Mmm, You’re so Surrendered.
“Mmm, you’re so tight.” Words that used to thrill me during sex. To me, this was the epitome of pleasure.
My man was basically saying, “Mmm, you feel so amazing. I can tell you’ve done a lot of hard work to give me the utmost pleasure, and I approve of it. You are not only good enough, you’re better than anything you’re competing against: other women, porn, my memories. Your vagina is the best vagina, and I’ll never leave you, because no matter what happens to us, there is no way I’ll ever find sex this good, anywhere, ever again.”
Looking back, it’s a good thing men didn’t actually say the above paragraph (that would have been creepy, eh?), but just those simple words contained a lot of information for me. They were thrilling. They meant I was doing good, that I had earned another day of love.
My friends mused and joked about my golden pussy or my pussy power. I thought this concept was hilarious, and I honestly thought it was some natural thing I radiated. Pheromones or something. I had no idea how hard I really tried for men’s approval, under my stoic, impenetrable, carefully cultivated facade. It was so intrinsic to how I operated, that it was invisible to me.
You hear a lot about the importance of a tight pussy, and it’s all bullshit.
Yes, I wanted that to be jarring.
A tight pussy is one more thing for a woman to achieve. Seriously. Tight abs, tight ass, thigh gap, perky breasts, we’re expected to be so fucking tight. One might even say that we’re expected to be masculine — rather than have our natural, soft bodies, we are given a harder, stronger ideal to work for. We wouldn’t want to be soft, flowing, or feminine.
And here’s the thing. If you spend your time during sex tightening your pussy for his pleasure, he’s the one getting off faster. He’s the one benefiting, to your detriment.
It’s another facet of this hard, fast sex act that we elevate in our society, one that is tailored to men (and some might even say, to an outdated concept of masculinity. Most men want to please their lovers, and were just never made aware that sex could be different.).
Still, it is one more way that we deny our pleasure, and elevate men’s pleasure.
I can hear your rebuttal. “But I’ve had kids. I’m concerned about my pelvic floor health. My doctor tells me to do Kegel exercises. Every women’s magazine in the world tells me to do Kegels. I think maybe even my mom’s copy of Good Housekeeping told me to do Kegels when I was five.”
And… “Kegels cause stronger contractions of the vagina, resulting in stronger orgasms. They’re for my pleasure too!”
And perhaps there is a tiny voice inside, underneath it all, who worries that without Kegels, your vagina will actually be a loose, sloppy place, that no man will love. In fact, he’ll joke with his friends about how he can’t feel a thing, so you must be a slut. And he’ll leave you.
Just food for thought.
I am not against Kegel exercises on the most basic level. Yes, pelvic floor health is important, especially as we get older and after we give birth.
But think of Yoga for a moment.
Yoga is a very balanced form of exercise, mindfulness, and body awareness. Yoga combines strength, stretching, and lines of energy. What if instead of clenching down with the kind of brute force that could break a dick off, you instead practiced a kind of Yoga for your vagina? Light squeezes and deep relaxation, combined with visualizations of the sexual energy inside you waking up.
Women’s sexuality is different from men’s. It’s slower, and it’s best when our bodies are fully turned on, when we are touched all over. We tend to rush into sex at a man’s pace, and let the man set the pace. Instead of being entered delicately and slowly, at our pussy’s invitation, we are often entered hard and fast.
Women’s sexuality is less like a sex drive, and more like a sex, ahhhh.
When we are fully relaxed, we are more present, we can feel sex more like a delicious massage, an opportunity to feel full-body pleasure. Tightening the muscles of the vagina, and tightening all our muscles, the way many of us do as we approach orgasm, actually cuts off the flow of orgasmic energy in our bodies.
When we can consciously relax our vaginas, our legs, our arms, our jaws, we allow more sexual energy to flow all over our bodies, meaning we can find ourselves in delicious, full-body orgasmic states. Rather than having little, fast blips of concentrated genital orgasm, we can find ourselves riding swirling waves of pleasure, feeling tingles all over, even cultivating a feeling that is much like MDMA or DMT.
During sex these days, I don’t tighten. I consciously relax. When I find myself nearing orgasm, I tell myself to let go of the tension in my legs. The pleasure dissipates slowly, and then I ride the wave up again. It’s a balance between in-the-moment pleasure and consciously letting go.
Instead of tightening, I tell my pussy to surrender. As my partner makes love to me, I often think, “Surrender. Let go.” This is for my pleasure. This is so I can feel him more deeply, so I can let him as far into me as I can. And I mean this metaphorically as well as literally.
In tantra, the penis is seen as a healing instrument. If you’re having sex with a compassionate partner who adores you, you can feel the energy of love coming through his penis, once you start imagining it. The more you can relax and surrender, the more deeply love can permeate and heal you.
If I find myself wanting to squeeze my pussy during sex, these days it’s for my pleasure. When you do vaginal Yoga (I use a jade egg to tone and nourish my pelvic floor), you can learn to isolate the different muscles of your pelvic floor. It’s a way to draw energy up and through the body for more pleasure, all over.
Sex is about mutual pleasure. It’s about mutual transcendence.
Sex in our society has been off-balance for centuries, and with the advent of internet porn, holy shit, young girls are learning that their pleasure is not only secondary, but that they should get a bulk of their pleasure from how well they satisfy their man. Let’s change that, shall we? Let’s change that with our fully pleasured, surrendered pussies.
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Lynn Wolfbrandt is a writer and intimacy guide who seeks to support people in healing from sexual trauma and shame. She believes that sexuality is Divine, with a capital D. In her writing, nothing goes untouched, no dark corner goes unswept. She believes in integration, whole-ing, exposing shadows, and love. Find more of her at her website. To learn more about standing in your power, sign up for a free guide.
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