How to set yourself up to have a terrible relationship and sex life
How the dominant cultural paradigm and unconscious scripts we run set us up to have a terrible relationship and sex life:
Shame sexuality and our bodies intensively while growing up and then expect them to become magical playgrounds even in the face of work stress, kids, health stress, and caring for elders.
Give zero education about the importance of sex for pleasure (and the importance of pleasure itself), connection, play, health, magic, and aliveness.
Give zero education about healthy relationships, communication, and dealing with our emotions.
Reward productivity and money, no matter how harmful to self and family the path is to achieve them.
Devote all time and energy to work and children, at the expense of connection between partners.
Teach men that their whole value is about how much money they make and how much they provide, while shaming male emotional expression.
Demand the female partner be a perfect mom while also having a job and doing housework, and yet still expect her to have extra energy for sex.
Expect sex to be magically perfect and pleasurable, despite teaching no techniques, energy awareness, pleasure literacy, or connection skills whatsoever.
Expect couples to meet each other's every need: sexual, emotional, and material - despite shaming men for expressing desire or emotions and not educating anyone about how to have good sex and connection.
Expect women to be non-sexual as mothers and completely devoted to children.
Also expect women to be hyper-sexual to meet the man's sexual needs (which are positioned as 'base' or 'unimportant compared to other things in life').
Shame men's desire for sex. Also shame men as 'unmanly' if they do not always want sex.
Shame women for being sexual and for being non-sexual.
Shame men from talking to other men about sex and relationship, while covertly being okay with cheating.
Expect partners in sexless marriages to be completely loyal and ignore their sexual + emotional needs even through 10 years of no sex.
Confine each other to one sexual partner forever, no matter what the circumstances.
Shame attempts to recognize and heal from trauma, and instead tolerate long-term criticism or shutting down from partner.
Shame attempts to have time alone for personal growth or healing. Expect partners to have no boundaries or personal space from kids or family.
Expect money to make up for lack of community support.
Shame attempts to study sex, emotional intelligence, or anything other than productivity, physical fitness, or money.
Encourage co-dependent dynamics where partners try to keep each other happy at all costs, at the expense of their own needs.
Shame the emotional, intuitive, and subconscious realms and avoid dealing with anything that gets in the way of productivity or more money.
Shame attempts to get help from therapists, coaches, and workshops.
Insist the nuclear family is the only way to do things and if a couple can't manage to have enough money, take care of the kids, and have a great sex life on their own, it's a personal failing, failure of willpower, or they just haven't worked hard enough.