Looking for outside perspectives regarding the way I approach sex, and how this affects my approach to my identity and relationships with others.
I find sex to be a deeply important part of my personality. I was introduced to sex at a very young age due to an unfortunate lack of internet boundaries, which I feel had a huge impact on my sexual development. As an adult, I have found myself deeply interested in very specific power dynamic kinks, to the point where even non-sexual actions from a potential or established partner contribute to a form of sexual tension in me. I revel in being taken care of and lead in parental ways, with degradation sprinkled in. I would also classify myself as somewhat hyper-sexual. And I can’t always tell if these are unhealthy ways of relating to myself as well as attaching to partners.
Sometimes I figure, if I’m even asking this question, then it’s probably something (a problem?) that I should “figure out”. Then other times when exploring kink-positive spaces, it seems my experiences aren’t that out of the ordinary. What classifies unhealthy sexual interest from kink? I personally feel as though kink itself is a way of coping and taking back narrative (for me, the narrative is childhood neglect).
But when said kink parrots codependency in a way, how am I to approach this without feeling like I’m just fumbling around looking for a savior? Sometimes it feels like setting myself up for personal failure. But when I have had genuinely good experiences in the past with these dynamics, I feel that I would be left completely unsatisfied without them, and that makes me unreasonably sad to think that the sex I want and enjoy might be bad for me?
As an additional side note, I recently went through a very rough breakup and was given a starter dose ssri (citalopram) because I had a very hard time with it. It just felt like laying a wet blanket over my emotions surrounding not only that relationship, but also over my sexual identity. When I realized this I cried intensely over that sort of identity loss and decided to stop taking them. I am open with my doctor about this, and I find the cons to be worse than the pros since I’ve been off meds for so long (years) prior to this. After 5 days I feel much more like myself, but it has me wondering whether I hold my authentic sexual aspects too importantly… or if I should aim to change them.
Thank you for any insight or advice!!!
2 comments
Sex can be used as a form of self harm. Take care of yourself 🖤
These are really really good questions and it’s absolutely worth exploring and in the end, as I suspect you know, the answers (like unhealthy attachment vs healthy kink) will be deeply personal. It’s really cool though that you are exploring this and learning about yourself, it’s all part of personal growth.
It’s true that for some people unhealthy behavior patterns or attachments can become sexualized, and those people find a release for whatever insecurities they have through sex. So someone may seek a lot of sex because subconsciously they get validation that way. Or someone acts very sexualized to cover feelings of insecurity. Someone’s kink may be more about replaying unhealthy dynamics from their childhood. In someone else the same kink isn’t about anything like that at all, there is no unhealthy undertone at all. So… are you seeking refuge from some other pain or trauma or anything in how your sex life plays out? Are you using sex to attach to someone in an unhealthy way or repeat unresolved traumas or neglect from your childhood?
Codependency is tough because there isn’t really a good definition for it and there is a lot of debate whether at least some codependency is good in a healthy relationship. So it’s really hard to say if you have an unhealthy level or not. The concept was created to explain dynamics in relationships where one or both partners have an active addiction (and it is still really good for that), but thanks to self-help books in the 80’s and 90’s the definition was broadened to explain all sorts of relationship dynamics until it’s confused and nearly meaningless. So watch labeling yourself. I have behaviors that can be called “codependent” and I in no way think they are unhealthy or that I’m a codependent.
So if I were you, I’d start in other areas of your life, especially around attachment (outside of sex). Sex is just one part of our psyche, some other sides are our physical health, mental health, our morals, our emotional side, our spiritual side, there’s probably a few more. If one of those gets out of whack – say your mental health – it can come out in others, like your sexual side. If you have trauma in your past, especially so, because trauma hides in us and comes out in all sorts of unexpected ways. So first, how are those other sides? How is, say, your mental health generally? Do you have trauma in your past?
After that I’d look specifically at your attachment outside of sex. A lot of therapists lean more on attachment theory these days instead of codependency to find and heal wounds in us, it explains everything so much better. There is a wonderful book called Attached by Levine and Heller (available at most libraries I’d imagine) that will help you examine your relationship attachments, from there you can decide if there is an unhealthy component or not. If there isn’t (your attachment style is “stable”) and the rest of you is healthy (no unresolved traumas or mental health challenges) and it’s not causing you issues in your life then your kink is probably ok. But if your attachment style isn’t stable or you have unresolved wounds from childhood or trauma or whatever, it could very well be that your kink is really an unhealthy way to attach to someone. If you still aren’t sure and you want to explore it further, and one is available to you, a therapist, one specialized in relationships, can really help here too.