WEEK 33 - Done Apologizing
By Jennifer Dirksen · Sheer Photography, Youngstown OH · Est. read time: 6 min
Your desire doesn't need a permission slip. And neither does your lack of it. Both are yours. Both are valid. Both deserve to stop being whispered about.
Let's talk about the thing women don't talk about.
Not in polite company. Not at school pickup or book club or the family dinner table. Not in the way that's honest and direct and doesn't immediately come with a disclaimer attached.
Women wanting sex.
Not in a theoretical, abstract, isn't-that-nice kind of way. Actually wanting it. Craving it. Thinking about it. Initiating it. Feeling frustrated when it's not there. Feeling disconnected when it's been too long. Feeling (and this is the part that gets really quiet) like that part of themselves has been so thoroughly buried under motherhood and exhaustion and the daily performance of being everything to everyone that they can't even remember the last time they felt genuinely, unapologetically turned on.
We have been taught to be sexy. Desirable. Appealing to look at. We've been taught to perform sensuality for other people's consumption while simultaneously keeping our own desire small, manageable, quiet. We're supposed to be wanted… but not to want. Desired… but not desirous. Available… but not hungry.
That double standard is f*cking exhausting! And we're done with it.
"We've been taught to be sexy for everyone else while keeping our own desire small and quiet. Your desire is not a performance. It belongs to you."
The desire nobody admits to.
Here's what I hear… not said out loud, usually, but between the lines of a hundred conversations I've had with women in my studio and in my community:
She wants more than she's getting. More intimacy. More presence. More of the kind of connection that makes her feel like a woman and not just a function. More sex or more of the kind of sex that actually feels good to her, that prioritizes her experience, that doesn't make her feel like an afterthought in her own bed.
And she's not saying it. Because wanting more feels needy. Demanding. Like she's putting pressure on her partner. Like she should be grateful for what she has. Like good wives don't talk about this.
So she goes quiet. And the distance grows. And she starts to wonder if that part of her (the part that wants and craves and feels) is just something she's supposed to outgrow.
She's not supposed to outgrow it. She's been taught to suppress it. Those are not the same thing.
What nobody tells you about desire after kids.
Somewhere between the epidural and the elementary school years, a lot of women lose the thread of their own sexuality. Not because they stopped being sexual beings, but because every single thing about early motherhood is designed to make you forget you ever were one.
Your body becomes functional. A feeding machine, a comfort object, a vehicle for keeping tiny humans alive. The identity of "mother" moves in and takes up so much space that "woman" (the version of you that has desires and fantasies and a relationship with your own body that has nothing to do with anyone else's needs) gets crowded out.
And then the kids get older. And the exhaustion shifts. And somewhere in the middle of a random Tuesday you realize: I don't even know what I want anymore. Not just sexually. In general. I've been so far inside everyone else's experience that I've lost the map to my own.
Getting that map back isn't indulgent. It isn't selfish. It isn't something to be embarrassed about or to figure out alone in silence.
It's necessary. For you. For your relationship. For the version of yourself that exists outside of every role you play.
And also… not wanting it is valid too.
Because this conversation has two sides and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't.
Some women aren't suppressing desire. They genuinely don't feel it right now and they've been made to feel broken, frigid, inadequate, or like they're failing their relationship because of it.
"I'm too tired" isn't always an excuse. Sometimes it's the truest thing a woman can say. Sometimes the body that has been touched and needed and demanded of all day long by children and work and the thousand invisible tasks of running a household simply does not have anything left to give. That's not a character flaw. That's depletion.
And sometimes it's deeper than tiredness. Sometimes desire has gone quiet because something else went quiet first… trust, safety, emotional intimacy, the feeling of being seen as a full person rather than a partner-shaped function. You cannot separate a woman's sexuality from her emotional experience. They are not different systems.
Not wanting sex right now doesn't mean you never will again. It doesn't mean something is permanently broken. It means you're human, and depleted, and possibly in need of something that has nothing to do with sex at all… connection, rest, to feel like yourself again, to feel desired rather than just needed.
Both are true. Both are valid. Both deserve to be said out loud instead of managed in silence.
"'I'm too tired' is sometimes an excuse. And sometimes it's the most honest thing a woman can say about what it costs to give everything to everyone all day long."
The things we don't say out loud.
Let me say some of them. On behalf of the women who have thought them and never found a safe place to put them:
I want more than we're currently having.
I want to feel desired… not just loved, not just appreciated, but actually, physically desired.
I have fantasies and I'm embarrassed by them and I don't know what that says about me.
I want to initiate and I'm terrified of rejection so I don't.
I want my partner to pursue me the way they used to.
I miss feeling like a sexual being and I don't know how to find my way back to that.
I don't want it right now and I feel guilty about that every single day.
I want to understand my own body better and I don't even know where to start.
None of these thoughts make you a bad wife. A bad mom. A shallow or needy or dirty or broken person. They make you a woman who is paying attention to herself. Who knows that something is off, or missing, or needs tending to.
That awareness isn't the problem. Suffering through it in silence and alone is.
Your desire doesn't need a permission slip.
Here's the thing I most want you to take from this:
Whatever you feel about sex right now (wanting more of it, wanting less of it, wanting to feel desired, wanting to reconnect with your own body, wanting to understand why the want has gone quiet) that feeling is valid. It belongs to you. It doesn't need to be justified or minimized or hidden or managed for anyone else's comfort.
You are allowed to want things. You are allowed to say them. You are allowed to take up space in your own sexuality the same way you're learning to take up space everywhere else.
Desire isn't something that happens to you when conditions are right. It's something you tend to. Something you make room for. Something that comes back when you stop pretending it doesn't exist.
Where boudoir lives in all of this.
A session at Sheer isn't about sex. I want to be clear about that.
But it is absolutely about desire. About reconnecting with the part of yourself that is sensual, embodied, present in your own skin. About spending a few hours where you are not a function (not a mom, not a partner, not a caretaker) but a woman who exists in her body and allows herself to feel good in it.
That reconnection matters. Because when you feel disconnected from your own sensuality (from your own body, your own pleasure, your own desire) everything else goes a little gray. The intimacy in your relationship flattens. The aliveness in your daily life dims. The part of you that feels fully expressed goes quiet.
A session doesn't fix a relationship. It doesn't solve whatever has made desire go quiet. But it does something that a lot of women describe as the beginning: it gives you evidence that she's still there. The sensual, embodied, fully alive version of you that got buried under everything else.
She didn't leave. She's just been waiting for you to make some room.
Your desire doesn't need a permission slip. But if you've been waiting for a sign… this is it. 🖤
→ If You’re Done Waiting fill out the form below!