Intimacy Intervention: ‘Why Can’t Women Have Sex Like Men?’

Passionate Living Coach Abiola Abrams gives love, dating and self-esteem advice on the CW’s Bill Cunningham Show and all over the web through her hit web series AbiolaTV. Now she wants to help you keep things spicy and fresh between the sheets. Are you in need of an intimacy intervention? Just ask Abiola!

Dear Abiola,

Is it really a problem if women have sex like men?

History continues to repeat itself for me. I was raised in a family of women and the men who were present were born from these independent women. I grew up watching the men in my family cheat and disrespect women as if they had no sense of compassion or consideration.

Even my own father was married with children when he met my mother and his other mistress. Even as a teen my relationships never carried love or passion. Just heartache and devastation. I began to have a twisted misconception of marriage, relationships and intimacy.

I’ve decided now to remain single and engage in casual sex. However, society says that a woman who “has sex like a man” is considered anything but a woman. I’m starting to fear that I might never find real love or a partner worth saving myself for. It never turns out well for me and it didn’t work out well for the women before me.

I’m convinced this is a curse. I’m learning to love myself further and I’m still becoming more of a woman but does that mean I have to be everything society considers a woman to be? I love sex and casual sex has been a good way to remain satisfied but am I wrong for feeling this way?

I refuse to end up alone and bitter like the women in my family.

Please help,

Hand-Me-Down Heartache

Dear Heart,

Thank you for having the courage to write this letter. You have expressed what many women in our current generation feel. We have witnessed firsthand the rejection and maltreatment of our beautiful mothers, aunts and sisters at the hands of our equally beautiful but emotionally abusive fathers, uncles and brothers. We then vow that by any means necessary we will not end up, bitter and alone, as you put it, like these women who look like us.

You talk a good game, sis but here’s a cold, hard fact: you already are bitter and alone.

On the surface you think that you’re asking if it’s okay for women to play the field, have one night stands, casual sex and friends with benefits. I am a firm believer that it is your right to choose what to do with your body. There is nothing ever wrong with a woman deciding to be single. You deserve pleasure and posses the only body part created solely for pleasure. Anything that sane, consenting adults want to do they should do — but we don’t live in a vacuum. This is a world of consequences and any thinking woman needs to look at the meaning behind her behavior.

If you said, ‘hey Abiola, I am free, single and ready to mingle because I have no desire to be attached,’ I would say ‘do you.’ However, that is not where you are.

Your own words state that you are living out inherited family patterns and dramas. You say “it never turns out well for me” and describe a personal history of “heartache and devastation.” Your own letter says that you are settling.

You are not cursed. Be your own version of the woman you were born to be. “Society” gets no vote on your womanhood. The mediocre men you describe are acting out of their own self-loathing and manhood issues. I pray that all of the men who want to give us women advice would go address them instead.

The truth is that you are using promiscuity as false protection from intimacy and vulnerability. You think that by keeping things casual your heart will not be invested. On the surface this may seem like a good idea but I can tell you as a coach that maybe only 1% of the women I encounter are able to roll like that without rolling down a path to further heartbreak.

Newsflash: There really is no such thing as casual sex. There is no safety for you in treating your body casually. There is no solace for you in not valuing your self. You are using casual relations to numb your fears and emotions.

Being detached and emulating the men in your life rather than the women will not keep you safe. You are not alone. I recommend that you read Jamilah B. Creekmur’s book, “Raised by the Mistress.” Talk to a counselor or coach who can help you eliminate your limiting beliefs that are keeping you feeling that you can’t have the love you want. Then, you will be in a healthier place to make choices about sex and relationships.

It’s your body and I can’t tell you what to do with it. I can’t make you feel that you are worthy of something greater. I can’t endow you with the knowing in my bones that you are the most sacred creature to walk this Earth.

However, I can tell you this: You deserve to be loved in the way you want to be, you deserve to be appreciated for your personhood, you deserve to feel safe in your mind, heart, body and soul with your partner or partners. You deserve to be cherished and adored.

A woman can do whatever she wants with her body which she should remember is never separate from her mind, heart, soul and spirit. I honor you and call upon you to do the same for yourself, whatever that means for you.

Always ask, what is the most self-loving choice that I can make?

Passionately yours,
Abiola

Abiola Abrams is the founder of The Bombshell Academy blog, online school and web series over at AbiolaTV. Follow her on Twitter to continue the discussion about this week’s hot topic, and then email her your burning questions now. Anything you send will be posted anonymously, promise.