low desire « Conscious Transitions

Sacred Sexuality: Now More Than Ever

By Sheryl Paul, on December 24th, 2017

With the latest exposure of sexual assault, abuse, and violation in this country, there can be no doubt that our culture suffers from profound sexual dysfunction and illness. Many of us, especially women, have been privately aware of the toxicity for a long time and we now know publicly that there’s hardly a woman in America who hasn’t suffered from some sort of sexual assault, but it seems to take a revelation of this magnitude for the awareness to rise up from the underworld of whispered stories and reach the collective consciousness.

What we’re seeing in the media is the opposite of sacred sexuality. We’re seeing a sexuality based on power, lies, and cruelty, a sexuality that treats women like objects and uses sex to achieve domination. Sexuality isn’t the only sphere where the domination model shows up; we’ve lived in a world that is predicated on competition instead of … Click here to continue reading...

Sex Begets Sex

By Sheryl Paul, on July 5th, 2015

One might think, given how much I write about relationships, that I would write more about sex. I’ve touched on the subject sporadically – here and here and here – but I haven’t delved into the topic in depth for a variety of reasons, the primary being that it’s such a vast and complicated realm that it’s difficult to do it justice in a single article. Still, because the topic arises so frequently with my clients and on my forums, it’s worth diving in a bit more, even if we only scratch the surface.

I’ve written about what’s “normal” and hopefully have shed some light on the connection between anxiety and sex. A large part of my work consists of debunking the pernicious “shoulds” that weigh heavily into psyches and mutate into shame. When we’re up against an externally derived barometer of what a healthy relationship should look like, we … Click here to continue reading...