Sex is like a souffle. A souffle is complicated and unique. It is difficult to get it to finish well. It takes preparation and forethought. You cannot be distracted or have your mind on something else while you are cooking a souffle. Use just the right ingredients at just the right temperatures. Beat and whip, but not too much. Fold and test until everything is perfect. Practice. Know your oven and test the temperature. Keep trying. It’s worth it – for the enjoyment, taste, and accomplishment.
Your body is not a package of fake meat and cheese (even if it feels like it some days) that you throw in a microwave oven, and it’s done in 3 minutes. You are a souffle that takes time and practice and love to prepare. You don’t make a souffle because you are hungry right now. You make a souffle for the love of cooking something special.
If you are treating sex like a hot pocket meal, you are not doing it right.
People treat sex like “I wanna do it and you should wanna do it with me too”… “I have this need and I am gonna use you to fill it”… “Hungry. Need hot pocket.”
Instead of treating sex like the deepest, sweetest, most liberating and fun conversation EVER. If we spent time preparing ourselves and each other FOR each other, we would have a much better meal. We wonder why we don’t want to have sex… but it is because we think it is a 3 minute heat up and BAM we are aroused and then orgasm and then done. That’s just not how it was made to be – believe it or not.
We put more care into preparing a presentation at work or an outfit for an interview than we do for sex.
We put more care into thinking through why someone did or did not call us back than we do for sex.
We put more care and consideration into the paint color on the wall than we do for sex.
We put more care and heart into a conversation with a friend than we do for sex.
And then we wonder why we don’t want to have sex.
Why are some things worth the work and other things not?? Usually because we don’t understand what we will get out of the other things. We know what we can get out of a good job interview or a great color on our walls or a conversation with a friend. But, honestly, what will you get out of sex except a little friction and connection and a few guilt-free days after…??
So so so so so much more. There is a wealth of love, depth, and pleasure that our bodies are made for and we have ignored out of fear and confusion. There is a conversation full of nuance and care, adventure and learning, that we can have with our bodies – if we are willing to go at the right pace and with good preparation.
You are a souffle. You are meant to be enjoyed and savored, folded, kneeded, and delighted over.
If you are thinking you are a hot pocket (or being treated like one) of course you don’t want to have sex. If you put the ingredients for a souffle in the microwave, that would not turn out delicious. You would still be hungry.
Take the time to learn how to prepare yourself and your spouse. Take the time to learn your own favorite ingredients and JUST how to fold, kneed, and heat. Actually finishing the meal is just punctuation at the end of a sentence you’ve been writing all along.
Rebel against the must-get-it-done push in our lives and go slow. Ask questions. You CAN learn to enjoy your own body – married or not. Your body is not just utilitarian – it is beautiful, graceful, delightful, strong, receptive.
((Full disclosure, I don’t love women-as-food metaphors… so forgive me if it offends your value as a woman. I just believe we forget the kind of preparation we are willing to put into other things because we don’t understand the goodness of sex. You are way more than a souffle, Sister. ))
Today is Anais Nin’s 111th Birthday. Let’s celebrate with some of her revolutionary words about living
a hot, free, brave, beautiful life!
*****
“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”
*****
“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”
*****
“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?”
*****
“There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don’t work.”
*****
“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you’re not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn’t a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.”
*****
“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.”
*****
“When one is pretending, the entire body revolts.”
*****
“I’m awaiting a lover. I have to be rent and pulled apart and live according to the demons and the imagination in me. I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.”
*****
“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.”
*****
“Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.”
*****
“Don’t let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.”
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“Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.”
*****
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
*****
“I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits.”
Love and Making It – the eCoursecurrently at full speed – is changing my life more than I thought possible because it is changing the lives of the women who took a giant step of bravery and signed up. We are asking hard questions and connecting with our spouses. We are cheering for each other, praying for each other, and laughing HARD with each other. Most of all, though, people are finding hope.
“My husband has never felt so loved and frankly I have never been more satisfied.”
“The very thing that has caused so much pain and fear could be the method by which those wounds are healed. whoa.”
(And that is just a couple comments. I am floored by the amazing things happening in this course.)
Thank you to everyone who has expressed interest in taking the next course AND to the single women who have told me I MUST include them next time… AS YOU WISH.
LOVE AND MAKING IT – a course on feeling brave and beautiful {in bed} will start another round in the spring. (Read about it here and here)
BABES IN GODLAND – a course on feeling brave and beautiful {in your body}. We will focus on feeling alive, well-made, beautiful, and sensual regardless of relationship status.
There are so many messages we have learned about what “sexy” is and how we are supposed to act as women and as people pursuing the mysteries of God. These classes are a call to freedom and healing for our WHOLE selves.
*****
“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” – Pablo Neruda
I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My beloved is knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.” Song of Solomon 5:2
