There’s a lot of skills involved in the process of making sex emotionally safer, particularly for those of us who have experienced relationship violence, or sexual abuse, or emotional abuse about our appearance or bodies. We need to learn how we work, what we need, where our own limits are. It’s a process of trial and error to find the line between anxiety that’s background noise and anxiety that needs attending to. It also takes time to learn how to communicate about things like ‘please don’t touch me that way, I like to be touched like this’ or how you can best be supported during a flashback. It takes time to learn how to communicate about your needs and preferences. There’s often pressure to ‘finish what we start’, but when there’s stress about sex this pressure isn’t helpful. Building all this self awareness, ability to communicate, and sensitivity to your partner takes time, attention, thoughtfulness, and dedication. 

Breaking the experience down into smaller components can help to keep the stress manageable. So you have a partner and you’re both keen to have sex but one or both of you is really stressed. Moving very slowly gives you both time to get used to each other, to take in the experience, to learn what is and isn’t enjoyable. Maybe you start with massages or with sleepovers in pajamas. One night there’s some skin to skin contact, hugs and kisses. Another night there’s nakedness. No sex, just nakedness. Getting comfortable with each other, with being seen, with seeing. Maybe you shower or bathe together, or cuddle under a blanket and watch a movie. Maybe you ask what they think of your body, or show them your scars and tell the stories about them. You experience intimacy as safe, as something you control, where you have rights, where your feelings count, where nobody makes you do anything you don’t want to, where nobody treats you with anything less than respect and care.

You also have a chance to see how you and your partner cope in the charged space of physical intimacy. Some people don’t handle this space well, it’s intense and deeply personal and they’re not comfortable with it. Sometimes otherwise decent and caring people react badly in this space, they snipe about you or belittle you or intimidate you or pressure you. Sometimes you may find that you are not handling it well and are doing or saying things you wouldn’t otherwise. Moving slowly gives you both a chance to see how safe you are about sex. It gives you time to see whether you can handle their anxiety graciously or if you get angry with them about it. It gives you time to see if they are safe to be naked and vulnerable with or if they will make humiliating remarks about your body. It also gives you an opportunity to see how well your communication, negotiation, and boundary setting skills hold up. Sometimes you find that you may have a superb skill in one area of your life that seems to go completely missing in another area.

There are some dumb ideas about sex floating around many cultures. One of them is the idea that you are innately good or bad at sex. You find someone, have sex to see what it’s like, and are either excited or disappointed by it and nothing can be done about that. New couples are often under pressure to have sex and share the details with friends. Newlyweds in many cultures are expected to go from minimal physical contact to sex overnight, with little to no education or support or chance to become comfortable with each other. Sex that is safe, loving, enjoyable, and fun takes skills, and skills take time to create. It takes time to learn the needs of a partner, and it takes maturity to be a safe and sensitive partner. Sometimes there’s a gap between how we want to be and the skills we currently have. We love the idea of being caring and supportive about our partners physical disability, but we’re scared to death we’ll do or say something wrong and instead come across as defensive and uncaring.

Time isn’t seen as sexy in our culture but it can be just what you need to blossom into a wonderful sexual partner, and to make sure the person you’re thinking of having sex with is safe and trustworthy. There’s actually something deeply erotic about languid afternoons in bed giving massages and talking through things that make you nervous without any pressure. When you prepare the context so well, sex when it blossoms can be amazing.

Time can help make things safer, but there’s also a place for jumping in and I don’t want anyone to think I’m judging those who find that approach empowering. Sometimes the opposite helps us, there’s a wall of terror between us and sex. Some of us dismantle it brick by brick, some of us pole-vault it. Whatever helps you navigate your stress is a good idea, with two caveats – that you’re not setting yourself up for bad experiences (see, I knew all women were heartless, or men are brutes, or whatever), and that you’re not harming anyone. My observation has been that even those who find pole vaulting more to their nature often need to come back and kick a few bricks out of that wall at some point. It’s much easier to have sex without the hangups that stress us out, than it is to keep having to find ways around them. Give yourself permission to take your time to make sex safer and as the things that are stressing you get resolved sex can feel less like a 3 mile crawl through barbed wire on the promise of something better up ahead, and more like a soaring inside, a desire that calls you on and draws you towards another person.

This article is part of a series about emotionally safer sex. Try also reading

• 5. Reset the Norms
• 6. Communication and Consent
• 7. Find Freedom

• 1. Checking In
• 2. Expectations

• 4. Take Your Time
• 5. Reset the Norms
• 6. Communication and Consent
• 7. Find Freedom

You don’t need to have a completely perfect stage set for sex to be safe. There can be awkwardness, embarrassment, anxiety, body memories, little flashbacks, all going on like background noise. It’s okay to be aware of them and still be following that thread of desire. You don’t need a completely empty mind, free of memories or triggers to have sex that feels safe, loving, intimate, joyful, and amazing. These things can all co-exist. I think a lot of us trauma survivors don’t get this idea. We feel – dirty – damaged – soiled. We think to have good sex we have to get back to something resembling ‘purity’. We work very hard on ourselves hoping to get to a place where we have eradicated our past. It’s devastating when it intrudes.

It doesn’t need to be like this. Ever had great sex while you were injured in some way? A twisted ankle or stitched up hand or just an elbow that was protesting because you’ve been leaning on it for too long? There was pain – in the background – not intense pain like a migraine or calf muscle cramping, but there and present. Then there was also pleasure, in the foreground, consuming your attention. They can co-exist. I live with a chronic pain condition so this something I really understand. It’s the same with emotional pain, with memories and anxiety. If they’re not intense they can be background noise. If they become intense, they need some attention.

The form this attention takes might be as simple as changing what you’re doing because the anxiety has become high or body memories have become strong and confusing. I get this problem, sometimes they’re so intense that I can’t work out anymore what’s happening now and what is just a memory. (or to use the clinical terms – a tactile hallucination) So I move away from touch in that area and find somewhere else that feels nice to have touched. Sometimes those of us who struggle with stress about sex find that some things are higher risk than others – things that make you feel exposed, or feel trapped, or new things that make you feel uncertain and so on. Sometimes you may find that there are certain positions, acts, and locations that can become your safer sex to retreat back to if you’ve tried something else and become stressed.

Sometimes it means pausing for a little while to settle whatever has been stirred up. This isn’t a bad thing – it’s a chance for healing. Having feelings and memories come to the surface gives you a chance to address them and to break cycles of ignoring and depriving yourself. This time everything stops the moment you want it to. This time you can ask for non-sexual contact while you settle. This time you wont be hurt, ignored, or abused. Maybe you realise that a certain touch is making you struggle, or that the music on the radio is triggering you.  If your stress isn’t about abuse, this is a chance for growth. You have a clash between some things you believe (such as sex has to be perfect, or that you are ugly, or that you’re not good at sex, or that you’ll be rejected by your partner) and what you want to experience. You’re giving yourself a chance to develop a different way of approaching sex and navigating the stress. Maybe you sit together and talk for a bit. Maybe you put things aside for that night, or only for 20 minutes while you settle. Maybe you go watch a DVD or find some icecream in the freezer. There’s no rule that says sex has to happen all within a certain time frame. There’s nothing wrong with breaks to get something to drink, empty your bladder, change the CD, find a snack, have a giggle or a cry, get a hug, and start again later. This whole experience is intimacy, safety, and care. Our culture has a very crude idea of what constitutes sex, but it doesn’t have to be broken up into a single act like that. Sex can be woven through the whole evening, it can be the back rub when you have a cry, it can be your partner ducking to the shops for a new packet of condoms, it can be you understanding that a shower will help them feel more comfortable or that keeping a sheet over them will make them feel safer. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be safe and wonderful. You don’t need a perfect body, you don’t need ‘movie sex’ where no one gets the giggles, or drops anything, or farts, or needs to rush off for a pee, you don’t need an entirely clear mind. You can have trauma issues, anxiety, and all kinds of mental health challenges that may certainly complicate sex as well as the rest of your life, but if you can make a space in your mind to accept that your sex life will include having a panic or needing to stop or lots of showers etc and that is okay! then you can work to create a safe space to have a  good sex life.

This is part of a series of posts about emotionally safer sex.

• 1 Checking In

• 3. Bringing Down the Stakes
• 4. Take Your Time
• 5. Reset the Norms
• 6. Communication and Consent
• 7. Find Freedom

I want to put aside for a moment the important considerations of STI’s, unwanted pregnancy and so on, and share for a moment some thoughts about making sex emotionally safe. I find myself having a lot of conversations about sex at the moment, partly because I’m very frustrated by the lack of these conversations in mental health! I’m not some kind of expert. I’m certainly not someone who has everything together. In fact, my knowledge base and my passion for this topic comes from being a person who’s had some terrible sexual experiences, huge distress about my own sexuality and identity, and who has big struggles in this area. I’ve gone into sexual health counselling to get support through accepting myself, coming out, learning how to navigate my distress, and my first gay relationship. I’ve very carefully ended many years of voluntary celibacy because I finally felt that I had enough tools and had done enough work for this to be a positive experience. I’ve read a lot of books and done a lot of talking and thinking. I’ve also done a lot of listening and what I’m hearing distresses me.

I’m hearing a lot of confusion, pain, grief, and resignation. I’m hearing people who do not believe it is possible to ever have good sex after rape or abuse. I’m hearing people who do not believe sex can be anything other than a manic, shame-based compulsion. I’m hearing massive anxiety about how to communicate about sexual things or during sex. I’m hearing people who feel stuck with sex that is empty, painful, lonely, violent, or emotionally abusive. I’m hearing people who feel broken, scared, ashamed, repulsed by themselves or their desires. People who feel rejected, guilty, beholden, that they ‘owe’ sex to their partner, and that they are failures. I’m hearing people for whom sex is a secret topic of personal torment and misery.

So I want to talk about it. I want it not to be secret anymore. I want to challenge the mental health system that pretends these are not important issues for us. I want to challenge those terrible fears that for such as we, the ruined ones, there is no possibility of a healthy sex life. When I’ve talked about the idea of emotionally safe sex, I’ve had people tell me there is no such thing. This breaks my heart. I want to tell people this is not true.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about the ways I’ve worked to make sex emotionally safer for me. I’ve been able to come up with a specific set of ideas I want to share in case they’re useful to someone else. There’s a few of them so I’ll break them up into different posts. The very first one is how you make the call that you’re going to have sex.

1. Checking In
Think about the ways you’re assessing whether you have sex. You’re checking in with yourself, noticing how the idea makes you feel. You’re probably asking yourself questions inside your mind. This is a great process to use to work out what you do and don’t want. For some of us, this process of checking in with ourselves is quite long and thought through. For others of us, it’s a split second instinctive glance at some internal alarms just long enough to notice that none of them seem to be screaming. For some of us, we’ve been trained through trauma or abuse that our needs, wishes, and preferences don’t matter, so we’ve never really developed the skill to do this check in with ourselves in the first place.

Babette Rosthchild’s book 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery has a chapter about developing this kind of check in skill to help you make decisions. If you’re feeling in the dark about this skill you can borrow it from many libraries including my own. For those of us who have some capacity to do this, I’d still suggesting fine tuning the process a bit. For example, if you’re trying to decide if you want to have sex, try picturing in your mind the details of your choices – in this place, with this person, in this way, and see how it makes you feel.

Pay attention to the kinds of questions you may ask yourself during this check in. I noticed a little while ago that my standard internal question when making this decision was ‘Can I handle this?’ – a question clearly born out of my own trauma history. Answering ‘yes’ to this question does not make sex safe! It doesn’t mean I want to be involved, doesn’t mean I will enjoy it! In fact it’s a set up for high risk sex – the kind that often leaves me feeling lonely, scared, or empty, even with a loving partner. I’ve changed this question now – to ‘What do I feel like?’ I may be feeling anxious but there’s also that impulse to kiss that soft skin in the fold of their elbow, or that hope that they’ll take off my top. If the anxiety is low I can follow these impulses.

The questions you ask yourself are a powerful way to set you up for safe sex or risky sex. Learning to check in with yourself is also part of how we follow our own pleasure. It’s not something to be done once at the start of things, it’s an ongoing process of listening to ourselves and noticing what we do and don’t want or like. People who are stressed about sex can be so numbed, so anxious, so overwhelmed by what’s going on in their mind that they can’t feel what’s happening in their body. Checking in is about noticing that this kind of touch makes your skin tingle, or that your knee is starting to get achy and needs to be shifted. Being focused on your feelings is how you will discover what you like. It’s a good skill to work on.

Checking in only really works for us if we have the ability to follow what we want and need. If we know we don’t want something but we can’t say no, there’s a miserable sense of betrayal and failure that only adds distress to a situation we didn’t want in the first place. It takes strength and commitment to notice how we feel and act on it – whether that’s saying “I don’t feel like this”, or saying “You look amazing tonight, can I kiss you?”. But it all starts with connecting to yourself and noticing how you’re feeling, and asking yourself what you feel like. It’s also really important to check in with your partner and find out where they are at, even if you are ‘the one with the problem’ in your relationship.

This article is part of a series about emotionally safer sex. Try also reading