The Actual Joy of Sex

When I first made love with my partner he commented on the fact he had never been with a woman who laughed so much during sex. He said it took some getting used to but he understood it to be a good thing.

I do laugh a lot during a happy sexual encounter.

I laugh because I am joy-ful, en-joying myself, free. Some times I groan and grimace and growl too. With intensity and in play.

One thing I love about good sex is getting to play with my partner.

We can be silly, put on voices, role-play, improvise physically, play with words. It’s intimate, it is our space. We are not observed by the world. We do not have to play the adult or the parent or the model citizen. We can change tack, re-negotiate, interrupt if necessary.

When we have been busy and committed and too serious in the rest of life this time is a relief and release, a re-awakening and return to each other and to those parts of ourselves we have pushed to the side for a while. Sometimes when I’m grumpy and my jaw is tight and I don’t know what to do with myself, sex is far from my mind and yet it can be just the thing I need.

When I am closed and defended and protecting myself I don’t want intimate physical contact- and yet if I am caressed gently or held firmly it can help me drop that guard that closes me off.

My partner has learned ways to approach me when I need re-connect with my body and with him even when it seems counter-intuitive, if not risky, for him to do so. At these times I don’t know myself what I need. When I see the world’s problems as unacceptable and unsolvable I forget that sex partnered or solo can help me shift my perspective. An orgasm can relax my nervous system, take me out of my rumination, resource me to be more resilient. It helps me with the rest of my life.

I read once that having an orgasm three times a week improves a woman’s overall health and longevity. When I shared this with a friend she rolled her eyes said

“So we have to eat 10 portions of fruit and vegetables a day and now we’re supposed to have three orgasms a week as well..!!” She saw it as one more “should” to squeeze into her life.

What if a satisfying sexual relationship with our partner or ourselves wasn’t just good for our health but could help us maintain hope and perseverance when political world events threaten to overwhelm us with despair.

Audre Lorde’s essay on the Uses of the Erotic is one I go back to again and again. It is well worth a read if you are not familiar with it. (https://www.centraleurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/audre_lorde_cool-beans.pdf) She speaks of the power of the erotic. The powerful life-giving creative energy in us related not only to sexuality but to being a satisfied empowered human being.

“Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.

“For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society”

“We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence. It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power. As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and non-rational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters. But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.”

It’s not just about having good sex but about being in touch with that life-giving energy that many associate with the sacral chakra and the womb space.

The woman connected to the power of the erotic is dangerous. Not to herself but to the system which is threatened by and so suppresses that energy.

I choose to embrace my sexual creative energy. I want to nurture it so I can be enlivened and satisfied and sustained to do my work in the world. I want to feel joy and to be a bringer of joy.

I would love to see more women experiencing and expressing the powerful energising transformative aspects of sexuality- despite our conditioning and yes our trauma too.

So let’s have those orgasms. Let’s embrace the ones we love, our lovers, ourselves.

And if that needs bit of lubrication or topical oestrogen or some inner work on our stories and experiences of sexuality to make that pleasurable- let’s feel empowered to seek them out.

Not as another thing we need to do but because there could be a font of untapped resource here from which we have been unjustly cut off.

What if this could be joyful, playful, loving, energising, releasing, satisfying, creative, healing? Couldn’t that be good for us and good for the world….?

With joy and love,

Marie Louise x

Queen of Revelry