When I say I don’t have time to masturbate, what I usually mean is that I didn’t prioritize it. Whether I prioritize it depends entirely on what I believe those fifteen minutes are worth.
My everyday life looks like a lot of women’s. I’m a mother, I’m home with my kids all the time. I don’t have a luxurious clear 2 hour window of empty house. Usually sometime in the morning I think to myself “I think I could use an orgasm today”.
Before I know it I’m upstairs walking through the kitchen, the dishes need done, floor needs swept. Then I’m in the bathroom putting in my contacts, and my hair is greasy so we’ll do a shower. Ah, back to the kitchen to make breakfast, and clean up after it. I look at the clock and think “well by noon surely I’ll have most of this done and can still head down for some pleasure”
Yeah you guessed it, noon rolls around and I’ve already added 13 more things to the list that I’d like to get done. I strolled past the art table and really wanna finish that piece. I remembered that I needed to upload verifications for the kids extra homeschool stuff. And honestly the list goes on, it seems never ending and now it’s 2:45 and my husband’s almost home from work, so dinner etc. etc. starts.
The funny thing about this is I don’t actually need that much time.
Fifteen minutes, throw a movie on for the kids, “moms taking a nap”, door closed and locked. Or tell my hubby im going down for some alone time while he manages the house.
So if I can easily find so many things that take longer than 15 minutes and stack them right up on the to do list, why don’t I always actually make fifteen minutes for pleasure?
I almost always have fifteen minutes in my day. Pleasure ends up competing with dishes, laundry, scrolling (shamefully), errands, TV, another task. The thing I believe matters wins.
I used to think that it was my husbands job to manage my pleasure. To know it, cultivate it, create it, and schedule it. Thats a lot of external offloading and pressure on him. It’s no wonder that resentment and anger showed up easily and quickly when I put someone else in charge of not only their own sexuality but mine too.
What shifted was a deeper understanding and knowing. Betty gave a lot of permission in her books that I really needed around masturbation. So by the time I started exploring it for myself I could be quite curious about what benefits I was really experiencing from each session. We have the easy obvious “why masturbation matters bullet points” like orgasm and pleasure, but also things like grounding, exploration, bodily reassurance, and maintaining my relationship with my sexuality and body.
I often walk away from a masturbation session with a deeper understanding of my needs and wants, reassurance that I do know what I like, and, that my sexuality is fun and exciting. Not to mention that deeper state of relaxation I can really feel in my body.
I notice that when I go a long time without touching myself, certain things start getting louder.. Body image stuff. Partner sex frustration. Resentment around frequency. Frustration about needing to ask. Ever present tension living in my body.
Even knowing all of that, I still don’t always do it. Not because I can’t find fifteen minutes of time somewhere in my day, but because masturbation can create a tiny little room. And empty rooms can bring stuff up. Grief, shame, disconnection, disappointment, frustration. The possibility that my body won’t respond the way I want it to and in turn leaving me with two options. Option one, listening to the inner critic, or option two, offering myself some very slow, kind, loving, self compassion and acceptance. And I’m gonna be honest neither of those is easy, and I get why sometimes I choose avoidance.
So sometimes I have to get scientific, practical or mundane to follow through. This week that looks like making a power point that features a photo of my vulva before arousal, and after arousal and how do we get arousal?? ding ding ding touching ourselves haha. Other times I have to schedule it in, like Masturbation Monday, yes this is also in effort to make Mondays suck less. Other times I fall victim to retail therapy, well I bought a new toy, of course I need to make time to try her out.
When I hear women say “I don’t have time”, I don’t really think the answer is to tell them to find fifteen minutes. Most of us can find fifteen minutes. Maybe the question that follows that statement is what does masturbation have to become in your mind before before it gets to outrank the dishes and other never ending tasks that happily take up every spare minute we have.
For myself it had to become more than orgasm. It had to become a way I stay connected to my body. A way I explore what I like. A way I remember that pleasure gets to exist in my life even when nobody else is providing it for me. And sometimes, yes, it is literally just a quick orgasm because I wanted one haha.
I think for me, underneath the idea of making time for pleasure, is making the decision that it belongs on the list at all.
You don’t have to make masturbation the most important thing in your day. But if it is the least important thing, it will almost always be the thing that gets left behind.