Stop Drinking and Start Living

Sober Sex and Intimacy

• Mary Wagstaff

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Navigating sober sex and rediscovering sexual pleasure without alcohol is a whole new area for most people. Pleasure is a huge part of reclaiming your wholeness beyond  alcohol. Explore the challenges and triumphs of sober intimacy, with personal stories and insights. Discover how sobriety can enhance sensuality, define boundaries, and indulge in spiritually aligned pleasure. 

This time of year can be full of joy, but it can also come with extra stress and temptations around alcohol. So, I thought, why not offer something to help bring in a bit more ease and peace?
I'd love to spend this time together with you. I miss you! 
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You have everything you need right now to find alcohol freedom with The Stop Drinking & Start Living Course. Join 100's of Women who have successfully eliminated alcohol from their lives using The Five Shifts Processes. Click here to learn more and join.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever feel like you're out growing alcohol, that you are longing for a deeper connection to life? If alcohol is keeping you playing small and feels like the one area you just can't figure out, you are in the right place. Hi, my name is Mary Wagstaff. I'm a holistic alcohol coach who ended a 20-year relationship to alcohol without labels, counting days or ever making excuses. Now I help powerful women just like you eliminate their desire to drink on their own terms. In this podcast, we will explore the revolutionary approach of my proven five-shifts process that gets alcohol out of your way by breaking all of the rules, and the profound experience that it is to rediscover who you are on the other side of alcohol. I am so thrilled to be your guide. Welcome to your journey of awakening. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners, I hope you're having an amazing week. It's so awesome to be here. Have you joined our Facebook group? Yeah, our discussion group. It's not just a discussion about the podcast, but it's obviously a community group to explore your life and going beyond alcohol, what it means to awaken beyond alcohol in all of the various facets. Today we're going to just jump right into it. We are talking about sober sex. But yes, there's so much I could say about what this means and just sex in general as a potentially taboo conversation, especially around women and really embracing our own erotic nature. I know for myself I'm 42. I'll be 43 this year that I feel like I've barely scratched the surface on my sexuality. I didn't even really have the opportunity to even get curious about what that might look like, to go beyond just the way things have unfolded for me in my life until I went beyond alcohol. I'll talk about my own personal experience. Some and some that I know have come up for some of my clients. But when it comes to intimacy and sex and sexuality which there's many, many layers of this a lot of times, just like with alcohol, it's unintentional. We learn, everyone learns certain things. I think until this point in our culture the idea of consent and having conversations about it hasn't really been a thing, especially for women's bodies have kind of been the property of other people. You know, obviously viewed that way. I know for me my mother talked to me about sex early on and how babies are made and that kind of sort of thing, but I don't believe that I really knew what it meant to have consent and it just wasn't even a conversation. And then there's like these blurry lines of wanting some level of intimacy, especially when we're younger, but maybe not feeling comfortable with certain levels of intimacy. So I think that this carries over into adulthood for so, so many women and when we're drinking and we're dissociating from the body, we can't really tune into the signals of the body and sometimes we go beyond what we feel maybe naturally comfortable with. We go beyond that limit and then to explore that without dissociation from a fully embodied place can feel really scary and uncomfortable. But the first step of you know, maybe feeling insecure and this is kind of the thing that I hear the most from people is especially around body image. And that's why, when we are under the influence in any way, it's like it shuts down and quiets those thoughts of feeling, you know, maybe insecure in your body and with body image, feeling like you aren't comfortable saying and asking for what you need. And I want to also kind of define that when I'm talking about, you know, sober sex. This is really about like physical intimacy because there's intercourse. There's what my coach talked about was outer course, you know, like foreplay I've never had her to put it that way, but, right, like there is a lot of intimacy to be explored, actually even potentially more so without intercourse. So there's all of these thoughts that are happening in your brain which are taking away from what your body is telling you and from experiencing actually the pleasure in the body. And this could kind of lead into what I'm going to talk about in the next episode, which is autonomy and even our own personal experience of being in relationship to ourselves. And what does pleasure feel like in our body, separate from any other person around? Just exploring that could be just self-touch in any way. I know that there's yoga classes that I go to that are extremely pleasurable, or a sound bath that has lots of sensory experiences that are quite pleasing. So there's that piece of it, too, of really not even knowing what you're asking for, right? So the solution is to just first recognize what are the thoughts going on in your brain that are creating the emotions of feeling insecure. Right, we'll just use that emotion Fear, insecurity, lack of confidence. And you know, there's so many layers of this, because whether or not you have a long-term partner, whether you're dating and or whether you're exploring, you know your sexuality with yourself. But the most important thing is to just have awareness of the thoughts that you are habitually thinking, the narrative that's running in your head, because until we know what the narrative is, we can't change it and we can't experience what that's like in the body. So the body has to feel safe first, in your own experience with yourself, to be able to then feel safe in relationship to another person, or at least it's going to be a much easier. So my suggestion is to just spend some time in the body experiencing what does it feel like when you think about sober sex, right, what comes up for you, and invite those emotions in first. Stop at the East, stop at the emotion. Let your body know it's safe to feel those things, because you can feel fear and still show up, right. I've shared this on the show before. One of my favorite thoughts for myself is I can feel fear and still know that I'm safe. So you have to get into the body and then, once you experience those sensations in your body, then you can start to ask what does pleasure feel like in my body? What is pleasurable for me? And you can explore that. Maybe it's through your senses, maybe it's through deep stretching, maybe it's through soaking in water in a bath, maybe it's through caressing your own body or giving yourself a little bit of a massage? Right, because there are layers of intimacy that might feel really good, right. And we have this idea that sex when we're under the influence, and then even exploring that fashion or that facet of it what is sex like under the influence? Do you remember it? Is it more enjoyable because it could go in a long term relationship or even in a dating situation where it's like wild and crazy and seems like it's super fun, but getting there requires you to lower your inhibitions. And then what happens after that, right, is like you pass out and then, as you start to get to know someone, you are just passing out and you're not even getting to the intimacy part anymore, right, like once, you are even maybe further down the line in your own relationship to alcohol. So uncovering to like the truth of what does intimacy or sex look like with alcohol present. Are you actually feeling your body? Are you present? Are you present with the other person and their needs? Are you engaging with them? Are you having a conversation? Right? So the process to get to feeling more comfortable is understanding what your thoughts are that are getting in the way understanding the reality of sex with alcohol or intimacy with alcohol, understanding what pleasure is in your body and then being in that place in the body, step by step. So that might be One of the things I negotiate in my house often are butt rubs. Yes, this is a very intimate detail in my life Our butt rubs. I love to get a little massage before I'm going to sleep, but it's very pleasurable and very relaxing. And that is a really good place to start where you could have a conversation with someone and ask can I get a butt rub? Or you can create that opportunity for someone else by asking someone would you like a massage? Would you like me to rub your shoulders? It's been a long day Would you like someone lays down on your lap? So there's these layers that can bridge, where you can start to feel pleasure in your body and connect with the other person before having to take your clothes off. So oftentimes the butt rubs really just lead to me passing out because I'm so relaxed, but they have the opportunity to lead to more than that as well, right? So that can be the start of it Experiencing and then really being in that sensation in your body, because when you're in this experience that just feels safe and feels natural and feels relaxed and you don't have to think about, oh, what does my body look like, all of these things then you can start to experience pleasure in your body. So you have to build a bridge. The other way to build a bridge is by creating thoughts that build the bridge right. So if the objection thoughts in your head are, for example, about your body which I want to let you know, every single woman I know has body image issues pretty much right, and it's a sad state of affairs because we are miracles, our bodies are amazing, they do so much for us, but it is the way that we are and we're unpacking this and this is part of getting to go beyond alcohol as well is honoring the miraculousness that is your body, and I'm right there. I've got my own stuff that I deal with since I was very young with diet, culture and exercising and all sorts of things, but I really can sit with my body and honor it as just this amazing vessel and offer it so much gratitude. So that's a really beautiful place to start. I love the ho-o-pono-pono prayer for this. I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. I'm really sending that message deep to myself, thinking about all the cool stuff that I get to do every day just walking, typing, hugging, right. So getting into a place that, with your body of honor and gratitude and appreciation, can start to help bridge that gap. Like, I have a body, my body does this for me, my body moves with ease in this way and maybe you have some struggles with the way that your body functions. Right, finding a way that your body does show up for you, even if it's digestion, even if it's processing your food and making it into energy, even if it's being available for listening to your children and what they need from you. Right, the ability to be present. Right, there's something. If you're alive, there is something about your body to appreciate. And if you are in relationship to someone else who is interested in your body, right, in a way that feels safe to you. Like, in a way that feels like that there's there's respect around that and they want to engage with you. My body is desired by someone, my body is appreciated by someone. How does that feel right? And maybe that doesn't feel great for you, but finding something that does so, this is a huge topic. I could do a whole course on this. I could get experts in here, but the the most important thing is awareness About the thinking, awareness about what pleasure feels like in your body, and then creating new opportunities to feel pleasure in your body that feel like one step closer to intimacy, and then creating new thinking that feels good, that doesn't feel like a stretch, that doesn't feel like I mean, maybe saying my body is miraculous is a stretch for you, right so finding some sense of appreciation and really being with yourself, giving your a part of your body that maybe you often reject, giving it some some, just some acknowledgement, right so? Having to recognize what are the thoughts. And the other piece that I talked about to was the truth of the complete and honest truth of what Sex under the influence looks like right now. It might say, be one drink, to kind of quote unquote, loosen you up. But what is the results Of starting a relationship or continuing an ongoing relationship with alcohol when it comes to sex and intimacy? Well, the result is full authenticity. The result is more intimacy. The result is being your honest and authentic self and creating new opportunities for connection, because so much of what we're doing with alcohol or why you're here is because alcohol has fallen flat, right? So what is possible? When I say I'm just scratching the surface, I know when I go beyond my mind when it comes to sex and sexuality and things I've experienced in my life, not even just with Matthew, but in intimacy with other people. And I'm not even talking about sex. I'm talking about just feeling comfortable, cuddling with someone else or being like laying with someone or being in a in an 18 second hug, like what is possible? Where does that take me in my body, just out of curiosity. If there's resistance there, that means that there's something else underneath it. There's an. If there's resistance, there's an opportunity for comfort, right. So where there's resistance, there's an opportunity to soften, and you can let yourself know if you find yourself in an intimate experience this week, whether it's with yourself, a loved one or a sexual partner soften something. You can just have this mantra soften something. You can be repeating that to yourself when you're in the act of finding pleasure for yourself. Soften something, and take your mind there to your body. I hope this helps. I would love to hear your feedback on this. Shoot me an email and one of the things that we're going to be really exploring during the reconnection retreat in Mexico is connecting with the body is how do we receive pleasure? Where does it feel safe to receive pleasure already, and where doesn't it feel safe, and why so? If you want to have a fully embodied experience to practice this in a group or in one on one with me, there are opportunities available for you to go deeper. Have an amazing week and I'll talk to you soon. The bridge between where you are and where you want to go with alcohol is spiritual alignment. That is what makes my private coaching program so unique and effective. It meets the needs of all parts of you through a feminine lens, so that sobriety can become a sustainable part of your life while alcohol becomes unimportant. Take your commitment to self to the next level by scheduling a private discovery call with me. Follow the link in the show notes to pick the best time that works for you and I will take care of the rest. I can't wait to connect with you in real life.