For many years in my marriage, I felt like I was in a little tiny box with my sexuality, and it was so uncomfortable. I felt stuck and suffocated in there. I have since come to realize that it was the box of distorted male sexuality which our culture promotes.
In this post, I’m going to help you break free of this box because I believe that it was not only affecting my marriage, but it’s affecting so many other marriages. It’s causing a lot of problems, tension, and anxiety, and not very much pleasure (which is what we want out of sex), or connection.
Before I tell you how I did that in my life and how I teach other women to do that, I want to introduce myself. My name is Janna Denton-Howes and I am a marriage coach. I’m a creator of two programs: 30 Days to Wanting it More and the Marriage Mastery Club.
Why is this box so devastating?
It really boils down to all the “should’s” that we have in our minds that make us feel inadequate, broken, hopeless, and frustrated, it goes on and on, and it’s really happening on both sides. Not just women, but men too.
Here are some “should’s”…
– Men should want sex all the time.
– We should have a mind-blowing orgasm all the time and that should be the goal of sex.
– We should have an intense, driven, focused desire, throughout the whole sexual experience.
Another thing this “box” tells us is that there are three sexual places on a woman’s body: her breasts, vagina, and butt. Whatttt. Just three?! Goodness. This is for men. This teaches men that in order for women to desire them, they need to desire sex. You could see how that can be really challenging for men when their wives don’t desire sex and their need is to be desired, admired, and respected.
Distorted Male Qualities
Men should go hard and fast all the time. Women should have vaginal orgasms, not clitoral orgasms. I could literally go on and on. Why do I think that this is distorted male sexuality? Because I do not believe at all that this is real, true male sexuality. It’s distorted because our culture has taken qualities that men already have, and it’s twisted and perverted them into something else. For example, men have a quality of strength. That’s getting distorted into dominance. Men have a natural desire to connect through sex. That’s getting distorted into a single focus on orgasm. Men have this quality of power. That’s getting distorted into “harder and faster”. Men have a quality of confidence. That’s getting distorted into, “don’t take your wife’s requests seriously, you’ve got this”, and their egos get hurt if their wife makes requests or wants more support.
How to Break Free
So, how do we break free of this little, tiny box that we’re all in? It’s gonna take a pretty big paradigm shift. What I teach is not just, “have a bubble bath” or “just make yourself do it”. I just want to gag in my mouth every time I hear that advice because it doesn’t work! It’s bigger than that. The biggest shift that needs to take place is that women need to get into the role of the leader in the sexual experience and men need to take the role of responders.
This is not a conversation about who’s better, or whose needs are more valuable, or who’s going to “wear the pants” in this situation. This is just the way it works so well. I have a million reasons why this is – I believe – the way it was supposed to be in the first place. Biologically. I share all of that stuff in my program 30 Days to Wanting it More. But just to keep this brief and make sure you have some action steps, the biggest reason is because women have expansive sexuality. There is unlimited potential for her pleasure. It is not just the three areas of her body that are the sexual hotspots. It’s her whole body. It is not just her physical touch through which she can receive pleasure. It is through sounds and talking, movement, feelings, emotions, and her imagination.
There are just a million combinations that can take place here.
Not that men are not sophisticated when it comes to sexuality, but they just naturally want to make their wives happy. So if she’s leading the show and making requests and following her pleasure, he can so naturally just come along for the experience.
You can see how this is very, very different than what our society teaches us. If you let go of all those “should’s” and follow true female sexuality and the sexual experience, you get something that feels joyful, fun, playful, relaxed, connecting, silly, goofy, and really just so much more than that tiny little confined box that we’re all trying to stuff ourselves into.
“I Love to Talk During Sex”
Some participants in my program, the women who I teach this to, have learned some new things about themselves. A lot of them say, “I love to talk during sex.” It’s something that they never felt like they should do, or it simply never even occurred to them, but now they’ve discovered… talking brings pleasure.
Some of them are laughing during sex and playing silly songs or having moments of goofiness and playfulness. Some are discovering that they can have peaks of pleasure – maybe like five seconds of really intense pleasure and then it drifts away and becomes more of a relaxing, connecting, cuddling experience. Then the peak of pleasure will come again (this is physical pleasure, to clarify).
Some women have discovered that certain sounds that they make, like a moaning sound or a low guttural sound, are very pleasurable for them. Others have discovered that being silent, calm, and contemplative is pleasurable. Still others have discovered new things about their body; different places, different types of touching or pressure, or that it’s really varying and unlimited.
If This All Sounds a Bit Daunting…
I know what you’re thinking. “She wants me to be the leader. She wants me to make this big paradigm shift and explain to my husband that now he’s the responder and I’m the leader… how is he going to react to that?! I’m supposed to put away all these “should’s” that I’ve been taught for my whole life about sexuality and just suddenly change it all?!
If you do find yourself still reading this, and you feel inadequate, or like you’re broken or there’s something wrong with you, I want to say to you, there is nothing wrong with you. There is everything wrong with that tiny little box of distorted male sexuality that our society promotes.
I want to invite you to join my program.
There are over 260 women in there already and it’s only been a year or so since I launched it. Things are crazy. Women are experiencing huge shifts in their marriage just by taking ownership of their sexuality and making a change right now. Just don’t go another day, don’t go another week, don’t go another month feeling uncomfortable with the sexual experience or feeling like you are objectified or used by your husband. Just no more. It’s time to speak up. This is a big part of the revamping feminist movement that we’re seeing around the world right now.
I invite you to join the program because you will learn so many things. You will learn how to be a leader, and how to share this with your husband. I share my husband’s videos. You can just let him watch that video where I speak directly to him. It’s only 10 minutes long each week so you don’t have to do it. You get to figure out what you like. I give you some specific things and try to make the program as simple as possible but in a really methodical step-by-step way. However, I do not want you to feel like you don’t know what to do, or feel overwhelmed just wishing somebody would give you a solution. I am giving you a solution.
The other extremely valuable thing that you’ll get from this program is a whole community of women.
Some are really in the position of being mentors in this movement that we’re creating. They’ve been in the program for five, seven, eight months already and they’ve been in the place that you’re in right now and now they’re in the place where they’re enjoying regular, frequent sexual experiences with their husbands that don’t leave them feeling empty or unsatisfied or objectified or used or angry or resentful or frustrated or like there’s something wrong with them. You get this whole supportive, fantastic group of women that I love. I personally love to be in that Facebook group. It’s so much fun. Hilarious things are shared. But more importantly, you do not feel alone and you get to see how women are practically implementing this into their marriages.
We’ve just started a live round this week which means I will be in the Facebook group. I will be doing live videos. I will be doing Q&A’s. We will have my husband in the Facebook group talking about the male perspective and what it was like for him to make this huge paradigm shift in our relationship. He’s a super open book so it’s really fun. I love doing Facebook lives with him. He’s just precious.
Before I go on and on about my husband, just I would love to have you in there and I’m looking forward to getting to know you a little bit better. Go forth and break free of that box. I look forward to hearing how it goes for you. I’ll talk to you later.