How to return sexual life if we have not had sexual partners for a long time? Is it possible to re-experience the desire for intimate adventure and the thirst for new discoveries? What to do with the fear of failure in bed? A sexologist reflects on the prejudices that complicate our intimate life.
Such a thought suggests that we doubt our attraction, the instinctive desire to enter into a partner or let a partner into ourselves, or that we have the right to accept our own desire.
Women’s fear
In some women, this is how the unconscious image of the female genital organ manifests itself. They perceive him as defective, castrated, like a wound.
This anxiety may be related to the moment when they first became aware of the characteristics of their body and their gender, generally discovered sexuality for themselves, which happened during the first sexual intercourse. The vagina is perceived by a woman as a small hole that was forcibly opened during intercourse, and then healed due to lack of sex and therefore must be deflorated again next time.
Male fear
As for men, their inability to imagine the resumption of sexual contacts may hide the fear of the significant energy that they need to apply in order to take this step. This energy, as it seems to them, speaks of their excessive aggressiveness towards a woman or of too strong a desire that has gotten out of their control.
Anticipating this risk, they often, under the influence of guilt, refuse sex or even pretend to be “harmless itself”, failing to achieve a satisfactory erection.
General difficulties
Considering the resumption of sexual life as too difficult a task, we usually have two difficulties in mind:
put your body into action by engaging in sexual contact, where there is a meeting and confrontation of two bodies;
accept your own impulses, give yourself the right to manifest your desire.
Generally speaking, any unusual action is difficult. But once we start moving, we realize that we are capable of it, we enjoy the novelty, we feel bolder.
The resumption of sexual functioning also raises the question of the reasons for abstinence. Was the breakup wanted or forced? Was there an obstacle to sexual life? And how did this abstinence affect you, in what ways did you become more vulnerable or, on the contrary, did you feel safer, more secure and confident?
Added to all these factors is our personal history, which has allowed (or not) us to gain self-confidence and faith in others.
If the skill of having sex, like the ability to ride a bicycle, is not forgotten, we are still left with our interpretation of the past, which we can perceive as “falling off a bicycle,” and with the prohibitions that follow from such an interpretation. That is why we are often afraid to venture on a new love adventure.
However, our sexuality, driven by the desire for life, is fraught with many possibilities, and it is this that gives rise to our natural desire to have sex. The discoveries and pleasures that it gives us (on occasion) strengthen our self-confidence and spur curiosity and longing for the meeting of two bodies.