One way I’ve found to minimise resentment in my relationships is to say when I’m full.

Full meaning I’m done, at capacity, have no more room in the inn for whatever’s happening.

This was terrifying at first. It felt so brutal, so cold. To tell someone mid-way through a conversation, that actually I don’t have any more capacity for this to continue. Or half way through an experience, that I needed to leave.

I felt so selfish. And how would the other person cope without me in that moment?

Why do women do this? I was thinking about my experience of faking and there were a few driving factors

The cultural sex scripts I had picked up from TV etc, taught me that sex meant quick penetration, a focus on male ejaculation and that women, without much clitoral stimulation get off on that. I faked orgasms to fit into that script.

I believed the narrative that women don’t derive as much pleasure from sex as men and it’s something to get over and done with ‘for them’

I felt greedy to need clitoral stimulation for more than 5 minutes, because that took longer than what a man needed to become aroused

Sex as something women do for men

Growing up, I received messages from the media that sex was something women did for men.

That Men were the ones with the insatiable desires.

Women were the ones for whom sex was unsatisfactory, something initially desired at the start of the relationship because of lust

But that this slowly dwindled over time, where sex was perfunctory

An item on the to-do list to keep the man happy

Years ago, one of the biggest things that I wanted to change about my sex life was my ability to have an orgasm with a partner. For years, I found it hard to relax and enjoy myself and I would get stressed about how long it took me to climax. I thought there was something wrong with me or that I was just someone who didn’t find it easy to have an orgasm with a partner.

I wanted to change this, so I began to study about female pleasure and orgasm. And not too long into that journey, my ability to have an orgasm with a partner radically shifted where it became easy for me.

I was a horny teenager growing up.

Devouring Mills & Boons and fiction where women had lots of s/ex.

I couldn’t wait to have sex and masturbated all the time.

I had this vision of it being this ecstatic, transcendental experience.

When I started to have sex though, I remember feeling profoundly disappointed.

Where was the ecstasy and pleasure that I imagined penetration would be?

One of the biggest shifts in my relationship to pleasure, came not from my training or courses I attended but from reading Caitlin Moran’s book ‘How to build a girl’.

There was a moment in the book when the protagonist talks about how she used to masturbate thinking about all the pleasure she would give the other person.

Her focus was on her touching THEM and how it would feel for THEM. She wasn’t even the main event in her own fantasies.

And as I read that, I realised that I was doing the same thing.

As I masturbated, I fantasised about all I could do for the other person.

How skilled and adept I would be.

I was getting off on their pleasure, not on my own.

Pleasure is experienced in the present moment

This may sound obvious, so why am I writing it?

What I’ve found that I do, and many of my clients do too, is that we put off feeling pleasure until some fantasy moment in the future.

Oh I’ll let myself feel pleasure when …

… I’ve lost weight

… I got this promotion

… My business is in this place

… My health is fully recovered

… My kids are at this stage

… My house is properly organised

… Everything on my to-do list is done

… I have the perfect partner

Things I learned from having a painful clit this year

- I wasted a lot of time feeling shame for my clit experiencing pain. I made myself wrong because I thought I shouldn’t experience anymore pain because I’ve spent so many years healing and doing different s/ex practices. I also catastrophised and became despondent, believing that I was stuck with this discomfort for life and that there was nothing I could do to change it. Basically I went into many of my negative patterns in the face of this experience. And once I stepped out of these, I was able to do practices that helped the energy shift. So I learned (again) that time spent in a negative down spiral of shame and fear achieves nothing except to keep me stuck.

How to experience more pleasure and orgasms by practicing love and approval for what your body is experiencing in the moment

How I transformed a negative pelvis bodywork experience into deeper power, stronger boundaries, trauma release and into creating an empowering journey for other women and their sexuality.