Bedroom Diaries - Managing Big Emotions During Sex
Have you ever had big feelings come up during sexy times - frustration, irritation, sadness, anger, annoyance? Those big emotions are often a sign that memories and traumas are coming up to be processed. Sometimes, in our sex lives post-kids, those memories can be the very thing blocking our desire to get into the bedroom in the first place. In this episode of the Sex After Kids Podcast I walk you through how I managed some tricky feelings in a recent romp in the bedroom and the breakthroughs it revealed for me.
Grab a cup of tea and listen below or skip down further to read if thats’ your jam.
Leave a comment or email me at sofia@thehappyvaginaproject.com and let me know what stuck from this episode? I love to hear from you.
So, I had sex the other night…
Long story short Big kid was away, little kids were asleep; we had a window we decided to take it. We are doing our thing, getting in the mood, and on this particular day, I was down for playing with myself and getting myself to orgasm. So we were playing around doing our thing and it was feeling like it was taking me a particularly long time to get there, it's like I was chasing the orgasm. It was moving on me. I would feel like I was getting so close and then it would disappear. Or I'd have kind of moments of numbness intermingled with moments of lots of sensation. Who knows how long it was actually even taking, but in my mind, forever, and my husband could read that I was getting a little tense, and getting a little frustrated. And I eventually did stop and give a bit of a huffed sigh with “ I'm fucking irritated with this moment” vibes.
Hubby was lovely. He invited me to breathe, and to relax, and to switch it up and see what we could do for me.
The feelings persisted, and got a little more intense as he was doing his thing. I wasn’t focusing so much and I was trying to support myself to breathe, and let go of the outcome, but I could feel the tears burning in the corner of my eyes and I knew if I tried to sigh or vocalize that I would uncork. I’m sort of aware of this, but also not, kind of semi-consiously trying to hold back the tears. Cause deep down it doesn’t feel safe to feel what’s coming up, I don’t want to, it feels inconvenient, messy.
So, eventually I tired with my partner going down on me. It was interesting because normally I will very unconsciously transitioned to, “I'm bored with this, I want you to just stick it in me so we can like finish and wrap up”, and instead I was just feeling like I wanted something different and I wanted to move to intercourse. So we do that, and my partner is so lovely, like no one has openly acknowledged that I'm having a trauma response yet, although I think we can both kind of quietly read that that is what's happening and he just invites me to do some union breathing with him while we're making love.
So we're breathing together in and out. We're kind of cycling our breath and I'm enjoying things. The sensations are nice. There isn't really much of a climax buildup for me, but at this point I've got a lot of complex emotions happening. And so I'm happy to just enjoy what's happening for right now and for us to close. And when we do, I just sort of like, nuzzle into his arm and breathe a little bit. And then this thought enters my mind. And I just start to sob. My husband just holds me. He doesn't talk. He doesn't ask questions. He just lets me cry in his arms.
My brain goes….
Is it him, you are mad at?Him you are frustrated in with. Him who sucks in bed, who just can’t touch you right, read you right, please you right?
Or is it all the men that came before.
Is it all the times you ended up in the sack, convincing yourself you wanted to get laid, and waking up the next morning, feeling so alone in the world, and realizing it was love you were looking for between sheets.
Is it all the times you didn’t want to really but cajoled and convinced yourself into it.
Is it all the times you wanted to say no but didn’t.
Is it all the times you felt unsafe in your body – being looked at, spoken to, or touched in ways that made your skin crawl.
In that moment I could see so clearly where I was projecting onto my partner all of my past experiences. He was the convenient fall guy, the one to blame, for all of these big feels. The outlet for all the anger, frustration, sadness that I have from past experiences. It’s so it's easy to take it out on him and it's also easy to take it out on myself and to blame myself for all of those experiences, to blame myself for self abandoning in those experiences, even though I would have been protecting myself in those experiences and responding in those experiences. I could also see super clearly how in the past when I had had a trauma response we both didn’t know how to deal with, I would end things quickly, roll over, disconnect from him and stew in a puddle of frustration and deep and utter loneliness. And as I was having this experience I’m realizing that loneliness wasn’t disconnect from him in hat moment, it was me protecting myself from the the shittiness of what had been activated in the moment and I did that by pushing those feelings and my partner away.
It’s kind of like when you are yelling at your partner and you realize that you are stuck in an old argument loop that you had with your ex, that has nothing to do with your current partner.
I could feel myself throwing all the rage, all the disappointment, all the sadness, all the expectation, and all the fear of those past experiences of my 20s onto him. What if it’s not him that makes me feel that way at all – what if it’s them.
Flashes of the redheads hairy shoulders who took me home after lacklustre date and then literally hid in bathroom the next morning until I clued in that I needed to leave.
Flashes of the army guys who took me out drinking at 18 and how I somehow ended up in the dorm room with the one I didn’t find cute, exploring more than I ever had, titilated and curious but shy and nervous with a half hearted NO all night long.
Flashes of following some guy around at a party all light – just hoping I would be the last girl standing and he would take me to bed.
Nothing major, friends, yet.... clearly major. In the impressions they have left. The junk they have left in my trunk as I like to say.
My sex coaching journey started because I spent my 20s thinking I couldn't orgasm, and I spent my 20s wondering if there was more to this whole sex thing. I spent my 20s feeling like my vagina was broken. I spent my 20s trying to find love, trying to be seen through sex, as most of us girls are taught to.
And I am so grateful now to be with a partner who is safe, and to be with a partner who loves me so loyally. A partner who will watch dorky sex videos with me, and try breathing, and chanting, and fancy, and be me. Penis holds and a man who will learn to read my energy and notice when I'm blocked in bed and when I need to be held and when I need to cry and to just be there for it all.
So why am I sharing this story?
I wanted to share this story for two reasons:
it’s a perfect example of how past memories and traumas can affect our current experience of sex.
what it taught me about my relationship and projection blew my mind.
Using Sex to Heal
Sex is great for so many reasons, and one of the most magical that I have discovered is it’s ability to help us heal sexual and other traumas. Anytime I have experienced it it’s like the weight of 1000 elephants is lifted off my shoulders in those tears, like I cry the sadness of all women and all humans who experience sexualized violence. I wanted to use this story to show you an example of what it looks like to heal with sex.
First - You are going to feel emotions rising during a sexual experience, whether that's nervousness, boredom, anger, frustration, irritation, sadness, loneliness, wanting to cry, wanting to yell, any of it as well as sensations of numbness, irritation or pain. That is a trauma bubbling up, working it’s way to release. And those traumas, be they small or big, are any moments where it was too much too fast, too soon for your nervous system. There was an overwhelm. You didn't close the cycle on that overwhelm. So that moment got stuck in your body somewhere. And now it's getting released. It's asking to be let go of.
The reason that this can happen during sex is because sexual energy, that horniness energy, that orgasm energy is what can help us to sort of push those memories, those traumas, like, out of the system.
Many of us will shut that shit down during sex. We aren’t supposed to cry and have a big emotional release of some kind, or we don't feel safe to do that, is our partner even going to know what the heck's going on?
But if we stick with the feel, if we allow it for a moment, if we allow ourselves to cry, rage, feel, visualize if there’s memory coming through, and let it go, it will be released and leave us feeling lighter. We do that with breath, with do that with presence, we do that with energy healing tools.
Sex is is powerful, my friends. It is powerful, and it is potent, and if sex is not something you want at all right now, and if sex is something you can't even imagine yourself wanting, I just invite you to consider the power of this story, of the opportunity you could be missing for deep deep release and deep deep connection.
It builds so much trust in my partnership for my husband to hold me in that level of vulnerability, for me to let myself be held (very begrudgingly) in that level of vulnerability. I could have very easily miss this breakthrough moment because I wasn't really in the mood that night, because my period was coming, because it was 10 PM and too late, because my partner needed me to initiate that night and put in some effort and I wasn't really into it, because we can always have sex tomorrow, and because it was awkward as fuck for the first minutes or so. Like, let's be real. But I used my tools. I noticed the intention that I had to connect. And the opportunity that we had. I invited my partner. We dove in. We landed in the present. We got there. And. You know, that night was more hard than fun, but we overcame the moments of disconnect so that I could allow him to really hold me and I could allow him to let me sink into it, which is something I am not good at.
Because we went there, like we invested in our sex skills, bank account. We invested in our connection time. I got to shed some layers of trauma that are just going to like open me up to even more pleasure and even more fun. The next time that we go, it's, it's not a one and done journey here. And who knows why that showed up on that particular night.
Sex can do so much for you and your relationship if you are willing to show up to it. Like the mat, like yoga, like meditation, like any spiritual practice. And not force yourself into it, but invite yourself into whatever you're willing to show up to that day. There is an art to being a good lovemaker, there is an art to knowing how to deal with the trauma that's arising for you in that moment. And most of the shitty sex you are having comes from a lack of sex education, where nobody really knows how to please anybody anyways, and definitely a wall of small and large sexual traumas that you do not know how to deal with when they arise.
So, I hope this episode has given you some insight into what it can look like when sexual trauma arises and if you're a partner. I'd love to hear from you, too, and like, have you noticed this kind of thing come up in your partner where maybe she gets emotional, maybe they wiggle away when there's a certain kind of position that you're doing, uh, maybe they kind of close their eyes, shut down, tune out, so they're still, like, doing the do, but they don't feel really present, these are all signs that a trauma reaction is coming up, and these are all signs that, as a team, you want to up your game on how to respond, In these situations so that you can use them to heal, to get closer and to find those awesome vibes that you're looking for in your relationship, both in and out of the bedroom.
Much love,
Sofia - AKA the Happy V
P.s. If you want to get out of a sexual stalemate book at free 30 min Reset Roadmap Call. We’ll map out five simple steps to set up a sex date you can get excited about.