Reflection On Sexuality

Let’s not talk about sex

From the outset in September, I picked up on the flirtatious nature of our therapy sessions: in session two, Kev arrived freshly shaven, wearing a tight fitting T-shirt exposing a considerable amount of muscle and he twice mentioned “if you were my girlfriend...” I understood this as a sign of how strongly he wanted me to like him and that, for a young man in full sexual prime, sexuality would be a major channel of expression and I felt that through our mutual teasing we were experiencing some form of intimacy.

Vaguely aware of the concept of erotic transference, I decided to bring this to supervision. However, I struggled to formulate a specific question: I was worried that my supervisor would assume I had been sexually

I was well aware of allowing Kev to nourish my narcissism: I enjoyed his attention; I felt prettier and lighter. I also enjoyed his narcissism, his enjoyment at being mirrored. I did not, however, feel that either of us was in love with the other.

December brought gender considerations to the forefront of my reflective enquiry. What had started last year as an exploration of my difficulties with boundaries, in particular the money one, had evolved into an analysis of my fear of being powerful in the relationship: I started questioning my own gender identity and, by extension, my original erotic material.

From a social perspective, having been raised in a traditional white working class family, I was socially primed to stick to a polarised vision of gender: feminine, emotional and submissive women achieving happiness through sacrifice to a masculine, rational, dominant man. Furthermore, through my mother’s German ethnicity, I inherited a strong protestant view of sex as a means for procreation, not

When I was 16 months and my sister was born, my father took over my care and we developed a special bond, sousing each other’s need for love that my mother could not satisfy.

I suspect that my confusion about feeling feminine stems from this identification with my dad while also trying to be daddy’s little girl: this leaking into my consciousness of “boy feelings” made me feel strange, “other” to myself (Stern, 2010).

I thought about my way of being in the world in order to get intimacy and realised that in the past, like Kev, I had tried to charm people into falling in love with me and had used sex as a tool to generate closeness, falling for the common confusion between affection and sexuality.

I kept avoiding bringing this to supervision and convinced myself I was aware of my countertransference when I daydreamed about having rough sex with Kev, fantasising about being seduced, losing control and being completely submissive. Somehow, I had taken the step from erotic awareness to concretising