Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Sensible Seductress

Though you do enjoy sex, it's just not something you think about on a daily basis. After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? For you, sex is about friendship and companionship, not violins and red wine.


It has been working so far, but you might be surprised to find that there's more to sex than the good ol' stuff you've been doing. "It sounds to me like that dismissive attitude could be covering up embarrassment, and fear of exposing your deeper self to your partner," says Joan Elizabeth Lloyd, author of Naughty Secrets: What Your Neighbors Are Really Doing Behind Their Bedroom Doors (Warner Books, 2003). "Try whispering a four-letter word in the dark, and see if the embarrassment that rises has a delicious frisson to it -- I'll bet it does."


Try to connect with your guy, maybe by reading sex-advice books together, and bookmarking the things you'd like to try. It's a pragmatic and indirect approach you're comfortable with, but it might lead you into titillating territory that's new to you. "It's okay to laugh and feel silly," Lloyd assures us. "There's a lot of fun to be had with a wonderful and trusted lover."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Funny Flirt
The direct approach has never worked for you. Instead, you like to charm guys by infiltrating their own territory and getting to know them in their own environment -- like Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist, but with beer instead of bananas. The strategy is to make yourself indispensable -- be one of the guys, make jokes, be fun to hang around with, and avoid the games girls play as much as you can.

However, you're well acquainted with the danger of being one of the guys. It's that you can easily become...one of the guys. Watch out for that -- make sure people know there are breasts under that Celtics jersey. "Women like this create intimacy through what I like to call the buddy system," says Catherine Cardinal, PhD, author of The Ten Commandments of Relationships (Andrews McMeel, 2000). "You give the feeling of being in this together -- whether 'this' is a difficult situation you want to get out of, like a parking ticket, or something great, like your marriage." But when buddying up means you're not taken seriously, learn when to assert yourself. "Never underestimate the power of touch," Cardinal says. "A well-timed squeeze of the arm, pat on the shoulder, or hug reminds people that you're a force to be reckoned with. A female force."

Think Cameron Diaz. She's the queen of the burping contest, yet she knows when to glam it up, and nobody ever forgets she's a girl -- because she doesn't forget it, either.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------