Rainer, a participant on our recent workshop ‘Getting Clear on Sex and Intimacy‘, reflects on the one-day exploration.
In our society there aren’t many places where I feel save enough to allow deepest feelings to occur. During the ‘Sex and Intimacy’ workshop in April, I had the possibility to ask myself how I am in this subject in relation to old lovers, to clichés and to my own beliefs. The questions being asked scrutinised my own thinking and opened something up in myself.
Exploring what my relationship to sex and intimacy is, I found myself having a hard time to separate those two. Although one can have sex without much intimacy, I find it still confusing. If I just want to have sex with a guy, maybe what I really want is intimacy, but it’s hard and too difficult to create it. Maybe the sex is easier to deal with, as it can be a technical thing.
It is a confusing subject and what I was getting clear on that day was that I am very scared around intimacy. Really appreciate that I was able to express that to the group and let that be with me as part of my process of the day.
The workshop was structured in a way that I was able to go through my fear and feel empowered at the end of the workshop.
The subject also leads me into confusion about what is real and what is fantasy. One can feel pressurised by a hierarchy of relationships, a compulsion to have to have ‘The boyfriend’. If not, all other relationships are not able to shine as much. Being confirmed that this is not true, strengthened my belief that I can be very happy with being close to friends, without being in ‘the love relationship’. There are so many possibilities to get close to people and really being close with a person and really attending to the person finally counts.
The day has been challenging, as well as joyful exploring such an intimate subject with my gay men fellows, something quite unique in itself!
Thanks so much Darren and Ade.
Rainer
