Sex, Intimacy and Desire
Sex, intimacy and desire are three realms of our human experience, which we can experience as separate or as intertwined. It all depends on what we’re looking for, hope for or are ready or capable of experiencing.
Freedom from “should’s”
For us, it’s not about the moral judgment of what you ‘should’ be experiencing. It’s not that you ‘should’ be intimate when having sex or that you ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ experience sexual desires. We believe that sexual experiences and desires are fluid and change as we go through life.
The challenge for many of us is to free ourselves from all the different ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts,’ and instead, to discover the language of our own unique bodies and desires, and what is fulfilling or exciting to us in the phase of our (relationship) life we are in.
When relationships do get stuck, it is often times around sexual issues, for example, one person having more desire for sex than the other or one person wanting kinkier sex or experiencing sexual difficulties on a physical level.
Often times, our experience around sex is a window into our relationship as a whole. Our sex life isn’t isolated from the rest of our relationship. The good news is that exploring where and how you get stuck can lead to new life, both in terms of your relationship as well as your personal growth.
What may look like sexual problems may, in fact (when explored and unfolded) hold the key to finding new and creative solutions.
Issues that Come Up around Sex, Intimacy and Desire
- Learning how to experience and/or restore passion in short and long-term relationships
- Creating physically and emotionally meaningful connections
- Exploring stuck points or recurring conflicts, and improving communication and creative collaboration
- Understanding the way that our sex life reflects unconscious dynamics and communication styles in the relationship
- Exploring diversity issues, for example, around health and aging, ethnicity, race, gender or cultural differences, and backgrounds
- Navigating power dynamics and their impact on sex and intimacy
- Uncovering issues from the past and how they impact our sexuality and relating
- Unpacking social issues and context, and how they impact our sex life and relationships
- Learning the ways that anti-sexual prejudices in the culture impact us and creates inner attitudes of judgment, guilt, or shame around our sexual needs, desires, and lifestyles
- Exploring the challenges as well as growth potential of being single, and how to create intimate relationships with ourselves
- Using sexuality as a pathway to explore spiritual and ecstatic states