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.
|
 |
|
|
