2025 Resolutions

A new year. A new start. The post party exhaustion still lingers and with it the feeling of time suspended, in limbo, the ‘actual’ start of the year deferred to next Monday. Just a few more days where reality can be pushed to the back of our mind.

This is also the time for resolutions, for the changes we feel we need to put in place to achieve the ideal life we seek.

Those extra pounds, that new job, that 'I will eat more veggies', that drinking less alcohol, being kinder, asserting ourselves, we all do it either with great fanfare, mainly when a bit tipsy or at the start of our resolution ‘career’ or quietly, in our journal or with a trusted companion.

‘Ideal’, a word dripping with expectations that make it heavy and slippery, which is why resolutions often fizzle after a few weeks.

The reason? I feel it is easier to explain when you look at synonyms for ‘ideal’ such as perfect, flawless, Shangri-la*, faultless.

I find hilarious that the adjective ‘ideal’ is also used to refer to something mythical, fictitious, imaginary, fantastical.

You see where I am going with this? We spend the first precious hours of the year aiming for something that, by its own definition, does not exist, when this is an opportunity to think about what makes us happy, what gives us joy, what makes us feel good, what is real and then we wonder why we fail and, worst of all, feel guilty and ashamed because of it.

So, when it comes to your sex life will you be aiming for an ‘ideal’? The flawless (aka mythical) body, the faultless (aka fictitious) orgasm, the perfect (aka imaginary) partner?

Or will you focus on what is ‘real', on what gives you pleasure, on what makes you tingle, on how you feel when in sexy mood (or not).

Turn your 2025 resolutions to aiming for more of what you like and makes you feel good and less of the things that do not work for you.

Start the conversation with your partner -and yourself- and be real about what you like. If you do not know -unsurprisingly many of us do not know, too busy focussing on achieving the ideal rather than focussing on our own pleasure- then start an exploration.

Go on a tour of ‘you’, make it fun and tell your partner to join you or go on a solo trip and find what lights you up.

*Shangri-La is a fictional place in Tibet's Kunlun Mountains, described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by English author James Hilton. Hilton portrays Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley ...Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – an enduringly happy land, isolated from the world. In the novel, the people who live in Shangri-La are almost immortal, living hundreds of years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance.

(extracted from Wikipedia)