Life gets much simpler when you let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

- Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

A good chunk of sex therapy is leading people to what they want in their relationships and in sex. At times, it’s investigative as we turn over stones of history and see what hides underneath. At times, it’s giving permission to try something new, something imperfect or something vulnerable. At times, it’s sitting in the metaphorical mud together as we move through lifetimes of grief, anxiety and anger.

As a sex therapist, I operate from the philosophy that we all know what we want, but that there is a lot of brain noise, social structures and ‘should’s’ that interfere with our inner knowing and our readiness to accept what we want. We collect beliefs about who is allowed to want and what is appropriate to want.

It’s here where our desire starts to fuse with judgement and shame, and even more so if we have previous experiences that reinforce the wrongness or abuse of desire. It’s here where we start to restrict and override in order to make ourselves more palatable. We say “it’s cringe to care”, “whatever you want is fine”, or “it’s not worth causing a fuss”.

Many of us spend years of our lives sitting with questions of desire and trying to convince ourselves otherwise. What I’ve learned about desire is that it will keep resurfacing until it is met. As in the common pop psychology phrase “what we resist persists”, desire is no different.

This does not mean that you have to enact every single impulse and fantasy that you have, but it’s to ask: what becomes possible if I treat my desire as a compass and a mirror?

Tell me a fantasy and I’ll show you the architecture of who you are and the kind of life that you are still brave enough to want.

When we resist our desires and the wisdom they hold, it can resurface in the form of not trusting ourselves, being in our heads, disconnection or resentment in our relationships.

Whether it’s about what you feel like eating, what you want to wear or how you want to have sex, there is an impulse. You may call it your desire path, your intuition, your gut instinct or your spidey-sense.

Sometimes it’s hard to hear for a variety of reasons including chronic illness, anxiety, body dysmorphia or trauma, but in the soft animal of your body, there is an impulse.

Following that impulse and learning to go by feel is a practice worth getting to know and letting it be enough.

Of course when it comes to big life decisions about marriage, having children or what city you want to live in, there are deeply practical considerations to factor in. However, what I find is for however many folks might be competent and capable in the realm of the practical and logistical, they can also feel just as stuck in the question of “what do I want?”.

When we ask the question of “what is my desire telling me?”, you’ll quickly find that the soft animal of your body hates doom-scrolling or feeling rushed. You’ll find that your body doesn’t really care for the latest trends in fashion and looks-maxxing or the most extravagant and expensive holiday.

You’ll find that it’s actually quite simple in its desires. Mary Oliver was right.

The soft animal of your body does not want to be good; it wants to be known and tended to. It wants movement, rest, getting outside in nature or the comfort of another person’s presence and touch. It wants to feel safe and slow, just as much as it wants to feel alive and passion. It wants to dance and kiss, to share desserts and sleep in, and to hold and be held.

For many folks who might have a troublesome relationship with desire, whether it’s refusing an impulse or not feeling immediately connected to it, desire can become an intellectual exercise.

It becomes an analysis and assessment: What is everyone else going to think? Am I doing this right? What should I do now? Is it okay to do this? Is it normal that I feel like this?

It feels foggy, rushed and the equivalent of taking an inhale and never letting it go. We question, compare and judge ourselves according to some invisible audience where it feels like they weigh up our choices and determine our character.

Whereas to feel desire is often quieter, softer and more curious. There’s a particular buzz and a spaciousness in how it feels. While there is still a forward motion and a pull towards something, it isn’t crushingly urgent nor a test of your worth. When you satisfy the desire and let your body love what it loves, there often also isn’t a big moment of catharsis on the other side of it. It’s simply an exhale.

Where thinking about desire asks “do I want this?”, feeling desire says “oh there you are.”

When you intimately know the difference between thinking about desire and feeling it, you learn to trust your body’s Yes and No. You also learn to trust yourself in a way that doesn’t demand an apology or justification.

It starts to decouple desire with its previous counterparts of shame and judgement, and life gets much simpler.

Of course we still have to navigate the terrain of relationships, consent and our responsibility to each other to not cause reckless harm, but it’s a call to stay connected to the felt impulse of our desire and to know that it’s not another problem to solve.

Whether it’s something wild and kinky, a certain food or colour that you love to wear, wanting rest or to make out for hours, your spectrum of pleasure is as vast and as open as you let it be.

So let it.