Uncovering the Story of Your Erotic Self
Sex is a complicated issue in any relationship. Identification of problems can be difficult for people because they might be comfortable openly thinking about their own sexual desires. The taboo nature of sex can make it difficult to personally understand, and especially difficult to talk about. Knowing this, it can be helpful for you to assess your own level of comfort with your peak erotic experiences. Although this is not always an easy journey to travel through, it’s one that is well worth the discomfort. Remaining personally guarded on this topic can prevent you from exploring, processing and negotiating what you sexually want in your relationship.
Shame around your sexuality will tell you to remain silent about your ideal eroticism. For some, the shame can be so extreme that they won’t even allow themselves to openly think about this. There’s a story about your personal feelings about eroticism, but you’ll only be able to process this if you allow yourself to open up about it. This process has to happen first for yourself, and then possibly to your partner, if it will be beneficial.
A great place to learn about your most ideal erotic relationship with your partner is by openly looking at your fantasies. People often don’t feel comfortable talking about their fantasies. Recognizing and being open to your own fantasies can be exciting and arousing. For many others, they can be scary and inappropriate. They can feel like they mean bad something about you as a person if they go against long-standing beliefs. Opening fantasy up to yourself doesn’t mean that you choose to engage in the behavior itself. Instead, you might identify elements of the fantasy that you want to bring into your sex-life, while finding many others that you don’t.
After opening yourself up to your inner sexual fantasies, you can identify what your peak erotic fantasy is. This will allow you to explore what makes it powerful. You can make sense of power dynamics that you desire, and allow yourself to accept these dynamics and communicate them with your partner. You can think about sexual positions and situations that you would enjoy. You might even be able to identify where these come from for you.
Sometimes we also compare our current relationships with past encounters. The problem with past sexual encounters can be a lack of understanding of what made that past encounter so pleasurable. People will move forward remembering, and maybe even fantasizing about that sexual experience, but not taking the time to break down the specifics of what made this encounter what it was. It’s important not to just attribute ideal eroticism to “chemistry” or “passion”, without identifying what those things actually are for you.
You can also identify what the peak erotic experience has been or could be in your current relationship. Taking time to figure out what sexual experience got closest to your ideal one can help. This will provide you and your partner hope that you can improve the excitement in your relationship. It will give you a concrete list of a place to start when you’re wanting to further explore eroticism. Taking time to identify fantasies that you have had of you and your partner can help you further improve your sexual fulfillment. If you don’t fantasize about your partner, this is an opportunity to start. Taking from some of the work that you’ve already done in other areas of exploring your erotic self, you can experiment with inserting your partner into them as well.
Shame can also keep people from this fantasy exploration of them and their partner. By taking one step closer to openly talking about sex, you might be tempted to shut down. Remember that by opening this door, you are giving yourself an opportunity to have sex with someone who you love, in a way that you hadn’t previously thought possible.
Processing, introspecting, and gaining an understanding of your sexuality in such an open way can be extremely intimidating. Opening this story of your sexual self is not easy, but with the knowledge that you’ve gained, you have the potential to explore something that you might not have even known was important to you. If you find it and are open to it, you might even be able to bring new elements into your current relationship.
