How do you feel about pleasure?

Exploring Your Perspective of Pleasure

Did you grow up with education around how your body experiences pleasure? The combination of cultural messaging, lack of education and silence all factor into shaping our perception of sexual desire, as well as our ability to allow ourselves physical pleasure.

There is no shame in desiring, enjoying and experiencing pleasure with sex.

More than likely, you don’t often see a woman depicted in a movie who enjoys and pursues sex for the pleasure of it. Even more unusual is a woman portrayed who desires sex because she wants to be pleased, instead of being desperate to please.

The exercise of understanding the messaging you have taken in around pleasure is important for your overall sexual health and ability to pursue pleasure. Investigate what your internal voice says and what you have come to believe about pleasure. Take some time with the statements below and ask yourself questions such as:

“Do I believe this?” or “Do I tell myself this?”

Sex is a performance for someone else.
My partner’s pleasure and satisfaction are what matters most.
Sex is not for my pleasure
My sexual pleasure is wrong, not allowed or doesn’t matter.
I am a vehicle for pleasure; I can’t receive it.
My pleasure is a bonus, not a focus of intimacy.
My partner is responsible for my pleasure.

After working through these questions, decide for yourself what holds true and what doesn’t. You have permission to throw out ideas you no longer believe and grab onto new ones.