The Currency of Sexuality and my demons.....

Let me start by sharing one of my core beliefs:  If I'm able to see struggle in others, in order to be my most compassionate and non judgmental self, I must first look to see how that struggle exists within me.  There is no IF that struggle exists in me, because if I can see it outside of me, I know that I recognize it from within.

I work with a brilliant and lovely young woman who is transitioning out of the foster care system. My role as a Court Appointed Special Advocate is to listen to her and fight for her needs/wants in the legal system that isn't inherently designed to do that for her.  When I met her last summer, she was in jail after being arrested two years earlier for prostitution (mind you, her pimp wasn't arrested, just her at 16...but that's another blog.) She wasn't in jail because she had been working the streets. She was in jail because while she was on probation for this "first offense" she kept running from group homes that didn't meet her needs and trying to make a life for herself that worked in the way she knew.  This was a violation of her probation and she was forced to do time for it.

After her release (we petitioned the judge to see the absurdity of her being in jail for 6 months for being AWOL from a group home), I began working with her to consider college, completion of her GED, getting a job, getting her own apartment, etc.  While she was INCREDIBLY excited about all of these possibilities, all she ever kept asking for was her freedom....from the stranger running her group home, from the rules that stopped her from seeing her family and friends in her old neighborhood and to be able to have a cell phone to engage with people in her community. However, she kept breaking the rules and pushing the limits because she wanted all of her freedoms immediately.  Who can blame her?  Despite trying to help her have a plan that incrementally gave her freedoms based on her growth, her lack of impulse control and simple desire to be free meant that she ultimately ran again (within days of her release from probation) and has been on the streets of East Oakland for the last 5 months.  Many people hear this and think how sad it is, but quickly blame her for not being willing to follow rules.

There is no part of me that can blame her in any way for making this choice.... she gets to choose how she lives her life at any given moment and will do the best she can given her experiences in the world.  Plus, no blame assigned to her can surpass the pain she's experiencing living with this choice.  What I see her struggling with is how to use her own value to buy pieces of the life she wants for herself now, creating freedom as she sees it.  If she sees no value in the foster/educational/judicial system OR in incremental growth towards a bigger plan OR in the people who have historically taken her from her mom and locked her up and kept her in the system, I can see that she believes she is making the best choice for herself that she believes possible. Despite the fact that she has been beaten up, suffered physical and emotional trauma and still is forced to live by another set of rules, she sees that who she is in this (albeit traumatic and differently dysfunctional) system as valuable.  Sex is her currency.  It gets her status, gives her a value in a system (of which she's not experienced in any other way) and gives her SOME control in a life that feels beyond all control. When I see that, I can feel compassion.  Aside from heartache I feel when I realize she sees this as the most valuable asset she can offer right now, and that she DESPERATELY wants out of it but doesn't know how, I feel a sisterhood with her.

If I start with myself, before I move to judge her, I have to be honest and share that I also struggle with my sexuality as a currency.  If someone doesn't find me sexy, I immediately struggle with self worth.  If someone DOES find me attractive and wants to sleep with me, it spawns a whole set of challenges for me.  Why do they want me?  Will they want me if I put MY needs first and engage my partner in that? *Note, even asking this question is NOT putting my needs first!  This journey of sobriety (*btw, it's been 7 months!!) has been many things, but a big conflict has been the challenge of being unapologetic about what I want in the world of relationship/intimacy and how that impacts my experience of being in relationship.

Where I've grown is in being excited about putting out there what I want.  I've more deeply engaged about not wanting children, looking for a partnership that is more Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera style, seeking someone who is open to the idea of open relationships, etc.  This has certainly changed who I date, BUT with being excited and having unapologetic pride in realizing this is what I want, there has been no shortage of people who respond to this.  Practicing the belief that there is ALWAYS value to who I am and what I need has helped to actualize experiences where I am received as valuable.
Where I struggle, like the young woman I work with, is undoing all of the brainwashing that has me, as a woman, defaulting to sex as the value I bring to the relationship.  While I intellectually get that I'm many things valuable (smart, accomplished, fun, interesting, unique, etc.), when I'm my most vulnerable self, I catch myself defaulting to sex as the currency I can negotiate with and I move to that rather than allow my partners to fall in love with the many other aspects I bring to the table.  Part of my sobriety has forced me to stay clear and intent on interrupting that. At 37, with many years of study, experience and brilliant community, THIS IS STILL NO EASY TASK.

The past couple of months I've been in conversation with someone I'm really interested in getting to know.  He's smart, insightful, travelled, accomplished and ridiculously fun and adventurous.  He's also sexy as hell.  We've hung out, but spent more time on the phone than anything else....and this has made focusing on my other "valuables" much, much easier.  This week we went out and I was immediately confronted with my default of avoiding intimacy with humor (because I can't avoid it with alcohol) and focusing on the physical attraction between us. It's torture and hard work.  He asked me at some point why I was blushing and I chose to take a leap of faith (again, practicing that even in my struggles there is beauty and value) and shared that it's really hard for me to stay in the space of intimacy and not go to sex.  It felt really good at the time to be so self expressed and free.

And then my default voices kicked in hard.  I had to really fight to resist the urge to cave into sex to avoid intimacy and seek value in a newly emerging relationship.  I want him to want all of me, not just chase the cute red bra under the little dress.  The reason this is so difficult for me is that I'm trying to BALANCE being unapologetic about my sexuality and wanting to be wanted as a whole...struggles and values together.  And, balance is a journey not easily found by setting boundaries alone. What comes up engaging in balance is where the learning exists.

So, one victory down, we wrapped up the night and I didn't cave in to my default.  We had a fun night, he was sweet, I was truthful about my internal conflict and I appreciated him honoring my needs.  Here is where I found my empathy with the young woman I talked about at the beginning of this blog.  The voices in my head immediately started telling me I blew it and I'd never see him again.  While this might seem ridiculous to some of you, I really want to convey how POWERFUL and FUCKING LOUD these voices are...reinforcing some brainwashing that my main (if not ONLY) value is from sex and that if I want to be loved, wanted, needed it has to start from there. It's like I've been trained to believe that sex is some hook and I can reel someone in with it that and maybe, with time, my partner might discover all the other amazing things about me. In trying to make the space for my partner to see the whole me, I felt like I had to create boundaries to limit or avoid the initial sexual element of that relationship.   I find myself so saddened by this.  Not because it's some insurmountable challenge I can't overcome (because I will), but I wonder how many millions of women throughout generations have bought into this absurdity and lived their lives believing the currency of sex is our main value and struggled with how to be seen as a whole being.  How many times have we either overindulged in sex because it's what's valued or avoided being fully self expressed as sexual beings because of our fear of not being seen as a whole human?  How has this impacted millions of men who only see the "sexy" we've been trained to show or see a "smaller" us as we hide our sexual being in the hopes we are valued for our other assets?

I realized after 36 hours of voices telling me I blew it and managing the fears that I'll never hear from him again, one big thing was missing for me.  While I set some boundaries to ensure I didn't go to my default, and that worked on some level, they were a technical solution to an adaptive struggle (I need to challenge my thinking to change my actions) in my own beliefs. Setting the boundaries didn't change the fact that I wanted to focus on sex, it just stopped me from acting on it.  What was missing was that there was no partnership in this balance of being unapologetic about my true sexuality, staying in the space of intimacy and being valued as a whole.  I didn't invite him into that, I just asked him to honor some boundaries I created.  Here's the lesson:  In finding partnership, even in new relationships that seem too early to be vulnerable, I can invite someone into the complex balancing act of being loved and wanted for all of me, including my already existing strengths and the places I'm growing.  When I don't do that, instead of working the pendulum that is the instrument of balance, I send mixed messages, and that's unfair.  I won't get this balance right this week, nor will I get it right any time soon.  What I can get right is being excited about this place I'm working towards, being as excited and unapologetic about it as I've become about many other things, and to invite a partner to support me in finding that balance.  I'm certain, as with all things, I cannot do anything alone.  Every time I find myself in unresolved struggle, that's usually where I am.

So, here's to the young woman's quest for freedom and doing that in partnership (with me and others) to help her defeat the default that's got her making the choices she's making now.  Here's to courage in asking (from this new man I've met and others in the future) for partnership in my journey to balance loving the whole me while un-brainwashing myself of misogynistic beliefs that have me believing sex as a currency is valued more than the discovery of my greatest self in the most intimate of moments.  Here's to unapologetically loving myself in the quest for balance, learning, truth and living the belief that I'm perfect, exactly the way I am and exactly the way I'm not. Finally, here's to having compassion for myself when I see the ways in which I'm not (usually seen in critiquing others' struggles), the strength to stretch and grow and inviting loved ones around me to embrace all of me wherever I am on this journey.