Valentine’s Day Is Complicated
Fully alive. Fully embodied. Joy is not frivolous. It is power.
Hello Courageous Thrivers,
Valentine’s Day is complicated.
Today, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m putting on one of my lesser-used coaching hats, my VITA™ Sex, Love and Relationship Coach hat. Because, y’all, sexual energy is LIFE FORCE energy, and I need each of you amazing humans reading this to be filled with all the vitality, joy, and pleasure possible right now.
And I hate the way Valentine’s Day can become a holiday of self-loathing and victim-y feelings for those who don’t have a romantic partner, or don’t have the kind of relationship they want.
So…
If you’re single and celibate, by choice or by circumstance, I want you to know that pleasure is yours for the taking. It’s in you. Always. No one else holds the key.
If you’re partnered and your sex life is something you’ve settled for, but not what you want, well, you’re not dead yet. I’m here to say you get to want more. Take a next step toward what you want.
I’ve got a short story for you, followed by a few ways to help you get started with a Valentine’s Day energy boost worthy of your body’s amazingness.
When the Rings Came Off
It was Valentine’s Day 2022, twenty-seven years into our marriage. My husband was down on one knee, saying all kinds of beautiful things, and inviting me to put my wedding rings back on my finger.
I’d taken them off during the Summer of 2020 because I’d realized that if I’d felt in October 1995 the way I felt in July 2020, I wouldn’t have married him. And I didn’t want to live with that feeling for the rest of my life.
I wasn’t ready to head toward divorce, but wearing those rings just didn’t feel true anymore.
Part of my frustration with our relationship was directly related to sex. I won’t go into the whole story here, but the short version is that due to our religious beliefs, we didn’t have sex before we got married. And we didn’t have much after that.
There was always deep care and friendship, and great partnering as parents. But passion, pleasure, and sex? Not so much.
So I put my rings in a little bowl on my altar to wait and pray and see what would happen with our relationship.
At the same time, I chose to take an important step for myself that wasn’t dependent on his choices. I signed up for the transformative journey that is the VITA™ Sex, Love and Relationship Coach training program, a program I graduated from just days after Dave “put a ring on it” again in 2022.
But that’s not the most important part of my story.
The Relationship With My Own Body
The most important part is this: I now have a relationship with my own body that I didn’t know was possible or available to me, regardless of my relationship status, moods, or circumstances. Even when I forget to cultivate it, it’s there, waiting. I know that I can access a powerful force of pleasure all by myself.
This knowledge is no small thing because I was explicitly taught, by well-meaning but, in my opinion, quite mistaken people, that self-pleasure was wrong. I suspect a few of you were too.
Others of you stopped when life got busy, or because you have a partner and figured the self-pleasuring stuff should no longer be necessary.
I’m here to remind you, especially for women and people socialized as women, that the forces that lead to widespread suppression of our sexual energy, pleasure, and power are not an accident. It is on purpose. It supports the unfair, unjust hierarchical systems that are doing so much harm to so many humans.
We need more turned-on women. Because turned-on women don’t tolerate harmful B.S.
Seriously. Accessing sexual pleasure and power can be both spiritual practice and part of your social justice work. And besides, your fabulous body and heart deserve to feel amazing just because they are amazing.
Especially on this silly, made-up holiday.
Pleasure Is Not Frivolous
Honestly, I forget too. I get tired and busy and frustrated with my husband and I don’t feel like taking time to pleasure myself.
But as I reflected on Valentine’s Day 2022, I remembered. Pleasure matters.
So I’m re-upping my commitment to myself and to my 58-year-old female body that deserves all the love, respect, and pleasure denied it by so many in our youth-obsessed, paternalistic, fatphobic culture.
We’ve got a lot of hard, scary, boring, and courageous actions we need to take in the relay race that is this time in history.
This Valentine’s Day, I invite you to pass the baton. Take your break from the race. Dive in. And celebrate yourself.
Give yourself a hug, flowers and chocolate, candles and more.
And if you’re inclined toward further exploration and experimentation, see below for some resources I recommend.
Here’s to thriving and equity, and a world where the bodies of women and girls are safe, respected, and seen for the amazing gifts that they are,
Deb
Resources:
Here are some things for you to check out:
• Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski, a fabulous place to start loving who you are and cultivating what you want, alone or as part of a couple. She also has a Substack publication now. I also recommend her newest book, Come Together, if you are in a long-term relationship.
• Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown, the ultimate guide to understanding how pleasure and politics intersect.
• Stacey Abrams is the author of several sexy romance novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery. I’ve read a couple and they are fun.
• If you want to start your body-love journey but aren’t ready to dive right into sexual pleasure, Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body Is Not an Apology will guide you toward a life of radical self-love that could change the world.
• The Wondermine podcast episode on pleasure is a lovely, gentle way to start.
• A lovely little item called the Kiwi can be helpful if you have some tension to work out down there. Of course, I’m not a doctor and this is educational information, not medical advice. Squilid lube is also having a Valentine’s Day sale.
• Last, but not least, and not for the faint of heart, check out Layla Martin’s podcast. Truth be told, a lot of what Layla teaches is still beyond my comfort zone, but if you’re ready for it, it’s powerful stuff.