Sex shamans: The revolving bedroom door

Sex in the future will see a rise and refinement of “sex shaman” identities and community roles, for people who wish to do healing work for others in the context of personal sexual relationships, both as a community service and as a means of personal healing.

I’ve had five breakups in the last four months. I don’t care who you are, that’s just objectively hard to deal with. Admittedly, it is somewhat of a relief to my schedule. That helps. And just as Number Go Down, so also Number Go Up, which means I have some new relationship energy to balance out the losses. That helps too. But it still hurts.

Our best choices can still lead to pain

The thing that hurts most is that nobody did anything wrong. In fact, everyone's making their best choices right now:

• “Vivian” is focusing on her career, child, and home responsibilities, and realized she doesn't have the capacity to show up how she wants for me. She is mindfully focusing on what matters most to her, and being honest with me about her priorities.
• “Lana” found a partner she unexpectedly fell for, and wants to commit fully to her, and doesn't feel right about seeing me too. She did not know these were feelings she would have and is being honest with me about those feelings.
• “Margaret” has been a great personal match but terrible schedule match and it's been affecting our together time, which we've lately had to squeeze in. She met a better schedule match and is choosing to put her energy there, because the squeezed time just isn't as rewarding for either of us.
• “Zed” has had a few Big Things come up since we started seeing each other, and just doesn't have the capacity for a relationship with me right now. They are going through a particularly hard time (we all are, but still) and being truthful about their reduced capacity.
• “Reid” has discovered while seeing me that they actually want a different role in a different relationship structure than we had initially agreed upon, and that wasn’t something I was looking for, so I chose to walk away.

See? Nobody's screwing up. At worst, Lana and Margaret were maybe monkey-branching with me. But they really weren't: we were in different places when we got together, we've all learned and grown in the meantime, and they're being honest with me about their feelings as they process and understand them. That's not a deliberate manipulation or deception like monkey-branching is by definition, even though it is strictly true that they did behaviorally "date me until a more suitable partner came along, and started that relationship before ending things with me." That is absolutely a legal move in polyamory, provided people are honest and open about their intentions.

But in the second place, even if they were deliberately monkey-branching me, that would actually be fine. (Again, provided they were honest about their intentions, which makes it "not a deliberate manipulation in the first place" even if the behavior is superficially similar.) I am a seaside temple sex priestess, so being someone's stable hold on love until a better lover for them comes along, is part and parcel of that role: I'm a pillar of the lesbian community, supporting others because that is what I signed up for.

Pain is inevitable, so make it meaningful

This is all working as intended, and it's validating and fulfilling, despite the pain. It gives a lot of purpose and meaning to my life, especially to parts that sometimes feel purposeless and meaningless (such as no-fault breakups). But it still hurts.

There is that bittersweet note of seeing a child you fostered or an animal you rescued, finally flying free of your temporary nest—temporary for them, anyway—and getting back to their life. A patient, once nursed back to health, may keep in touch—but that will be nowhere near the "deep idle" chatter between a recovering patient and an emotionally present caregiver that happens organically in the liminal moments during routine care tasks. My home is like a sexualized combination of halfway house and hospital, in addition to temple and boudoir, a place where people come for both joy and healing, both to celebrate and to shelter, a place some will love to stay but others will need to leave.

Being a sex shaman of any stripe just means that sometimes the people you help heal, will outgrow you. And being a wounded healer means, archetypally, that I am in for a life of giving to others what I lack myself, and then with a little emotional alchemy, I am finally able to fill my own lack. By ending a relationship when it’s time, instead of running it into the ground trying to make it work, we can preserve friendships (friend divorces in lesbian circles can be brutal), and recontextualize the endings of romantic attachments as a “completed project” rather than merely a tragedy or a failure. It's wonderful, it's magical, it's the miracle of love and connection and togetherness and meaning, and it's temporary like everything, and I wouldn't trade it away for anything else in the world.

But it still hurts.

Healing begets healing

As I heal my own traumas, joy becomes more joyful, and pain becomes more painful. No wonder I ran from these feelings and locked them away for decades, when I didn't have the discretionary time or life experience to sit and process them. And because this healing is actually leading to authentic emotional resilience, genuine positive self-regard, and the growing ability to regulate my own feelings, even the greater pain is easier to handle now.

Importantly, I'm not saying that multiple partners or lots of sex is a "cure" for anything. That's putting the cart before the horse. Doing this inner healing work makes me more emotionally available to more people—the inner healing work comes first. And being able to handle rejection and severed connections makes me more able to pursue no-strings safe sex for fun, because I'm stable enough to not take the rejections and partings personally—so again, the inner healing work comes first.

It just so happens that I also have a naturally high sex drive, and human sexuality is my special interest, and I have sexual anhedonia—so, respectively, I find the high activity fulfilling instead of draining, I get a burst of energy from "learning a new person from scratch," and I have to prioritize the emotional connection because the physical activity is unrewarding all by itself.

This sets me up for virtuous feedback loops, where my high level of activity is validating and rewarding, but only because I'm already stable enough from this inner healing work to focus on internalizing the good while separating myself from the bad.

Your mileage may vary, is what I'm saying. My rules may not apply to you, just like yours may not apply to me.

Aligning with authenticity makes life better

But there are people out there who do work like me, who like to have lots of sex, who want that sex to be emotionally connected and fulfilling, and who genuinely value the happiness of others even if we can’t be part of that happiness. At the end of the day, I would rather repeatedly heal people and set them free, than settle into an eternal routine with someone who isn’t growing and changing for whatever reason.

People who work like me, when forced into a monogamous relationship, feel unhappy and unfulfilled because we’re living to fulfill others’ expectations instead of to fulfill our own authenticity. But when we live authentically, it takes less effort to go through our daily routines, because we’re not fighting our nature to do so, but living in harmony with our nature instead. We also recharge our energy more effectively when our habits are aligned with our authenticity.

These sex shamans, who use sexual bonding and healing activities to power our own healing as well, will provide emotional restoration to our communities. By recharging our own emotional batteries with the healing we provide to others, we are able to pay that forward to the next person, and so on. And in this way, one person's abundance can help many others cultivate abundance of their own.