When is a touch a signal for sex? How can you get touched the way you want?
by Marcia Singer, MSW, CHt
My new client, a Gen X-er, sat frustrated, eyes dulling as she formed her question: “How can I get touched by my boyfriend the way I want or when I want, or knowing for sure when his touch is a request for sex?”
I paused, wondering where to start. Huge topic, and I had lived so many aspects of it, even co-creating a Touch Awareness Training in the late 80s with a sex therapist colleague in L.A.
Mother Teresa once counseled, “Touch only with love. Sounds simple, it’s hard to achieve, putting touchy issues near the top of the list of intimate concerns. They’re often overlooked or avoided.
Let’s consider some scenarios. You’re tired, it’s bedtime, you crawl into bed and your honey moves over to you and puts a hand on your thigh. Is this a suggestion for sex? Two: you’re at your office desk. Your boss comes by and puts a hand on your back, stroking you a bit while discussing a business matter. You’re uncomfortable, but are scared to speak up. Third scenario: your grandchild runs up to hug you and sit in your lap. The youngster begins to fondle your breasts: Sexual precocity? Innocent curiosity? What’s an appropriate response?
Maybe you’ve been the toucher in disjointed situations.
How have you been responded to? Misunderstood? How often do you really know? All these scenes can bring apprehensions about the meanings and motivations of touches. Talking clearly about them is rare, even when you’re conscious of participating in an act of touch, or making judgements. And if you’re preoccupied with assessing sexual overtones, you’re less able to register your own bodily sensations and response, losing your ‘truth’ in the process. It’s also likely that any pleasure that might have been there for you in any of these events was lost.
You might well question that IF sexual innuendoes were implied, and you felt that was inappropriate, but you felt some pleasure in the touch anyway, that would mean your ethics were questionable. Isn’t pleasure only OK to feel under certain well-defined circumstances wherein if sex is clearly indicated for you or not? Not necessarily. Our wiring is much more complex that simple rules might dictate.
So when does touch mean sex? In a broad sense, male/female overtones may be inevitable. And if you are a lover in life, embodying the rapture of feeling fully alive and turned on, your awareness of your sensuality will naturally rest alongside your comfort levels within your own sexual nature. If we now ask whether someone intends a sexual overture when s/he touches, of course sometimes it’s so. But where is it written that we must be uptight or guarded, or on the other hand –leap into the sack? In learning to be touch aware, discretion and making choices that line up with our own desires and true values becomes the rule, more often than exception. You can graciously accept or refuse any offers for concrete sexual expression. You’re free to experience pleasure in any touch freely and honestly given. If you’re not sure about motivation, you can inquire, and share your stance, in a respectful way. You may be able to read others’ motivations more clearly, being emotionally and mentally uncluttered by worry or shame.
Becoming touch aware enough to determine what communications are within your own morality code, integrity or boundaries, you may be astounded to discover how many of the touch acts in your daily life are determined by unknown, invisible ‘negative’ factors. As you create a more conscious touch life, you unravel the confusions most of us labor under about the relationships between the body (the biblical “flash,” and pleasure, touch, sensuality and sexuality. You’ll benefit from a new perspective on or definition of sexuality and sensuality that doesn’t embrace a body-mind split. Best, you reap countless pleasurable benefits of caring touches from the heart.
Shining deLight, Marcia
