Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica:            Sissy, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Sissy:              Okay. Well, I'm going to read my question. So, "The first time an astrologer read my birth chart, they laughed and said that I was the star of my sex. But my relationship to sex and desire and erotic energy/life force has always been fraught. When I think about my relationship to sex, I feel disillusioned, scared, confused, and often like a child. And while I love sex when I'm in it, sometimes it feels easier to imagine giving up sex altogether. This is impacting my partnership, my relationship to creative energy, my health, and my own sense of aliveness. Does my birth chart, especially my Leo stellium, say anything about how to get over my hang-ups so I can be the sexy star I'm meant to be?"

Jessica:            I love this question. And my very literal Capricorn brain is like, "What does that mean, star of sex?" Do you know what that means?

Sissy:              Yeah. I'm not sure what that person fully meant. This was so long ago, but when I think about it now, it feels like I want to embody the confidence, like sex is whatever. I'm just walking down the street, and I can flirt at people, and I'm just so in my body and playful and fun and everything feels great. That's what I think of when I think about the star of sex.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay, because I wasn't sure if it meant you're supposed to be the center of sex⁠—you know what I mean? Because I think, "What is that, the"⁠—you know what I mean? What are we talking about, really? The second I read that, I was like, "I have got to see what this astrologer meant," because it's a weird promise to make someone, "You're the star of sex." I mean, you're the star of anything is a weird promise to make anyone. And I imagine that⁠—I mean, maybe I'm being generous or not generous, but I imagine that person was being metaphorical and spiritual in what they were suggesting. But it stuck with you for a reason, right?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Your birth information⁠—we're sharing parts of it, not all of it. You were born July 5th, '89, 10:53 p.m., somewhere in the United States.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm going to say a bunch of things about your birth chart. I'm just going to kind of rattle some things off, and then we're going to dig. You've got a Pisces Rising, zero degrees, and you've got your North Node at almost 20 degrees of Aquarius in the twelfth house. And it's conjunct your Ascendant. We're going to get to that, okay?

Sissy:              Okay.

Jessica:            And it's intercepted, just like all your Leo is intercepted. You've got your Venus, Mars, and Moon all sitting really tightly close to each other in Leo intercepted in the sixth house. I'm going to say more; don't worry. Then you've got Pluto in the eighth house. Pluto in the eighth house. A person who has Pluto in the eighth house does not have a chill relationship to sex. And so I want to immediately disavow you of that as a goal. If your idea of, "I just want to walk down the street and be totally chill in my body and with sex and everything's easy"⁠—yeah, that's not a great goal. We can get you to a goal that feels good, but chill and you around this topic, or maybe most topics, feels like not the best goal. Does that track for you?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm guessing your partner would agree with me.

Sissy:              Yeah, probably.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm guessing. I'm guessing. So you absolutely have a stellium in Leo. It's really three planets and your South Node. But you have three planets in Cancer as well, and that's⁠—you don't have less Cancer than you have Leo. You have two little baby stelliums. I wouldn't count that South Node as part of a stellium, personally. So you have a whole lot of Cancer in your chart. Also, if we're counting things, you got three planets in Capricorn, too. You have a very focused chart. Almost everything is in Capricorn, Cancer, or Leo.

Sissy:              That's true.

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. So we're going to unpack it all. But again, I'm going to ask you just a couple orienting questions. The first is you referenced a partner. Are you in a monogamous relationship?

Sissy:              I am not. No. I'm polyamorous.

Jessica:            Are you, or are they?

Sissy:              That's a good question.

Jessica:            Thank you.

Sissy:              Yeah. Hmm. I think we're trying to figure it out. I think that it oscillates between who's more polyamorous, let's say. I think of myself as someone who feels really poly right now, but it's a continuous conversation.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. I'm going to have more questions there, but wait.

Sissy:              Sure.

Jessica:            Okay. How long have you been with this person?

Sissy:              Four and a half years.

Jessica:            Okay. Nice, long relationship.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And what are the right pronouns for me to use?

Sissy:              They/them.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Do you live together?

Sissy:              We do.

Jessica:            Aha. Okay. And has living together shifted sex with your partner for you?

Sissy:              Probably. I mean, we started living together pretty early on into our relationship, and I think that being nesting partners probably shifted it for both of us.

Jessica:            Yeah. I would imagine. It tends to. You called it "nesting partners."

Sissy:              Yeah, I did.

Jessica:            That's very sweet. That is a very sweet term. I've never heard it before. Also, you've got a lot of Cancer, and you've got a Pisces Rising. So "nesting partners" kind of sounds⁠—it's very tender. It's very nice. Okay. Whose idea was it to be poly? I just⁠—I need to know.

Sissy:              Wow. Yeah. Hot at the collar. I guess we both came into the relationship as people who are poly.

Jessica:            What's poly?

Sissy:              What is poly? For me, poly feels like being really open to all the types of love that might come into your life and recognizing that some of that could be romantic or sexual with people outside of your partnership. And for me, because my dating life has been pretty stop and start⁠—this is the longest relationship I've had. This is the most certain I've been about a relationship. I haven't actually had a lot of experience with dating multiple people at the same time. And so I've gotten a chance to try that out in this relationship and do that in a way that feels safe, and not without its drama, but definitely safe and secure.

And so, for me, that's a part of poly, too. It's knowing that my love for my friends, my love for my community⁠—all of that gets to be a part of my relationship, or any kind of other partners I might have or other loves I might have, other crushes⁠—all that stuff is welcome in my relationship.

Jessica:            So that's your definition of poly. What's your partner's definition of poly?

Sissy:  I think they would probably say something really similar.

Jessica:            They would? Okay.

Sissy:              Yeah. I mean, they've been poly much longer than I have. They've been poly for, like, over a decade. So, yeah, I'm sure that there's a lot more nuance [indiscernible 00:07:20] than that, coming up with it in this moment, but⁠—

Jessica:            No. It's not a test.

Sissy:              ⁠—it's similar.

Jessica:            It's not a test. It's like⁠—because a lot of times, people say poly, and I have been stunned by the variety in the answers I've received about what is poly or what is nonmonogamous. And it sounds like a lot of what this is about is about heart connections and intimacies. It's not just about fucking other people or dating other people.

Sissy:              Yeah. It's definitely not. No.

Jessica:            Okay. Every single time somebody tells me that they're monogamous or they tell me they're not, I'm like, "What does that mean?" because I want to know what it means to you, right? But the other thing that's really interesting to me about your question is, in your question, you share how sex is so fucking complicated⁠—not just sex with other people, but sex and sexuality inside of your skin and on the streets. And then you say you're poly, which is fascinating because then it makes the negotiation between you and other people around your sexuality chronically an open question in a different way than it would in a monogamous relationship, eh?

Sissy:              Yeah. Yeah. And I think one version of that for me is that for a really long time, I thought that maybe I was demisexual, and I think that's still a word that I sometimes⁠—

Jessica:            What's demisexual? Say it for me.

Sissy:              So, for me, demisexual is feeling like I have to have a real strong romantic connection with someone or know someone for a really long time before I can feel sexually attracted to them. And it could add another level of complication in terms of poly. I think that explains why my poly is much more like it's about feeling as opposed to just going out and fucking people, because that's never really been how⁠ I—

Jessica:            Absolutely.

Sissy:              ⁠—yeah, how I date or how I fuck. So⁠—

Jessica:            Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So I am obsessed with that astrologer telling you that you're the star of sex or you should be the star of sex because I think that's so bananas. It's such an unfortunately destructive thing for somebody to have said to you because you have Pluto⁠, you little millennial, you⁠, in Scorpio⁠—right, Pluto/Scorpio equals millennial⁠—sitting in the eighth house, which on its own makes sex something that is psychologically and emotionally really intense and raw and vulnerable for you, which is not even about having sex with people. It can be, but that's not all that it is.

                        And generally, when we have Pluto in the eighth house⁠—you get it because there's some sort of intensity around sex that either was put on you when you were little or you witnessed from the adults around you. This instantly makes sense, eh?

Sissy:              Yeah, it does.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              That feels resonant.

Jessica:            So that's just Pluto in the fucking eighth house in Scorpio. But then you have got Pluto square your sweet little Leo stellium. You have Pluto at 12 degrees of Scorpio, and that forms a square to the Moon and Mars and Venus. And nothing could make sex more complicated than this series of squares. You have all of the squares from Pluto to a personal planet that a person could have that would make sex and sexuality complicated.

Sissy:              Wow. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah, which is why I'm like, "What was this astrologer thinking?" I'm fascinated. What were they possibly thinking? Because for you, I mean, there's a lot of things to say, but one is that you place so much pressure on yourself to be what you think is normal. And what you think is normal is not necessarily what's normal, but it's like you have this idea of, like, keep it together, like you want to be a particular way around how you are emotionally, how you connect to other people dynamically, which includes romance but is more about the exchange of connection⁠—we're talking about Venus, right? And then Mars⁠—we're talking about sex. Pluto square Mars is a particularly challenging aspect because⁠—and are you comfortable with me talking about your childhood?

Sissy:              Yeah. That's fine.

Jessica:            Okay. And were you raised with both of your parents or just your mom?

Sissy:              Mostly my mom. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, because Pluto square Mars⁠—often, we get that because in our early developmental experience⁠—so I'm referring to either a year before your birth till about seven years old, somewhere in that time frame⁠—there may have been either violence and the energy of violence or sexual violence⁠—I'm including that⁠—in what either happened around you or to you. It looks like it's what happened around you. Am I seeing that correctly?

Sissy:              Yeah. I mean, it's kind of both, to be honest with you.

Jessica:            It's both? I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. So the pressure of star of sex⁠—again, let's crumple it up; throw it away. Let's not even throw it away. Let's put it in the compost bin and let it go back to the earth because that kind of pressure is precisely what you don't need. Instead, I want to just acknowledge that in your early developmental experiences, you learned the cost of intimacy, the cost of vulnerability, and how sometimes you can't trust what you feel because⁠—in particular, when you feel it with and around other people.

Sissy:              Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

Jessica:            Yeah. And I'm really sorry. Because of this⁠—this is a stupid example but I hope will be illustrative. I am from Montreal and spent 30 years in California and grew up in Montreal. I slipped on black ice so many times. So many times have I harmed my tailbone and been very sad. Have you ever fallen on ice?

Sissy:              Yeah. Just, like, a week ago, I fell.

Jessica:            I'm so sorry. That's fucking terrible. So you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Sissy:              I do.

Jessica:            And for 30 years, I've lived in the Bay Area where it literally never snows, but it rains. And I would see the slick pavement and still tentatively put my foot down because my body is so⁠—my whole system is so concerned because the feeling of a bruised or whatever a fucked-with tailbone is—it's awful, right?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, if I have that response to slipping on ice a couple of times, imagine all the ways that the body holds on to fear of losing control and getting hurt.

Sissy:              Wow. Yeah.

Jessica:            And then let's add another layer, okay? You have a little baby stellium in Cancer in the fifth house. So the eighth house and the fifth house is where we go for sex. Those are the two places. You got Chiron sitting very close to your Sun in between the Sun, Mercury, right in there. It's not conjunct Mercury, but⁠—Chiron is the wounded healer. And have you heard me tell the story of Chiron? Do you know the story of Chiron? You can see why it's relevant to you, eh?

Sissy:              I can, yeah. I mean, I remember talking to a friend about the same question, basically, about my relationship to sex. And one of the things that he was saying was sex is about a release. It's such a huge release. And if all of the things that you're focused on right now are about protection, of course you don't want a release.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting that he would say that. I would tweak that.

Sissy:              Okay.

Jessica:            Cumming is about a release.

Sissy:              Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            Sex is not always about cumming, you know? And I think that when it comes to Pluto in the eighth house and having hard aspects between Pluto and Venus and Mars, sometimes the Moon, cumming is not it, is not the point of sex. In fact, if you take cumming off the table, sex can be way more fun because it doesn't engage your control issues on the same level. Does that make sense?

Sissy:              Yeah. Yeah. The idea of sex without cumming does make me sad, but I do understand what you're saying.

Jessica:            Interesting. It makes you sad.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Interesting.

Sissy:              Or it feels kind of like a bummer. Maybe that's the Leo star of sex or something. It's like⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            So, for you, cumming is the point of sex?

Sissy:              That makes me feel really⁠—I don't know if I want to say it's the point of sex, but it's definitely like the reward, you know?

Jessica:            Absolutely. Yes. Listen. I don't want to change your mind about this in any way, shape, or form. But I want to encourage you to sit with it because if the point of sex⁠—and I'm not talking about sex alone; partnered sex⁠—is not feeling safe and present and connected and having fun⁠, if those aren't the kind of primary points, then it's goal-oriented. And when something is goal-oriented, for you, because of those Pluto squares, but especially the Pluto square to Mars, you're really, really hard on yourself. You come at it with an intensity of an Olympian. Does this feel correct?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            It's a lot of fucking pressure. That's a lot of pressure. And some people⁠—pressure is their kink. Pressure is fun.

Sissy:              Right.

Jessica:            Unless you were being really like, "We're going to make pressure into the kink in this specific interaction," I don't get the sense that that's you.

Sissy:              No, you're right. Yeah. I think I'm⁠—the kink is more of the buildup or something. It's the [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Correct. Yes. Yes. And so this is where sex is not like going to the gym, which is literally like⁠—some people enjoy it. A lot of people do it just because they want the outcome.

Sissy:              Right.

Jessica:            When you have so much Leo⁠—a Pisces Rising, a Cancer Sun⁠—sex is about how you feel in your emo, tender little heart. Whether or not you're in love with a person, it's as you said. For you, having sex, most of the time, is really about having an emotional connection. And so I don't want to say, "Have sex and don't get off." That's not what I'm suggesting. But in the hierarchy of what gets your attention, placing that at the top instantly makes it a goal to achieve, which activates your compulsiveness. And your compulsiveness, like everybody else's compulsiveness, is an out-of-body experience.

                        So how can a person⁠—maybe perhaps, perchance, you⁠—be tenderhearted, really sensitive to connection with other people, and fixated on doing it right, achieving the goal, getting there in a certain amount of time⁠—whatever it is? I'm going to pause myself to ask a question, which is do you get in your head with sex?

Sissy:              Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              I mean, I feel like even before my partner, I feel like I had to do so much explaining before, like, "Okay. Before we get into this, I need to tell you all of my trauma. These are my hang-ups. These are my hang-ups." My body⁠—it felt really like, "Okay. This is the list I have to get through before we can actually even be in an erotic energy with each other." And I feel like some of that felt like dysphoria; some of it felt like trauma, etc. But it definitely feels like, yeah, I have to⁠—I'm just really in my head. I'm not in my body at all. And one of the ways that I can feel the most in my body is when⁠—this sounds weird, but when someone else is in their body and [crosstalk]⁠—

Jessica:            Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. Yeah.

Sissy:              Yeah. I can hear or see or reflect their desire for me or their excitement. Then I'm like, "Oh, okay. Here's my body. I found it." And that's even⁠—that's been a thing that's been a problem in previous relationships, too. But yeah.

Jessica:            It's hard to find people who don't have any trauma with sexuality. So, if your strongest tool is mirroring, it gets limited, right? There's only so many people who can show up for sex without any trauma. And because you are so watery⁠—water is⁠—you see a reflection in water, right? Water is so empathetic.

Sissy:              Right.

Jessica:            And on the one hand, you've turned it into a superpower. You turned it into a way to have fun sex and to have good sexual exchanges with people. And on the other hand, it's only one tool, and it's a tool that kind of leans on your natural predisposition to abandon yourself.

Sissy:              Oh fuck. Wow.

Jessica:            This brings me to your Nodes because you're still a puppy, early 30s. Is that right?

Sissy:              Yeah, mid. Mid-30s.

Jessica:            Mid-30s? Okay. Okay. But let's talk bout this North Node for a minute. North Node in Aquarius⁠—soul has come here to figure out who the fuck you are, to allow yourself to be the weirdo that you are, perchance the queerdo that you are, if I may be so bold as to say. It is about embracing your uniqueness. And in your family, that is a very big deal. In your family of origin, that is a very big deal. Are you still in contact with both of your parents?

Sissy:              Less with my dad. Definitely my mom, yeah. She's more down with the weird, but my dad is very confused as to⁠ how he got two Queer, weird children.

Jessica:            I mean, I have hours of things to say about that and about your dad. Your dad is a very complex person. Is he religious?

Sissy:              Kind of. He's not Christian, but with very specific beliefs, yeah. [crosstalk].

Jessica:            He's militant-looking⁠—

Sissy:              Yes.

Jessica:            ⁠—and is all about control, controlling other people so he can control himself, controlling himself so he can control other people. It's very intense. And so for you to be so self-possessed that you give yourself permission to embody who you are is going to be threatening. And it's conjunct your Ascendant from the twelfth. And so the process of investing in your interior, your inner world, is essential to your soul. And doing so, so that you can embody you authentically—

Sissy:              Can you say that again?

Jessica:            Yes.

Sissy:              I think I felt it, but I just need to hear it again.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Investing in your interior life, your spiritual life, how you actually feel⁠—like, how you actually feel, right? Not what you're thinking, which is where you default, but what you actually feel emotionally, spiritually⁠—that is where you find you. You're very good at locating yourself by anchoring into other people, right?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So you mentioned that in terms of kind of mirroring people in sexual encounters, but you do it on all levels. You're very good at it, and it's a great skill. You don't want to lose that skill. But you want to recognize when choosing that skill comes at the expense of you.

Sissy:              Oof. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. When it requires you to abandon you.

Sissy:              Can I ask about that?

Jessica:            Yes, please.

Sissy:              Because I feel like⁠—and this ties in to the part of the question that feels like it's about the creative impulse, like erotic in the [indiscernible 00:22:54] sense of the word, the loudness.

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah.

Sissy:              So much of my work⁠—whether it's my art, my actual professional work⁠—is so tied to other people, to groups and collectives and gathering with other people, which, yeah, I do feel like is a superpower of mine. I think I can do that really well. I think I do that with a lot of grace and warmth and all the things. But I actually am not sure yet how to do that on my own. I don't know if it just feels lonely or if it feels⁠—yeah, maybe that scary feeling, maybe that child feeling I'm talking about.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              But yeah, and it's hard for me to sit with myself. I think I kind of lose myself when I do that.

Jessica:            Yeah. I would actually pause it. It's not that you're losing yourself when you do that. It's that you're present with how you don't even know where you are. You are excellent at rising to the occasion. You meet the moment. And some of that is a trauma response. Some of that is you got a fucking baby stellium in Capricorn in the eleventh house. You're like, "What needs to get done? Let's get shit done." You've got a baby stellium in Leo. You're like, "Let's have fun while we're doing it. Let's move through this. Let's carry things to the finish line." Right? It's nice, fixed sixth-house stellium.

                        And then you care, with all that Cancer stuff. You emphatically care. These are great pieces⁠—I mean, there's other things in your chart that point to these three things, but this is all very real. And it's consuming, and it's high-functioning, right? It allows you to have friends and allies and comrades, and it allows you to have dates and romances and all the things. Nobody has a North Node conjunct the Ascendant and doesn't struggle, on some level or another, with being alone because you've come here on a soul level to figure out who the fuck you are and to choose that person.

                        What you had modeled for you as a child and what may have also⁠—some of what happened to you as well⁠—is being too deep, being too intense, being too focused on yourself has fucking dire consequences.

Sissy:              Yeah. That resonates.

Jessica:            Yeah. And when you say you're tight with your mom, do you talk daily, weekly?

Sissy:              Yeah. We talk weekly, honestly more every other week. She's really been getting on my nerves, bless her. Yeah. I'm having a hard time spending a lot of time with her, but some of that annoyance is that she's not spending more time with me. It's like a whole⁠—

Jessica:            It is a whole thing, and it's not off topic⁠—

Sissy:              Okay.

Jessica:            ⁠—because that Pluto/Moon square generally indicates very broadly you had a bad parent, an unsafe parent, and then a good parent who was the safe parent. And that safe parent will often create a merged dynamic where "We need each other. We rely on each other in order to be okay." And so there's this incredible closeness that can often be kind of codependent.

Sissy:              Yeah. I mean, the safe parent⁠—I definitely think she was safe. I don't think she was safe to herself⁠—

Jessica:            Correct.

Sissy:              ⁠—like I had a sick parent. So, when you talk about the merging or the codependence, it was more like keep Mom alive, you know?

Jessica:            I see. So the merging was because you had to take care of your mom.

Sissy:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm sorry. Again, it's like this other way that your experience taught you how bodies are not reliable; they're not safe in a particular way.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So here's the thing about this Pluto/Moon square, and this is not to vilify your mother or her circumstances, to vilify you. It's not about good person/bad person. Little kid us thinks good parent/bad parent, good person/bad person. But the reality is your relationship with your mom does require you to be really on guard and to be really of service.

Sissy:              Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              Spot on.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It turns out that you can't do that in a healthy way for your whole life. I actually would contend you couldn't do that in a healthy way as a child. But it was your best shot. It was your best option.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And where we are now is, you know, in several years, you'll have⁠—I don't know if it's several. A couple years, you'll have your Saturn square, your first Saturn square, which is the major crisis from the Saturn Return. And at that point, if you haven't already worked on this, it's really going to come up, this pattern in your interpersonal relationships, maybe specifically with your mom, but also in the ways that it shows up elsewhere where you have to place other people's needs first in order to feel safe.

                        And so this comes back to this core issue of, when you're alone with yourself and you're just like, "What am I doing? What is this? I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing"⁠—that's the most important relationship. It's the most important relationship, the one that you have when you're alone with yourself, because if you can practice being like, "Okay. I really don't know. I feel confused. I feel thrown around. I don't know what I think or feel. I'm bored"⁠—all the things, right? I'm guessing that's⁠—

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah⁠—to practice sitting with that, just that. Maybe do a scan of your emotions, your thoughts, and your body. And when I say a scan, is scan is not like an in-depth analysis, Plutonian you. A scan is just a scan. It's just like, "Take note." By taking note without fixating with your mind⁠, you're bringing presence to your experience. So, if you were to take note⁠—I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.

Sissy:              Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Tell me if I'm hitting this right. Your head is like⁠—there's a part of your head that's really focused and part of your head that's staticky.

Sissy:              Yeah. I can feel that. There's a part of me that feels really almost buzzy and tuned in, and there's another part that feels a little distracted.

Jessica:            It's interesting. The part of you that you're saying is tuned in is actually the part that I thought was staticky, because the way you're tuned in is headfirst. It's so head. It's⁠—you are the great and powerful Oz. Do you know what I'm saying?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's a disproportionate amount of head. I know this sounds like a funny sex joke, but I'm talking about your brains. I'm talking about your noodle, right? Okay. I'm going to have you just take a moment to breathe if you can. Did you feel your stomach move when you breathed?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Did you feel it, or are you just aware that it happened?

Sissy:              Oh, good question.

Jessica:            Thank you very much.

Sissy:              I don't know.

Jessica:            Okay. We're going to do a quickie little exercise. Take one of your hands. Doesn't matter which one. Put it on your stomach. Take a breath and notice if you can feel the experience.

Sissy:              Yes, I can feel that.

Jessica:            Was it different than before?

Sissy:              Yeah. Before, I kind of felt the aftereffect of it. I don't know how else to describe that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, because you're perched right outside of yourself, plugging in like, "This is what I should do." You're tracking. You're tracking. You're tracking. It's very Plutonian to track. And again, it's not all bad. There's a lot of positive things about it. But in the context of our larger conversation, it requires a level of self-abandonment that is so deep that you don't even realize you're doing it.

                        So of course sex is hard. Oh my God. To go from watching yourself to not just being in your body but having an interaction with somebody and not completely pouring yourself into them and losing yourself or defending yourself against them⁠—that is going to be⁠—I mean, that's just like hurdles on hurdles on hurdles.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So okay. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. We're coming back to you. I'm just going to look at you energetically. I know this sounds like a weird question, but you want to be having sex?

Sissy:              I⁠—yeah, I think so. I mean yes.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              I mean, yes, I do. I want to be having sex, but I also don't at the same time, if that makes sense.

Jessica:            It does, 100 percent. 100 percent it does. Now we're going to get a little personal. I know that's funny because we've been personal the whole time. But let's talk about sex with your partner.

Sissy:              Okay.

Jessica:            Okay. That's the first time I've seen you look uncomfortable, by the way. So okay. Do the two of you still have sex?

Sissy:              Not right now, no.

Jessica:            Okay. And do you want to be having sex with them?

Sissy:              Yeah, I do.

Jessica:            Really?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm not setting you up. I'm just⁠—okay. You do. Okay. And do they want to have sex with you?

Sissy:              I think so.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And are you comfortable initiating sex?

Sissy:              No.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              No.

Jessica:            Do they know that?

Sissy:              Yeah, I think so. I mean, we've talked about it. I think that can be a problem sometimes.

Jessica:            They're not like a top who loves to initiate sex all the time?

Sissy:              I think they are. I think they just don't want to feel too forward or something, you know?

Jessica:            Right. They don't want to pressure you to have sex.

Sissy:              Yeah. I think, also, they want to feel desire, obviously, all the things, too, like I'm⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            That's perfectly fair. That is perfectly reasonable. But that's not your primary way of letting someone know you are into them, is by letting them know you're into them. Am I wrong about that?

Sissy:              That's not my primary way, you're saying?

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm saying⁠—

Sissy:              Absolutely not. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. No, it's not. It's not. I mean, do you kind of tease your partner?

Sissy:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's your way of flirting. But it's hard for you to set someone up with that because sometimes you would like your partner to kind of press sex because you're just like, "Come on. I'm too in my head. I need to be reminded. Just remind me."

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And then sometimes it feels really nonconsensual and fucked up when somebody tries to press you when you're not resonating with it. Am I correct about this?

Sissy:              Yeah, but it also just feels easier sometimes, if I'm honest.

Jessica:            It is easier. Oh yeah, it's easier to completely let go of all responsibility and control and let somebody else do all the work. Yeah. Of course. Easier is not the question. The question is more your partner⁠—it looks like their concern about initiating all the time is that sometimes it's met with, "Oh hell no," or⁠—like "Oh hell no" either like, "You're annoying me," or, "You're hurting my feelings or making me feel bad."

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So that's the part right there, is that that part of you that has abandoned yourself⁠—right? And this abandonment is hiding behind being responsive, so being a responsible, responsive person. So you can abandon yourself at work and in community and all these things, and no one notices, and it feels good, even. It brings you great life experiences in lots of ways.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But when it comes to anything that requires you to be emotionally present, which apparently sex does, it doesn't work. So if you, like most humans, are a one-to-three trick pony, your tricks don't work in this milieu most of the time, which is why you feel bad about it, and it's why your partner of many years who deeply cares about you, who wants to have sex with you and you want to have sex with, has learned to stop initiating because I'm guessing, at first, they initiated a lot, and it worked.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              Yeah. That makes sense.

Jessica:            This is not your fault. This is not your fault. This is not your fault. Let me be exceptionally clear. It's not about fault. Were you starting to think it was your fault?

Sissy:              Yeah, it does feel like my fault sometimes. And I think there's also that part of me that's like⁠—I don't know how to fully describe this but to say that the sex⁠—sometimes the sex that I want to have is not⁠—it's not sexual. It's not sex at all. It's more that kind of cinnamonny, spicy, desire-y feeling that, yeah, I get with my partner for sure, but I⁠—you know, when you're five years into a relationship, it's not the same there.

Jessica:            Absolutely.

Sissy:              And I feel like I want a fantasy of a thing that I'm like⁠—

Jessica:            There it is.

Sissy:              ⁠—that I want⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            There it is. Okay. Let's stay with that for a second, Pisces Rising, because⁠—yeah, that's right; I called you a name⁠—because on the one hand, I mean, that's what polyamory is for. We're good. And on the other hand, that doesn't fix your problem. Going out and getting dessert doesn't actually cook your dinner. You know what I mean? And this is always a risk with relationships, is that we go out and we look for dessert before we've had a healthy dinner or a happy dinner, right?

                        So, on the one hand, I mean, what are you going to fucking do? It's a relationship. It's a long-term relationship. You're right. Some of that cinnamon spicy deliciousness⁠—you're not going to find it every week at home or every month at home.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And on the other hand, if somebody knows you⁠—like knows you⁠—and likes you and also is annoyed by you and lives with you and does dishes with you sometimes, for you sometimes⁠—you do them for them⁠—if somebody is somebody you buy toilet paper with, there's nothing more intimate than this⁠—what did you call it? Nesting?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Nestling love. It's such a tender thing to do. It's turning someone into family, right?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Your partner is your family.

Sissy:              Which I love. Yeah.

Jessica:            Of course. Yeah. Yes. You deeply love. You choose this structure, and you choose this person, and you choose this relationship.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Here's the fucking rub, okay? Here's the fucking rub. Family is traumatizing and not sexy.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You've got a Pluto/Moon square.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Family is a trigger for you. It's not a "Oh, of course, everything's going to be fine no matter what" kind of thing. It's a "What do I have to do to stay safe? How can I take care of you? How do I need to take care of myself? What's going to come next?" So there's a hypervigilance is what I'm trying to say, for you, that comes up at home.

And so waiting for sex with your partner to not engage your hypervigilance, which pops you out of your body⁠—it's going to be a very fucking long wait. This is something you're going to have to work on. But when I say work on, if you work on it in your typical way, your Olympian way of working on goals⁠—like, "I'm going to make this happen. I'm going to pull together my energy, and I'm going to fucking make this happen"⁠—that won't work at all with this topic, right?

                        This is why I asked if you want to have sex with your partner and if your partner wants to have sex with you, because none of this works unless those two boxes are checked, which they are. But I want to just acknowledge that even within that, you may, two hours from now, look at your partner and think to yourself, "I don't want to have sex with this fucking person right now. Not at all." And I just want to hold space for there is an ebb and flow to that. And the hypervigilance in your nature says it's either yes or no. And so, if it's no at 6:00 p.m., then there's a part of you that gets attached to that no at 6:00 p.m. And even if your body says at 7:30, "Actually, maybe," your head has already said no. And so there's this trauma pattern for you of defending that impulse.

Sissy:              That resonates with me. I can definitely feel that vigilance and⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm going to give you advice, if you want it, about how to have more sex with your partner. Is that what you want? Is that the kind of advice you want?

Sissy:              Yeah. I'll take it. I think it's⁠—for me, it's also⁠—the advice is like sex feels like it's connected to my ability to be alive in this world and to generate. And maybe I'm making this up. Maybe I'm making too much meaning, which I know I can do. The root part of my body feels fucked up right now, and I can't write. And I just want to do nothing. That feels like it's all connected to the fact that I'm just not this⁠—I don't know. Maybe it's that what you're saying about me feeling like I need to go towards this normal, this sense of normalcy or something. But it⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            What you're talking about is hypervigilance.

Sissy:              Okay.

Jessica:            You're hypervigilantly defending your need to rest or exploring, "What is the problem right now?" There's a kind of going deeply into it. I want you to repeat the first part of what you said to me because it sparked something, and then I lost it in the second part.

Sissy:              Not having sex feels like it's⁠—honestly, killing my life force is the thing that comes to mind right now, and that all the things feel connected, too, to that.

Jessica:            Yeah. They are. I don't want to take that from you. You're right. They are. It's not killing your life force, though. What's happened is that this has always kind of been there, and now you're older. And if you have ever carried a heavy backpack all day long, you notice that it gets heavier as the day goes on, even though it's the same fucking weight. At a certain point, you get fatigued by the weight of the shit you're carrying around.

                        And you are correct that the interconnection between feeling your own life force energy and being a creative⁠—whether we're talking about that interpersonally or in terms of actions with other people or making art in some way or fucking or flirting⁠—whatever the level, it's all interconnected with all the things we're talking about. And it is connected to sex. However, you have just put all of the weight of the universe upon something that requires emotional presence instead of strategy. You're not wrong that these things are connected. You're not wrong that there's something in you that is pulled back, and you want to let the stallions of your muse gallop forth from you. You got all that fucking fire. You have stallions inside of you.

If that were to truly happen, how would it feel? How long could you sustain it for? I am not saying, oh, you can't have what you want. I'm saying you're putting pressure on yourself to have everything all at once, now, when you think about sex or creativity in various ways. And that level of pressure is not especially kind to yourself, and it's coming from outside. It's the great and powerful Oz saying, "Go get me those fucking ruby red slippers. Otherwise, you can't go anywhere."

If you're not present inside of yourself, this is going to be hard for you to achieve. You're trying to do it, but this is not actually a problem of you doing. I'm sorry. If it was a problem of you doing, I could give you a list of things to do, and you would do them. The problem is how you feel inside of you. It's your interior landscape that is your struggle. And I will say to you what you've probably heard me say before, which is what's hard for you is not what's wrong with you. The fact that this is hard for you doesn't mean you're broken or fucked up or⁠—nothing like that. It means that this is what's hard for you. Have you ever been around children, like human children?

Sissy:  Yeah. I love children.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Me, too. Love kids. Okay. Have you ever seen a child try to learn how to tie their shoes? Have you seen such a thing?

Sissy:              Yeah. I think so.

Jessica:            Herculean efforts. Kids do not intuitively get how to tie a shoe. And that's okay. But if you say to a kid, "Well, if it's hard for you, let me just let you know that if you can't tie your shoe, then it's probably connected to not being able to play. And also, if you can't tie your shoe, you probably can't go out and connect to other people. And if you can't tie your shoe, you might not like the way you look because you're not wearing shoes." How is the kid ever supposed to fucking learn, right?

Sissy:              [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So, again, you're placing too much pressure. And the reason why tying your shoes is a great metaphor is because, adult to adult, we think of it as a pretty simple, given thing. Well, you know, I expect you know how to tie a shoe without thinking twice, right?

Sissy:              Right.

Jessica:            And being emotionally present in your body is also really foundational, but most adults don't do it. We pretend. I'm pretending; you're pretending. We're all pretending. Those of us with trauma, a.k.a. big Pluto issues⁠—it's like you don't even realize you're doing it because the survival mechanism becomes the identity.

Sissy:              Wow.

Jessica:            It takes the wheel.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if what we're addressing is not how to have more sex with your partner, which⁠—by the way, none of this has to do with cumming, just for the record, just revealing that to you. If what we're focusing on more is your larger capacity and relationship to sex as an energy, sex as an action, sex as a share, creation as an action, as a share, as a practice⁠—if we're going in that direction, then my advice to you is way more annoying to you than the other one would have been, which would have been very annoying also. I mean, this is a better question. I'm glad. This is a better question.

                        You have to practice being present with yourself. I mean, that's the fucking answer. Wouldn't you love it if I had a different answer? Because if you develop a practice of being alone, phone off or in another room, not connected to other people, and you feel what you feel, you're going to feel bad most of the time. And it's not because you feel bad all the time. That's not it. It's because if every time you leave the house, you wear a mask because COVID is real, and then you take that mask and you shove it in your backpack and you move on with your life⁠—every day, new mask, new shove. New mask, new shove. At the end of the week, at the end of the month, at the end of the year, let's say at the end of somewhere in the mid-30s, you're going to have a bag full of dirty masks. Now you gotta deal with it. You gotta pull them out of your bag.

It builds up is what I'm saying. And at a certain point, it overwhelms the backpack. You're the backpack in my metaphor, if that wasn't obvious. Okay. Thank you. Because you don't have a practice of sitting with yourself and giving yourself permission to feel vulnerable, feel sad, feel awkward, and instead you start to feel those feelings and you redirect to your brain like the great and powerful Oz⁠—because that's your practice and you've been practicing that for 30-odd years⁠—I mean, honestly, this was developed for eight or nine. Eight or nine is what it looks like, this pattern, so almost 30 years. When you start to settle into your skin, like truly settle into your skin, there's a lot of care required because you, adult you, has been acting towards inner child you like a parent who doesn't show up with care and nurturance.

You've been parenting yourself. We all are constantly parenting ourselves. But you've been parenting yourself with avoidance. It makes sense, right? It tracks. But if you persist in this pattern, its consequences will become heavier and heavier and heavier to you, as you're experiencing. Some things do get better with time. This is not one of them.

What is required of you is to treat yourself the way you might treat a child, a puppy, a friend, someone you actually really care about. And what you have the skills around is you know how to navigate and manage your life and your welfare, correct?

Sissy:  Yeah. I'm good at that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You're very good at adulting. And you deserve an actual gold star for that because that is⁠—you know, I mean, that's a fucking feat. It's not nothing. But it's good for you to acknowledge, "Okay. At this age, I have achieved this level of self-reliance, and I can see that there's this bucket that needs my care. It needs my attention." And whenever we do that as adults, what happens is we are forced to greet the parts of ourselves that we abandoned, and they're at the age we abandoned them.

Sissy:              Wow.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              That's wild that you say that. I mean, I think of myself as someone who's very warm. I think people meet me and are just like, "Oh, you're so chill. You're so warm." But when I think about doing inner child work⁠—it's funny that you said that there's a sense of avoidance there. It's really hard for me to sit with. I don't have that same kind of warmness towards⁠—

Jessica:            No.

Sissy:              There's actually a lot of⁠—yeah, there's a lot of shame when I think about myself as a younger⁠—a child, I guess.

Jessica:            Yeah. The shame is all your Pluto shit. And the firmly and aggressively parenting yourself into adulthood⁠—Saturn/Neptune in Capricorn shit. You've done a great job, but you've done the job that your inner child knows how to do. And your inner child wasn't given the love, support, and care, the space to be a child, because of your circumstances, right? It's not your fault. We can point fingers at your parents. What's the value in it? I mean, there's a value in it if you want to do it, but that's not what we're doing right now.

                        It's acknowledging that you have done for yourself essentially what was done for you. You haven't made much space for your feelings, only your needs that are actual needs, not your soft needs, which is antithetical to who you are because that's what you're extra good at with other people. You see those subtle nuance things that would give them a little bit more ease, and you show up with that first. And it makes them feel better, and it makes them feel safe, and it's how you know how to love. And you developed that skill, but you haven't developed the willingness and the practice of giving it to yourself.

                        And this is at the core of your question, right? And does that mean if you learn to love yourself in these particular ways, that sex will be easier? Yes, it does. It actually does, but it doesn't only mean that. It means that you will be able to assess in the moment, by checking in with yourself, "What kind of attraction am I having to this person?" not, "What kind of attraction are they having to me?" which is your specialty, because some people are very attractive but actually not a safe choice. You might have a friend who you have a really great chemistry with, but you've seen them hook up with other people and you know they're not a safe choice for you to go there with or whatever.

                        Assessing your safety while assessing your desire without pathologizing either, which is essentially about not attaching to either, is a practice that I believe you can absolutely have. And I believe you could have it be pretty reflexive. It would be a result of having the willingness and ability to sit through discomfort inside of yourself alone, whereas focusing on sex and sexuality won't give you that skill. Cultivating that skill will help your sexuality.

Sissy:              That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Jessica:            Sometimes, when you feel shame, it is for no discernible reason. You see yourself in the mirror. You're like, "Oh"⁠—you kind of recognize yourself at ten years old when you see yourself in the mirror⁠—feelings, shame, bad, weird. Is this correct?

Sissy:              Yeah. Definitely.

Jessica:            Pluto works like that. When we have strong Pluto stuff, as you do, it's like 10-year-old you, 14-year-old you, whatever, 7-year-old you had an experience, and it was bad to that part of you. And it may have been a truly bad experience, or it may have been like somebody said something mean, and your adult self can be like, "Okay. Yeah. That happens to literally everyone." But when it happens to you, there can be a part of you, because of these Pluto dynamics, that is like, "No. I'm going to take it, and I'm putting it in a fist, and I'm going to shove it as deep down as it goes."

Sissy:              Totally.

Jessica:            And that means that you won in the moment. But it also means that you have a fistful of that emotion from whatever age you were and all the drama of a child's emotions living inside of you. And this is where it just doesn't make any sense why it comes up in moments where it feels disproportionate to the issue, all that kind of stuff.

Sissy:              It manifests physically for me. Like, I have tears or I'll have a, like, scream or moment of just intense anxiety, and then I have to⁠—in order to keep going, I have to kind of swipe it aside or something.

Jessica:            Okay. So to this I will say a couple things. First of all, it starts in your body because you have fucking Leo intercepted in your sixth house, and all that Pluto does it does to your sixth house. So it shows up in your body. I've learned to call those anxiety spikes. It's not really anxiety, although anxiety is a part of it. It's more of a whole-body fucking experience, right?

Sissy:              Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            And it can be fixated in parts of your body and in parts of your physical health, but it's like being seized by something, right?

Sissy:              Totally. Yeah.

Jessica:            When that occurs, that's that Pluto undertow you've heard me talk about. And so the content of the thought or the provocation is important to not fixate on.

Sissy:              Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? Instead⁠—have you ever heard of havening?

Sissy:              No.

Jessica:            Okay. Havening is like⁠—it was created kind of recently, and it was created for people with PTSD, in particular people who came back from war. It includes basically self-stimming, a form of self-stimming as a way to connect to your physical body and your emotions in the present. It's a way to get into your meat suit because⁠—and I don't know the extremeness of your situation. Obviously, do not let this replace common sense or good mental health suggestions.

Sissy:              Sure.

Jessica:            But I will say this. Every time you get that shame spike or that anxiety spike or whatever we want to call it and you shove it away, you are perpetrating the harm that created it. You're abandoning yourself and showing yourself that you are not there for you, that you're not a safe person. And when you perpetrate behaviors where you say to you, "I'm not there for you. I don't take care of you. I know you're suffering. Fuck it. I'm gone," why in the world would you feel safe to have sex?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Why in the world would you feel safe to let someone in who could unravel a romantic or sexual intrigue in your life, in which you have technically no control? Right? This is like the thing.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            The practice⁠—and it's a practice. The thing about practice is that when you're practicing, it's implied that you won't get it right, that you don't know how to do it. Let me be clear. I see how perfectionistic you are. You have this Olympian style. You're not supposed to be good at this. Don't try to be good at this. That's a bad goal. The only goal is to continue the practice, and when you forget the practice or you fuck up the practice, you redirect to the practice. That's all that it is. And then the practice is you have to speak kindly to yourself and treat yourself like you would treat someone that you think is tender and sweet and cute and vulnerable and worthy of love. That's the practice.

                        And that means choosing to feel sad and bad much more frequently than you do. And the risk of that for you with your trauma pattern is, if you feel sad and bad, then people might leave you because you're no longer taking care of them and centering their needs.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And if that's what happens, it's great for you to find that out because you don't need that in your life. I mean, some of it you need. You have a job, I'm guessing. You have communities where there are some people you're just not going to work well with. Fine. In terms of your intimacy life, your closeness life, any close person that you lose because you're taking up more space with your intensity and your rawness⁠—yeah, that's not the right person for you. The truth is most of this is really about you choosing you and not about other people leaving you if you're intense.

Sissy:              Yeah. I've heard that a lot, actually. I've been given that advice before, but it's really hitting today.

Jessica:            Good. I'm glad. And also, nobody's good at their North Node. That is like the rule. And eventually⁠—and again, I always assert it's after 40⁠, and for some people it's before. But we can come into embodiment of our North Node in a way that's really healthy and well adjusted and all those things, but it's not natural. You have to try. And it's trying in something that, on a soul level, feels really like, "This is the opposite of what I'm supposed to do," because the South Node, which you have in Leo⁠—you've done in previous lifetimes⁠—you were like, "Let me just be the star. Let me take up the space. Let me shine, shine, shine. Let me be fun all the time. Let me be creative all the time." That was what your soul learned how to do.

                        But you've got your South Node at the anaretic degree of Leo. You did it. Check. Check. You don't have to keep on proving to yourself that you're creative and that you're fun and that you're dynamic and that you're a star. You get to do something else this time. And some of this has to do with not fitting in. And within that, people hear that and they have lots of different ideas, but it might be like the people in your community⁠—when they talk about polyamory, they're talking about it with a pink hat, and you're talking about it with a blue hat. It might just be not fitting in. It doesn't have to mean any one thing. And the reason why it shakes down like that for you is because you alone get to decide if that's okay, if that's authentic. And that requires that you care enough about yourself to sit with what you feel and what you need and what you believe.

Now, I'm going to say one more thing about sex with your partner⁠—

Sissy:  Okay.

Jessica:            ⁠—because I bet they would be really grateful if we talked about this part because they would like to have a lot more sex with you than they're having. Am I seeing that right?

Sissy:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Great. You underplayed that before, but we agree they would. And technically, you would. But the problem is, when you come home, it's like all the feelings⁠—it's such a wide chasm between being in your head and getting into your body. And to traverse that chasm⁠—it's already late at night. Let's go to⁠—you know. It can be hard work is what I'm trying to say.

Sissy:              Sure.

Jessica:            I once spoke with a couples' counselor who was a straight guy, a straight cis guy. So this advice feels very on brand or his demographic, okay?

Sissy:              Okay.

Jessica:            But I'm going to share it with you. He worked with long-term partnerships exclusively, and he was a couples' counselor. And he said that sometimes sex is like chewing cardboard; you just do it. You just take the actions, and you do it. And I thought, "That is the fucking stupidest shit I ever heard." No. It's like, for anyone with a trauma pattern, like a trauma history with sex and body stuff, that doesn't work.

                        And then I thought about it and the ways in which it's an interesting idea to explore. Is it possible⁠—and this is my advice. It's coming in the form of a question.

Sissy:              Sure.

Jessica:            Is it possible for you to experiment with having sex with your partner when you don't really want to, with the goal and intention that it's either not goal-oriented⁠—so it's not necessarily about fucking and getting to the finish line, or if that makes you sad, as you said earlier, then that's not it⁠—

Sissy:              I'm sorry for saying⁠—

Jessica:            No, no, no.

Sissy:              [indiscernible 01:00:36] me for saying that. Yeah.

Jessica:            No. No, no, no, no. Sex is like⁠—some people just are all about cumming, and some people are not about cumming. And I think it's important for there to be space for all the kinds of people. Do you know what I'm saying? However your fucking body and your sexuality works is good. As long as it's consensual, no shame. No bad answers. No bad answers. I said it for the people in the back, okay? So don't you feel weird about that. Or maybe it's only about the finish line. I want to encourage you to experiment with just trying something.

Sissy:              Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            And be open to having an annoying experience with your partner if they're down for that. And the reason why is because, half the time, you don't want to have sex because you're in your head, and it's too large of a gap to traverse, as I said. And the other half of the time, it's because you don't want to have fucking sex, right?

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And right now, you don't really have a way of knowing the difference.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You have to get in the pool and see if you want to swim before you know if you want to swim. That's just how that's going for you. And because you feel safe with this person and you trust this person and you have a mutual care and respect and attraction with this person, I can't imagine a safer way to experiment with this because if you found, "Oh God. There's something actually really bad happening for me emotionally right now," you could just say to your partner, "Oh shit. It was the other one. It was the 'I can't have sex right now' one."

                        And then your job is to let them know how hot they are and let them know how much you love them and appreciate them. And don't descend into guilt and shame.

Sissy:              Right.

Jessica:            You can't make it about you, because you're making⁠—it is about you, but again, if your partner is down for this, then it's an experiment. And it could result in 25 percent more sex. It could result in zero percent more sex. It could result in 75 percent more sex. There's only one way to find out.

Sissy:              Sure.

Jessica:            And if they're down to experiment, then that means they're going to be down to have the plug pulled on them sometimes.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I would set them up for half the time. Just create the expectation. And if they're like, "That would feel bad," okay. This is a bad idea. Don't do it. But if they're like, "Let's go and see what happens. I'm down for that other 50 percent," then you can explore the emotions. And I would like to point out⁠—do you feel what you're feeling? Do you know what you're feeling right now?

Sissy:              No.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mm-hmm. Man, you went to a place.

Sissy:              [crosstalk]. Yeah.

Jessica:            You went to a place. You went to a place. So here's a couple things I'm going to say. The first one is you don't have to do anything you don't want to do, ever. I mean, yes, you do. I mean, you have to do a million things you don't want to do, but not on this topic is what I mean. You don't have to take this advice. It may be terrible advice. It may be great advice. It doesn't matter. Even if it's fucking amazing advice that would objectively fix all your problems, you don't have to do it. You get to say no.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Part of this is about consent.

Sissy:              I think maybe when you said grief and shame, I felt a feeling. I think that one of the reasons why I don't feel is because once I do, it's just a wave of overwhelm.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sissy:              You know? And that's just hard. But it was great advice.

Jessica:            It doesn't have to be. Again, I don't want you to take care of me around this. That's⁠—I appreciate it. It's very kind. But I want to say that what I actually saw happening was that it's like you have all these emotions that have built up around these other big emotions. And that's when I saw you just getting kind of like⁠—your reaction to it is you kind of go into a crystallization process yourself. You get tight and rigid emotionally, and there's a lot of sadness in that. There's a lot of grief and sadness in that.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so that started to come up at the suggestion that I made. And it doesn't matter why. I mean, it does matter why, but in this moment, I want to just practice acknowledging, "Okay. That's what came up." And it's not⁠—we don't have to make it interesting. We don't have to pair it with analysis. We don't have to figure out why. We don't have to fix it. It's not broken. It's just a feeling. Emotions are just energy in motion. And sometimes what happens is you encounter emotions that feel like there is no motion to them; they're stuck. And those are the worst for you. You fucking hate those.

                        And so your habit is to then move away from them or shut down or disassociate. And that's a good, adult, common sense thing to do. But then they remain in stasis. They don't evolve. They don't shift. And so, as you play with this⁠—and hopefully you do play with this a little bit. Whether it's my advice or not doesn't matter. Play with different ways of holding this or looking at this or sitting with this. You'll encounter these feelings, these stuck feelings that feel like if you let them move, you'll lose yourself in them, right?

                        And the practice is being like, "Oh, here it is again. I'm feeling it. Okay. I'm just feeling it. How long can I sit with it?" What I like to do sometimes is literally grab my phone and put a timer on my phone and just really be in the feelings and breathe into the feelings and receive the feelings. And then let the timer go off and then be like, "Okay. I'm grabbing my phone and scrolling," or whatever⁠—to let it go.

                        And for a Plutonian nature, knowing that there's an end time, that it's not a forever thing, can really help. It's control, right? So you may want to practice that. You may want to sit with and explore this idea before sharing it with your partner so that you have a greater relationship to the feelings that it provokes before you share it with them. You're allowed to do that. Just FYI, you're allowed to have privacy. It's encouraged. I encourage⁠—you should have privacy.

Sissy:              Yeah. That's really good advice.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I'm really glad. And let me just ground it back down. Okay. This is what I was supposed to say. You authentically value being kind and being well adjusted, yeah? You do.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You help other people to those ends every damn day. If those are truly held values, then the way to be in alignment is to embody them internally. And when you do that, it will strengthen your capacity to offer that for others, and then it will have this really enlivening effect on the parts of you that have gone into crystallization mode, calcification mode, where you wish there was more motion and motility, right? That life force energy you're missing is life force energy that's in survival mode.

And so it's interesting because I'm able to see right now you have really strong guides. I'm assuming you have a very woo life in your own way because you have really strong guides. And they're just showing me how much more impact you'll have and also how much happier you'll be on the other side of some of this. And that doesn't mean you have to do it. But choosing yourself is actually the answer to your question. And choosing yourself includes evolving your ability and willingness to be kind to yourself when you feel challenging emotions. And that actually just organically makes sex more fun and easier and organic. Weird. Weird, weird, weird. But that's how that works for you.

Okay. Do you eat meat? Do you eat veggies? What do you eat?

Sissy:  I eat meat, yeah, and veggies.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm going to give you just a little bit of homework to integrate. Before you go on a scroll-a-thon or before you do anything else⁠—are you hungry? Are you hungry right now?

Sissy:              I probably need to eat dinner.

Jessica:            I feel like you need to eat dinner, too.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Can you make an effort to have a really grounding meal? I'm not talking about comfort foods. I'm talking about⁠—like do you feel especially grounded when you eat broccoli or when you eat chicken or something? Do you know what I'm saying? Can you make an effort to cook or order food that you know is particularly good for your body tonight?

Sissy:              Yeah. I have a delicious stew in the fridge waiting for me.

Jessica:            That's what I'm talking about. Okay. So, when you eat, before you take your first bite, maybe take a moment to acknowledge that inner child and just be like, "This is a healthy meal. We eat healthy meals." That's all. That's it. Small.

Sissy:              Okay.

Jessica:            Acknowledge and feed, nourish the child. Acknowledge and nourish yourself because you are the child. Okay? That's a great starting point and a great ending point, as it were. How are you doing?

Sissy:              I'm good. (laughs)

Jessica:            (laughs)

Sissy:              I'm good. It's easier to laugh than it is to cry, right?

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Sissy:              Wow. I feel thoroughly read. But I'm so, so appreciative for this reading. It made so much sense, and there's so much to sit with.

Jessica:            I'm so glad to hear that.

Sissy:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm so grateful to hear that.

Sissy:              Yeah. Thank you again. This was really so helpful.

Jessica:            It's totally my pleasure.