How I Learned to Honor My Sexual Seasons
After winter, must come spring—Change, it comes eventually…
Autumn is here, at last. While it’s always with a tinge of nostalgia that I bid farewell to those balmy and buzzing summer nights, there’s something equally comforting about what’s ahead; cozy evenings cuddled up in my candle-lit home-nest.
My flowy summer skirts and open-toed sandals have been replaced with wool sweaters and heavy-soled boots. The bottles of cold rosé have given room to dark reds and I’m excited for hours spent prepping and cooking soups, stews, and oven-baked veggies. I’m feeling ready to go inward; to rest.
As much as I’m giddy and excited for spring each year, I equally welcome the dark seasons when the time comes. I crave this balance of rest and restoration after exponential, outward energy, and even though fall and winter bring about withering and decay, it’s exactly this process that nourishes and gives space for the new blossom yet again.
According to traditional Asian medicine and Daoist theory, spring and summer are the yang seasons, while fall and winter are yin. The two opposites depend on one another in order to create a perfect balance.
Did you know that just like how nature adheres to seasonal change, our sexualities are cyclical as well? It does make perfect sense since we humans are in fact nature, regardless of much as we tend to forget or ignore it.
I only became aware of my sexual seasons a few years back, after hitting my first noticeable fall, only to descend into a dark, cold winter.
For the first fifteen years of my sexually active life, I never considered this to be a thing. I’m convinced that being on hormonal birth control played a huge part in numbing not only my natural cycles but my inborn intuition and my womanhood in general. On top of that, I was in two long, consecutive monogamous relationships, neither of which gave much room for exploration and communication around sex. Despite having sensed it brewing under the surface, I neither allowed my true sexual nature to come forth nor did I know how to tap into it.
Off the hormones and out of my last long-term relationship, I launched into a full-on sexual exploration that felt nothing short of a rebirth. Post motherhood, in my thirties, and confident in a whole new way, I felt sexier, more sensual, and bursting with lifeforce like never before.
Gobbling it up by the spoonfuls, I grew from a cautious yet curious bud basking in the sun, to a fully flourishing tree with roots, deep and wide. Throughout this process, I dedicated myself to erotic self-focus in the form of photoshoots and self-exploration. I wrote poems and told sexy stories on stage at slams. I chatted with tenfolds of strangers with whom I shared my deepest fantasies. I came into the kink and BDSM scene, built a network of friends and fellow females to confide in. I danced, pranced, played, and made love, thinking this was all here to stay.
But then, slowly, after a nearly two-year growth spurt, my leaves started withering. Suddenly, I felt more sluggish than sexy, and most of all, I was tired. I didn’t need to dance every weekend and stopped taking photos of myself. Chatting and scheduling dates began feeling like a job. And so, I freaked out: What was happening to me? I was just having the time of my life and now this?
I was not ready to let it go and grasped for the last of those buzzing summer nights, refusing to retire my sandals quite yet. But I couldn’t fight it. Winter was coming. And with it came a deep seasonal depression.
For a while, I was certain my sexy days were over and grieved. This had been my big hurrah and it was all downhill from here. But then, one day, while lounging on the couch and browsing for inspiration, I came across a video from tantric sex coach Layla Martin explaining the nature of our cyclical sexual seasons.
A light came on: I was just in the dead of winter. Spring will come eventually.
Surely, I was right. After I stopped fighting it and allowed myself to regenerate through months of rest and self-care, I finally felt that tingle. Again my seeds germinated, budded, and bloomed to their pinnacle before wilting and perishing once more. This time I expected it and didn’t despair.
In our Yang-obsessed culture which favors masculine traits; we tend to want light and endless summer, constant output, and efficiency. Focusing on these values often drains us energetically, when what we need is rest and integration in order to renew.
I came to embrace my seasons and realized that they don’t tend to coincide with the seasons of the year, neither do they maintain the same type of regularity as your average menstrual cycle. Sometimes they’re shorter, other times longer, and usually, the duration of one season is disproportionate to the next.
Although my first winter was brutal and near eradicated my libido, I later found that going through the darker seasons doesn’t have to mean that I don’t desire sex whatsoever. Usually, it’s rather the way that I express my sexuality that changes and the type of intimacy I desire tends to be more nurturing and focused on soul connection. Springs and summers, on the other hand, are more ideal times for self-expression and exploration of new territories.
While I still prefer my winters short and mild, I now love these too; I happily soak up the healing nourishment gathered during harvest and welcome the much-needed rest.
After I learned to observe the cyclical nature of my sexuality, I was able to move through and honor them rather than resisting. With that, I found a new sense of balance and harmony, I also became more dynamic and less likely to crash.
While I may not experience a spring quite as ecstatic as that first one almost half a decade ago (neither do I know if I want to), I do know with certainty that after each winter comes another spring, brimming with passion and intensity anew.
ⓒ Ena Dahl 2021
