Eroticizing Life is for Women, Not Girls
Eroticize Your Own Damn Life
Stop waiting for someone else to make you feel alive.
We have made desire far too dependent on being desired.
Does someone want me? Do they still find me attractive? Why don't they initiate anymore? When was the last time they looked at me that way? Am I sexy enough? Young enough? Interesting enough? Desirable enough?
We spend so much time looking outward for evidence that we are still alive that somewhere along the way, we forget to actually feel alive.
Maybe the question isn't whether someone desires you.
Maybe the better question is: Do you desire your own life?
Not sexually.
Erotically.
There is a difference.
Eroticism is bigger than sex. It's appetite. Anticipation. Curiosity. It's inhabiting your body instead of simply dragging it from obligation to obligation.
It's wanting.
And I think a lot of us have forgotten how to want.
Maybe the better question is: Do you desire your own life?
We Have Become Very Good at Functioning
There is a particular kind of numbness that looks remarkably like having your shit together.
You wake up. Make the coffee. Answer the emails. Take care of everyone. Go to work. Buy the groceries. Make dinner. Do the laundry. Pay the bills. Walk the dog. Remember the birthdays. Schedule the appointments. Scroll for a while. Go to bed.
Repeat.
Nothing is necessarily wrong.
But when was the last time you were excited?
Not productive. Not accomplished. Not relieved because you finally crossed something off the list.
Excited.
When did you last anticipate something so much you could feel it in your body?
When did you last wear something simply because you loved the way you felt in it?
When did you last turn the music up? Order exactly what you wanted? Stay up too late reading? Swim in cold water? Take yourself somewhere beautiful?
Touch your own skin and remember that this body isn't merely something you're responsible for maintaining?
When did you last do something for no reason other than:
I fucking wanted to.
That is the beginning.
Eroticizing Your Life Isn't About Making Everything Sexual
I think we've reduced eroticism to sex when it's actually something much more interesting.
Eroticism is attention.
It's noticing.
- The first sip of coffee when you're actually paying attention to it.
- Clean sheets against bare skin.
- A perfume that makes you want to keep smelling your own wrist.
- Sunlight warming your legs.
- The song you play three times because once wasn't enough.
- A dinner that takes two hours.
- A book you cannot stop thinking about.
- Flowers on the table when no one is coming over.
- The ocean at dusk.
- A dress with nowhere particularly important to go.
- Choosing the good glass on a Tuesday.
- Lighting the candle instead of saving it.
It's making your home somewhere you want to seduce yourself into staying.
It's allowing pleasure to exist without requiring productivity to justify it.
Eroticism says:
I am here.
I am paying attention.
I want to experience this.
And maybe that's why it feels almost rebellious.
Because so much of adulthood teaches us to become efficient instead.
Somewhere Along the Way, We Started Editing Ourselves
Maybe you were told you're too sensitive.
Too emotional. Too loud. Too sexual. Too quiet. Too ambitious. Too affectionate. Too curious. Too intense. Too independent. Too sentimental.
Too much.
And perhaps you started sanding yourself down.
Just a little.
Then a little more.
You learned which parts of yourself made other people uncomfortable and tucked them away.
You became easier. More agreeable. Less complicated. Less needy. Less emotional.
Less you.
Certainly, we should grow.
Learn emotional regulation. Communicate better. Develop boundaries. Take responsibility for our behavior. Apologize when we hurt people. Become better humans.
But growth and self-erasure are not the same thing.
If sensitivity is fundamental to how you experience the world, the solution cannot permanently be becoming less sensitive so someone else can love you more comfortably.
At some point, you have to ask:
What would happen if instead of becoming less, I became more myself?
Stop Waiting to Be Desired
This might be the hardest part.
We are taught to understand our desirability through someone else's reaction to us.
Their gaze. Their attention. Their pursuit. Their compliments. Their hands. Their wanting.
And yes, being desired can feel incredible.
But there is something dangerous about making another person responsible for your relationship with your own body.
Because what happens when they stop looking?
What happens when desire changes?
What happens when you're single?
What happens when your body changes?
What happens when you're 47 instead of 27?
What happens when no one is standing there telling you that you're beautiful?
Do you disappear?
Or do you still belong completely to yourself?
Wear the lingerie anyway.
Use the perfume.
Take yourself to dinner.
Buy the flowers.
Move your body because it feels good inside it.
Put lotion on slowly.
Sleep naked.
Wear lipstick to the grocery store if you damn well feel like it.
Cook something gorgeous for yourself.
Take the long way home because the sky looks incredible.
Make your bedroom somewhere you want to wake up.
Go to the concert.
Book the trip.
Dance in the kitchen.
Romance yourself so thoroughly that your life stops waiting for someone else to arrive before it begins.
Not because you don't need other people.
We do.
Connection is one of the great pleasures of being human.
But another person's desire should be an addition to your aliveness.
Not its source.
Who am I when I'm fully alive?
Ask Yourself What You Actually Want
This is where things can get uncomfortable.
Because once you start waking yourself up, you start noticing things.
Your job. Your friendships. Your routines. Your relationships. Your habits. Your body. The things you've been tolerating. The things you've been pretending not to want. The places you've been making yourself smaller.
You may realize you want more adventure.
More solitude.
More touch.
More conversation.
More sex.
Less sex.
More creativity.
More softness.
More ambition.
More quiet.
More fucking fun.
And wanting doesn't mean you immediately blow up your life.
Wanting is information.
That's all.
Desire is data.
Pay attention to it.
And Yes, This Will Affect Your Relationships
Not because eroticizing yourself is some trick for getting your partner to want you again.
Please don't turn this into another self-improvement assignment.
Become more interesting so they'll desire you.
No.
Become more alive because you are the person who has to live your life.
But something interesting often happens when people come back to themselves.
Sometimes the relationship wakes up too.
Maybe you start flirting again.
Talking differently.
Touching differently.
Having things to tell each other.
Going places. Getting dressed. Laughing. Missing each other.
Seeing one another as people instead of coworkers managing a household.
Maybe your partner looks at you differently because you are looking at yourself differently.
Maybe you realize you didn't need another person.
You needed another version of yourself inside the relationship you already had.
And sometimes the opposite happens.
You wake up and realize how long you've been asleep.
You realize the person beside you doesn't particularly like the fullest version of you.
Maybe they preferred you quieter. Smaller. Easier.
Maybe the things you've been trying to change about yourself aren't things that need fixing at all.
Maybe you're simply different people now.
That doesn't automatically make anyone wrong.
It doesn't erase the love.
It doesn't make the years a mistake.
And it doesn't mean the first move is leaving.
Talk. Get curious. Listen. Try. Ask the uncomfortable questions. Get help if you need it. See whether there are two people willing to meet each other again.
Sometimes Things End. And That's Okay.
We have a strange tendency to believe that if something ends, it must have failed.
A relationship. A friendship. A career. A version of ourselves.
We look backward and try to determine who ruined it, what went wrong, which moment could have changed everything.
But not everything that ends was a mistake.
Some things were right for the people we were when we chose them.
And then we changed.
They changed.
Life changed.
What once fit doesn't anymore.
There doesn't always have to be a villain.
Sometimes you can love someone and still recognize that the relationship no longer meets either of you where you are.
Sometimes you can be grateful for what something gave you without requiring it to give you the rest of your life.
Not impulsively.
Not because relationships should never be difficult.
Not because another life looks shinier from where you're standing.
But because you've been honest.
You've communicated.
You've listened.
You've tried.
You've looked at yourself too, instead of making another person responsible for every empty place inside you.
And after all of that, sometimes the answer is still:
This isn't where I belong anymore.
That's allowed.
Staying isn't inherently more noble than leaving.
And leaving isn't inherently more courageous than staying.
The courageous part is being honest enough to know which one you're doing out of love and which one you're doing out of fear.
Because there is a difference between working through a difficult season and spending years trying to resurrect something that both people have stopped choosing.
There is a difference between compromise and self-abandonment.
There is a difference between growing together and continually making yourself smaller so you can continue to fit.
Sometimes coming back to yourself brings you back to each other.
Sometimes coming back to yourself allows you to finally say goodbye.
Both can be acts of love.
You Don't Have to Know Where This Leads
That's the beautiful and terrifying part.
Coming back to yourself isn't a strategy for achieving a particular outcome.
You don't eroticize your life to save your relationship.
You don't do it so you'll finally have the courage to leave.
You don't do it to find another relationship.
You don't do it to become hotter or more desirable or more interesting to strangers.
You do it because numb is no way to spend a life.
Because you are allowed to experience pleasure without earning it.
You are allowed to be curious.
You are allowed to change.
You are allowed to want.
You are allowed to discover that something you once wanted no longer fits.
You are allowed to discover that something you nearly gave up on matters more than you realized.
You are allowed to stay.
You are allowed to go.
You are allowed to mourn something and still know ending it was right.
You are allowed to be grateful for a chapter without trying to turn it into the whole damn book.
Most of all, you are allowed to meet yourself again.
Who am I when I'm fully alive, and does the life I've built have room for that person?
Find out.
Wear the dress. Light the candle. Order dessert. Take yourself somewhere. Say the thing. Touch your own life. Pay attention.
Want something.
Want a lot of things.
Become curious about the person you've become.
And if something in your life can meet that person there, beautiful. Let it grow with you.
If it can't, you are allowed to lovingly put it down.
Not everything is meant to be carried forever.
Eroticize your own damn life. Then have the courage to live it.