The Blowfish Blog

[Greta Christina] My Sexual Resolutions

I’m one of those scary people who makes New Year’s Resolutions and takes them fairly seriously. I like having an annual tradition of taking stock of my life and my goals, thinking about what I want to accomplish in the coming year and deciding what I need to do to make that happen. I think it’s my hyper-responsibility gene kicking in. (”Happy New Year! Are you really living up to your potential?”) I even follow through on my resolutions more often than not.

Usually my resolutions have to do with my writing career: finishing a book proposal, contacting new publishers, etc. But this year, I’ve decided to take my own advice about making sex a priority. I’m going to put some conscious thought into what I want my sex life to look like in the coming year — and what actions I need to take to make that happen.

If this inspires you to make some sexual resolutions of your own — speak up in the comments and tell me what they are!

I resolve to proposition at least three people this year. You might not think it, but I’m very shy and lacking in confidence about hitting on people, and I have a bad habit of waiting for the other person to make the first move. But that’s not fair. Being the one to speak up and say, “So are we just flirting, or do you actually want to boff?” is a scary, risky thing to do, and it’s not fair to always expect other people do it. Plus the waiting game doesn’t get me laid nearly as much as I’d like. So I’m resolving to get over my shyness, and to be the one to speak up and make that first move. At least sometimes.

I resolve to do my Kegels more regularly. This one speaks for itself. At the risk of sounding like a ’70s feminist consciousness- raising seminar: I love my vagina. I want to take better care of it.

(Oh, speaking of Kegels: This is something of a tangent, but I thought y’all would appreciate it. There’s a very funny scene in an episode of “Futurama”: they’re in a gym, with various weird aliens on weird gym equipment, and there’s a passing shot of a woman sitting on a Nautilus-type weight machine. You can only see the upper half of her body, and the weights in front of her torso going up and down — and then you see that the name of the machine is the “Kegelcisor.” I’m totally in awe of how they got that one by the censors. I strongly suspect that the censors had no freaking idea what Kegels were.)

Anyway. Kegels. Important. I resolve to do them for a few minutes every day.

And expanding on that theme:

I resolve to continue taking better care of my physical health. I realize this is a pretty standard New Year’s resolution: the iconic one in fact, well past the point of cliche. But the changes I’ve made in my health in the last year or two — going to the gym more regularly, bulding my muscles and my flexibility, losing weight, taking care of my bad knee, getting something vaguely resembling enough sleep — have had a massive impact on my libido and my sex life. I feel friskier more often; I have more sexual stamina; my body has the strength and limberness to do more of what I want it to.

So while this is an embarrassing cartoon cliche of a New Year’s resolution, for the sake of my sexuality I’m making it anyway: Keep walking. Keep going to the gym two to three times a week. Keep counting calories and managing my weight. (I know weight loss isn’t important or necessary for everyone — but it is for me.) Keep up my physical therapy regimen on my bad knee. (If I can get my bad knee into good enough shape that I can stay on my knees for more than a few minutes, I’ll be a very happy camper.) Go to the doctor when I have a health concern, instead of toughing it out. Don’t get less than six hours of sleep more than twice a month. Remember that my body is a source of pleasure and joy — and treat it as such.

I resolve to try at least three sexual variations that I’ve never done before. This is more of a challenge than you might think: I’m in my late 40s, and I’ve already tried most of the sexual variations that I’m seriously interested in.

But not all of them. There’s more than a handful of variations that would make me very sad if I died without ever having tried them. And there’s far more than a handful that I have only a passing interest in but wouldn’t mind checking out. You never know when today’s idle curiosity will turn into tomorrow’s frantic obsession. (That’s what happened to me with “Mad Men.”)

It’s true that one of the great advantages of middle age is that I’ve already figured out a lot of what I do and don’t like in bed . . . and I can now spend my time just doing it. But in the same way that I don’t want to become someone who only listens to the music I liked in my twenties, I don’t want to become someone who only has the sex I liked in my twenties. I want to keep my sexual options open . . . if only so I don’t turn into a crank, griping about how sex isn’t like it used to be and young people these days are doing it all wrong.

Besides, sexual desires can change with time. Just last year, I stumbled on a sexual kink that used to be completely off-limits and has now become a favorite in the regular rotation. So I don’t just want to keep my mind open to things I’ve never tried before. I also want to keep my mind open to things I tried and rejected years ago. If I could rediscover and reclaim Led Zeppelin after years of scorning them, maybe I can rediscover and reclaim deep throating, too.

So those are my sexual resolutions.

What about yours?

Greta Christina, copyright © 2009. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, 31 December 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.