Sexercise - Tony Crisp

Tune-in To Your Hunger

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Hunger is one of the big features of sex. Just as an empty stomach, falling blood sugar, or energy expenditure, brings about the hunger for food, so the influence of hormone levels, glandular pressure and emotional need produce sexual hunger. But sexual hunger also arises out of our image of ourselves. It is easy to see that many people of both sexes view themselves as highly sexual and desirable. This isn’t simply something they think of as a sort of self assessment. If you have a temperament deeply influenced by whether you are sexually desirable, you will probably dress and act in the role. You will fight a long and hard battle with the ageing process in an attempt to remain nubile or virile. After all, without being nubile or virile you would be uncertain of your identity!

Other people see themselves as intellectuals, or creative, and so on. These people wouldn’t need to have sex simply to retain their image of themselves. But beyond such differences there is still sexual hunger.

Are you wanted?

Especially for women, hunger is a factor in sex in another way as well. If there is an absence of feeling wanted as a woman - not as a person - many women get hungry for food, and start a battle with weight. With this hunger the need is to find the bottom line in the situation. What is it you are hungry for. Is it really food? Is it sex? Is it to feel you are really wanted? Those aren’t always easy questions to answer, but by tuning in to your hunger, and learning to listen to it, you can go a long way to making it a friend instead of an enemy.

Our first movement to express our hunger was - hopefully - to suck on our mother’s breast. Our mouth and tongue are incredibly sensitive. Through them we reach out to the world from our hunger and touch it. Our teeth are a part of this hungry reaching for the world too, and when we express our emotional and sexual hunger, it is often our hands, lips, tongue and teeth we use.

Tuning-in to our hunger helps us to more deeply enjoy the satisfaction and emotional and sensual nourishment we get from contact with our partner. It also helps us to become aware if our needs are being fulfilled. There are subtle but important experiences in sex that we may not be getting. This is a bit like eating nice looking and tasty food which has in it no vitamins and minerals. It looks good, it tastes good, but you gradually feel bad on it. And if you still keep eating it you get sick. Most of us know what it feels like to love someone who is indifferent to us, or whose desires go to someone other than ourself. This can happen to us not only as an adult, but also as a child. The hunger to be wanted and loved can be so great it consumes us.

Are You As Hungry For Me As I Am For You?

Recently a divorced male friend, Doug, told me some of the secrets of his sex life. He is a very sexually active male in his forties. Having recently split from a four year relationship, although now having sex with a younger woman, Sheila, he doesn’t allow himself to feel emotionally connected to her. Doug noticed that when he masturbates Sheila, her vagina relaxes and opens ‘like a flower’. When he enters her during sex though, her vagina is often tight and uncomfortable for him.

When talking to Sheila about this, she told Doug that her tightness was probably because she was anxious about letting her emotions flow fully. If she did she would want to be much closer and committed with him than he did with her. Doug had often told Sheila that he was still emotionally connected to his previous love, and didn’t want to make any deep connection to Sheila, because of that, and because she was much younger than he.

It is fairly clear that Sheila and Doug are allowing their hunger for each other to be only partially satisfied. The physically sensual side of their relationship appears to be enjoyed by both of them, as well as the sexual release and pleasure they both get. Although they live apart, they meet often and spend time together sexually. But their emotional and social need for each other is not met because of mutual decisions to avoid it.

Doug and Sheila’s situation is fine if they can both remain happy and healthy, and manage to get their emotional and social need for closeness satisfied somewhere and somehow. They are both aware of where the lack arises, and are decisive about it. But if they were not sure of what they were hungry for with each other, and lacked awareness, the situation would be different.

Anxiety makes you tight

Doug and Sheilah are both people who have a lot of anxiety and feelings of insecurity concerning relationship. This is possibly what makes it difficult for either of them to commit themselves any more fully to each other. According to recent research, only about one or two percent of people are actually born with an anxious disposition. This suggests that however deeply etched the insecurity is, it is still only something that was learnt through difficult childhood experiences. In other words the feelings that keep Doug and Sheilah from getting closer are negative habits learnt in childhood. With a little persistence you can change and create a completely different relationship. Of course it helps if your partner also attempts to be creative in a similar way.

I know this for myself because during a time of great inner pain and depression just after my divorce, I experienced a turning point in my life and relationship that had to do with transforming a habit. The moment occurred as my wife returned from shopping. I was in our bedroom standing staring out of the window into space feeling dreadful, empty of any pleasure, and without any motivation to do anything. As my wife entered the bedroom I turned my head to look at her. I could see her happiness shining through her body from her upright energetic movements and the openness of her face. It struck me that she was feeling good because she had been out of the house and away from the heavy atmosphere of my depression. But as she took in the story of my position and the window and whatever my own body posture and facial expression was telling her, I saw the enthusiasm drain from her and she wilted slightly like a plant lacking water.

It hurt me to see how my situation affected her, and in that instant I didn’t want to go on building that sort of deadening influence into our lives. I wanted to be a source of pleasure and support, not an eroder of enthusiasm and love. I knew my wife had responded to what she had seen of my posture and facial expression, so I straightened up, smiled, walked toward her and hugged her and told her how pleased I was to see her. The result was extraordinary. Her posture straightened again. Her brightness returned, and she talked with pleasure about where she had been.

I learnt from that experience and repeated it over and over until I actually developed a new way of responding in our relationship. Although at first it was something I acted out from regret at what I was doing, slowly it was no longer an act. Such is the way with habits. At least I saw that what had felt like inevitable parts of my personality that were ME, changing showed my depression and pain was a form of habitual response to events.

Hungry Kisses

Getting close to our partner without any clothes on, and kissing, are ways we can tune into our hunger. I realise you most likely get skin to skin already and kiss. What I am suggesting is to take time with your hunger and let it blossom.

To do this stand with your partner in a warm private place, wearing a single layer of loose easily removed clothing. Slowly make contact by holding each other, but don’t rush this. It is too easy to have sex automatically. All sorts of pressures or expectations push us to ‘do sex’ rather than move to it from our own needs and hunger for it. We may feel that it is expected of us to have sex now we are physically close and intimate, so we simply get on with it. We might feel, even if not admitting it to ourselves, that not having sex would mean we are not capable as a man/woman, and the more often we do it the more woman/man we are. Another pressure to what I call automatic sex is that we might have sex to get something else, like someone’s attention and support. We might allow sex with our partner as a business arrangement to make sure of getting money, a roof over our head, food, or even as an escape from loneliness rather than as an expression for longing and hunger for our partner.

So this sexercise is a way of finding out what hunger and desire we have for our partner outside of automatic action.

Once near to each other, pause and feel each other’s body heat. Notice what you feel as you brush against each other and gently touch lips. Don’t go for the stereotyped TV kiss one sees so much of, where there is an open-mouthed, tongue protruding, massive contact immediately. Wait for your desire to build up and let it express in the contact you have with each other. Hunger for another person is usually felt as a yearning in the belly which often flows up the body to the chest and mouth. Sometimes ones feels it as a sort of breathlessness and a desire to get as close to the person as possible. There is an urge to take your partner into you, like being hungry for them and wanting to take them into your body, or to get into them as fully as you can.

In whatever way your hunger arises, let it direct how you connect with your partner. The urges that arise will lead to semi spontaneous movements, or an urge to touch, rub or kiss.

It may help to let the hunger flow into kissing at first. The kissing then ignites further hunger, so let it flow from there.

If there is no sense of hunger, during the sexercise do not move on to further sexual activity without the hunger. Pause at this very first stage and notice what you are both feeling. Admit to each other what is felt and it will gradually shift. If you find it difficult to find your hunger, read chapter five and use the sexercises given.

Summary of Sexercise 15 - Hungry Kisses

• Stand near each other in a warm place. Wear loose easily removed clothing.
• Get closer until your bodies touch. Brush against each other. Feel the body heat generated between you. Gently touch lips.
• Notice any desire or hunger this arouses in you for your partner. Allow this hunger to express in kissing, touching or rubbing. If it moves in that direction, let the hunger flow into sex.
• Your hunger may at times lead to expressing verbally. Don’t suppress this urge to say things to your partner, even if what you say uses swear words.
• If you cannot feel any hunger or desire for your partner, do not simply have sex automatically. Wait and notice what feelings or images stand between you and your partner. Admit these to your partner. This usually shifts them. Read chapter five if you cannot move beyond this point.

The overall aim of this sexercise is to recognise your hunger for your partner and give it more chance to flow into your sexual contact and express it through your body.

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