2/4: Better Sex Reaches A Dead End

I used to think I knew all about “change management”. That all change could be managed, like a project. But when I had to let Reclaiming Venus die, when I no longer had the ability to help birth another YES, the ground beneath me moved in a profound way.

At some point better sex, more whole-hearted enjoyable sex, healing sex, even hours upon hours of ‘tantric’ sex just didn’t seem to be going somewhere, anywhere that made sense … to me.

Learning is my thing, my gig, in work as an organizational consultant and I think it’s just what gives me juice in life. There is nothing than drains me more than having to take stuff in and spit it out just for the sake of making money – or having to ask others to do the same. Its like running on a gerbil wheel or some sort of mental masturbation … only without the orgasm, ever. What I mean by learning is growth, genuine curiosity, going for a walk without a path to follow. It is full of surprises, it’s hard work, often fraught with failure, confusion and it contains the seed of the most awesome sense of exhilaration and connection with Life.

A little more than a year into the YES journey the learning was gone and I suddenly found myself on the gerbil wheel asking, “why am I doing this anyway? What's the bigger point of it all?”

I was going broke trying to fund Reclaiming Venus. HRDC (Human Resource Development Canada) banned me from a favorite business project I contributed to several years in a row to help unemployed women because of my involvement in “sex work” … not sure what they thought I would do to the women, force them to talk about their vagina’s?!

At the same time many of the women who had attended the workshops and found some level of sexual healing by connecting to their erotic story, now seemed to be almost trapped in a perpetual peeling back of layer upon layer of healing ... as though sexual healing had become their occupation or worse yet, their addiction.

I just couldn’t connect to the fire any more. It was like all the internal lights went out. I couldn’t find a context for ‘a better relationship with our sexuality’ to rest in that made sense to me.

A woman who had been a great inspiration to myself and many other women, Betty Dodson, came out with a new book called Orgasms for Two. On the back cover she wrote, “Although the idea of pleasure might be frivolous in a world that appears to be on the brink of horrible disasters, I believe one of our best hopes for survival depends upon embracing and celebrating human sexuality as a healing force.”

Really?! I certainly didn’t see physical pleasure as irrelevant and couldn’t disagree about our world being on the brink – or maybe already in – disaster … but better sex, “healing sex” as a key to addressing our complex predicament? We’re going to address poverty, epidemic diseases, pollution, extinction, climate change, war, fundamentalism … with healing sex?! Dodson was not alone in her thinking, at least not within the ‘healing sex’ community (which was gaining a lot of momentum and growing into a sizable industry). This was a leap of thinking that I just couldn’t sign up for.

So I did the thing my dad had taught me to do when I wasn’t sure – just sit still and wait, be patient. Just wait. I shut down the website, stopped the radio show and writing e-zine features, and didn’t offer anymore workshops. Without a sense of purpose, I couldn’t fake it. With feelings of failure roaming around inside, I went back to consulting full force.

Confined to sex, we pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
I made it to the forward deck
I blessed our remnant fleet –
And then consented to be wrecked,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
I guess they won’t exchange the gifts
That you were meant to keep.
And quiet is the thought of you
The file on you complete,
Except what we forgot to do,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

[Leonard Cohen, 10 New Songs]