What’s Your Relationship with Sex?

By: Dr. Denise Renye

My days consist of talking about sex, drugs, and psychospiritual experiences. As a sexologist and sex therapist, I talk about sex a lot: what sexual energy is, the circles of sexuality, consent, and the problem with the word “foreplay,” to name a few. Something always curious to me is a person’s relationship with sex – how they engage with sex in their lives – conceptually and physically – and what it means to them. 

It’s common knowledge that sex can be used as a means of connecting with other people, i.e., partner sex. It can also be a way to connect with the self, i.e., self sex or masturbation. But beyond connecting, sex has so many other uses – to help with sleep, for distraction or taking a respite from something that feels overwhelming, a mechanism to disconnect the mind and body, a mechanism to connect the mind and body, as part of a harm reduction model when tapering off from an addiction, etc. There are also severely negative uses of sex, for instance, when it becomes a weapon of violence through rape and molestation.

Because everyone is so different from one another, sex can look a certain way on the outside and feel differently on the inside for each person. That is why good communication is extremely important, even if the person you’re having sex with is yourself. Doing so will help you build a better relationship with yourself and with others, if you choose to involve them in sex.  

Some self-inquiry is important around sex to help increase your consciousness. Awareness around sexualness, sexuality, and intimacy can potentially lead to a more enriched and embodied life. As a practice of self-inquiry, being curious about what sex is for you is important. If you don’t know what sex is for you, you won’t know why you’re having it or possibly what your desires even are. Once you begin asking questions around what sex is for you, what it means to you, you’ll have more awareness and thus conscious choice with regards to it.  

Some questions for you to investigate:

·      What is sex to me?

·      How has sex historically been a part of my life?

·      What do partners in sex mean to me?

·      Have sex and love always gone together?

·      Have sex and love ever gone together?

Also, your relationship with sexualness and sexuality and sex can change over time, with life experiences, and with maturation. I’ve seen this time and time again. For instance, I’ve worked in many harm-reduction facilities over the course of my career. I used to create curricula for individuals who were developing a deeper relationship with recovery from alcohol, other drugs, and behavioral addictions. We found their relationship with sex changed as time wore on because they brought more awareness into all parts of their lives.

When there are active addictions alive and well in the shadow of the psyche (which also means they are alive and well outside in the world via behaviors), the person’s relationship with sex and sexualness tend to be heavily affected. For instance, if a person is addicted to or has a compulsive relationship with alcohol, they may also have sex compulsively. Or if a person is anorexic with food, they may be anorexic with sex. Addictions aren’t always directly correlated like that – a food anorexic can be compulsive about sex for instance – but often an addiction in one area of life bleeds over into another. Exploring one’s relationship with parental figures, with a well-trained professional, is important when active addictions are occurring. Commonly, folx with active addictions unconsciously seek the love that was absent in an early childhood relationship –perhaps the relationship did not meet  the nuanced needs of the infant.  

Similarly, when a person starts to experience recovery in one area of life, they start to experience the possibility and opportunity for it in others. While it isn’t always true in practice, in theory there could be a domino effect wherein bringing more awareness to the person’s relationship with sex also brings more awareness to their relationship with food, alcohol, shopping, cigarettes, etc.

So again, what does sex mean to you? How is it meeting or not meeting your needs? Is your sex life working for you? If you don’t ask the questions, you may just never have a knowing about it.

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