Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the connections between the relationship we have with food and body and the relationship we have with sex.

What are the ways we perform with food? What are the ways we perform confidence? And what are the ways we perform (rather than actually experience) pleasure and the erotic?

I’ve been finding so many interesting threads because the way we do one thing is often indicative of how we do many things. If we deny ourselves access to the foods we are hungry for and crave, do we also deny ourselves indulging in expressing our needs and asking for that touch that we desperately want?

So many people that I work with wonder why it’s so difficult to turn off their brain during sex with a partner, why it’s so difficult to ask for they want, why it’s so hard to get turned on and surrender, why they’ve been tolerating things that they really don’t enjoy…and when we take a more holistic view of their lives, we often find that they struggle to assert their desires in other places, they struggle with saying no to things they know they don’t want because they’re worried about being nice or keeping the peace.

Through it all, our bodies are listening. They hear the places we constrict, we deny, we attempt to control. Our bodies hear the ways we judge ourselves and others. And these bodies of ours are so hungry to be heard.

Yes, I want that. Yes, the wanting is real and valid and true. Yes, I’m hungry for more. Yes, I want to feel good, I want to feel satisfied, I want to be allowed to own this wanting.

But to acknowledge our desire is to take up space, which can be risky because it means to be seen. And so many of us don’t want to be seen as we are, but instead how we think others want to see us.

It’s a rich, gorgeous place of inquiry for us all to sit with. Do I honor my hungers in all things as true and real? Am I deserving of the wanting?