Sex life in a slump?

One way to look at sex is as a metaphor for life: Sex is life and life is sex.

If your sex drive is just sputtering along or if it has stalled out all together, sex and life might seem like a contradiction in terms. But perhaps they are not…

It was over 100 years ago when Sigmund Freud first introduced the idea that sex is a key motivator in the psychology of humans. He used the term libido to describe the sexual drive that is at the core of what he called the life instinct.

Riffing off of Freud, when it comes to ramping up the passion between you and your partner, or even that delicious surge you feel (or wish you felt) within yourself, the most pertinent question might not be “What kind of sex are you having?” or even “What kind of sex do you wish you were having?”

You might ask yourself instead, “How am I living?”

When you consider sex as a metaphor, you might see that how you are with sex is how you are with other areas of life and, perhaps your relationship to your sexuality is not the only aspect of yourself that could use a little revving up. After all, it is difficult to feel that sensual energy surge, that open expansion from deep within, if other important areas of your life lack vitality as well.

For women in particular, it is easy for them to put themselves last, particularly in the service of upholding responsibilities to family and relationships. It is easy for women to become so accustomed to being at the service of everyone else that as time goes by, it becomes increasing harder to not do that.

Women often describe feeling guilty or selfish if they want to spend time on their own away from family. As a compromise between duty to family and their own needs for self-care, they try to make due with quick walks with friends or the occasion evening book club or bunco group. For some women that is enough to refill their tank, but for other women those brief moments of reprieve are a little like living on the crumbs of cake instead of getting a big lick off the top of the icing.

What is missing is devilish smile of indulgence. What’s missing is the rush.

Other women feel that if they are not home taking care of children and family, things won’t get done the way they need to get done.

Okay. So what?

Things will get done, or they won’t—and they probably won’t get done the way you might like them to be done (which, by the way, is different from how they need to get done)—and that is really just fine.

Kids eating frozen pizza for dinner and going to bed dirty is a small price to pay for you getting your vitality back, for you getting your Self back…and yes, for you getting your sexy back.

So, how do you get your sexy back?

You do the things you loved to do (or were just about to get ready to do) before you got too busy to do them: You hike mountains. You run on the beach. You create art. You sing your songs. You do meaningful work.

In short, you do whatever it takes to make you hum again; to make you burn again with a passion for life. Your life.

Through asserting your essential, authentic, vital, beautiful, alive Self, your sexy will come, without even having to take off your clothes—unless, of course, you suddenly find yourself wanting to…

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Ed: Bryonie Wise