Illuminatus
Don Juan
This post is for guys who experience the issue of getting a girl home then not being able to be sexual himself, get a hardon, get into the sexual emotions of the moment, and so forth. This post is about entering the sexual trance, and more importantly perhaps, removing the barriers that prevent you entering the sexual trance.
I've posted on a few pickup scenes in the past, under various names. This is my first post on SoSuave however.
I am posting this because threads such as "Low sex drive", "Can't enjoy receiving oral sex" and "Couldn't get hard" seem to be a recurring theme amongst a significant subset of men, particularly in the seduction/pickup community, and that is who this post is for.
I have a lot to say here, as it was something I faced myself (and overcame), and also because this issue is really at the heart of many other issues people face relating to anxiety, states of overthinking, and so forth.
Now this post is LONG. But if you are suffering the issues discussed, you should read the entire thing, as it really will help you nail it once and for all.
In the past, I had all of these problems, with any new girl I ever slept with, including my first girlfriend. I shortcutted having to handle it in the early years by ordering boatloads of generic Viagra from India. This marked the beginning of my fascination with drugs.
If I had slept with any girl a few times however, I could then go without the Viagra. So something was happening in my brain while spending more time with a specific girl that allowed me to enter the sexual trance.
It turned out that what was happening was not so much that I was increasing my ability to enter the sexual trance -- rather that by spending more time with a particular girl I was removing the barriers to entering the sexual trance.
You see, if we just talked about how to enter the sexual trance, we would fail to discuss the bigger issue of what else is going on in someone's mind preventing them from entering the sexual trance.
By the way, I believe MANY women also suffer from this. Since they don't have to get a hardon to have sex, the signs aren't as overt. Inability to orgasm is the most obvious sign in women. It is the tension caused by some anxiety which prevents them from entering the sexual trance to a point where orgasm is easy.
When a woman is in the sexual trance however, you can see it easily. A woman who is in the trance is almost like she is on drugs and is sensuous and compliant and swept away in a flood of passion, one who is not in the trance is cold and resistant and non-reactive to sexual stimulus.
For good sex to occur, you both need to be in the sexual trance, and entering it is more straightforward than you may think. For sexual trance to occur there are two steps:
1) Removing barriers preventing sexual trance
2) Initiating sexual trance
REMOVING BARRIERS TO SEXUAL TRANCE
This is almost entirely a matter of thresholds regarding how easily you become anxious. Anxiety kills the possibility of sexual trance. The reason for this is based in our old friends the sympathetic nervous system (SNS -- "fight or flight") and the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS -- "rest and digest"). Put succinctly, sexual arousal occurs during activation of the PSNS. Sexual stimulation then gradually ramps up the SNS state ending in orgasm which is a full expression of the SNS, with an immediate return to the PSNS state post-orgasm.
Think about being alone with your partner, having a bottle of wine to start relaxing (artificially kickstarting the PSNS; hence why alcohol is so effective), gazing into one another's eyes and dropping into sexual trance with breathing becoming deeper (full activation of the PSNS), starting to touch and play with each other (gradual rising into SNS), then starting to have sex slowly (higher ramping up into the SNS state), then starting to have sex like animals, and finally coming as the total expression of SNS. As I have said in previous discussions of PSNS/SNS, while in a PSNS state, SNS stimulation feels GOOD. While already in an SNS state, further SNS stimulation feels PAINFUL.
Starting off in SNS at the first stage will completely kill your ability to be sexually aroused. Imagine running 10km then trying to get a hardon immediately after. It isn't going to happen.
Yet all these guys who can't get into a sexual trance are doing just that: trying to be sexual while in an SNS state. Now let's look at why they're in an SNS state. These things will be the biggest piece of the puzzle for guys who struggle with entering the sexual trance, getting a hardon etc.
All of these points tie in to thresholds. So different guys have different thresholds for what will result in an SNS activation. What events you have set as "safe" and as "threat" in your mind, etc. In my experience, if you are prone to anxiety anyway, pretty much all the below things will put you into an SNS state whereby sexual arousal is next to impossible.
- The environment. If you are in a loud, noisy nightclub, is that going to be conducive to sexual trance? No. Loud noise and lots of people is a major SNS/anxiety activator for many people. It is just about the most unnatural environment I can think of. Some guys are okay in clubs though. They don't get freaked out. These are the guys who pull. But what about the guys who DO get freaked out? They take lots and lots and lots of alcohol to drown out their SNS and artifically enforce a PSNS state. Then they can't enter sexual trance because all the alcohol is just making them want to go to sleep. Druggies fare better, especially on amphetamine class drugs, but the point is still that this environment is not conducive to sexual trance, and that drugs and alcohol are circumventions, hence why they are so commonly used in such environments. In a typical English nightclub, all the girls are trollied as well as the guys, for this very reason. The most reliable indication of whether you are SNS in a nightclub or not is whether you get a hardon while dancing with or kissing a girl. If you consistently don't get a hardon, you are not entering the sexual trance, even when kissing or touching a girl.
- Getting the girl home. Let's say you get her out of the noisy environment (or date, or whatever) and take her home, and you aren't too drunk to enter sexual trance. Why is it that you still can't do it? Well there are a few things that might be going on here:
i) You aren't giving yourself time to drop into the sexual trance. For me personally, in the early days this was because I didn't know about sexual trance. I think this is actually a MAJOR issue among guys having difficulty. I just expected it to "work". I didn't know about stress, and unwinding, and finding a rhythm and a mutual enjoyment and a two-way emotional information exchange with the girl. I saw foreplay as something to be "barrelled through" to get to the "actual sex". I didn't realize it's one long dance. For this, I completely blame patriarchal male-orientated TV shows who are too afraid to delve into the subtlety and nuances of sex and therefore write sex in terms of the conquest of women. I think framing sex as conquest is one of the dumbest, most harmful things a young male mind can be exposed to. It objectifies women and blinds you to the nuances of the sexual dance.
ii) You are being affected by the pressure to perform you have placed on yourself. When a young guy is having sex with a new girl, he isn't just having sex with her. He's having sex with his own ego for his "conquest", with his friends for what a cool dude he must be, with his parents for proving he can procreate, with the girl for conquering her, with the guys on the Internet that he intends to write a field report for later, and so on. What this amounts to is a constant cycling of imagery through the young man's mind of everything EXCEPT actually entering a sexual trance and having something resembling natural sex with the girl. There is also the pressure the young man creates for himself such as "I've brought her back home; she is expecting sex", especially if he has been making out with her in the club, or has brought her home from some other date under the implicit agreement that sex will be happening. In this instance the man will create imagery of himself failing in order to remind himself "what not to do". So the imagery and thoughts the man creates activate the SNS in ways he cannot begin to comprehend.
iii) Guilt/shame about sex. Negative images arising in one's mind in connection to sex, which activate the SNS by the same process of anxiety. Common amongst those with religious or conservative upbringings.
I've posted on a few pickup scenes in the past, under various names. This is my first post on SoSuave however.
I am posting this because threads such as "Low sex drive", "Can't enjoy receiving oral sex" and "Couldn't get hard" seem to be a recurring theme amongst a significant subset of men, particularly in the seduction/pickup community, and that is who this post is for.
I have a lot to say here, as it was something I faced myself (and overcame), and also because this issue is really at the heart of many other issues people face relating to anxiety, states of overthinking, and so forth.
Now this post is LONG. But if you are suffering the issues discussed, you should read the entire thing, as it really will help you nail it once and for all.
In the past, I had all of these problems, with any new girl I ever slept with, including my first girlfriend. I shortcutted having to handle it in the early years by ordering boatloads of generic Viagra from India. This marked the beginning of my fascination with drugs.
If I had slept with any girl a few times however, I could then go without the Viagra. So something was happening in my brain while spending more time with a specific girl that allowed me to enter the sexual trance.
It turned out that what was happening was not so much that I was increasing my ability to enter the sexual trance -- rather that by spending more time with a particular girl I was removing the barriers to entering the sexual trance.
You see, if we just talked about how to enter the sexual trance, we would fail to discuss the bigger issue of what else is going on in someone's mind preventing them from entering the sexual trance.
By the way, I believe MANY women also suffer from this. Since they don't have to get a hardon to have sex, the signs aren't as overt. Inability to orgasm is the most obvious sign in women. It is the tension caused by some anxiety which prevents them from entering the sexual trance to a point where orgasm is easy.
When a woman is in the sexual trance however, you can see it easily. A woman who is in the trance is almost like she is on drugs and is sensuous and compliant and swept away in a flood of passion, one who is not in the trance is cold and resistant and non-reactive to sexual stimulus.
For good sex to occur, you both need to be in the sexual trance, and entering it is more straightforward than you may think. For sexual trance to occur there are two steps:
1) Removing barriers preventing sexual trance
2) Initiating sexual trance
REMOVING BARRIERS TO SEXUAL TRANCE
This is almost entirely a matter of thresholds regarding how easily you become anxious. Anxiety kills the possibility of sexual trance. The reason for this is based in our old friends the sympathetic nervous system (SNS -- "fight or flight") and the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS -- "rest and digest"). Put succinctly, sexual arousal occurs during activation of the PSNS. Sexual stimulation then gradually ramps up the SNS state ending in orgasm which is a full expression of the SNS, with an immediate return to the PSNS state post-orgasm.
Think about being alone with your partner, having a bottle of wine to start relaxing (artificially kickstarting the PSNS; hence why alcohol is so effective), gazing into one another's eyes and dropping into sexual trance with breathing becoming deeper (full activation of the PSNS), starting to touch and play with each other (gradual rising into SNS), then starting to have sex slowly (higher ramping up into the SNS state), then starting to have sex like animals, and finally coming as the total expression of SNS. As I have said in previous discussions of PSNS/SNS, while in a PSNS state, SNS stimulation feels GOOD. While already in an SNS state, further SNS stimulation feels PAINFUL.
Starting off in SNS at the first stage will completely kill your ability to be sexually aroused. Imagine running 10km then trying to get a hardon immediately after. It isn't going to happen.
Yet all these guys who can't get into a sexual trance are doing just that: trying to be sexual while in an SNS state. Now let's look at why they're in an SNS state. These things will be the biggest piece of the puzzle for guys who struggle with entering the sexual trance, getting a hardon etc.
All of these points tie in to thresholds. So different guys have different thresholds for what will result in an SNS activation. What events you have set as "safe" and as "threat" in your mind, etc. In my experience, if you are prone to anxiety anyway, pretty much all the below things will put you into an SNS state whereby sexual arousal is next to impossible.
- The environment. If you are in a loud, noisy nightclub, is that going to be conducive to sexual trance? No. Loud noise and lots of people is a major SNS/anxiety activator for many people. It is just about the most unnatural environment I can think of. Some guys are okay in clubs though. They don't get freaked out. These are the guys who pull. But what about the guys who DO get freaked out? They take lots and lots and lots of alcohol to drown out their SNS and artifically enforce a PSNS state. Then they can't enter sexual trance because all the alcohol is just making them want to go to sleep. Druggies fare better, especially on amphetamine class drugs, but the point is still that this environment is not conducive to sexual trance, and that drugs and alcohol are circumventions, hence why they are so commonly used in such environments. In a typical English nightclub, all the girls are trollied as well as the guys, for this very reason. The most reliable indication of whether you are SNS in a nightclub or not is whether you get a hardon while dancing with or kissing a girl. If you consistently don't get a hardon, you are not entering the sexual trance, even when kissing or touching a girl.
- Getting the girl home. Let's say you get her out of the noisy environment (or date, or whatever) and take her home, and you aren't too drunk to enter sexual trance. Why is it that you still can't do it? Well there are a few things that might be going on here:
i) You aren't giving yourself time to drop into the sexual trance. For me personally, in the early days this was because I didn't know about sexual trance. I think this is actually a MAJOR issue among guys having difficulty. I just expected it to "work". I didn't know about stress, and unwinding, and finding a rhythm and a mutual enjoyment and a two-way emotional information exchange with the girl. I saw foreplay as something to be "barrelled through" to get to the "actual sex". I didn't realize it's one long dance. For this, I completely blame patriarchal male-orientated TV shows who are too afraid to delve into the subtlety and nuances of sex and therefore write sex in terms of the conquest of women. I think framing sex as conquest is one of the dumbest, most harmful things a young male mind can be exposed to. It objectifies women and blinds you to the nuances of the sexual dance.
ii) You are being affected by the pressure to perform you have placed on yourself. When a young guy is having sex with a new girl, he isn't just having sex with her. He's having sex with his own ego for his "conquest", with his friends for what a cool dude he must be, with his parents for proving he can procreate, with the girl for conquering her, with the guys on the Internet that he intends to write a field report for later, and so on. What this amounts to is a constant cycling of imagery through the young man's mind of everything EXCEPT actually entering a sexual trance and having something resembling natural sex with the girl. There is also the pressure the young man creates for himself such as "I've brought her back home; she is expecting sex", especially if he has been making out with her in the club, or has brought her home from some other date under the implicit agreement that sex will be happening. In this instance the man will create imagery of himself failing in order to remind himself "what not to do". So the imagery and thoughts the man creates activate the SNS in ways he cannot begin to comprehend.
iii) Guilt/shame about sex. Negative images arising in one's mind in connection to sex, which activate the SNS by the same process of anxiety. Common amongst those with religious or conservative upbringings.