by
Doug Goldschmidt, PhD, CSW
Sexuality is one of the great gifts of
being human. Unlike many other animals, we can experience sex' physical
and emotional pleasures throughout our lives. We are neither constrained
by procreation nor biological encoding nor age. And, we can experience
our sexuality in many different ways - playfully and joyfully.
Sexuality deals with our most core issues
of self. The physical and emotional aspects of sexuality significantly
shape our relationships with others and ourselves. We are not merely
a man or woman who happens to sleep with another man or woman. Our
desires and how we relate to those desires and often how we conceal
them shape who we are.
If we feel constrained in our sexuality,
we'll feel constrained in a number of ways in our relations with
others, not restricted just to those we have sex with. For, the
lack of authenticity in our relation with all parts of ourselves
means that we are neither whole nor integrated. Parts of us remain
hidden, are deemed shameful, or are denied.
Despite our best efforts to the contrary,
these hidden parts will demand recognition. How we handle those
demands shapes how whole and fulfilled we feel as adults. It is
only through authenticity, the felt senses, and deshaming - the
honest acknowledgment of what and who we are, where we can integrate
all of our parts and be whole again.
We may ask why we would hold parts of
sexuality as forbidden, bad, or shameful. Freud noted that infants
are born with polysexual feelings - their entire body is open to
sexual feelings and they are open in expressing these feelings.
Unfortunately, while sexuality is the gift of being human, it comes
with another part of being human - learning about ourselves through
others and through society. Most behavioral psychologists note that
the infant must learn to repress many of these feelings as part
of maturing into an adult. The degree of repression however, is
not some set goal.
Our society often distorts our sense
of sexuality. Matters concerning sex are often deemed not fit for
public discussion, as deviant, wrong, sick and sinful. Despite greater
openness about sexual issues since the 1960's, there can be little
question that societal phobias and expectations about homosexuality,
female sexuality, elder sexuality, and "other" sexualities (e.g.
fetishes, S/M) remain strong. We all receive sex-phobic messages
in schools, through the media, from our friends and families.
Our parents may tell us not to "touch"
ourselves, give mixed signals about sex outside of marriage, and
may demand heterosexuality as a condition for their continued love.
The signals may not ever be spoken as threats or commands. Rather,
they may be comments about the "tragedy" of the neighbor's single
or gay son as opposed to the joy of other neighbors whose daughter
is getting married. They may be expressed as hopes (or demands)
for grandchildren. And they may be expressed as fears about pregnancy
or AIDS. However well intentioned these messages may be, due to
cultural ignorance and our societal limitations in the complexities
of sexual expression, they are traumatizing.
We also receive messages about sexuality
through our parent's interactions with each other and with us:
- What is their degree of physical and emotional warmth? Do
they touch and use intimate language?
- Are they openly sexual with each other? We're not talking
about having sex in front of the kids, but does their interaction
suggest that sex is part of their relationship?
- How authentic are they in their dealings with each other and
family members? Is there a sense of intimacy or is there a sense
that relationships are somehow contractual. This is like the
comments one may contrast at funerals ranging from "I'm sure
they loved each other" to "They acted like they were still dating"
offering strong contrasts in object lessons to children.
More dangerously, we can learn lessons
of sexuality through abuse, against self or others. Watching one
parent beating the other offers strong lessons about sexuality that
are not easily forgotten. And, being sexually approached or abused
by parents, other family members, friends or strangers, also teaches
lessons about sexuality, about the ability to control one's own
body, about intimacy and touch, that are not easily forgotten. Unless
these lessons are integrated and healed as adults, we may find our
sense of sexuality filled with images of powerlessness, fear, negative
aggression and distrust. When fear overtakes love, being touched
is more threatening than pleasurable, while being loved can be an
out-and-out threat. Simply being "present" for sex is difficult
let alone fully expressing one's sexuality in our culture.
It is important to remember that notions
about abuse and abusiveness need not come only from directly experienced
abuse. The media are full of displays of hostile sexuality - displays
than often teach children lessons about themselves and sexuality
that then interfere with their sense of sexuality later on.
The process of authenticity teaches us
that all of the lessons we've learned are part of who we are. The
positive and negative messages and experiences are all there, to
be used as we grow. Our interest isn't in accentuating the positive,
but in taking all of the positive and perceived negatives parts
of ourselves and being able to present them authentically - without
shame or hiding. This is when we begin to transform our sexuality
into something new and whole.
This means that we acknowledge our culturally
perceived negative parts and how they make us what we are - how
they are part of our alive sexual juice. By learning to integrate
them, we change how they affect us. Fear and loathing can become
love, but not before they are acknowledged for what they are - pieces
of our history that cannot be simply discarded or repressed. When
these parts are denied (e.g. by labeling them as bad) they emerge
again and again, bringing their own misery with them.
Jack Kornfield, a meditation master,
wrote, "forgiveness is realizing that we are stuck with our past."
It is in this stickiness that we discover self-love and through
that, intimacy and love of others.
How does all of this actually look? We
find many manifestations in authentic process healing:
- Integrating childhood fantasies into adult sexuality - a
man taking his childhood fantasy of being Marilyn Monroe and
integrating those feelings of desirability into his relations
with other men or women;
- Integrating childhood desires into sexuality - Taking the
desire for love and warmth from one's father or mother and integrating
it into sexual roles in a parent/child relationship. This awareness
allows us to ask for a type of loving and warmth we desire,
without embarrassment. The joy comes when this desire to offer
or receive that type of paternal love is fulfilled. ·
- Taking sexual fantasies and integrating them into sexual play
- Taking fantasies that many people initially experience as
dirty or shameful and turning them into sexual play - bondage,
vibrators, dildos, role-play, and the like. Here we learn to
understand the distinctions between sexual play tied with love
and intimacy and "acting out" sexually addictive behavior or
sexual anorexia in life. ·
- Being able to enter into casual sex without feeling that it
is shameful or degrading - Rather than experiencing it as somehow
"acting out", compulsive or shameful, finding it a joyful outlet
for sharing sexuality and connection with another human being
and then moving on. Here the person neither affirms nor denies
the pleasures of sex tied to intimate relations.
- Changing hostile acting-out behavior into loving behavior-
Taking prior sexual behavior that included anger towards self
or others, for example in S/M actions, and making it loving
and intimate. For example, moving from hurtful aggression with
a sexual partner out of anger (perhaps unconscious) at some
figure from the past, and retuning it into playful sexuality
with another with a reciprocal desire. Here we discover that
it is not the act that defines healthy sexuality. It is the
individual and mutual intent.
- Understanding that sexuality evolves over time and need not
be exclusive - that one can desire a woman or man at different
times in one's life, and that one may desire different types
of sex on particular occasions. Sexuality, like the rest of
us, can be fluid and change.
- Integrating our feelings of sexuality with our social feelings
- that a person who felt that his sexuality was his currency
can integrate those feelings so that his overall persona is
his currency. Social shyness can then give way as sexual precocity
is integrated into character.