I don’t know if anyone knows this, so I want you to lean in close as I whisper it to you. I want you to receive it.....professionals have sex! professionals have sex! professionals have sex!! Yes. Even people with degrees, extensive work experience, culture, and money are sexual creatures. We wear our conservative blue or black suits. We are the world’s problem solvers and go-getters. People put us on pedestals of knowledge and, consequently, of morals and standards.
At some point in our western society, the message and the norm became that professionals were to be staid, serious, purely intellectual and thinking creatures who are above connection with prurient thoughts, wants, or needs. Now, to be sure, every person has their own standards of morals and will have an experience and expectation of sex that is different from the next person. This is what I refer to when I say “sexual experience.” However, I find the rigid expectation of professionals to appear almost asexual, even within their very proper marriages, to be unrealistic and unhealthy. This article is not to challenge, *too much*, what each of us holds as moral or correct for his/her sexual self. Rather, this article is to encourage us to become more open to our own sexual experience and not to associate others’ openness in their own sexual experiences with something that is taboo or wrong.
So, what is the issue with being disconnected from your own sexual experience? Well, I can think of a few reasons, all poignant adjectives:
1) Repressed
If you are characterized as repressed, generally speaking, you are distressed from the exclusion of thoughts and feelings, often involving sexual desires and sexual urges. By repressing these desires and urges, you are pushing them into your unconscious mind. You are not accepting them into your conscious space and you actively, or inactively, work to put these needs out of your consciousness. The problem with doing this is that you cannot rid yourself of your thoughts and desires. By not accepting them into your conscious mind, you are effectively failing to deal with them. By not dealing with them, you can create anxiety and other psychological consequences that can in turn affect your ability to function in everyday tasks and in your relationships. Your thoughts and needs become a prison of sorts. In other words, you create your own unhappiness.
2) Stunted
As a stunted person or a person having a sexual experience that is stunted, your growth or development has been stopped or your experience has not been allowed to attain its proper growth and development. How important is sexual development and growth? In a newsletter published by Family Voices, Vol 10, Issue 1 in September 2009, Patricia Barthalow Koch is quoted as saying, “Sexuality is an integral part of development throughout the life span, involving gender roles, self-concept, body image, emotions, relationships, religious beliefs, societal mores, as well as intercourse and other sexual behaviors.” In other words, by not allowing your sexual experience to attain its proper growth you are in turn hindering your concept of who you are within yourself and in relation to the world in which you live.
3) Unhealthy
Your sexuality is a part of who you are as a biological creature throughout your lifespan. Your sexual experience plays a significant role in your physical, mental, and experiential health. So not connecting or not having an ongoing connection with your sexual experience is not a healthy state.
It has become more common knowledge that sexual desires are driven by hormones produced in different areas of our brains. What may not be as widely known is that acting upon sexual desires also in turns stimulates hormones as well. In “The Neurochemistry of Sex” by Walter Last, he says that sexual arousal leads to increases in various hormones, including dopamine. (http://www.health-science-spirit.com/neurosex.html) When dopamine levels are deficient or in excess, there are negative consequences. Some that Last lists are anxiety, depression, compulsions, low libido, unhealthy risk-taking, gambling, ADHD, psychosis, and social anxiety disorder. However, normal levels of this hormone lead to feelings of well-being, reward in accomplishing tasks, healthy bonding, sound choices, and maternal/paternal love.
To be clear, dopamine is not the only hormone at play, so the consequences can and do reach all areas of life beyond what’s presented here. But, by looking at the example of dopamine levels, we are able to see that having a connection with our sexual experience, whatever that is for each of us, is important beyond our sex lives and the sexual contact with have with others. This connection to our sexual experience can affect happiness, career, our relationships with family members, our roles as spouses and parents, and our very satisfaction with all of it and ourselves.
4) Unmotivated
This adjective is closely related to the “unhealthy” factor above, but I felt it was important enough to cull it out from the rest of the consequences. According to Ludwin Molina in “Human Sexuality,” (1999) human sexuality is a primary source of motivation. (http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/sexual.htm) “Sexual motivation does to some extent influence human behavior.”
In the previously-cited article by Walter Last, a symptom of dopamine levels being out of whack is lack of ambition and drive. On the other hand, when dopamine levels are normal, you are motivated and feel pleasure and reward in accomplishing tasks. This motivation goes beyond motivation to just have sex. This is a motivation that pushes us to accomplish life’s goals, to take care of our families and ourselves, and to find pleasure in that.
As professionals, we are, by nature and/or nurture, motivated, driven people who take care of others and value family, friendships, and relationships with others. We have varying but high goals in our personal and professional lives. Being disconnected from your sexual experience can mean being repressed, stunted, unhealthy, and unmotivated---the antithesis of what we hope to accomplish as professionals, spouses, and parents. Therefore, as professionals, we must connect with our sexual experiences and explore our sexual selves, which is consistent to all that we are striving to achieve.
Now that we see the importance of connecting with our sexual experience, you may be asking how can you make that connection for yourself or how can you maintain the connection you have already made. Well, I have a few tips:
1) Take inventory
One of the best ways to become connected or to stay connected to any aspect of your own experience is to stop and look introspectively. In other words, take inventory. Look at the good for yourself that you have done. It’s all too easy for us super motivated types to see the bad or the negative in ourselves. Well, taking inventory means also looking at the GOOD. What are the positive things you’ve done that have brought you to where you are?
Now, we also have to look at the bad or negative things that you have allowed to be done to you. Notice the wording: “you have allowed to be done to you.” The truth is, we control our experiences. We cannot control other people’s behaviors, but we do control our own experience of their behaviors. So if you are hurt, angered, betrayed, etc. it is because you allowed that to be your experience. We have to take ownership of this during the process of taking inventory. Because the next question becomes, “Why did I allow THAT to be my experience?”
You may be asking what this step has to do with experiencing your sexual self. Well, experiencing your sexual self--or any other aspect of yourself--requires you to take control of the experience. In order to take control, you have to admit the good and the bad and FIND THE BALANCE. Ultimately, it is this balance and control that will lead to your freedom of self. With this freedom, you can give yourself permission to make your experience what you want it to be.
2) Explore
Often times, we have enclosed ourselves into a thought pattern or set of ideals and have given ourselves little opportunity to venture outside of that. We limit ourselves in this way and may do so for a variety of reasons. Maybe we have become complacent with the ideals and ways “given” to us through childhood and the experiences of our elders. Perhaps we fear censure from our family or partners. Whatever the reason, it is time to break free from that and explore! Give yourself permission to challenge your own preconceived notions and challenge that box that others may have put you in. For example, think about what your preferred sexual position is. Now, ask yourself, “why?” Why is that your preferred position? Now take it a step further into EXPLORATION and ask yourself would a new position offer you the same or even a better experience? It’s ok. Go for it!
The task of exploration can be scary, but it’s largely mental. Our minds are powerful tools that can imprison us or set us free. Make the choice to be free!
3) Act
After you’ve taken inventory to find your balance and given yourself permission to explore to find your freedom, now you have to go and DO. You’ve done the hard parts, now it’s time for the fun parts. Of course, you’re still using your good sense and you still stand on your moral ground, but be free from shame or censure. We see now that our actions in regards to our sexual experiences are important for our happiness, well-being, and goals. So go forth, be free, and act!
4) Reciprocate
Now that you have found your experience and come into your own, you also have to allow others to experience their freedom. Don’t shame and censure. Don’t do to others what may have been done to you. Even if you go through these steps and you don’t make many changes in your own experience--that’s ok!-- don’t lie in judgment of others’ sexual selves or sexual experiences.
Remember, everyone’s sexual experience and sexual self is different. Even if your experience is relatively more limited, if that is YOUR full experience, then it is good. Whatever you are, whoever you are, embrace it. You can be professional and ambitious AND in tune with your own sexual experience. However your experience may appear to others, if it is who you are, it is good.
Pura Vida
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