Food and Sex

Food and Sex

Two cards fell out from the Creative Questions deck this morning; Why am I sexual? and Why am I nourished? Food and Sex! Creative Questions can be so fun!

Except when they aren’t.

These are some big whammy cards for a lot of people. Matters of control and power get snarled up in both of these, often when we are pretty young, so that we don’t even remember what happened.

How do I enjoy my sexuality? Why do I enjoy feasting? What makes me innocent?

Things happen to us when we are small, some of them are traumatic. Sometimes, they are things  that are benign, but we misunderstand. Sometimes, they are done with our best interest at heart, but we are hurt or damaged by them. Sometimes they are simply bad things.

Then we grow up.

Once we are adults, we have a lot of choices to make.

I get to choose the quality of my life. I get to choose my world view. I get to choose whether I will spend my life reacting to things that happened in the mists of my time, or dump them, and respond to my life’s unfolding.

Sex and food. Drugs, liquor, work, video games, exercise, cleaning, meditation, TV, glamorizing, reading. The list is way more extensive, you may have different ones on your list. These are often referred to as soft addictions. These are things that suck up our time, helping us avoid making the choices that will bring us the life we want.

“Wait a minute!” I hear some of you say, “There are some good things on that list.”

Aren’t we supposed to exercise? Aren’t we supposed to meditate? Aren’t we suppose to clean, and read? All these things are good, when we use them lightly. When we use them to escape, when we use them for relief, when we go to them because we feel empty or scared or some other feeling we don’t like, then we are in soft addiction mode.

“Wait a minute!” I hear some of you say, “Isn’t relief a good thing, too?”

Relief is tricky. There is the relief we feel when the other shoe drops. There is the relief we feel when the check comes in the mail. There is the relief we feel when we remember that feeling bad is a habit based on negative thinking.

Then there is the relief we feel when the buzz starts.

So the question becomes this: Does this feeling of relief move me forward or hold me back?

When I choose to be a grownup, I choose to take responsibility for my well being. One of the ways I do that is to consciously choose how to spend my time.

Why could I enjoy my sexuality? Why could I transmute all I eat to nourishment?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11042013