We got in touch with Sarah through the Kind to Mind platform where we were featured a while back on sexuality and mental health. After having some pretty interesting contact over email and a cute video chat, we decided to start a little collab. Sarah started writing about her experience with sexuality and being open about such a subject on a daily basis. This is the first article that came from it and we're sure there are more to come.
'I'm writing this piece under a pseudonym because, while I want to own my sexuality fully, as a mum I have to think (for now at least) about the wider impact and be conscious my openness may not sit well with others. Juggling an authentic self with parenthood is one of my greatest challenges.' Sarah Tink [pseudonym] A few years ago, I found myself at a dinner party discussing the Kinsey Scale. I couldn’t plot myself on it, not because I was afraid to, but because I didn’t feel sexual at all. I’d lost my libido as the result of a deteriorating marriage and the pressures of raising young children. I didn’t want to touch myself, let alone be touched by someone else. I didn’t feel sad or frustrated about it, I just felt numb. Fast forward to now and having exited the relationship and rediscovered my needs in the process, I talk about sex all the time with a close group of friends who share my willingness to communicate about something we all see as necessary for mental wellbeing, vitality and identity. We’re conscious of each other’s boundaries and privacy and it feels healthy and liberating.
But it’s a small cluster and I find myself questioning why I feel emboldened to be an overtly sexual being with some people and to hide it from others. If asked I would describe myself as a cis-gender female, but while nearly all my sexual and romantic experiences have been with men, I’m more comfortable with the term pansexual than straight. I’m attracted to someone’s energy more than anything else.
Sex, it turns out, is very important to me and I’m starting to think the only way I can be myself in a largely vanilla world is to adopt a label that seems to succinctly sum up the desire not to have one and be queer. I often wonder, is everyone else thinking the same thing? We’re having and thinking about a wide variety of sex and not talking about it, but if given the chance we’d really like to? So how can we have more open conversations about sex? We give a voice to our other basic needs, our hunger, our thirst, our tiredness, without self-censorship. Our need for air or shelter is taken so for granted its unspoken. Why then are we so reluctant to talk freely about sex, considering our desire for it sometimes means we ignore the fundamentals we feel so happy discussing?
Our sexuality is both who we are at a core level and how we behave in different situations, and we have choices around how we experience and express it. But these may be hugely impacted by the community we’re part of, the circumstances we find ourselves in and the way we regard ourselves within the ever-changing dynamics of our interpersonal landscape.
At its best, sex is a way to connect to something beyond the self, to tune in to a higher frequency. There’s no simple ladder to reach this transcendental state, sex uniquely taps into everything from our basic survival to our want for safety, belonging, esteem, exploration and growth. It’s less a climb to enlightenment than a deep dive, freefall, cartwheeling, rollercoaster ride with a potentially revolving door of others and all that they bring to the equation. Every sexual blueprint is unique and evolving and we each have a different preference to exhibit our sexual identity on a spectrum ranging from the very public to the intensely private to the deeply secret. If the only universal truths around sex are the uninhibited guttural sounds that escape from our mouths when we’re having it, creating a comfortable shared space to discuss it is hard.
Maybe we just need to start confidently articulating the basics and build a common vocabulary from there. Connection, tenderness, intimacy, sensuality, pleasure, excitement, kink. If we can’t all get on board with those simple light touch terms without a collective recoil, we’re not going to be able to discuss the gloriously complex topography of the world of sex.