A sad state of affairs. And one that continued with my next boyfriend, a lovely human and wonderful friend who should have just stayed a friend but instead we ended up dating and then living together for four years after college. Sex? Same as before.
So what changed? Well, things started to change as my meditation practice gained traction in my midtwenties. And shifted again when I discovered yoga. Body-centered psychotherapy has also been a big, glorious, super-win. But the biggest shift—the seismic transformation—happened in the midst of a six-month meditation retreat all alone in a cabin in the mountains of southern Oregon. I had no phone, no computer, no electricity, no running water—and I had nothing to do but look at my own mind, feel my own heart, and know my own body, hour after hour after hour, day after day after day.
I wish I could say this long retreat was an entirely pleasant experience. I’d like to tell you I was filled with light, that angels danced, that I was elevated, blissful—and, in fact, those things do happen on meditation retreats (sometimes).
But not this time. This time, from just about the moment I first closed that cabin door behind me and the pickup truck that had dropped me off drove away down the long dirt road, I was struck by a clenching dread. That dread settled around me as I unpacked my things. It followed me to bed. It was there when I woke up. And then for one hundred and eighty-something days it was my ever-present companion.
Were there thoughts that accompanied this dread? Indeed there were. All the same thoughts I always had. Except magnified. Amplified. Spinning me around and dragging me down. Shame thoughts. Guilt thoughts. Self-doubt, self-disgust, loneliness. The utter certainty that I wasn’t good enough, not thin enough, not worthy enough. Oh, and the unrelenting hatred of my body. That particular variety of unfiltered self-loathing. Yep. That was me. Alone. In a cabin. For months.
I always tell people that it was during this stretch of time that I learned the true meaning of compassion. Firsthand. For myself and for everyone. Every morning waking up alone. Every evening sleeping alone. And nothing in between but knowing the body and watching the mind. Knowing breath, knowing the crunch of a sour apple, knowing the steps of my feet on crusty snow, the swirling thoughts of helplessness and despair. And just being with it. Remembering the meditation instructions again and again—just be with it. Just know. Awareness has room for everything.
And it did. It truly did. Awareness didn’t let me down. By the end of that grueling, endless, lonesome retreat, I was a different human. And I felt, for the first time, that I could handle my whole life. Handle anything and everything. And that my body—this body, just as it is—was not only good enough: it was magic.
AND ANOTHER THING…
Let’s Talk about Consent
Before we move on, let’s take a quick minute here to talk about consent. Because when we’re talking about having good sex—sex that aligns with our values and honors our own and our partner’s body—we’re always talking about consensual sex. Here’s the thing: consent is not a confusing topic. Let me repeat that: consent is not a confusing topic. But here are a few simple guidelines for those of us who might still be figuring it out.1
1. Yes means yes.
As a culture, for some reason we used to think that when somebody didn’t explicitly say “no,” that meant they wanted to have sex. That’s a ridiculous standard. The true standard is that somebody tells you, really clearly and through words or obvious gestures, that they want to engage in sexual acts with you at this particular moment in time. If they’re not doing/saying that, then you can assume they’re not into it and you don’t have consent.
2. It’s moment to moment.
One minute it could be yes, the next minute it could be no. This happens. And it’s okay. Another thing that happens is that one partner can be into one level of sexual intimacy and not another or might like one position or sensation or encounter and not another. So if there’s hesitation or objection or prevarication, consent has been revoked and some communication needs to happen before moving forward.
3. Enthusiastic consent is the goal.
Which leads us to the gold standard: enthusiastic consent. Enthusiastic consent means both partners are really into what’s happening and they are communicating this to each other with some degree of exuberance—through words, touch, expressions, and all the rest. Not only that, but they’re checking in with each other as things progress. They’re saying yes, taking it moment by moment, lighting a mutual fire. Anything less than enthusiastic consent is no consent at all.
Okay, glad we got that out of the way. Now let’s jump back into how we’re going to make this consensual sex really good.
HOW TO MAKE SEX GOOD
Most of us are never going to hole ourselves up in a cabin with no running water and no electricity and no cell reception for six months. And I’m not sure I even recommend it. I bought that little ticket to cabinland after doing a whole lot of training with a whole lot of very skilled meditation teachers. And I am also the recipient of many requisite privileges—race, class, nationality, and more—that even allowed me to consider such an option.
The good news, though, is that for the whole of humanity, who largely have no real interest in meditating alone ten hours a day for half a year, there are still ways to take back your body. What follows is not, I am sorry to say, a guide to really awesome sex, per se. (If you are looking for a guide to really awesome sex, the best book I have come across is Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas. Definitely pick that one up if you have a chance.) What I’ll be offering here, instead, is a guide to taking back your body so that you can truly connect with your partner and find your own way into the good sex you’ve always wanted—or used to have and would like to get back. So here we go.
Unplug
Honestly, I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to drop in this all-important piece of contemporary semi-Buddhist advice. Come to think of it, we probably should have just started the book by recommending that you unplug. The entire book, in fact, could be called “unplug.” But that ship has sailed and the book is mostly written and the publisher already has a title, so let me just say really quickly here:
This is maybe the most important thing we’ll say in this entire book.
No big deal. But you might want to pay attention for a minute.
Everything I’ve been talking about thus far in this chapter, from objectifying patriarchal consumerism to my own little (ahem, big) journey of divorcing and then re-inhabiting my body, takes place in the context of the storming gale force of, yes, technology. Social media, in particular, which is, by its very nature, suffused with all the very messaging we’ve been unpacking here. If we want to make sex good, we need to take a break from all that.
For instance, let’s say you have a lovely partner. Let’s say you identify as a woman and she does, too. Let’s say you’re both in your early twenties, both graduated from college, both working full-time. Both tired, in other words. And let’s say you live in a big city on the West Coast of the United States, just for kicks, and maybe you just moved in together, and what was a spontaneously flaming sex life just, almost overnight, sort of fizzled out. And now you’re reading this book and looking for some good advice.