I want to be wanted
on healing and desirability
“I don’t feel desirable.” I say to Khara one night in bed as they scroll instagram stories. Our dog Rio is laying between us and my arm is aching from petting him but if I stop he will lick my face, forcing me to keep going.
“I desire you.” Khara replies without looking up from their screen. I recognize the horrific news headline they are looking at from seeing it shared on multiple stories earlier today. After a moment of silence they look up, sensing my energy. This isn’t just a passing insecure comment. Bunny wants to talk.
“That might be true”, I say “but I don’t feel desirable and I’m not entirely sure it has anything to do with you.”
For the last couple of months I’ve been going through a kind of desirability crisis, that if I had to be honest, is a bit embarrassing to talk about. Ok, here it goes: I don’t feel hot. And I’m not sure if I have ever felt hot but I do want to feel hot. But then I think: this is silly and pathetic because wanting to feel hot and desirable is so ego-centric and unspiritual…right?
Desirability is in large part shaped by patriarchy and euro-centric body ideals—toxic cultural conditioning that in my years of healing I have become apt at recognizing. For example, when a fat phobic thought comes in my mind like, your stomach is too big, that’s unattractive, I understand those aren’t my thoughts, they are a brain washing of sorts I am intent on unlearning. my stomach is beautiful, I remind myself, momentarily breaking free from the spell.
But this experience feels uniquely revelatory. I am not interested in being validated by the male gaze or fitting into toxic beauty standards. I am not interested in posting a thirst trap to hopefully get a lot of likes and feel good about myself. And planning a kinky date with my partner to spice up our sex life so I can feel hot again is not the answer (although i love kinky dates). This is about something much, much deeper. But what?
When a healing realization comes out of the depths of my unconsciousness like a babe gasping its first breath, I feel it first in my knee caps. Tremors of epiphany building to an earthquake of ah ha! That normally happens in moments I least expect like when vacuuming between the couch cushions.
This time it hit me just out of the shower, slathering Aveeno all over my body:
My yearning to feel desirable has nothing to do with how I look in the mirror, what my partner thinks about me or how much sex I am having. It has to do with feeling alive, powerful and unashamed of the ways I want to experience myself.
Yes, I want to be wanted. But I want to be wanted…by me. To feel sexy or hot or desirable comes from the inside out, not outside in. And I cannot access it unless I desire myself. something I haven’t felt for some time, possibly ever.
And despite years of addressing sexual trauma in therapy I know a part of this disconnection to desirability is old shame that says: wanting to feel desirable is selfish. Pleasure is a utilitarian need, not an avenue for aliveness or spiritual depth. Don’t think too much about what makes you happy or excited, it might lead you down a dangerous path.
In her essay, uses of the erotic: the erotic as power, Audrey Lorde describes the erotic as a force within all human beings “firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling”. Systems of oppression are intent on suppressing the erotic within us because it provides “energy for change.” She speaks of the erotic as an internal resource, an inner knowledge that if we are willing, can transform all aspects of life.
We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.
I hurriedly reread uses of the erotic after the shower, remembering how impactful her words were when I first read them, years ago.
The erotic is what I crave! within myself. To feel myself. To awaken an energetic resource that has been all too dormant. But how?
One thing I know is sexuality is part of it but not the full story. Or rather sex is not the full story. What I am craving is aliveness. An energetic shift. Yes a connection to my body and its rhythms and yearnings but also my spirit: to feel the power of my own light and to bask in its beauty.
Feeling “hot” is an energetic shift! Because heat is a vibrational frequency.
Another thing I suspect is this is coming to the surface because of my age (42 to be exact). am I in my Stella (needs to get her) Groove Back Era? Possibly. Am I a walking cliché? Sure. But clichés are there for a reason.
Yesterday I explained all of these realizations to a friend while we sat in their cozy living room in front of a fire, drinking delicious matcha and eating toast with a lot of butter. (talk about a nurturing environment!)
My friend asked, “When in the past have you felt most alive? When do you feel the hottest?”
Without hesitation I replied,