Stuck and sexless? During my hiatus, I have been answering people’s questions. I don’t get to get to every letter but I try to. If you have a question I will do my best and get to it on air. I can also answer them here in my blog.
The more detail and context you share, the more specific I can get with my answer. Also, know I change information or create compost people based off of multiple letters to protect people’s identities. This is your opportunity to share a snapshot of your life and get answers to your burning questions. Go for it.
Dear LaidOpen:
I’ve been with my girlfriend for four years and we rarely have sex. It’s been this way for the past two years. We are great friends and share similar politics, she’s very caring and affectionate, and we cuddle a lot, but I just don’t feel like having sex. She wants to have kids and get married. I just don’t know.
My friends are married. They’ve bought houses back home in Dallas. And here I am, I went to Princeton, I did everything right, and it means nothing in the Bay Area, where people are either homeless or driving a Tesla. I’ve been out of work for nine months.
I mean, I went to college and what do I have to show for it? The last time I was home, my best friend’s mom came up to me at a party and said, “And what are you doing?” I hear it playing in my mind over and over again: What are you doing, What are you doing, What are you doing? I can’t turn it off. I just stood there totally blank and didn’t say anything at all.
It’s the same with my own parents and always has been. In case you don’t know, football is a big thing in Texas, and I was far from being a football star, like my brother, the quarterback. There was a whole trophy case for my brother’s awards. I could barely watch football let alone play it. When we’d get a game going as a family, if the ball ever came towards me, I’d freeze up and forget what direction to run in.
Mom’s a perfect debutante and Dad is a partner in a law firm. All I hear from them is what I haven’t achieved, how I didn’t become a lawyer, how I’m not married like my brothers, how I have nothing substantial to show I’ve applied myself, and “Why would you want to live in California?”
I just can’t get it right and I’m failing all over the place. My girlfriend is simmering in her passive-aggressive Victorian, “I’m perfect and never angry” repressed way because we aren’t having sex, which makes me even angrier because I’m the one who’s stopping us. Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?
Sincerely,
Stuck and Sexless
Dear Stuck and Sexless:
There is a lot here about what others may want for you and how you aren’t measuring up, but you need to get clear as to what brings you alive. Do more of that.
What do you truly want? While you say you “don’t know”, I wonder if you actually do know and you are afraid of what you will lose if you speak it out loud.
Sometimes people dig in their heels, put their foot on the gas and break at the same time, and stay static because they don’t want to acquiesce to someone else’s desires. They want to be at complete choice and anything else feels like pressure. Even external support can feel like pressure.
Years ago, I had a client who thought she wasn’t creative and couldn’t draw. It wasn’t that she wanted to be an artist, but this limiting belief about not being creative restrained even small life choices and problem-solving. The belief was part of her identity. Inspiration to engage creatively is a sign of turning a corner when healing from trauma, so I wanted to support this impulse and challenge her old belief.
By taking out some pens and exploring these emotions, the source of her belief became clear. As a child, whenever she “made art” with her mother, her mom would take her crayons and drawings away, crumple up the paper, and say, “Stop coloring outside the lines. Start again.”
I like to think her mom was doing her best; that she was trying to teach her daughter to do something well and likely in the only way she knew how: the way she was taught. I don’t think she intentionally meant to hurt her daughter, but I can also see how her reactions were cruel and soul-crushing to a child’s creative exploration and sense of self-trust.
Of course, my client stopped drawing. She didn’t think she could after that crash course in “You can’t get it right.”
This illustrates something for all of us: Where in our lives do we need to exit or change the conversation? Naturally, as a child, my client was stuck, as I imagine you were as a little one. It sounds as though your parents had extremely high, and at the same time, very limited expectations for you.
They had a specific idea of how your life should go, and you want to color outside of the lines that they suggested. When criticism poisons the waters, it’s an intelligent move to not drink it in.
Perhaps what you value is also dissonant with the prescription for success that all of your friends and family have swallowed. (San Francisco is also a tad different than the South if you haven’t noticed.) There’s what we value and what our family and culture believe we should value, and yes, dominant culture indicates an order in which we are supposed to do things to be successful and on the right path.
I sense you are suffering because you feel you have fallen out of step. I picture you standing on two landmasses that are slowly moving in opposite directions and you are caught in the middle, between where you once were and where you are now, afraid to lose your footing, afraid to choose one side, afraid to drown.
How can you make a decision about what is next or get intimate with your S.O. when that relentlessly- berating tape about failure is playing in your head? That is not the kind of pump-you-up music that is a turn-on for most people. If I could hook you up to an approval I.V. and rehydrate you, I would. Unfortunately, before you can receive the approval you seek, you need to see if your receptors are working.
Sometimes we are like an overly dry plant—our soil hardens to the point that we can’t absorb what we need most. We don’t even realize we are being watered by a caring partner because all the love and tenderness are passing through us and falling out the bottom. We continue to remain parched and defiant because it’s what we know. It’s familiar and oddly comfortable, this pain and suffering.
Sometimes the trouble is taking nourishment in and other times the challenge is to keep out what’s not useful. I was recently at a large brunch, and I asked the hostess if I could help in any way. While I imagined I might be asked to bring waffles out or refill the berry compote dish, she urgently said, “Yes! Please covertly let everyone know not to ask my daughter what she is doing after college. She’s in the other room spinning out and crying, feeling like a failure because someone just asked her.”
When we are in a vulnerable, state of transition, we need support, acceptance, and protection. I garden and am often repotting or transplanting plants. A freshly planted tree or veggie starter needs extra care. If we know this about a tomato plant why would a human living in uncertainty be any different? I wish you’d had an ally running defense for you at that gathering.
Sometimes we need to have boundaries with others, what they want from us, and what they say to us—like your friend’s mother—and sometimes we need to learn to have boundaries with ourselves.
This applies to the soundtrack you have on repeat in your mind, the judgmental phrase that’s thwarting you. An essential place to start is deciding to stop the tape as strong as the compulsion might be to keep pressing play. Instead of focusing on your perceived failure or a story you tell about it, what do you want to say to yourself?
Studies show that when we visualize ourselves accomplishing hard tasks in advance, such as an Olympic athlete running a race, we are more likely to succeed with ease when we actually do them. Our brains and bodies do not know the difference between practice and the reality of a situation.
The same is true for imagined failure. Holding on to negative thoughts and listening to them, again and again, may have felt like a protective move at first. Harsh words often feel better coming from ourselves than others, because we have a false sense of control over the river of meanness. Either way, you are dammed up and nothing is flowing—not your sex drive, not the direction of your relationship, not your career.
Being stuck is hard because from the outside you look able-bodied and people grow impatient with your inability to take action. But to you, it can feel dramatic and paralyzing. That blank and frozen state that fell over you when you were put on the spot, unable to think and respond, is possibly your old friend dissociation, and in tow, his cousin, immobility.
Both occur when we are overwhelmed; verbal or physical responsiveness literally becomes impaired. Finding some kind of regular practice to come back into your glorious body, to rebuild it as your safe house—a place where you have choice and can listen to and for what you want—is key.
Are there any moments in your life that you can recall where you felt empowered and vibrant? What were you doing, where were you, who were you with, what did you feel in your body? When you recall a time when you did feel in control, you are brought back to that experience, and that neuropathy is reinforced and strengthened.
Intentionally being present and regulated in your body builds your capacity to take action. In contrast, focusing on fear of what you Don’t want to occur can amplify your overwhelm when making decisions about the future.
You’ve described a feeling of impotence around getting a job and pleasing your family. This can leave you feeling impotent sexually as well. I often see that sex is not just sex. It mirrors how much vitality runs through us in other parts of our life.
If you are feeling shut down and disempowered around work and where you live, or squeezing down on your emotions, this can also kink the hose on your life force and prevent turn-on from flowing through you. So the question of how to revive your sex drive needs to be addressed holistically.
One example of a body practice could look like this: orient to the room you are in, look around, and name the colors you see. State the date and time and your age. Put your hand below your belly button and breathe fully into it. Press your feet into the ground; wiggle your fingers and toes.
This may sound minor, but the impact can be major. It will remind you that you, and not others, govern you. It will also bring you back to the present moment and open you up to the possibility of affection, praise, and direction. After all, it’s hard to answer the door to receive the flowers delivered to you when you are not home.
With affection,
LaidOpen
