‘I’ve being hunting the net for hours today for answer and accidentally stumbled across your site. I’ve got to a point where all I can do is ask questions and hope someone somewhere will have answers.
I’m 26 and either bi or les, but that’s not the issue. I’m comfortable being straight, bi or lesbian as long as I can sort my problem out.
I’ve never been able to sexually arouse my mind. Physically I get aroused, my genitals swell and become very lubricant. But I can’t seem to connect the two hence I don’t feel the urge to continue after I loose the feeling in my genital area after a few minutes. I feel if I can connect the two I’ll have greater sensations and will be able to cum and hopefully orgasm.
I know that fantasies play a big part but I don’t find anything sexually arousing. I’ve watched porn (straight, les and gay), read erotica. I’ve only started masturbating a few months ago but with all the best intentions I don’t seem to be any further forward. I touch, caress and massage my body but I have no sensations at all. I put this down to my mind not being sexually stimulated. Is this correct? How do I do it? I’ve had tests done and medically I’ve fine.
I’ve recently split with my gf of 5yrs due to me not wanting to live a sexless life. She was happy as it was but I felt that she had a choice and I didn’t. We did have a close relationship and it was intimate at times but mainly one sided as I was never mentally there in a sexual way. I need and want to explore and enjoy sex but am stuck in a rut.
I’m seeing a hypnotherapist but so far its no/slow progress.
I’m at a stage in my life where I’ll try anything. I don’t believe I need to sleep around to learn how to enjoy sex. I have never slept with a man and everyone I speak to (male and female) seem to think that this may be the answer. Personally I do not believe this as I should be able to please myself before someone else can.
I had this chat with my doctor who seemed to be of the same understanding that maybe I’m not bi/les but straight. She had no right to suggest that but even if that was the case shouldn’t I be able to please myself?
Please help. Any suggestions will be useful.’
The Lovers’ Guide responds:
Thank you for your message. This really does sound as if you could do with working over a period of time with a good sexual therapist.
Your experience, though, is not uncommon. Many women experience genital sexual arousal without any conscious awareness of arousal. It’s thought that this is an evolutionary trait that ensures that women are ready for sex physically when in the presence of stimulation (e.g. erotica or a person) even if they’re not in the mood psychologically or emotionally. It’s thought that this physical receptiveness prevents damage if the would-be suitor is not put off by the fact that a woman’s ‘not in the mood’. It may be that knowing this and normallising the feelings may allow you to go along with the physical sensations and enjoy them and reduce the anxiety in her mind. For many, masturbation is mostly physical and it’s often within a relationship where the mind and heart kick in much more.
It is tempting to suggest that the lack of connection between body and mind might be the result of early experience, whether in the sense of blocks introduced to natural connections or those connections not being encouraged to develop, through the course of childhood and early adolescence.
It might be, for example, that the culture in which you grew up did not provide you with models of sexual fulfilment with which you could identify and which you could make your own – ways of imagining fulfilling sex, that is. It would be understandable if, as a lesbian child, you were left cold by heterosexual norms surrounding you. Time and habit might then have encouraged this state of mind to ossify. Once we are cut off from our feelings, it can be difficult, to say the least, to go back and repair that connection – or to go back and learn that they can be connected. The ways in which emotions and physical feelings/sensations do connect or fail to connect are wired into us from a very early age, a process beginning before we can even speak and which is hugely socially determined.
It is worth asking what sorts of things, not overtly sexual, you do most enjoy imagining. Are there things that you greatly enjoy imagining or fantasising about? If so, then it is possible these could help provide a route to more sexual fantasies. It might be that there is some sense of a physical you within such fantasies – and this could help you forge further connections between body and mind. We would expect this to be a very gradual process.
It is also worth saying that, if the process of therapy entails retracing past connections to do work now which wasn’t done in the past, then this can be an unsettling process. Indeed, it might be an at times painful process. This can be especially so if it is a case of some damaging experience actively blocking our capacity to feel sensually. Such experiences are often hidden from our conscious minds for self-preservatory reasons. This, though, is not necessarily the case with you – and the experiences which can make such an impact on our later lives are often seemingly quite trivial.
It is very easy to offer generalising theories about what might be happening, but we must stress that such theories might have little or nothing to do with you. It is for this reason that we must recommend you see and work with a good therapist, one who will cater specifically to you and not seek to latch some pet theory onto you.
We hope this may be at least of a little help.
Good luck.
The Lovers’ Guide