You probably already know that breast cancer and treatment wreak havoc with your intimate and sexual life. Feeling feminine, attractive, desirable and sexy during and after treatments can seem like a lost cause, and maybe it’s the last thing on your mind. Many women say their sex life wasn’t so great before diagnosis and it hardly seems worth it now. My heart aches when I hear things like this because it doesn’t have to be this way. What do I mean by this?
We women don’t know a lot about sex or pleasure to begin with. Stop and think where you learned about sex ~ what it is, how to do it, how to make it pleasurable. Way back in our teen years we may have had a hygiene or human interaction class. After that, it was like the blind leading the blind ~ done secretly, not talked about much and not wanting to get caught or pregnant. Most women report that their early sexual experiences weren’t pleasant. Many of us haven’t learned a lot since then. We carry a lot of cultural shaming about being women and being sexy and we don’t know where to get good information. Even if you’ve had a satisfying intimate and sexual life, it’s all radically changed by breast cancer and treatments.
What’s a girl to do???
Let’s begin with expanding our definition of what sex is. We’re trained to think that sex is what happens when some body parts come together, some movement happens and some fluids are exchanged. This is called intercourse, and the goal is to have an orgasm and help our partner to have an orgasm, not necessarily in that order.
Our bodies function differently now and intercourse may not feel good, or we may not be interested in it or our libido may have disappeared. Wanting to please our partner, we may attempt to overcome these challenges. That can be a painful way to go and who wants to feel pain, especially during lovemaking?
What if we knew that sex was more than genital intercourse? Would that interest you? Let’s explore a possibility…
Imagine that the letters S ~ E ~ X are acronyms for
- Sacred Energy Exchange
- Spiritual Energy Exchange
- Sensual Energy Exchange
Suddenly a world of new possibilities appears. Here are a few:
- Having your partner kneel at your feet, bow to you as a goddess, then kiss your feet with reverence and love. Then they bathe your feet in warm scented water, gently dry them and massage lotion into your feet, ankles and lower legs. Sounds like Sensual Energy Exchange to me!
- Read aloud to each other ~ try love poems, erotica or spiritual material that inspires you both. Set the stage with soft music and candles and dress in something that feels sensual to you. How’s that for spiritual energy exchange?
- Sit facing each other, holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. Then tell your sweetheart 3 things that you love and appreciate about them. Then have them tell you 3 things they love and appreciate about you. As you speak, share straight from your heart, as if your heart had lips and could speak. As you listen, drink in their words and know that the truth is being spoken. This is a time of sacred energy exchange.
You get the idea. Use your imagination and your heart to create ways to express and experience love, intimacy and tenderness and have some fun. These are all forms of S ~ E ~ X. When you expand the horizon like this, the possibilities are endless. Happy creating, and if you are moved to share some of your creations here, we can all benefit!