Howl

A New Perspective on Sexual Frustration

Our hunger might be easier to satisfy than we think

If you were to take over my email account for a week, can you guess what most readers ask me about or want to talk about? Yes, the state of their relationships, but go a little deeper… Yes, it’s about sex. Keep going, you’ve almost got it.

Yep! Sexual frustration.

First of all, let me say that I get it. I’ve had my own struggles with feeling sexually shut down or ignored. It’s a difficult position to find oneself in.

In other words, it happens to us all and is far more common than I ever would have believed. But there’s an aspect of this issue that worries me a bit. There are feelings and power imbalances that crop up that I suspect we are failing to examine and I fear that is only making things worse.

So what’s going on here?

Deserving vs. expecting

There’s one basic belief that I really hold on to: that all humans deserve love and yes, even sex. We are mammals and like other mammals, we need one another. Further, in my opinion, we are souls, and our souls are perfect, beautiful, and deserving of love and acceptance.

However, I also believe that no human being owes another love (or sex). I don’t care if you are parent and child, siblings, or even lovers. We have free will to do with what we want. We have our own journeys to travel and our own struggles to overcome, which might affect our ability to love another or engage in physical intimacy.

Ideally, we’d live in a world that required parents and children, siblings, best friends, lovers, etc. to love each other all the time. Ideally, we’d find a mate (or more than one) and experience perfect sexual timing and compatibility so that no one ever felt rejected or unfulfilled.

But that’s not the world we have.

Respect, I think we owe one another. That’s a fair demand.

But it’s important to be very clear with ourselves that we are not entitled to love and sex — not even from our partner.

The importance of agreements

And yet, having said that, our agreements with a lover matter. I have heard from a lot of people who have a spouse who decided that they weren’t interested in sex anymore and that was that. The expectation is that the relationship continues on as usual, just without the sex.

I’m not on board with that. When people get married, in general, sex is part of the agreement. How that plays out for each couple is, of course, entirely up to them. The point is simply that even though most couples don’t sit down and talk through all the details of their marriage agreement, many details, like sex, are implied.

When someone changes the terms of the agreement — for instance, by taking sex off the table, without a discussion or negotiation — that, to me, is a violation of the agreement. And it’s not about the sex — it’s about the agreement. Two people made it. Two people need to negotiate it as it evolves.

I’m also not on board with one party changing the rules of the agreement in secret, without talking about it with the other partner. For instance, my ex decided he no longer wanted to be with an older woman and began dating — and fucking — a woman in her twenties, without revealing this information to me. He didn’t owe me his love. He didn’t owe me sex. But he did owe me the respect to simply say to my face: “I am no longer committed to this relationship and am going to start seeing someone else.”

Hunger and responsibility

For the most part, humans want sex. Let’s celebrate that, without shame.

But while we’re patting ourselves on the back for being so sex-positive, let’s remember something even more important: our sexual satisfaction is no one’s responsibility but our own.

It doesn’t matter if we’re single and haven’t been able to find a decent partner in years. It doesn’t matter if we are married and experiencing an end to our sexual agreement.

We are responsible for our own sexual fulfillment. Period.

Our culture doesn’t support this. It looks down on masturbation as a poor substitute for sex. (Most people don’t even think masturbation falls under the category of sex unless you do it with a partner.) It urges us to tie our worth to our sexual relationships. It asks us to focus on who desires us instead of focusing on how we can love ourselves and see ourselves as whole.

Every time we long for sexual fulfillment that we think we can’t achieve, no matter our circumstances, we disempower ourselves. We start to feel like victims, and then our entitlement kicks in, after which, all hell can break loose.

But if we’re gonna celebrate our hunger for sex — if we’re gonna claim that hunger and own it proudly — then we need to take the next step, which is approaching our lives with a knowing that we also must claim and own our power to satiate that hunger.

Isn’t that a delicious thought?

Feeding our inner wolves

How would you feel if you believed that you could be sexually fulfilled no matter your circumstances?

For most of my life, I believed what our culture taught me: that my sexual fulfillment was in someone else’s hands and that I’d have to wait until he or she finally arrived and then everything would be okay.

After I entered my forties, as a single woman, I threw that belief straight into the garbage can.

I had had so many disempowering relationships, so much sexual and emotional frustration… And there was no way in hell that I was gonna sit around for another few months — or years — waiting for someone to come fuck me into satisfaction. Hell no.

I decided to take care of my sexual needs in a way that would fulfill me whether or not I was in a relationship. Instinctively, I knew that this was critical for me to take into my own hands — that my satisfaction and happiness depended upon it.

I achieved this in a variety of ways:

• Giving masturbation the same gravity that I give sex with another person
• Turning masturbation into an art form
• Expressing my sexuality in appropriate ways across all the aspects of my life
• Opening my mind about what kind of relationships I want and who I want to be with
• Looking at myself in new ways

These are all things that I can do for myself no matter what circumstances I find myself in. With or without a partner. Forever single or fiercely married.

These practices have helped me find an enormous (and ever-growing) level of sexual fulfillment and it’s even more fulfilling to know that this is in my hands. I have control over this. Not someone else.

Dealing with disappointment

As empowering as it is to take control of our sexual fulfillment, that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to sometimes struggle with disappointment, sadness, or frustration. It can be heartbreaking and confusing when a partner no longer wants to engage in sexual activity and leaves us wondering if we can stay in the relationship any longer. It can be devastating to want someone who doesn’t want us back. And it can be frustrating when we deeply desire sexual connections with another person and can’t seem to achieve that.

But I think it’s important to experience these feelings in a very deep way. To confront them head-on. Sometimes, they will pass, but oftentimes, they can illuminate for us the places in which we need healing.

Maybe we do associate our worth with our sexuality. Maybe we do struggle with entitlement around our sexual needs. Maybe we do need to speak more clearly, more openly, and/or more honestly.

And then we can teach ourselves to land, again and again, in the truth that our sexual fulfillment is not in someone else’s control.

We are responsible for taking care of ourselves. And what a blessing that is.

This article was written for Howl by Yael Wolfe, a weekly column. © Yael Wolfe 2020

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