Art by Betty Dodson
What’s my favorite fantasy? What’s my kink? What’s my fetish? For me, thinking about those questions can be tricky and somewhat disturbing. Why? Because they tend to make me feel ordinary and restricted. Am I really that vanilla-ish? What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I fantasize? Why don’t I long for power play? Why don’t I objectify? Sometimes I wish I could just choose differently from the big sex positive menu, then I would order a huge meal of harmless fantasies and joyful preferences, and please make it extra spicy by adding a little dirty surprise on the side. I think I have kink envy!
Sometimes I want to be kinky so much that I start flirting with the thought that I just have to dig even deeper until I find my inner more advanced sex player. And I could be right – sex is dynamic and I have no way of knowing before I take my last breath. But I could also be wrong. Time and effort – well spent on sex – will guide me!
For now, for this blog post, I will use the same approach when looking at my sexual mind as I do when I look at my sexual body. I’ll be kind. I love my body for what it is: Mine. I love my mind for what it is: Mine. The single most important thing I have learned in my process of creating a beautiful sexlife is that it takes a lot of self-love to find pleasure within oneself but there is no way around it because pleasure cannot be found anywhere else. Self-love is the door to pleasure and pleasure is the gateway to healing and love. Put on repeat. Pleasure – Love – more pleasure – more love. It is the life spiral!
So with kindness, and without shaming my mind for the lack of kinkiness, I will share some of the more sexy parts of my mind: Thoughts that randomly come to me and spontaneously turn me on. Thoughts that I deliberately can call upon and count on as efficient fuel for my desire and arousal. And then I will also allow myself to mention some thinking and sharing practices that have inspired and energized me to create more of the kind of pleasure that connects me to myself and others.
First, I think a lot about past sexual experiences. Replaying pleasure pulls me into my area of lust. I know many people are dreaming about future experiences or fantasizing about stuff not even meant to be acted out in real life, but that’s not how I work. I think about something that has actually happened and that I would like to happen again. Often some small details from the last time I had sex or the last time I got turned on. But I also have a huge catalogue of “greatest moments and situations” and thinking about those; that hotel room or that meal or that look or that flirt or that trip or that fireplace or that gesture or that suggestion or that smell or that funny pillow or that beautiful piece of body or that pair of shoes or that touch or those words or that sound, easily brings me into wanting. The memory of the smell of my partner’s favorite chapstick when we first met. Or the memory of how an interesting stranger once politely asked me out for a date while we were both helping a man that had hurt himself in a fall. Some of my memories are like pushing a button. I am so simple, so predictable! When I replay past experiences my body reacts as if it happens again in the very moment. My breathing changes, my temperature shifts, my blood starts flowing, my full attention suddenly points towards pleasure.
Secondly, my mind also has a special area of creativity that is fed by education and communication. That’s when I talk about sex or listen to others talk about sex. Or about nature or art – because those subjects are super sexy too. I communicate a lot. With myself, with my partner and with my friends and Bodysex sisters. I find that sharing sexy stuff is the most direct highway to connecting. Sex talk has a tendency to quickly bring out what is important to us and who we really are. I guess the reason is that talking about pleasure, how we access it and why we sometimes avoid it, is a kind and often humorous way to share our inner feelings; our longings and fears, our guilt and shame. Often there will be tears and laughter, and that is a good thing because everyone will be able to leave the conversation feeling more normalized and less traumatized. Shedding shame is without doubt the most crucial ingredient in making self-love, and thus engaging in a sex positive relationship and/or community is very helpful in creating a great sex life.
Lastly, When I have sex – with myself or my partner – my intention is to place myself in the pleasure area. It is not a space I have always had easy access to. Despite having liked sex most of my life, intense pleasure only happened randomly and surprisingly. I did not get serious about taking responsibility for pleasure before I reached my fifties. I guess life brought me to a point where I finally matured and then I took the wisest and bravest decision of my life: I wanted to become an amazing lover and I wanted to design my sex life with sole focus on my own pleasure. So now, for me, after years of practicing, having sex feels like going into a state of sensate focusing. Stimulation makes me go within, and then pleasure connects me to myself and/or my partner and to everything. Intentional sensate focus is my easiest way to establish the link between body and mind. It’s my form of meditation. As Betty Dodson wrote in Sex for One “I don’t want to go overboard and turn sex into a religion” but I totally identify with her words about sexual energy: “As we awaken our bodies through the senses, we awaken our minds to the knowledge that we are all related and connected to every living thing on the planet and throughout the vast universe”. That’s how I feel too.
My final thought is that pleasure is pleasure no matter what kind of stimulation it takes. The important thing for me has been to find and explore my own personal way to create the connection between body and mind. Whether I can make it happen with the help of fantasies or kink or sensate focus or a combination is really just about style and preferences. With that in mind: Time to say goodbye to my self-judgemental kink envy.
Mette J. is a certified Bodysex Coach
