Hello…

Are you feeling intimacy starved?  Sex-starved?  Skin starved?  Perhaps you are longing to feel skin-on-skin, flesh-on-flesh contact with a person.  You may even be belonging for that gaze of lust, a gaze that says you are special and desirable.

You are not alone.  Whether single or in a relationship, sex starvation is hurting a lot of hungry people.

Covid-19 has placed rigid physical constrictions on our ability to get this sex-starved part of ourselves met.  Together with anxiety and uncertainty, the hassle of handwashing, masks, interrogating about social safety, sex is a hassle and not essential.  In a recent Kinsey Institute study 44% of people in a relationship and 56% of singles report a decline in their sex lives.

During times of chaotic fear such as what COVID-19 brings us, libidos will lessen or heighten.  You may feel especially horny, have a deeper longing for touch as a way to soothe your beating heart.  Or you may turtle down into independent survival with less than usual libido.

Stop for a moment.  I am wanting the attention of people who were sex-starved before COVID-19.  That is people, perhaps you, either single or in attachment, who were having no sex at all or sex less than 10 times in a year, which is the official definition of a “sexless” relationship.

I invite you to consider how COVID-19 has affected you emotionally and sexually.  Whatever your style of adapting to this trauma, you may be suffering now more than ever, from the loss of intimate connection.  Loneliness, not having someone who is “your person”, disconnection from a community, a sex worker, a potential date and distance from your live-in partner, heightens mental health distress and makes you vulnerable to risky behavior.

TIPS TO ENGAGE WITH YOUR SEXLESS PART

  • Acknowledge you are suffering without touch, sex, intimacy, even love.  Do not minimize this pain, just notice it, and respect it.
  • Take action to energize yourself from stuck “despair” into “hope and possibility”.
  • Create a sensual life for yourself.  This means shifting from raw sex into your 5 senses: taste, touch, smell, soundvision.
  • Notice your living space.  What colors, textures, smells, visual objects, and varied tastes do you have around you that delight and excite you?
  • Begin to bring these unique senses online through making small changes and additions to your physical environment.  For example, choose food with different textures and flavors, move the furniture around, engage in creative handiwork, wear colors that make you feel alive, challenge your brain with different genres of music.
  • Professional massage/bodywork is an essential way to receive touch and calm your nervous system.
  • Months, even years, of sexual and physical disconnection from a partner, requires attention once you have soothed and regulated your own self through the above tips.
  • A conversation from a compassionate and kind heart, rather than from an angry, hurting heart, will open up a possibility of becoming unstuck from your sexless life.
  • The facilitation of a therapist is useful.

SIGN UP NOW FOR THIS DYNAMIC TEDx CapeTown PANEL DISCUSSION

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/tedxctdecadeofwomxn

Feel free to reach out to me via WhatsApp.  Anonymity is guaranteed.  Let me know where your anxieties, fears, and worries sit with you.  Tell me what is soothing for you.  And what you need in this time of radical uncertainty.

 

060 890 1062

Feel free to book a teletherapy Zoom session with me right here… https://www.dreve.co.za/appointment/

For more information please contact my PA Shantel:  shantel@dreve.co.za