“Oh, puh-lease. It’s not like I’m giving you a dildo and a whip!”
At this Merritt and Carol, both red faced and laughing, tried to send her to the kitchen to do the dishes.
But their daughter continued, “I mean, come on, it’s the twenty- first century. You’re here, you’re queer, you get naked together sometimes because you’re in love with each other. Get used to it.”
Which is exactly what she’s been doing ever since, side by side with Carol. influencing the little monitor part 3: changing the
goal In chapter 8, I talked about ways to change the goal state to improve orgasm. When you replace the goal of orgasm with the goal of pleasure, you shift your little monitor’s attention to a new and highly accessible target, yet one that may carry a lot of negative meta-feelings for you. That’s normal. If you notice resistance inside yourself to the idea of valuing pleasure over orgasm, just notice it, step to one side, and allow the frustration to transition into grief, as your little monitor lets go of the old goal, and then allow the grief to open the door to pleasure.
In chapter 7, I talked about ways to change the goal to improve sexual desire, too. Letting go of the goal of spontaneous desire and allowing yourself to be responsive or context sensitive satisfies your little monitor and opens up the opportunity of seeking out contexts that maximize your desire style. Again, cultural baggage may cause you to feel attached to the idea that spontaneous desire is better than responsive desire. Notice the urge to hold fast to the ideal of spontaneous desire and allow yourself to move through the tunnel. Anytime judgment of context-sensitive desire emerges inside you, practice noticing the judgment without agreeing or disagreeing.
Just acknowledge it and allow it to move through you and out of you.
I also described changing the goal in terms of nonconcordant arousal, in chapter 6. Concordance isn’t likely to create significant change in your sexual satisfaction. Instead, the goal is to recognize that nonconcordance happens sometimes, use lube if your vaginal secretions aren’t there when you need them, and teach your partner to listen to your words. Again, there are cultural misunderstandings and judgments about nonconcordance, so you may find that you need to release negative meta-emotions around it. It’s