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  BREAKTHROUGH 2: CELEBRATING HEARING NO

  You come to realize that your partner saying no is a good thing; it means they are taking care of themselves. You move on easily to another request and can enjoy that fully. You have a wealth of things that can feel good, and one can replace another without a problem. You ask for exactly what you want without concern about whether your partner will say no or not, knowing that you will be fine if they can’t do it.

  Phase 7—Being Selfish

  Most people are raised to believe that selfishness is bad. And it certainly can be. There are plenty of people who manage to get their orgasm regardless of whether they connect with or think about their partner, but that is not a wholesome selfishness. That is bred of insecurity and smallness. I am talking about being selfish in a good way. I am talking about being able to take pleasure, ask for what you want, and allow yourself to soak up pleasure with abandon. This kind of selfishness is crucial to great sex. Having the strength to want and receive is a powerful thing. Being able to relish your experience, dive into sensation, and luxuriate in sex brings passion and dimension to your sexual encounters. This ability enhances not only your own enjoyment, but also your partner’s. It is attractive to want! You are a much more compelling sex partner when you thoroughly enjoy yourself.

  But this selfishness is hard to do when you have been raised to be a people pleaser. Many of you were brought up and trained to always be looking for ways to be of service, keep the peace, be easygoing, and roll with the punches. As a people pleaser, you may take pride in your ability to accommodate and not need too much. Your friends appreciate your easygoing attitude, and you may find yourself coasting through life without much conflict.

  And yet, like so much in life, this comes with a cost. If you focus only on pleasing others, you may not know what you want or have any sense of how to figure that out. You may have devoted so much time and energy figuring out what others wanted and trying to give them those things that you never took the time to tune in and see what you would choose.

  Over time, some of you have learned to bury your desires because it was clear early on you weren’t going to get them met anyway. They may be buried so deeply by now that you can’t seem to find them. But somewhere inside of you there are things you want. And over time, if you ignore those wants and desires, a feeling starts to smolder. It may be unhappiness. Or resentment. Or maybe just a worrying feeling of being unsettled. But something simply isn’t right.

  At some point, going along with what others want becomes a problem. Some of you will hit a wall, suddenly, and can’t go along anymore. Others get to this place more gradually, with a consistently growing and gnawing sense of dissatisfaction and unease. In whatever way you get there, once you do, there is no turning back. Your desires will make it to the surface one way or another. The question is, are you going to wait for them to explode on their own? Or will you proactively start looking for them now?

  There is another cost to always being the one who accommodates: your partner never gets the opportunity to give to you. There is something profound in being able to please someone else. If you don’t give your partner the opportunity, you are depriving them of that experience. When in Thailand many years ago, I was watching the Buddhist monks begging for rice among the crowd. In talking to my tour guide, I became intrigued when he explained that they were providing a service: offering a gift of the opportunity to give. This applies to all of us. Allowing yourself to want (and allowing your partner to give by fulfilling those wants) is a critical part of a good relationship—and good sex.

  A balanced relationship is key to a great sex life. You need to be able to think about yourself in addition to thinking about your partner. In great sex, there is a dynamic of being both selfish and giving. If you or your partner only has sex for the other person’s pleasure, or if you’ve only had sex in the way that works for the other person, you are out of balance. It is not sustainable to keep pouring from a cup that doesn’t get filled. Eventually, it feels draining at the least, and toxic at the worst. Once sex starts to feel negative, sex is going to suffer unless you step up and bring your own wants into the equation. It’s important to be able to be selfish.

  Having the strength to access your desire and then act from that place opens sex up and creates a more fulfilling experience for both people. Letting your partner give to you, as well as share in and enjoy your pleasure, can make their experience better. Sex starts to get hollow if it’s always about one person’s enjoyment, even if that one person is you. Ideally, you create a flow where you each get a chance to think about yourself and receive.

  To practice being selfish in your life, you can use the same strategies I suggested in the stage where you were accessing desire. Think about yourself and ask for what you want. Let yourself focus on what would make you happy. Rely on your partner to take care of himself or herself and to speak up if they have a problem. Remember, you don’t have to take care of them. See what it’s like to indulge yourself.

  Using the Receiver Exercise—Being Selfish

  The zeal of selfishness takes openness and confidence as well as a strong alliance with your partner. You are exposed in sexual desire. That’s why it takes practice and growth. You can use the Giver/Receiver Exercise to stretch the limits of your pleasure and your ability to revel in it. You can ask for exactly what you want, and you can practice taking the space to think only about what would feel best, letting your partner set the limits they need in order to participate with you in a healthy way. Watch what happens as you explore positive selfishness!

  PITFALL: INABILITY TO PUT YOURSELF FIRST

  It’s hard for you to think about yourself. You may have spent your life focused on the pleasure of the person you’re with, or you may have more recently decided that you need to worry more about your partner.

  You worry that your partner won’t like your choice, so you censor. If you believe that the touch should (or shouldn’t) be sexual, you limit your choices to those expectations instead of really tuning in to see what you want in that moment. Or you ask for what you want, but you watch your partner for their reactions (their comfort) and gauge from there. You spend the whole time wondering if they are okay, instead of being in your own experience.

  BREAKTHROUGH: GIVING YOURSELF PERMISSION TO BE SELFISH

  You can think about yourself, to be selfish in a good way. You take up space and let yourself have a turn. You allow yourself full access to your desires, and you relish receiving that touch. You trust your partner will take care of himself or herself, freeing you to let go of all those cares and savor the experience. You feel unburdened, free, and expansive. It feels good!

  Phase 8—Giving

  Being selfish in sex needs to be balanced with allowing your partner to do the same, putting you in the role as the one who gives what the other wants or allows them to take their own pleasure. You don’t have to balance this equally every time you have sex, but there should be a good balance overall. Create the space for your partner to desire and soak in their own pleasure. Be an active participant in inviting and responding to their selfishness.

  You may have a partner who isn’t able to enjoy sex fully. Perhaps they are shut down, repressed, ashamed, or self-conscious. This tones down sex, bringing the potential vibrancy of pleasure down to shades of beige. Working with your partner to explore their desires, their fullness, and their ability to abandon themselves to pleasure will pay off for both of you. This focus on them takes being able to set your needs aside and give.

  You can work on giving in your day-to-day life. Make space for your partner to have their wants and needs met. Set yourself aside, sometimes, to fully get on board with them. Notice how often you shut them down to pursue your own agenda. How often do you expect to get what you want while ignoring or minimizing what would make your partner happy? How often do you expect them to cater to your wishes, but you don’t reciprocate?

  Using the Receiver Exercise—Giving

 
You can use the Giver/Receiver Exercise to immerse yourself in the role of Giver. After taking care of the boundaries you need, you can work to open your heart to want to give the pleasure your partner is requesting. You can follow directions carefully, tuning into their body language and signals, as well as their words. Invite them into that space; let them know there is room for their pleasure and desires. See what unfolds when you try it!

  PITFALL 1: DIFFICULTY HEARING DIRECTION

  You feel like you should know what they want already. You feel like the things you’re learning now show you’ve been doing it wrong all along. You feel criticized. You feel stubborn; you struggle to do things when people tell you to. You feel an urge to withhold what’s being asked. Or you struggle to want to do it well since it’s their idea.

  BREAKTHROUGH 1: LOVING DIRECTION

  The pressure is off. You don’t have to know what they want. You don’t need to be an expert or impress them. You just follow directions. It’s freeing to know they are getting what they want because it’s up to them to ask for it. You feel the burden that you are responsible for their pleasure has lifted. You are a partner in it, allowing you to relax and simply put yourself into doing what they describe.

  PITFALL 2: NOT LIKING WHAT YOUR PARTNER CHOOSES

  Sometimes, your partner will express a desire for something that you don’t like. You struggle with the line between needing to say no and just wanting to. You’re anxious or turned off. It’s not what you want, so it’s hard to do it, and it’s certainly hard to want to do it. It’s difficult to stay present. You’re thinking about how you feel about it instead of being present with it. You may feel like you should like it and thus get into self-criticism. Or you worry what all this means.

  BREAKTHROUGH 2: ENJOYMENT OF PLEASING THEM

  You want to please them. You love being able to give. You love seeing your partner happy. You’re learning things about what they like, and you’re learning to like some of the things that please them. You’re moving through any discomfort you have with certain acts and expanding the repertoire of touch and sensation.

  PITFALL 3: JUDGING YOUR PARTNER

  You may judge your partner for their choice. You may feel they should be asking for sexual touch and are hurt or annoyed that they aren’t. You feel like they aren’t doing the exercise correctly, or they aren’t pushing their boundaries. Or you think they shouldn’t ask for something sexual, and you think they’re pushing your boundaries. Judgment gets in the way of you just being in the experience, and you get annoyed or frustrated or disappointed.

  BREAKTHROUGH 3: LETTING GO OF JUDGMENT

  You let go of the idea that your partner is supposed to want anything specific. You value what they ask for because it is exactly what they want in that moment. You let go of any ideas that their requests should be sexual—or that they shouldn’t be. You give your partner the freedom they need.

  Phase 9—Exploring Eroticism

  Early in a relationship, there is often plenty to get excited about. The two of you generally have enough overlap in your sexual interests to find at least some room to play. But over time, you may have gotten into a sexual rut. Throughout a relationship, you tend to take anything off the table that makes either of you uncomfortable. Unfortunately, you may have ways of being sexually intimate that you really like or are interested in that were taken off the menu in those early days when everything was new and exciting. Being careful to not make your partner uncomfortable, you may have gotten to a place now where you feel like you’re really missing something. It’s also common to play it safe with your partner and not make yourself uncomfortable. You don’t reveal too much about what really turns you on.

  It’s been said that the brain is the biggest sex organ, so if you’re not using yours, you’re missing out. The brain is what adds meaning and psychological depth to what you’re doing. The brain is what turns words, gestures, and acts into erotic stimuli. If you leave out eroticism, you risk dulling your sexual experience.

  You each have an eroticism that is uniquely yours. There are specific things that turn you on. And it’s not just the specific physical acts but the meaning of those acts (the energetics around them) that make them exciting. There can be themes of power, romanticism, prohibition, danger, mystery, presence, and more that underlie what really “flips your switch.” Your eroticism is revealed in your sexual preferences, your fantasies, and your reactions to erotic media, both written and visual. If you aren’t clear about your own eroticism, you can explore fantasies and erotica to see where it leads you.

  There is a lot of fuel in your eroticism; it has power. And if you’ve been going through your sex life without tapping into what is erotic for each of you, you’re not maximizing your interest and arousal. If sex is seeming stale and boring, exploring eroticism is one powerful way to breathe new life into it.

  Of course, a lot of people don’t ever get to this level of exploration because it’s very intimate to share your eroticism with your partner, and that can be scary. You may not have ever thought about what’s hot to you, never explored this at all, so you don’t know where to start. Or if you do know, you may not know how to share it with someone who may or may not accept it. You may not want to rock the boat or risk the anxiety of showing someone else this side of you.

  Now that you have shifted from avoiding sex to actively engaging with your partner to change the dynamics, and you’ve worked through the other phases of this process, you can explore eroticism together. Making sex erotic is powerful fuel for sexual interest and arousal.

  Beginning to explore your own eroticism with your partner can open new levels of intimacy and intensity. This is not for the faint of heart; it can feel very risky to show this side of your sexual self. You may be ashamed of your sexual turn-ons, and you don’t know until you share them whether or not your partner will embrace them. Coming to terms with your eroticism and making room for it in the conversation with your partner, whether or not you will incorporate it into your sex life, can take some time and patience.

  The first step, once you’ve got some idea of what turns you on and what is salient in your eroticism, is to imagine how you can bring that about with your partner. What would you have to ask your partner to do to explore your deepest erotic desires? Then you can discuss this with them. I recommend sharing scenes with each other that you each find hot. Go into this with the agreement that you won’t criticize each other. Try to keep curiosity and openness about what you each find to be a turn on. You are not, at this point, talking about doing anything with this information; you are just learning about each other. You can share scenes from written erotica, movies or TV shows, or from visual erotica, including pornography, if you wish. You can point out which part(s) of the scene are fundamental to your response to it—which parts are hot and which parts don’t matter or get erased in your mind, so you can focus on what turns you on. Sharing more than one scene allows both of you to see the basic theme of what underlies your unique eroticism.

  The next step might be to share your actual sexual fantasies. Knowing that your partner might not respond especially well to your ideas, agree to the same respect and lack of criticism as when you shared other people’s scenes. Since these are created in your mind, they only include elements that work for you. There are no off-putting elements that you must overlook, as there often are in porn or other media. After all, why add elements to a fantasy that would make it worse? This means it’s more personal, too, since your fantasies are pure erotic material that reveal your core erotic nature. When you let your partner see this level of detail about what turns you on, you are showing them extremely personal information about you and your essence.

  Through this exploration with your partner, you’re going to get an idea of where you overlap in eroticism and where you don’t. It is my belief that no two people choose each other if there isn’t at least some overlap in what they find erotic. It’s not a problem if you don’t find the exact same things arousing. You
’ll want to find the overlap and start there. Then you can start to explore those things that are outside your comfort zone, but that you might be willing to entertain because it’s pleasing to your partner. And vice versa.

  The places where you overlap are easy to use and play with. Whether you decide to do some of the things that turn either of you on (whether acting out a whole scene or just playing with parts of it), or you harness the erotic energy by just talking about or imagining it, you can start to incorporate the energy right away. Some of the erotic ideas that don’t overlap can still be part of your sex life. You can use some of them, even though it’s out of your comfort zone. Or maybe you’re willing to role play or imagine some of the things that excite your partner even though it doesn’t excite you. Sometimes you can build ways to play that use elements from each of your fantasies, finding how they can go together in a way that works. Other erotic elements may just be off the table in your relationship (giving you another opportunity to practice saying or hearing no). In that case, those themes can be explored and enjoyed in solo sex.

  Using the Receiver Exercise—Exploring eroticism

  You can use the Giver/Receiver Exercise to explore eroticism once you have made good progress with all the other phases of this process. Because you are directing your partner, in exquisite detail, about what you want, you can capture elements of your eroticism in your requests. Eroticism is more about how things are done, and sometimes less about what things are done. See what it’s like to add this dimension to what you describe to your partner when it’s your turn to receive.