Sex is constantly being fed to us in various forms of media or is somehow always lingering in our daily lives- and I am not simply referring to the 16 year old boy on hormone overload, on the contrary, I'm referring to the average individual such as you...or me. Sex is everywhere; its in the his & her KY commercials that interrupt our Modern Family episodes, in those "miracle little blue pill" commercials that randomly follow the morning or late night local news, it's written into our favorite shows within the flirtatious play of our favorite TV show hero and leading lady, its in the Carl's Jr. Commercial featuring a mythological deity having created the perfect burger and his harem of goddesses devouring the burger in tiny outfits and a highly suggestive manner...It's everywhere. But for a topic that almost runs our social surroundings, we know very little about it.
For many sex is a pleasurable purely physical experience, for others its a way of expressing your feelings to your partner...However, as Mr. Stanley Siegel points out; no one thinks or talks about what actually occurs during sex. For Siegel, sex "...is the doorway into our deepest psyche.” He outlines that often our unmet childhood wants and needs become sexualized as we mature and manifested in our adulthood. He emphasizes that "our true sexual desires emerge out of an unconscious attempt to work through deep-seated feelings.” This might sound slightly stereotypical and perhaps even Freudian, and if you're not a fan of Freud (like me) you're knee-jerk response might be to be offended or immediately disagree. However, if you stop to think about what Siegel is really saying; you realize he makes a very strong case. For example, you don't need to suffer from the classic Daddy Issues to find that you have a Damsel in Distress or Rescue fantasy. On the contrary, it may be as simple as you grew up extremely self-reliant and independent and learned to fend for yourself; therefore, your sexual fantasy evolved into a desire for someone to take care of you and "rescue you," so to speak. On the other side of the coin you may have grown up in a happy home but a financially and economically struggling one; so as a child you may have grown to admire your family's ability to "make do," and perhaps even developed a sense of helplessness for not being able to change their circumstances. For this reason as a child you may fancy yourself a superhero who changes their lives or may vow to make a lot of money so you can give it to your family, thus resulting in a "Rescuer sexual role" or a role in which you protect and provide for your partner. As you can see, the childhood experience may not always be an extreme traumatic one; but our childhood experiences do mark us, so it makes sense that it would affect our sexual self.
However, for Siegel, in order to begin to understand the depth of Sex and how we relate to it as our sexual selves, it is crucial to examine what happens DURING sex.
But more on that later ;) For now, your thoughts? What is sex to you?
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I think you're on a right track, theoretically, but I haven't been able to find a link between my own styles and my rearing.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to suggest that motivations and meanings are unimportant, but I would also say that what you've got you've got, and if you spend too much time worrying where it came from you rick souring your own enjoyment.
I'm a big fan of Dan Savage's podcast. Since it's in the form of an advice column, overarching philosophies are only revealed as the sum of many related pieces of advice. But one of those is that a person who depends on, for example, violence for arousal may do so because they had a violent youth, or because they had an overly peaceful youth, or because they had one influential violent episode in an otherwise-peaceful youth. That is, it could be a doorway into your deepest self or you could have just happened upon a Freddy Kreuger movie while channel-surfing and horny one time - either could be the case.
For another example, polyamory could be a result of trust issues, trust stability, or watching Clockwork Orange at a formative time in your life. And you might never know which!
Savage's advice tends towards: You should establish that scratching that itch isn't actually making something worse, but that done, it doesn't make much difference where you got the preference, what matters now is how you express it and find partners willing to go there with you.
Thank you for your comment; I find Savage's point of view quite interesting and will make it a point to familiarize myself with his work further. This post is only the tip of the iceberg so to speak, of Siegel's perspective on what he calls "Smart Sex." I've only begun the preliminary discourse on his work; however, his overall point is not to demonize or ostracize our sexual desires and preferences and by proxy; our true sexual selves. Nor does he intend that without deep examination one can't experience a healthy and pleasurable sex life. On the contrary his intention for examining our true sexual selves via our background is to use this understanding of ourselves to enhance our relationship not only with our partner, but with our entire environment and the multiple facets of our lives. For Siegel, reaching such an understanding of our true selves via the process of Intelligent Lust achieves a harmonization that enables us to reclaim part of who we are and who we have become. I promise to try to cover this more in my next post; stay tuned! :)
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