Yesterday my partner and I were talking about ideas for starting our own business. The idea that rocketed to the top of the list was a consultation business for sexual acceptance of self. Whatever one’s gender preference, whatever one’s orientation, whatever one’s kink, or darkest, strangest, trippiest, or even vanilla sexual desires or no desires at all, it’s all alright. We’re all wired the way we’re wired. And there are safe, sane and consensual outlets for those desires to be met.  We can help!

While we were brainstorming, I realized that I started to recoil a bit. I was immediately worried that by getting into a sex-based business, I was somehow short-changing myself. That there were more important things for me to do in this life, why would I do that?

But then I thought, WAIT A MINUTE! What’s wrong with it? Why am I falling into the same trap of the very people we want to help?

The strange truth about our culture in America is, we are sent mixed, confusing messages daily about sex daily. If you’re a woman, you’re suppose to be both liberated and modest. If you’re a man, you’re suppose to be both aggressive and sensitive. The media bombards us with flashes of objectified humans and psychologically ambushes us with products to make us all sexier, sharper, hyper-aggressive, übermensches. But you’re not supposed to act on those airs you purchased; you’re just suppose to look the part.  

With no national dialogue on sex. We’re all a bundle of neurotic wrecks on the subject, including me. My mother was so hung up on sex that I never thought I could talk to her about it. I group up terminally embarrassed about the subject so there was so much I didn’t know until I got to college. But if I’m honest with myself, I learned most of what I know about sex through the internet like most people today.

 I’ve met women who so identified with sexual purity due to their Christian fundamentalist upbringing, that they were unable to shed that identity when they got married. They were just suddenly expected to let go what was drilled into their minds since they were young children.  They didn’t know who they were if not a virgin!

And that is why we need more people out there helping communities to gain a healthier understanding of sex, sexual orientation and gender in this country. Too many people think there is something wrong with themselves because they like something “deviant” or “immoral.” Often times what they are into is rather normal, they just don’t know it because people rarely open up and talk about it. People worry if they like sex too much, they worry if they don’t like it enough.  God help then if they find they like having pain inflicted on them, or they like to inflict it on others. They bury these fears because they’re not supposed to like it by the standards of social norms.

It’s when these things are buried and unacknowledged that they become misshapen and grow into deviant monsters that hurt others. When we are aware of the shadow and start to integrate it, we can find constructive outlets for our desires and partners who are more aligned and eagerly willing to participate in our sexual needs.

So much ends up in that shadow, it’s got to be made of the most super dense material on the entire planet! I believe that to be the case. I think Americans are really good at super packing their shadows with dark treats just waiting to bite us all on the ass one day. It’s okay if you like that sort of thing, I don’t judge.

It’s healthy to talk about sex. What is not healthy is to not talk about it. So, my own shadow work this week will be to uncover why I recoiled when I really thought about a business that centered on sexual acceptance. Is it my Catholic background rearing its head, a fear of being rejected by my family, or something deeper?