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In my personal life, in my work, and in the collective zeitgeist, I have been observing an unhealthy attitude toward sex as a need that another person is responsible for filling.

Many men (and some women) feel entitled to have their desire for sex be filled by their partner.

Many women still use their ability to “service” a man’s “need” as currency to get some of their own needs met.

Over the centuries of disempowerment in society, a woman’s ability to seduce a man and thus manipulate him into providing some of our survival needs was among the few occasions where women could access power. To hold on to that power, we perpetuated the unhealthy dynamic.

This patriarchally conditioned belief that a man needs sex has led to much bad behavior, suffering, manipulation, mistrust, distortion and conflict in our relationships.

It gets even more complicated when either gender not only demands that sex be provided by their partner, but they also feel rejected when they do not feel desired by their partner.

To me, at the root of these relating issues is our lack of education about sovereignty of our (and other people’s) bodies, confusion about our boundaries, and absence of clarity as to which of our needs are our responsibility to fill, and which needs we can ask others to help us fill.

It comes from the fact that before we learned to speak, we had to endure things that were done to us. Too many of us had our boundaries breached as children (physically or emotionally) and we grew up without a clear understanding of where we end and other people begin, which desires are ours and which we had assumed as ours.

I teach people I work with to look at things they crave—whether food, sex, substances, achievement, relationships—as symbols that stand for specific needs.

For example, I regard sex as an umbrella that represents several human needs: for intimacy, self-expression (of which sexual expression is just one form), touch, connection, belonging, pleasure, validation.

As such, sex becomes a strategy to get these needs met, not an actual need in itself.

This point of view adds complexity and nuance that I find largely missing in discussions on the subject.

The need for intimacy and connection is a basic human need.

However, we lean heavily on other humans for connection, which often leaves us disappointed. Other humans can connect with us only to the extent that they are connected to themselves and feel safe in their own bodies.

Meanwhile, energetically we are connected to everything else in our environment: trees, the sky and the stars, pets, birds, and other humans. Many of us disregard these opportunities for connection everywhere and focus instead on the absence of connection with a specific person, who may simply not have the capacity to connect with us at the moment when we seek it.

Further, many people still expect connection and intimacy to come from sex. Which explains why so many people are dissatisfied, disconnected, and depressed—because the need for intimacy is not (necessarily) satisfied there.

Moreover, when we are disconnected from our environment and from ourselves, the sexual encounter with another can create more harm than good, leaving us feeling more alone, more misunderstood, more disconnected, more empty, even traumatized.

Dehumanization of another person as a need-fulfilling machine is ever-present in our society. When the other is not capable of providing the satisfaction we seek, we tend to punish them.

In my work with men, I find myself needing to explain to them that women are sovereign and separate beings with their own nervous system, their own capacity for desire and turn-on, and their own needs.

To assume that their partner will be ready and willing to fill their “need for sex” in the moment when they need it, or to take her no as a rejection is the definition of dehumanization of their partner.

In my work with women, I find myself teaching them that feeling guilty when exercising their right to refusal of intimate physical contact is a conditioned distortion. I remind them that our bodies are sovereign and no one has the right to our bodies without our consent.

Even in long-term relationships after many years of sexual fawning, we have the right to change our habitual behavior and express our wishes or lack thereof.

The notion that our partner’s love, thoughts, behavior, and genitals can ever be “ours” is dehumanizing to all genders.

Many of us simply do not understand some basic concepts of Domain, Boundaries, and Limits, as explained in the work of Betty Martin in her A Wheel of Consent guide:

Domain is what we have a right to and a responsibility for: our bodies, desires, feelings, pleasure, pain, fear, emotions.

What is in our domain does not change; we are always responsible for it. We do not blame them on someone else. And we have the right and responsibility to say no.

When we own what is in our own domain, we naturally respect what is in others’.

A boundary is the line that distinguishes what is yours (inside your domain) and what is not (outside your domain). Your boundary is the edge of your domain.

When someone crosses your boundary they step into your domain.

A limit is a choice about activity. It is what you are willing to participate in and what you are not. A limit is your no.

Limits can change. Example: I am happy hugging almost anyone except when I’m not. My boundary hasn’t changed (owning my body), but my limit has (when to hug).

To me sex or any physical intimacy is like a hug described above. My willingness to participate can change based on many internal factors in my domain. But my boundary—responsibility for my body, my sovereignty—never changes.

To identify, evaluate, understand our needs in relationships (and in life) and learn which of these needs are our responsibility and which we can reasonably ask our partner to share is what I focus a lot of my attention and work on.

So, to come back to men in long-term relationships with women. Many women who used to agree to sex to respond to the man’s desire often overriding their own preferences are starting to exercise their right to say no. Many men take this as a rejection.

Most men look for intimacy through physical closeness. Often, it is the only intimacy they know or are willing to accept.

Most women refuse physical closeness when they feel there’s no emotional intimacy. The more their male partner expresses anger about the absence of sex, the more women feel unseen and unsafe with their partners, in their own beds.

As a result, both women and men find themselves lonely and disconnected in their relationships, longing to be seen, understood, and loved. And safe to remain loyal to their own bodily needs and preferences.

What we all crave is intimacy. Unfortunately, we are used to experiencing intimacy through physical closeness. The truth is, physical touch is just one expression of intimacy.

The way I see it, sex—when we strip it from all the coded messages and emotional entanglement—is a symbol for physical and emotional needs. It makes sense to understand the underlying need.

If it is physical, it does not serve us to outsource it to others. We do not expect anyone else to drink, eat, sleep, urinate for us. And yet, when it comes to sex, we expect that someone on the outside of us is responsible for fulfilling our need.

Sex can be an emotional need, as well. The fact is, there are plenty of other ways to be intimate with each other and physical touch is just one. A vulnerable conversation is another. A vulnerable conversation may become a prelude to physical touch.

So in relationships where the desire of one person does not match the capacity or desire of another, throwing temper-tantrums, threatening, and acting as rejected children will not resolve the disconnect.

As brilliant Clementine Morrigan writes: “No one can withhold sex from you. No one can withhold intimacy from you. No one owes you sex or intimacy. Period.”

I believe that our relationship with sex reflects our stages of development. As we mature emotionally, we gain understanding of where we end and another person begins: what is our domain, our boundaries, our capacity and limits.

As we reconnect with our own bodies and nature all around us, we can come to deep levels of intimacy with or without other humans.

When I was going through my sexology training—we were talking about such notions as “joy-gasm” and “laughter-gasm,” among others. Meaning that we have access to “peak states” all the time—if we are embodied enough to notice and feel them. I find myself in similar states frequently now—nourished by my work, communion with nature, connecting deeply with the people I love. My body experiences pleasurable vibration outside of a “sex act.”

In conclusion, I want to say this:

Women are at the forefront of challenging and exploding traditional gender roles. Through the changes in our relationship with ourselves, we put evolutionary pressure to evolve on our partners.

However, a lot of that pressure we put on our male partners mostly has to do with our frustration at their refusal or inability to change. In my experience, the more I demanded change, the more my husband resisted. Once I took my gaze off of him and became a model for change, my husband became curious and open and a more willing participant.

~

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