When Emma Firth had a sexual awakening, she was surprised to find an inner calm
By Kate Moyle
For me, a rather happy respite in this s**t show of a year was, unexpectedly, meeting someone and connecting with them sexually.
When the pandemic hit in March, establishing a routine was the most prescribed self-care tonic on my Instagram feed. Easy, I thought. Though, after a while, the Groundhog Days started to grate. Everything felt so deeply monotonous. Combine that with the onslaught of a grim news cycle, mute social life, and meeting anyone new seemingly out of bounds or, as one friend so deftly described dating this year: “If it were a banner? Bleak Until Further Notice.” It wasn’t so much missing romance, so much as much as the possibility of it.
But on meeting my partner I entered into a world of the good kind of uncertainty, as opposed to looming-threat-and-panic-in-a-pandemic kind. A flicker of hope and frivolity, in a landscape shrouded in doom and gloom. Our early courtship was more like being in a Jane Austen novel i.e. lots of walking and public encounters. Time felt slower, and sweeter, in his company. Similarly, when we’ve been intimate, I savour every moment. I am never thinking I should do anything. I’m just enjoying the meandering of sensations; the warmth of his touch, his mouth on mine, being fully present in my body. Here, I am blissfully immune to rules or expectations.
As such, the experience is all the more satisfying, and stress-relieving, because I’m in the moment. Like a good, long walk. The ones that are totally aimless. You amble up and down, maybe stop for a bit and then, somewhere along the way come across something so mesmerising that, for a brief moment, you just sort of bathe in its beauty. Afterwards, you feel connected, energised, restored. We’re living through an undeniably tumultuous period. Seeing our friends’ lives play out on our phone screens; comparison culture at an all-time high; professional uncertainty. Sex should be a soothing intermission. Free of judgement or external worries. And for me it is.
Before I met him, I was craving physical intimacy more than ever, like a lot of people during a year of U Can’t Touch This. The erotic friction that occurs when you know you are attracted to someone. Every moment titillating. Sex written in every look, hand hold, kiss, until finally your bodies are in motion. Like slowly, one by one, adding logs to a burning fire.
It’s all part of the “sex dance”, as I like to call it. Or, as I’ve recently discovered it’s been co-opted, ‘mindful sex’. A term which is so hot right now, there’s a new book dedicated to it: Mindful Shagging: The Calmer Sutra by Rhonda Yearn. My first thought upon hearing this emerging lust-based lexicon? Ugh. Yet another thing to remember to be mindful about. Scepticism aside – I fully support the sentiment in practice. According to Yearn, it’s about “bringing our awareness” to this moment in time. Sex that “produces inner calm, tranquillity and self-acceptance.” Something we could all use a higher dose of in 2020. To break it down further, mindful sex is a shift away from conventional mind-filled sex. The latter a fixed, goal-orientated concept. So often fed to us, be it through films to conversations with friends, that you’ve nailed it (pah!) only if one reaches orgasm. Being naked with another person is peak vulnerability, why add a layer of stress to such an enterprise? Not least in the age of Covid-19, a year that has been marred by a tsunami of emotional tension and pressure for so many of us. Psychosexual and Relationship Therapist Kate Moyle offers up a useful framework here to “tune out to turn on.” First, try and take distractions out of your environment i.e. no tech (“our brains are primed to notice things [and] take in new information.”) Secondly, introduce sensory cues (“something like LOVE Sleep pillow spray from This Works, it helps create a shift in context”). Thirdly – and most importantly – “avoid putting pressure on yourself.”
This, I can report, has been the most significant shift this year. I am notably happier, in every aspect of my life, when I just ‘go with the flow.’ No rush to get to the next level. One of my pet peeves is when girlfriends want to delve into the-morning-after chat. So often it feels like a performance review. What was it like? What did you do? What did he do? And so on.
Sex isn’t a performance, it’s an experience. If I look back through my archive of subpar, um, sessions, they’ve always been the ones I’ve built up in my mind beforehand. Which is a recipe for disappointment. Like New Year’s Eve (my most hated day of the year). You angle it to be the best night ever, you will look incredible, they’ll be fireworks, the whole shebang. So that when you get to the big day itself it’s, at worst, panic-inducing. At best, mind-numbingly anti-climactic. Far better to just make it up as you go, take pleasure in the moments, as they occur. Be zen AF…quite literally.
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