feel alive. Those lonely, numb nights of starving madness are a place I can never return. Now that I have had a taste of what’s possible—electric connection, deep love and surrendered pleasure—I have no choice but to burn on.

This is what it takes to move from the chains of bondage to orgasmic freedom. The real sexual revolution doesn’t happen by burning bras or holding on to anger against men; it happens in our own minds, hearts and pussies. And it’s waiting for us, whenever we’re ready.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Dropping the Fairy Tale: Good Girls vs. Good Women



Anne Hathaway from The Princess Diaries



Once again it’s time for another one of those posts that explores the finer distinctions between two seemingly similar subjects (you may remember an earlier post of mine, What do you REALLY want: Desire vs. Craving).

Through the questions that arise in coaching sessions to observations made in nail salons to my own personal journey, I have discovered that we as women have a hard time letting go of the “good girl.” You know, the one all in pink who sat quietly in church, never tells a lie and is the apple of daddy’s eye? No, you don’t, because she doesn’t exist. As much as we try to be that “good girl,” our desire and orgasm sneak out in a lot of ways. It can leave us feeling exhausted doting on others and guilty in our inadequacy. Or perhaps we’ve rejected our desire for so long, we react in anger and blame those who “took advantage of us.”

In any case, we are grown now. Free women to choose what we want, whenever we want it…right? Well, not exactly. Our bodies may have matured, but the way that we interact with the world has changed very little from when we were 4 years old. In fact, we still live in a society that very much reinforces the notion of a high-class lady as being pre-pubescent thin, beautiful and, above all, very proper. Any other type of woman is troubled, too much, crazy, a slut, etc (you’d never see Prince William fight for the hand of someone like Lady Gaga, even if he were madly in love with her).

So I’ve come to set the record straight and help out my fellow ladies who are working on finding their voice and coming to their power. No, to break out of the “good girl” mold, you don’t have to become Lady Gaga (though I love that woman with every ounce of my being). But you will have to confront and let go of a lot of old ways of relating that kept you safe and comfortable in the past.

So, without further ado, I bring you the Top 10 ways of telling a “Good Girl” from a “Good Woman.”

1. A good girl runs from fear. A good woman embraces it.

A good girl doesn’t want to rock the boat. She’s afraid of hurting people, going outside the box…essentially she is afraid of life. A good woman doesn’t escape her fear, but she leans into it, because she knows her ultimate fulfillment comes from discovering the desire on the other side.

2. A good girl denies her hunger. A good woman relishes it.

“Oh, no thank you, I’m full.” “Oh I’ll just have the diet platter.” “I’ll skip dessert. I’m being good this week.” We’ve all heard the catchphrase of women still caught in “good girl” mentality. And we also know that women dieting are more likely than not having orgasms. And this doesn’t mean that a good woman is stuffing her face all the time and pigging out on cheetos and bon-bons. But a good woman slows down and knows herself well enough to choose what is nourishing and relish every bite…whether it’s the grilled fish and asparagus, or the double chocolate chip cake. She eats life to feed her soul, not to numb the sensation.

3. A good girl withholds. A good woman adjusts.

A good girl is going to tell her partner what she thinks he wants to hear, but in the process, she holds back a piece of her voice. That unspoken desire sits in her body and, over time, rots into shame and resentment. Over time, she will (consciously or unconsciously) do things to her partner to punish him…and ultimately herself. A good woman tells her partner the truth. She approves of him/her and learns to calibrate her words so she can be heard and received, while fully expressing what it is she wants. She adjusts her partner (and is desires to receive the same kind of attention and honesty in return).

4. A good girl receives with guilt. A good woman receives with grace.

Good girls may accept a gift, but there is always a string of “you shouldn’t have” or “that’s too much” or “you didn’t have to do this” that comes along with it. She has to knock herself down a few notches in order to make it acceptable to receive, lest she feel her hunger (and subsequent shame) that comes with receiving. A good woman says “thank you”. Just thank you. Because she knows she is worthy (without the insecure timbre of entitlement). She listens to her hunger, knows when she is full and pours out genuine gratitude.

5. A good girl does what looks right. A good woman does what feels right.

A good girl follows a tried-and-true structure that will elicit positive reinforcement from her partner and the people in her life. A good woman moves from an instinctual compass. While it may look messy from the outside, deep within her body, she knows it is the path for her.

6. A good girl stuffs her anger. A good woman alchemizes it.

Good girls don’t get angry. Bullshit. They just stuff it until it seeps out as passive aggressiveness. A good woman acknowledges her anger in the moment and feels into it so she can know where she is out of integrity in her life. From there, she can use the force of that anger as power to change course.

7. A good girl strives for perfection. A good woman lives in perfection.

A good girl lives her life seeking to perfect perceived “impurities” in her life, so she is never fully able to relax and drop into the present, lest someone catch a glimpse of her ugliness. A good woman sees every moment as perfect, with both it’s divinity and it’s humanity.

8. A good girl’s desire is frozen. A good woman’s desire is dynamic.

A good girl is bred to want the same thing every day and desire only so much as is socially acceptable. She has lost the connection to the freedom that comes with spontaneity. In fact, she will often deny that she wants the very thing that will give her the deepest satisfaction. A good woman’s desire ebbs and flows like the tide: small and humble in one moment, wild and tempestuous in the next. But it is always, always authentic and she is constantly seeking to expand her container to hold more.

9. A good girl submits. A good woman surrenders.

A good girl submits, relinquishing her power to perceived “authorities” in order to escape the clamoring cry of her orgasm. A good woman surrenders control to her orgasm, and thus holds her own amongst the truly powerful.

10. A good girl waits for the fairy tale. A good woman creates her own legacy.

A good girl is still trapped in a tower, like a virginal princess waiting in vain for Prince Charming to save her. Over time, she can turn jaded and bitter, a “victim” of the happily-ever-after story she bought. A good woman turns the key to the door, descends the tower staircase and, like a Queen, enters the vast terrain of her own pleasure. It is from this empowered place that she can choose the life she truly desires.