WELCOME TO CHAPTER 11! IN U.S. BANKRUPTCY LAW, “chapter 11” refers to the part of the bankruptcy process in which the business or individual can begin to reorganize and rebuild. While we’ve been reorganizing in every chapter, it seems particularly appropriate in this last one. As you leave behind old and bankrupt ideas about sexuality in favor of what you really really want, it can feel unstable and chaotic. In this chapter we’ll try to firm up the ground beneath you so that you can jump off from here to wherever you want to go next.

Let’s start by revisiting where you were in chapter 1 and seeing what’s changed and what hasn’t. Remember this quiz? Without peeking at your answers from when you took it the first time, take it again now:

1. I know how to stay safe while expressing my sexuality.

2. I’m afraid of what others would think/say/do if they knew how I feel about sex.

3. I can tell when sexual activity is making me uncomfortable.

4. I can tell when sexual activity is giving me pleasure.

5. I feel comfortable telling a potential sexual partner that something they’re doing is making me uncomfortable.

6. I feel comfortable telling a potential sexual partner what to do in order to give me pleasure.

7. My sexual values make sense to me.

8. I often do sexual things or have sexual feelings that make me feel confused or bad.

9. My sexual partner(s), if I have them, share my values about sex.

10. My friends share my values about sex.

11. My family shares my values about sex.

12. I have people in my life I feel comfortable talking to about sex.

How’d you do? Specifically, ask yourself if those answers are what you’d like them to be. If some of them aren’t, go back and circle them. We’ll talk about them in a minute. But first, find your answers now from when you took this quiz in chapter 1. Put a star next to every answer that’s changed. Then go back and take out the commitment you made to yourself at the beginning of the book. Reread it, and think about it. Did you live up to it? Did you accomplish what you set out to do? Or at least some of it? Whatever the answer, take a moment now to appreciate all the hard work you’ve put into this process, and where it’s led you.

Here’s what Heidi had to say after completing the process:

The main thing that I’m better at is actually sitting down and figuring out what I want in a partner and what I want from sex, instead of living with some vague [sense of] Oh, I’ll know it when I find it and then having no clue what I’m actually looking for. And also just remembering that I’m not an abandoned puppy waiting to be adopted, and that I’m allowed to do the choosing. I’ve actually had the STD talk with a couple of people, and I’ve canceled a couple of things because I wasn’t sure I felt comfortable with them. I don’t want to be doing things with regret anymore.

Dive In: Write yourself a thank-you note. Tell yourself how much you appreciate the effort you put into working through this book. Make sure to remind yourself why it matters that you did this work. Also be sure to acknowledge what parts you’ve done particularly well, what the hardest parts were, if there were parts where you felt like quitting (or did quit for a while) and how you overcame those obstacles, and what a difference it’s going to make in your life going forward. Don’t be stingy with the praise! Flatter yourself wildly.

TO BOLDLY GO

Of course, no matter how far you’ve come since chapter 1, you may still have a few issues with sexuality. For most of us, sorting out our relationship with our own sexuality is a lifelong journey.

Just because you’ve finished the book, don’t feel that you have to be finished with exploring the ideas and questions we’ve grappled with here. Consider those answers you just circled above. They’re not failures—they’re signs telling you where you may want to focus your future attention. You don’t have to do it all right now. Let the things you’ve learned so far about yourself settle in. Think about something else for a while. Then, when you feel ready, ask yourself if there are exercises in this book that address unresolved issues that you want to go deeper with. Go back and get into it. Are there exercises you wish you’d had time to do the first time but wound up skipping? Go back and try them out. Are there sections that make sense to you, but you’re having trouble really internalizing them? Do them again. Are there people you wish you could have all of these conversations with? Why not drop them a line and ask them to do the book with you, starting again from chapter 1?

In other words, think of this book as a basic road map. You probably haven’t gone down all of its routes yet. There may be some you’d really like to double back to and explore, and there may be some you have no interest in checking out. Some streets that you’ve now driven down once are going to be places you want to make part of your regular travels, and some of them may be excursions you’re glad you went on but don’t need to do again. And, of course, there are plenty of places not on the map of this book at all. I’ve pointed to some of them—the resources throughout the book where you can learn more about a wide variety of topics we had time to go into only briefly in these pages. And every one of those resources will lead you to other new places as well.

The most important thing is to feed the exploratory spirit that led you to pick up this book in the first place. Your curiosity about what’s possible for your sexuality and your understanding that what people and institutions are telling you is not always the whole story (and sometimes not even the truth) are wonderful guides. Follow them, using the tools you’ve learned along the way:

Risk assessment

Keep in mind that there’s no way to avoid risk altogether; your job is to cut through blame, shame, and fear by using reliable information to answer the following questions: How big is the risk (to you and others, emotionally and physically) in pursuing sexual things you may want to do? Are there ways you can reduce those risks, and how great might the reward be, despite the risk? How likely are the good and bad outcomes to happen? Once you have your answers in hand, you can make a decision that makes sense to you.

Intuition

Remember: Intuition is specific. It says things like, This person seems nice, but I don’t think he’s trustworthy. Generalized fear is the opposite of intuition: It says things like, Don’t trust anybody, no matter how nice they seem. Turn down the volume on your generalized fears and amplify your intuition, and you’ll be both safer and happier.

Emotional connection

Your feelings—even the uncomfortable ones—are important. They’re telling you something. Treat them like clues. They may not contain answers all by themselves, but they’re a crucial part of the puzzle when it comes to figuring out what you want or need. Make room for them. Make friends with them. Because even if they feel awful in the moment, when it comes to feelings, the only way out is through.

Direct communication

As awkward as it can feel to blurt out what you need to say, you can’t expect people to be mind readers. Whether you’re expressing a desire or setting a boundary, you can take control of your body and your sexuality only if you’re willing to talk about them. Use the tools and tricks in chapter 7 to help you get the words out.

The Golden Rule

It’s a classic for a reason: If you do unto others as you would have them do unto you (especially if you believe you deserve loving, respectful treatment, which you do!), you’ll probably be a good friend, family member, and lover, even while you’re pursuing what you really really want. (It’s no accident that direct communication + the Golden Rule = the Nice Person Test.)

Please also remember that many of the things you’ve discovered in this book are new. You’ve tried on new ways of seeing yourself, your partners, your friends and family, and the world. You’ve experimented with new ways of behaving, new ways of talking with people, new ways of relating to your own desires, needs, and boundaries. Probably, many of these new approaches still feel, well, new. Don’t get me wrong: New can be great! It can be exciting, exhilarating, liberating, energizing! But it can also feel unfamiliar. Inauthentic. Uncomfortable. Awkward. Artificial.

One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself right now is time. Time to try on these new approaches long enough to see if they begin to feel more comfortable and natural. Don’t forget—you’ve been working on this book for a few months, maybe. But you’ve had the old behaviors, the ones you may now be trying to change, for many years. It makes a lot of sense that they might feel more comfortable. But “comfortable” doesn’t mean those behaviors and beliefs are working well for you. If they were, you probably would never have picked up this book in the first place.

One of my first girlfriends taught me this valuable framework for thinking about learning new ways of being: You start off in unconscious incompetence. That is, you’re not being effective on your own behalf, and you’re not even aware of what you’re doing wrong. As you begin to learn, you shift into conscious incompetence. This can be the most uncomfortable stage of learning new ways of being. You’re aware that you’re doing things that aren’t good for you, but you can’t seem to stop doing them, out of force of habit, fear of change, etc. But don’t give up! Because the next stage is conscious competence. That’s when, if you focus on it deliberately, you can do things a new and healthier way. This is the part where it feels awkward and artificial, even though you’re acting in a way that you know is better for you. And if you do that for long enough, you’ll eventually find your way into unconscious competence—that fantastic sweet spot where the things that feed your soul feel so natural that you do them without even thinking about them.

So hang in there with the weird, awkward feelings. And give yourself permission to be imperfect. It would be surprising if you didn’t sometimes revert to old behaviors or beliefs that you’ve tried to shed over the course of this book. Growth isn’t linear. You don’t move from one step to another in that four-step learning curve I just outlined without ever slipping back and forth a little. We learn things, and then we backslide a little and we have to learn them again in a new way. Don’t give up if you catch yourself acting or thinking in a way that’s not compatible with what you really really want. Just notice it, see if there’s anything to learn from it, and let it go. There’s always a new opportunity to move from conscious incompetence to conscious competence again the next time around.

Here’s Mieko’s plan going forward:

I’ve gotten better at trusting my intuition more, especially around my male friends. I’m a lot calmer around them now, because I’m more confident in my boundaries with myself. But I’m still not so confident with strangers. So one of the ways I’m going to deal with that is that I’m going to take a self-defense class. That way I can be confident walking down the street and knowing that not only does nobody have the right to come up to me and touch me without my permission, but if somebody tries it, I can do something about it. That’s definitely the next step for me. I also want to invest more in doing things that give me pleasure. I might buy myself a new sex toy or something!

All of the challenges you may still face are a great reason to keep doing your weekly body love and daily writing, even though you’re “officially” done with this process. (Or hey, if you weren’t keeping up with them while you worked on the book, there’s no time like the present to start.) There’s never a bad reason to focus on giving yourself physical pleasure or carving out ten minutes a day to get in tune with your thoughts by spilling them onto a page. But now is an especially good time to keep up these practices—this can be a delicate transitional moment, and anything that helps you stay grounded and focused on what you really really want will be a real asset. So don’t stop now, and if you need to, start again: Love your body every week, and do a little private freewriting every day. It’s a good way to be your own best friend.

Dive In: Make a new commitment to yourself to make the lessons you’ve learned through this process last. Start by writing down what you’ve learned about yourself, your sexuality, and the world you’re living in. Write down everything you can think of. Now, make a list of anything you still feel uncertain or challenged about—anything you still want or need to figure out. You don’t have to do it all now! Just list everything you can think of.

Now, just as you did in chapter 1, send yourself a message. Tell yourself what you plan to do now to make sure the lessons you’ve learned aren’t lost, and what you plan to do to support yourself on your ongoing journey. Don’t forget to send your future self a message about why continuing this work is important, what you’ve already gotten out of it, what you want to get out of it in the future, and what you want your future self to remember when things start to feel hard. Say whatever you want, but also be sure to include the following sentences: “I, [your name], am making a promise to myself: I won’t give up on seeking out what I really really want. Because I matter to myself. My desires matter, my pleasure matters, and my safety matters. This process is a gift to myself, and I promise to keep accepting it.”

GROW TOGETHER

Of course, if you have to give yourself some leeway to settle into the new you, that means your friends and family will almost certainly need some as well. Almost nobody likes change, especially in the ones we love. So if you’re doing things differently as a result of this book (perhaps you’re being more direct about what you want and don’t want, or you’re dressing differently, or your desires themselves have changed) and you experience some blowback from the people around you, try to be patient. That doesn’t mean you have to put up with people treating you badly. But keep in mind that people still living in the throes of shame, blame, and fear are likely to feel, at some level, like you’re challenging their worldview if they see you rejecting the Terrible Trio. So set boundaries with them if you need to. If it feels like they’d be open to it, sit them down and explain to them why you’re changing and how their response is affecting you. Definitely don’t let them talk you out of pursuing a happier, healthier sexuality just because it makes them uncomfortable. But if they seem to be trying to understand, have compassion for them, too. It may even be useful to share this book with them—if they’re women, they may have a lot to learn from it. And if they’re men, there’s a special section at www.wyrrw.com/justformen that will help them understand how they can be more supportive of you.

These changes may be especially challenging if you have one or more ongoing sexual partners. Don’t get me wrong: They may also be awesome. You may already have found that they’ve improved your sexual satisfaction and strengthened your relationship in general. But if you change the way you go about your sexual relationships, you’re also changing the way your partner’s sexual relationship works. And while you chose this process you’re both now engaged in, they may not have.

It may be that working through this book has helped you to see your partner in a different light. Perhaps you’ve discovered that they’re not very interested in your desires or your boundaries. That’s difficult information to learn about anyone, let alone someone you’re already intimate with. That kind of disregard is not something you need to put up with. On the other hand, you may be pleasantly surprised to discover how well your partner responds to your developing sense of your sexuality. Their responses to your new ways of behaving and communicating may increase the trust between you, strengthening the ties you already have.

But if their response falls somewhere in between—if they’re supportive of the reasons you’re changing but having trouble adjusting to it in practice—try to cut them a little slack for a while. As we discussed in chapter 9, make sure you’re compromising with them, as opposed to compromising yourself. But if you can find ways to make room for them to work through their discomfort without sacrificing too much of yourself, you could be doing both of you a favor, allowing the relationship to grow to meet both of your needs.

That’s exactly what Prerna and her boyfriend are doing. “Because this is my first serious relationship after being sexually assaulted, how I handled the sexual aspects of it was an entirely new territory that I didn’t expect,” she says.

My boyfriend was so understanding and kind and in my head I assumed everything would be happily wonderful in bed, too, and I led him to believe that. But I quickly came to realize that things weren’t as fine as I’d thought they would be. I ended up in tears every time we had sex, and not the good kind! When I first tried to talk about it with him, he was upset because he didn’t want to be hurting me in any way, but also because he thought I was putting the kibosh on sex. And at first that was exactly what I did. I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings, so preventing them from coming up by not having sex in the first place seemed like a good idea. He was patient with me, but it quickly became clear that it wasn’t working for either of us. Eventually we decided to try things again, but slowly and with lots of pauses to make sure we were both feeling good and content with what we were doing. That was so much better! There are still kinks we’re ironing out, but now that we’re on the same page we’re both less afraid to speak up about what works and what doesn’t.

As for finding new partners, keep in mind what we talked about in the introduction: This book isn’t designed to make it easier for you to find sexual partners. What it will do is make it easier to distinguish partners who’ll be good for you from ones who won’t, and to make your experience better when you do find a good partner. The sad reality is that since we’ve all been raised in a dysfunctional sexual culture, many of your potential partners may have unrealistic and sometimes damaging ideas about women and sex. (This may be more likely if your potential partners are male, but it’s possible no matter what gender your partners are.) As you get clearer about what you really really want and what you really really don’t, it can result in a smaller pool of people to pick from. That sucks, plain and simple. But it also means that when you do get with someone, you’re far more likely to have a healthy, satisfying experience, whether it’s a flirtation, a one-night stand, or a long-term partnership.

Whether you’ve already got a partner or are still on the lookout, you’re ultimately going to have to decide how much you’re willing to “educate” them, versus how much you want them to already understand and care about your sexual priorities. If you’re with someone who believes women who go out wearing a short skirt are “asking to be raped,” is that a deal breaker for you, or a teachable moment? If your partner thinks it’s unsexy to talk openly about sex, is that the beginning of an important conversation for the two of you, or the end of the road? You’re totally justified in feeling like it’s not your job to teach your partners how to not be sexist, nor is it your responsibility to be their personal sex educator. If you choose the zero-tolerance route, you may have a harder time finding folks who meet your standards, but you’ll have less work to do in your relationships when you do have them. On the other hand, if you’re willing to take on “fixer-uppers” who are curious and well-meaning but need you to help out with some enlightenment, you’ll find more willing candidates, but you’ll be putting in more effort and taking a bigger gamble. There’s no right answer. The right balance is up to you.

Dive In: Complete the following sentences. Feel free to write as much or as little as you like about each:

• The person who’s been the most supportive to me throughout this process is:

• The person who seems most challenged by the ways I’m changing is:

• I wish I could make _____understand that:

• I’ve been most surprised by how ______ reacted to:

• The person I most need to talk with more about all of this is ________ really want us to talk about:

PAY IT FORWARD

Now that you’ve got a stronger grip on how to know what you really really want (and how to go after it), you may stop and think to yourself, Why does this have to be so hard? It’s not fair that the way our culture is structured makes it difficult for us to just be ourselves. If that makes you feel angry, frustrated, or sad, you’re not alone. And while there’s nothing you can do to change the past, there’s plenty you can do to change the future, so that the generation of women growing up after you get a lot less of the Terrible Trio, and a lot more of what they really really want, from the outset.

The media’s a great place to start. Pay attention to the types of media you’re consuming. Video games, music, movies, TV, books, even porn—they exist because you give them money to exist. So think about the kinds of messages they’re sending you and everyone else, and vote with your dollars. In other words: Give your money to media that portrays the kind of world you want to live in, and stiff the rest. Not only will you wind up consuming media that supports your values—an awesome goal in and of itself—but you’ll also have a role in creating a world where more of that media exists for other people to find.

(Of course, you can indulge in “guilty pleasures” sometimes. We all have guilty media pleasures. But be aware when you’re doing it, and, when possible, do it in ways that don’t give money to people perpetrating shame, blame, and fear.)

Another place you may want to get involved is in shaping the way sex education is taught in schools. Think back to your own sex ed class: How helpful was it? Did you learn that sex was something good girls Just Don’t Do until marriage, and that was that? Or did you learn that if you insist on having sex, you’d better be super-careful, because otherwise you’ll wind up pregnant and with all sorts of nasty diseases? Those are the two dominant models in the United States right now, and they’re both missing something crucial: pleasure. As we discussed in chapter 10, if you talk to kids about sex and don’t mention pleasure, it creates suspicion, shame, silence, and secrecy. It certainly doesn’t make you seem credible: By the time kids are exposed to sex ed in school, even if they’re not having sex, they have a sense that it might feel pretty great when they do. But leaving pleasure out of sex education does something even worse: It tells women that our satisfaction is an afterthought.

Think about it: In “prevention-based” sex education, the kind about condoms and preventing diseases and pregnancy, the act that’s focused on is penis-in-vagina intercourse. Even if pleasure isn’t mentioned, this teaches boys about the primary way to get sexual pleasure—through stimulation of the penis. But most women don’t reach orgasm from vaginal stimulation alone. Nearly two-thirds of all women require stimulation of the clitoris in order to get off.

And the clitoris is an amazing organ! It’s the only organ in the human body, male or female, that has pleasure as its sole purpose. Awesome, right? But you’ll never learn about it in “harm reduction” sex ed classes, because you don’t have to talk about the clitoris in order to teach people to prevent STDs and pregnancy. I don’t know about you, but in my high school, the clitoris wasn’t even on the anatomy drawing. No wonder so many of us grow up thinking sex is something women do for men’s pleasure.¹

If you want the next generation to grow up with a healthier, more well-rounded vision of sexuality, find out what your local school district (or the school district of a young person you care about) is teaching in terms of sex ed. If they’re not teaching a holistic, pleasure-based model, encourage them to think about it. Then ask your friends and family members who agree with you to encourage them, too.

Dive In: Check out some people and organizations working to create a healthier sexual culture for all of us. Spend at least thirty minutes on one or more of the websites listed at www.wyrrw.com/sexposorgs.