Improve your capacity to receive more sexual attention and pleasure
Robert was a male in his 50’s who took pride in his capacity to give generously to his partners. He was skilled at oral sex and how to touch a female body and could spend hours “at the temple” massaging, worshipping and making love to his partners every last square inch.
For many women that would be a dream come true, for others rather hard to imagine, and for a number of us the whole idea of receiving that much attention could be enough to have us run and hide under the duvet with the lights out and a Gin and Tonic for moral support.
For Roberts most recent partner, Laura, the novelty of this unusual level of attention wore off after a couple of months. Laura found she was unable to fully express herself and her love for Robert sexually as he was utterly incapable of lying down and receiving similar attention from her.
The capacity to stay present to ourselves and receive and enjoy love, attention, intimacy, sexual or sensual pleasure from a partner is not one to be taken for granted. It requires the capacity to be vulnerable.
I’ve experienced for myself with my own partners that we each have a ceiling on how much attention, love and pleasure we can tolerate in connection with each other being before we start to feel too vulnerable and our survival mechanisms kick in to prevent our internal alarm system from going into hyper-drive.
How quickly this occurs and to what extent seems to vary quite dramatically from person to person and situation to situation.
A recent partner of mine who is skilled lover and fellow sexual trauma therapist, shed some light on his personal experience, sharing that, due to his own childhood sexual abuse, it was too vulnerable for him to allow someone else to be in control in a sexual situation. It very soon stopped being sexy for him and just started to become frightening.
Sexual shaming, abuse, abandonment and various other types of developmental and adult trauma can easily lead to a person whose attention rests firmly on their partner in the bedroom.
Even just cultural conditioning around what sex is meant to look like and the imprints we carry from watching pornography can have us operating under a strong sense of performance pressure which has us feeling powerful and confident when in the position of the giver and very exposed when the tables are turned.
It takes a strong person to relax into their vulnerability and stay in their bodies and yet sexual surrender and the capacity to recieve is vital to a balanced and truly connected experience of intimacy.
When receiving sexual attention from my partner I can easily find myself leaving my body and pleasure and going off into thoughts in my head, feeling a sudden and urgent desire to stroke my partner or reorient the situation to put attention fully back on them or even feeling suddenly afraid that my partner is not enjoying themselves and that they might tire of me as a sexual partner. I put pressure on myself to orgasm quickly, which usually delays, or even prevents my orgasm, or requires me implementing some old strategy that limits my full-bodied aliveness and pleasure, like holding my breath. I find myself fixating on my partners genitals and how I can reach them to ensure I keep my partner in a state of arousal, not trusting their experience of pleasure in the giving itself.
Whether you or your partner are the one who struggles to relax and receive, chances are that what’s happening in the bedroom is an indicator of something more pervasive and subtle occurring in your life.
For me, I had somewhat disowned both my needs for attention and sexual pleasure and lived most of my life with my centre focussed squarely on everyone else whilst being rather disconnected to my own needs and firmly incapable of asking for attention for myself. It’s a journey to bring my centre of gravity back into me.
In a previous relationship, a partner had restricted certain ways in which I could express my love, eventually stating a desire only for penetrative sex and not for kissing or oral sex. This felt devastating to me. Of course as humans we have both needs to give and to receive love, although we may have preferences in our sexuality as to whether we prefer to take the “penetrating” or “penetrated” role.
We have needs to express our sexuality not just with our bodies and genitals but also with our hands and mouths. We are integrated beings.
A lack of space for expressing ourselves sexually can lead to a build up of resentment, frustration upset, and also infidelity.
In an effort to support Robert and Laura to a more mutually enjoyable sex life we designed an experiment to help Robert experience a barrow-load of love and attention and work out his receiving muscles. Laura and I, with a mutual friend, set about to give him a non sexual and yet highly sensual 6-handed massage. Everyone was naked. No-one’s hands were going near Roberts genitals except Laura’s and the ritual was to take place at the baths at Esalen where nudity and personal transformation go hand in hand.
Clear boundaries were set to ensure Robert felt safe and also to prevent him from reversing back into his normal pattern of giving. He was even banned from saying thank you; a rule which of course he overrode within moments of the end of the massage...old habits die hard.
On the day it was challenging for Robert to accept this much attention and yet he boldly pushed through, as he always did, eventually really rather enjoying the experience,
The following day however, there was a backlash in Roberts nervous system and he moved into a state of distress and paranoia as a result of his capacities to receive having been seriously overextended. No-one noticed for far too long as his internalised state of fear had him frozen and detached, running stories of having been subject to some sort of feminine witchery and failing to express his concerns and seek comfort from the outside world until an anger explosion at Laura the following day which resulted eventually in the termination of their relationship.
Oops. Lesson learned. Sorry Robert.
As a therapist and friend to Laura and Robert and carrying a high level of guilt, curiosity and fascination by this turn of events I’ve given a little time and attention to this topic now in order to find ways to help couples rebalance the giving and receiving dynamics in their relationship in a way that the partner in transformation can actually integrate.
Here are my top tips for building sexual receiving muscles:
- Start with talking outside the bedroom
This is vulnerable stuff and during a love-making session is not the time to bring it up unless it’s initiated by the person wanting to make the change and the partner is equipped to hold space and really listen without judgement and without taking anything personally.
Open this conversation in a safe space next time you are feeling calm and connected.
Discuss with each other what you each enjoy about giving and receiving. Really listen to what’s going on for your partner. Be really honest about your own experience. See if there is common ground to explore further. Perhaps there are ways you want to indicate to each other during love-making if you’re reaching a limit and need to slow down, stop or ask for support? Explore your real feelings. The more honest and open you can be with one another the easier it will be to open more deeply and to allow a recalibration in your nervous system to allow in more connection and pleasure.
- When someone is developing their capacity to receive put them in total control
The last thing that will support someone to open is to force them to tolerate “being done to” even with the best intentions.
Give that person the agency to say when they want to experiment with more receiving. Give them permission to say “go”, “stop”, “more”, “slow down”, “that’s enough for today” whatever they need to know that they are in control of the pace.
If you spot your partner checking out, freezing or loosing heart connection name it and pause activity until they ground and come back online.
Talk, before you begin, about orgasm. Combining orgasm with receiving is especially vulnerable so discuss if it feels desired and exciting to allow orgasm to happen if it happens. Be prepared to take orgasm off the table initially for this experience though and just to focus on the experience of pleasure and sensation in the body.
Prepare a code word or course of action with your partner for when things are starting to feel a bit much or someone is going into thought rather than sensation and allow yourselves to switch roles or activities to ease the pressure. Often allowing the one working on receiving to go back to giving is a quick fire way to getting them back into presence and a calm grounded sexy state...and you can always swap back later when they are ready.
Don’t be scared to ask when you’d like to experience giving. Be prepared to receive a yes or a no
- If it’s too hard to receive, start with “taking”
Being in the completely submissive position is very vulnerable. There may be ways to tweak this that make things more tolerable, or to ease in from different directions.
“Taking” can be a great alternative to receiving to start with. If you’re not familiar with the 4 quadrants model of Betty Martin, get familiar, it’s a great tool kit for developing intimacy and understanding the subtlety’s of boundaries and consent. As a quick guide, “taking” is where one partner gives over their body (within an agreed set of boundaries) to the other for them to play with for their own pleasure: not to pleasure their partner.
The great thing about “taking” is that you get to experience pleasure and yet you stay in control, and you know it’s ok because you’ve discussed it with your partner and know that they are excited and open and where and how they are happy for you to touch them. Also, once one partner starts to build some sexual charge, it can be rather infectious and so often, even though one partner is “taking” and theoretically getting the benefit, the other tends to be having a pretty awesome experience too, sometimes even more so than when a partner thinks they are “giving” and really aren’t quite hitting the nail on the head of what the recipient is wanting.
A bit of a hybrid between between taking and receiving might be that a partner assumes a position in which to “receive” where they still have some element of control, for example receiving oral sex from an on-top /dominant position. Please be mindful of the givers comfort in this scenario though as it’s easy for that person to give themselves away and go into discomfort in an effort to support the receiver and that’s not sexy and not ultimately going to build trust and connection.
- Support the body to integrate new experiences
Having a new experience creates a new Imprint in your nervous system. This needs to be carefully tended to and the new neural pathways encouraged to grow. You need to feel safe and be with the experience of having new choices available.
It’s no small thing to have an experience of receiving when that’s something you’ve been avoiding or watering down for most of your life. When the body opens and becomes vulnerable in that way it needs to be treated very gently afterwards.
Praise yourself or your partner for their achievement. Acknowledge it’s a big deal and celebrate it.
Take care of yourself and each other in the period following. Be kind. Rest. Take an Epsom Salt Bath. Get a good nights sleep. Avoid alcohol. Drink lots of water. Find the right balance of personal space and togetherness. Check in the next day how you are both feeling and be prepared that there might be some fear coming up for the person undergoing the transformation. They might pull away a little. They might not. Just give space for whatever arises. Don’t take it personally. If it’s happened in your relationship before that increased intimacy results in a subsequent distancing make sure you can each be supported with other friends and family to avoid putting pressure on each other at this vulnerable time. As soon as you can, come back to love and loving physical contact. Give some space from sexual contact as needed.
- Take the initiative to work on this on your own
Finally, you can do your own homework outside the sexual space you share with your partner and touch yourself more.
Building your own capacity to receive your own touch, without resorting to quick fixes, pornography and vibrators, is an art and a skill in itself. The more you can touch your own body and stay present to your sensations and pleasure, the easier it will be with your partner. You can start with setting a timer for just a little longer than you would normally allow to self pleasure and take some time to stay with yourself sexually, learning to sense your body and understand your own pleasure. It can be much harder than you might imagine so be gentle with yourself and just notice what arises.
This is not a scientifically proven and perfect mechanism for increasing receiving tolerance, it’s just what I’ve found effective so far in my explorations. Everyone is different and all our experiences of our sexuality are perfect so please just take from this what you find helpful and let the rest go.
Happy love-making!
Emma
