While walking back to my car from the beach I noticed a car parked next to mine that needed a good cleaning with writing on its back windshield that said, ‘I wish my girlfriend was this dirty’.
I’ve been thinking about the point view of the person that wrote the message. First, I felt sad for his girlfriend that she would feel that she needs to compete and live up to what he thinks is ‘dirty’ enough.
The idea of sex being ‘naughty’/‘dirty’ starts when we are children and we begin to ask questions to our parents and they give us dismissals and lies. This creates the belief that when it comes to sex we can’t trust our parents to tell us the truth. We look elsewhere for answers but the only resources we find are porn or misinformation. When we find this false information we feel like at least we finally got some kind of answer. We stick with our newfound answers for most of our lives or until we run into some problems.
We look to bond with our partner through a 'dirty’ lens we received from the parental message, we need to hide information about sex because its ‘dirty.’
This has been the norm for a very long time.
‘Dirty’ seems appealing because the brain thinks you feel good when the suspense for sex builds up a neurochemical rush.
To sum it up: We get a clear message when we are young that sex is wrong, when we grow up and we want to enjoy sex, we feel that what we are doing is ‘wrong’. And shame sets in.
But that means that you need to compromise yourself in wanting something that is naughty to make you feel good. And the real trick is you gotta get your partner to go along with this insane idea.
Which is why a lot of men that are in recovery note that they have had to resort to things like encouraging their partner to drink excessive alcohol or other numbing strategies.
It’s like living a double life with your own sex life. First you take your girlfriend on a nice walk, maybe some dinner and flowers, but then when you get home it’s time to rip off each other’s clothes and have intensely driven sex. That is very fast, furious and ends quickly too.
There is an interesting dichotomy created in this polarized world of sex between the idea of wanting something bad but we want to be good at that bad thing.
But the truth is that ‘dirty’ in terms of a societal preference isn’t as appealing as we all have been conditioned to believe.
Dirty to us means, as a woman, that you need to be ready to do anything and everything that is available in mens fantasies. This is an impossible task.
The men in my life have made it perfectly clear that they want their sexuality to be aligned with love but are challenged with intrusive interference from the onslaught of porn in all realms of media that show that ‘dirty’ is the way to go. This conditioning results in them feeling incapable of steering their sexuality towards love.
The normalization of ‘dirty’ creates a status quo peer pressure that, reportedly, feels like a current that pulls men in.
To live a life where our sexuality is indeed aligned with love its necessary for us women to first understand our own true sexuality in a holistic way then we will truly be able to hold space and support men that are ready to move beyond ‘dirty’s grip.