Day 369: Sex & the fear of failure

19122013

The moon is used as a symbol of femininity in witchcraft - "The Moon" by Alphonse Mucha

I haven't been writing for a few days because I have been preoccupied by practical application. I am going through something very intense in my relationship towards another person and it's required most of my spare time and attention. I am / we are now starting to find some kind of a balance after the first few days of constant new underlying points popping up and being discussed, so I am now also getting back to writing. I am not sure what to write about, but I will probably try to make an overview of what I've been going through.

Okay, as I was making a list of all the points that have surfaced within the past few days, one point stood out as I noticed I was reluctant to look at it. I've been thinking a lot about how I perceive sex through a negative filter: I compare myself to people who think of sex as something fun and exciting (an ideal here maybe) whereas I am nervous, tense and outright scared. Whenever sex comes to play, it feels as if I shrink. All of my insecurities are magnified and I feel incredibly small and vulnerable. I know people (women) who have a completely different take on sex where they feel empowered through sex, strong and magnificent. Although, hang on. Have I ever heard them put it into words like that? I see that my vision of “who I should be” within sex might actually be yet another self-created illusion. Let's look into that.

A few years ago I got really into witchcraft, which is a very female-driven phenomenon. I read a lot of literature (fact and fictional) on the subject and got the idea that a woman can in fact enjoy sex on her own terms by embracing her femininity. I basically created this image of the sexually empowered witch woman – a magical creature – something “more” than who I was – someone with the extra “magic” or understanding about what sex is and how it works.

I'm guessing I have filtered my friends – the people who approach sex with a positive attitude – according to this ideal and imagined them to “already be there”, to have achieved that magical something which I haven't. I've made myself feel like a failure as I have believed I'd need to be something “more” when in fact what I'm looking for is something less.

What sex basically is is touch. What separates it from other kinds of touch is usually the involvement of genitalia and/or a sense of intimacy, being “unusually” close. Touching other people is fun to start with: it's a form of communication and play, a tool for creation. Through touch movement is created; in it's ultimate form, new life can be created. The thing is, sex isn't usually seen to be that simple. First off, it is though of as a “special” kind of a touch. This is one layer of shit placed over the simplicity of sex. Also, sex is highly visualized, separating the act from the other senses (touch, taste, hearing, smell) – another layer of shit. Sex is also valued as a trophy, it is demonized, it is used as currency, it's used to control – shit, shit, shit – the conceptual (imagined) reality of sex has become an entity of its own. Even under all these layers of shit, all the beliefs that we have painted over our reality, underneath all that sex is still primarily a touch. In any sex scenario I can conjure in my mind underneath the roles all I see is trembling flesh. It's all just vibrations and frequencies, the flesh in differing tempo and beat.

So: what is the conceptual reality I have painted over the simple physical reality of sex? What are the layers of shit I need to peel off to get to the null point?

I am basically afraid of failure. I think of sex as something I need to succeed in. I use it as a measuring point for my worth. I'm getting kind of sick and tired about this “I'm not good enough” -sentence that keeps on surfacing behind EVERY SINGLE POINT I ever walk through because I'm still not sure where the fuck it comes from. Perhaps I'm just a culmination of the kind of femininity that has submitted under (male) abuse and dominance for aeons. What has created me is all the men and women in my lineage – and that's such a shitload of people that I can't even begin to imagine what they were like. But I'm guessing the issues have always remained the same, so it's enough that I look at the little I know of my history. My history is the human kind's history.

The way my fear of failure manifests within sex is through a basic concept: the belief that sex has to be “good” (a definition containing an ideal) for my partner to be satisfied and not leave me (which implies that the reason I look for relationships is to not be alone, hence the fear of being abandoned). Therefore I'm never really having sex for myself, as an act of self-expression, but for others. There may be other aspects to this as well but this is what's surfacing right now. I'll continue tomorrow with SF on this point specifically.