It's Not About Sex

Do you sometimes feel an aching hunger in the pit of your stomach?   It is a deep longing for something to fill the void you sense is there.  One client recently described it as a clenching in his gut and a desperate emptiness with a compelling urgency to fill it.  Unfortunately, he like many of us misinterpreted the feeling and what he really needs.
This hunger is more intense for those who feel lonely and alone in life, when they allow themselves to feel at all.  For many, this loneliness seems like it has been there forever.  It is, in essence, the human need for dependency, love, and attachment.  If you were well cared for as a young child you probably feel more confident and independent but you still have those moments.  If you did not feel secure and bonded to both parents then those moments will be more frequent and more intense.
Many times, like my client, you attach more to the parent of the opposite gender, which can create some identity issues.  For example, if a boy identifies with his mother he may find himself rejecting his own masculine energy and becoming more dependent on female approval and affirmation.  The inner hunger is then interpreted as sexual desire and he strives for sexual and emotional fusion with a woman, assuming he is heterosexual.  Over time he realizes this does not satisfy his deeper desire, but often has no idea what to do except seek out more female connection.
Here are some suggestions for you to meditate on:
• Recognize that your need is not really sexual, it is emotional and spiritual
• Rather than trying to make the feeling go away, turn toward it with an open mind and heart
• Give yourself permission to feel whatever you feel.  Feelings are not the problem
• If you experience sadness or anger or fear, just sit with it and allow yourself to process it
• You can’t go back and get what you missed as a child so you must learn to love, accept, affirm, and validate yourself
• Share your pain with your partner but don’t expect him or her to fix it for you
• Just the act of honestly feeling and sharing your pain allows you to move forward
• Refuse to indulge in self-pity or self-condemnation.  Instead, have compassion for yourself and then let it go
• Seek out healthy relationships with others.  Being accepted and affirmed by a friend of the same gender can help you experience and express your own masculine or feminine energy
• There is a natural spiritual hunger also that is experienced at the core of your emotional self
• Open yourself to your own spirituality and connection with the divine as it is revealed to you
• Recognize that all you need is to relax and be yourself.  You cannot be anyone else anyway.