I wonder if vulnerability is overrated. What about capability? There’s time and place for each. Softness and power aren’t incompatible.

I grew up Catholic with all the inherent guilt, secrecy and shyness. Learning to talk about sex has been a BIG DEAL. Initially, sitting in Tantric sharing circles with other women opened my eyes. Then, sitting with men, listening to the shame and hopes around an integral part of their being, opened my heart. Taking an extraordinary spiritual, embodied journey together, showed shadows and potential that a decade of yoga hadn’t begun to touch. Finding my voice came later.

Rather than choosing a label, finding your polycongruency is finding someone's relating style to match your own. I had a boyfriend once who was a swinger. He wanted us to have adventures so he could fuck women once a month. It was never going to work. I found that out the hard way. Finding someone I want to fuck is a rarity; the choices on swingers sites did little to raise the odds. He loved me, I loved him. He wanted us to swing together, I wanted him alone. He wanted a meal ticket. I wasn’t it. The woman he found to replace me was a swinger. She loved him more than she pretended, ironing his shirts, keeping his house, calling him Master, teaching him ropes, submitting for her pleasure, accepting pain. He found someone who wanted swinging for herself and a BDSM contract. They got each other's way of relating without needing to love each other. Ultimately, that worked out badly too. Relating of any kind is a trip.

It took me a year to sign up to a Tantra journey, longing, judgment and false virtue ganging up on me, keeping me scared and doing nothing. The main delay was in trying to enrol a lover who didn’t want to join. I suppose they were frightened too. Or were already happy. Or didn’t see the need for a divine aspect to the relationship. Still, the insistent voice of my longing wouldn’t shut up. In the end, I set out alone, not even realising that was what I was doing.

Learning about pleasure through touch, emotion and sensation changed things for me. Learning to feel was beautiful and risky. Taking me down a whole new track of erotic embodiment. Emotions and longings I didn't have names for, clambered out of the exquisite little box I’d sat on for years. Hidden yearnings queued for my attention, demanding I finally took notice. Parts longing for expression safely came out under the covers of intimacy. Yearning moved around a spectrum of pleasure, a trail of clothes behind it, libido rising as pants dropped to the floor.

The contradictions of love, safety and freedom intrigue me. Is the answer to spread the paradox around? Can we be poly when single, and monogamous when in a relationship? Is that a thing?  If I’m living it, it’s a thing. We simply need to be clear, and cool with honesty and contradiction. It annoys and confuses the old skool poly people who want clear classifications and labels. If only responses and emotions were so rational.

Imagine intimacy where nothing you don’t want to happen would happen. Consensuality as a given. It doesn’t mean we won’t make mistakes but it means we have the freedom to change our minds, to move away from what we’re not enjoying with ease. Where the choosing is more important than the doing. For hazy, expansive, dreamy touch that’s relaxing, curious and arousing, slowing down, softer strokes, and inncocent touch helps. Feeling our way around another's body, their entirety, the smoothness of their skin, the soft parts, the surprise parts. Enjoy the slow freedom to feel soft hair, bristles, tenderness, to smell scents, to pause, to notice, to sink into safe space, free of fending off intrusive forays. The body becomes an open space, not a battle ground, wretched sex-bucket list, race to the finish or the floundering to satisfy unspoken expectation. There’s so much potential for change and pleasure, in breath, movement and sound with new erogenous zones to discover.

Being able to move with the unknown is quite the art. When we want what we want, yet are scared of  another disappointment, events, plans and people fall away, retaining inner resilience and versatility asks  too much of us. A bit of certainty goes a long way. Too much of the unknown upends us. Finding a place in ourselves while the world looks like its burning feels like a holding on with fingernails. Finding peace in troubled times may not be possible. Then finding people and places to express our fears, grief and losses makes us feel not so alone. Being prepared to let go is terrifying.

Awareness helps identify when we are overwhelmed or overstimulated, in our heads with the past or future, or chasing, defending or trying too hard. Anxiety is displaced when we’re in the moment, focused on the wonder beneath our fingers and on our skin, relaxed, safe, feeling accepted and permissive. Awareness allows us gently to get out of a groove to nowhere and back to presence.

Being able to focus attention, block out the world, and make time for new ways of relating intimately means moving away from ‘how to spice up your sex life’ to emphasising awareness, authenticity, sensation, emotion and enjoyment. Moving from the performance of “Am I doing it right?” to the ''Am I, and we, enjoying this, and what would make it better?”

I love creative sexuality these days. It’s such a contrast to the ideas that I used to have about what a man should be or how they ought to behave, or what I was supposed to be or do in relation to them. That never really worked out, which was a bummer for my prejudices and preferences, inane Mr Right, or later divine masculine fantasy. A few mistakes and Mr Wrongs are par for adjusting course, humbling, while opening up to something better.

Break down the myths of a perfect you, a perfect relationship and perfect sex. Freedom comes when you’re your own person, free from societal, family and religious expectations in upbringing. Sure, it’s nice to be part of something greater than oneself, but deciding what to create, believe and embody comes down to you. Finding a way to connect to your own personal arc, the life you’re here to live, is just as if not more important, than the expectations you and others place on you, however well-meaning. These disappointed expectations usually have to collapse for you to live something meaningful to you. With substance and an interior sense of guidance and authenticity, you can go your own way.

I’ve never had kids and that’s not the loss I might have imagined. I’m glad I didn’t go through the ticking biological clock. I was always tempted by a long distance flight rather than the long haul of motherhood. I had lost pregnancies which gave me dark nights of the soul for a while, the illegal termination in Indonesia, the miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. A clairvoyant had told me I wouldn’t be a mother. Accepting that reset my inner compass towards a differently interesting life. Of course I’m never going to know the sweetness of holding a nuzzling baby or the pride of graduations. Or any of the touching and difficult moments in between and beyond. I see my friends who are mothers, some with kids doing well and others struggling. I’ll never know that level of attachment or responsibility. I didn’t want it enough.

I love change and I know it takes courage. Change occurs through dissatisfaction, boredom, loss or burn out. It doesn’t really matter how. It takes a while to act from hearing the sirens call. The call is scary, a mission with no promises of known results. But when you know you know, it’s time to go.

We get to write and re-write the stories of our lives, and to make meaning of our adverse experiences. For that there needs to be shifts in perception, without bright-siding what happened to us. With distance and perspective we can see how through the humbling losses, and processes of healing, we’ve become more compassionate, less triggered, more aware of the changes we sought, and our contribution to the predicaments. With the commitment to freedom from our past, we can move towards wiser choices. And better stories.

Build trust in yourselves and each other. Most relationships have times where you’ll fall out and discover a stubbornness in yourself or your lover. Ultimately if you’d like to stay together that has to be incorporated rather than ignored. So better strategies than sulking or silence will help. Intransigence usually means an underlying value or belief or boundary has been revealed, so getting down to that and why it matters is often more important than the inciting incident. It’s going to help you know each other better and where the tender spots are, and if to leave.

The most important things are the hardest to talk about. How do we find ways to connect in the complexity of sex for greater connection, empathy and liberation? Sex and relationships are a place where we might need to be most understood, yet are mute. Silence reigns when we don’t have the words, permission, acceptance or safety to express who we are, what we long for and what has disappointed or hurt us in the past. Communication about the helpful pleasurable, confusing or erotic things can’t take place amidst secrecy, shame, or feeling too much or not enough. Finding the kind words is essential.

Are you an asker or a guesser? Can you ask for what you want clearly, or do you try to guess if the other person will say yes, before you voice a request? To be able to ask, you have to believe that it’s okay to ask. To ask clearly and cleanly, believing that it is equally okay for the other person to say Yes or No. To accept that it is natural for you to still have the wish, even if the person you’d most like to help or share the experience with you doesn’t want to. To see that No as clarity, rather than rejection it gives clarity and a change of direction. Being a Guesser requires different mental acrobatics to fit your desire into someone else's day. First, to work out if the other person is likely to be able to say yes, alongside the risk of being met with confusion. Someone wanted a lift, yet instead of asking me if I could offer a lift at a certain time, they started asking me about my plans for the day. I didn’t understand why until I asked them why they were asking. Asking for what you need or want directly is a great shortcut. For you and the other.

Do we have an erotic soul? I have no idea. I wonder what landed me in the world of erotic adventure at the price of love. I wanted to know something beyond the initial high, then tedium of many relationships. I wanted to be passionate. I wanted something that wasn’t there. Yet I had no idea what it was. So I went in search of what I couldn’t imagine. A soul journey turns out to be a quest, but I had no idea then. What if I’d set out to understand love rather than adventure? If we live life going forwards and make sense of it backwards, what if they’re the same quest?

What if I’m never productive enough, peaceful enough, what if I don’t meditate, fail to soothe my nervous system, fail to get my self-esteem tip top or walk 10,000 steps a day, and forget to eat green leaves, seeds and sprouts? What if I don’t take all the supplements or do all the practices? Self-help is a bitch and an inner slave driver. All this self-improvement sucks. What if I’m doing okay, despite all that not doing. Maybe I’m doing enough of what I can to get by well enough?