What You Really Really Want by Jaclyn Friedman Read Free Book Online

decisions, worrying how people see you, feeling responsible for everything—and that crappy feeling can lead to even crappier outcomes. For example, if you feel insecure about your sexuality, you often don’t want to associate with your desires. You end up checking out of your body a little, like you’re watching yourself in a movie. In that checked-out state, whatever sexual encounters you engage in can feel like they “just happen” to you. You might have unprotected sex because you’re too afraid to admit to yourself that you want to have sex at all to speak up about using barriers. Or, if you’re “just letting” someone make out with you (because you secretly
want to make out with them but you’re in denial about it), you might wind up “just letting” them do sexual things with you that you really don’t want as well. All of these dynamics collide to create one massive negative-feedback loop in which you feel bad about sex, which makes sex feel bad, which makes you feel even worse about it.
    On the other hand, if you find ways to reject the Terrible Trio, you can create the exact opposite effect: You’ll feel more connected to your sexuality, which means it will be easier for you to get your sexual needs met, which will feel great, which will make you feel even better about your sexuality.

SHAME
    Odds are, at some point, someone has tried to make you feel ashamed of your sexuality. Maybe someone, a parent or a classmate, said you were dressed “slutty.” Maybe you told a date you didn’t want to be sexual, or even just be sexual in a particular way, and they called you “uptight” or a “prude.” Or maybe the opposite happened, and you expressed your sexuality openly and with exuberance, and you were suddenly labeled “easy.” It doesn’t have to be about your behavior, either. You could feel shamed by something as simple as what arouses you. Take twenty-six-year-old Avory, for example. “My most sensitive spot is just under my armpit, which I find very, very embarrassing and often can’t even admit, because it seems so nonstandard and armpits are ‘icky.’”
    Often, this shame gets lodged in our bodies. We feel ashamed of how we look, or we feel ashamed of how others see
us, or we feel ashamed of what gives us physical pleasure and what doesn’t.
    The variations on the shame theme are endless. But shame always boils down to one thing: A person or group is projecting their moral values onto you. It doesn’t even have to be directly targeted at you. Twenty-one-year-old Mag puts it best here:
    The way my friends or people around me talk about experiences they’ve had with people, and the way Cosmo is constantly like, “50 ways to please your man” and, “OMG, virgins,” it makes me feel ashamed to not have had these experiences. And it makes it even harder for me to get out there and tell somebody, because I’m afraid that once they know that I haven’t done certain things, they’re not going to want to do that with me, because they’ll think there must be something wrong with me.
    When someone is making you feel ashamed about your behavior, your appearance, or anything, for that matter, the most important thing to ask yourself is: Do I agree with this person’s values?
    This seems like a pretty easy thing to do, but in practice it’s actually pretty complex, especially when you’re not in the habit of asking yourself the question in the first place, and particularly when you haven’t asked yourself the corollary question: What are my personal values about sexuality?
    This is a good place for me to own up to my own values around sex, but let me be the first to say: You don’t have to
agree with me! The important thing is to spend the time deciding for yourself what you believe.
    I believe that we all have the right to experience sexual pleasure.