You Contain Multitudes (And So Does Your Desire)

You are not one thing.

There’s the version of you who runs a meeting without blinking, the one who turns up to girls’ night and laughs until something comes out of her nose, and the one who can sit up all night beside a sick kid without a word of complaint. All of her is you.

Nobody has ever told you to pick one and stick with it forever. You’d think they’d lost the plot. You get to be all of them, depending on the day, the room, and how much wine is in play.

Except in bed.

There, most of us are still honouring a contract we signed at twenty-two. One script, one type, one fixed idea of what does it for us, guarded like changing it would take the whole personality down with it.

(It would not. Your personality is fine)

A woman seen from behind reaching into a wardrobe full of wildly varied clothes in warm afternoon light

Your erotic self was never singular either

You have a work self and a “third glass of wine with your best mate” self, and you have more than one erotic self to go with them. A curious one. A bold one. A dominant one and a submissive one. An adventurous one, a spiritual one, possibly one you haven’t been introduced to yet. They don’t cancel each other out any more than the rest of your selves do. They’re the little mirrors on a mirror ball, each its own square, and together the whole spinning thing.

The one room you never redecorate

You’ll happily overhaul your career, your haircut, your whole wellness routine, your strong opinions on oat milk. The bedroom stays exactly as it was. “Who I am in bed” gets treated as sacred and permanent in a way “who I am at work” never does.

And the woman who set it in stone was twenty-two, working off a couple of films and whatever her first partners happened to be into. That wasn’t a considered choice. It was a default nobody went back to change.

A few of the selves you haven’t met

You don’t have to become someone else. You just have to notice which of your selves has been loitering by the door, waiting to be let in.

The bold one who’d say the thing out loud instead of hoping it lands telepathically. The bossy one who likes deciding how the evening goes. The slower one who’d rather be adored than ravished. The curious one who’d read the weird book. The bit of a menace who fancies misbehaving. Not one of them is more “you” than the rest. They take turns, if you let them.

Start with a quiz

A quiz can be a fun way in, and the good ones hand you a name to try on rather than a box to climb into. If you want somewhere to start, The 6 feminine dominant archetypes is about which of your stronger sides you tend to lead with. And if you’re a new mum running on no sleep, there are lighter archetype quizzes too: what’s your postpartum movie archetype, or the postpartum horror-movie version for when it’s been that kind of week. Take whichever one pulls you in, notice who you recognise, and treat the result as a doorway, not a label to live inside.

Open the whole thing up

Desire is not a fixed point. It’s more like a wardrobe. The things you wore at twenty-five you wouldn’t be caught dead in now, and the things you swore weren’t you turn out to hang beautifully at forty-five. Bodies change, hormones move, and what you want moves with them. That’s the machinery doing its job.

Midlife, of all times, is when the wardrobe is worth throwing open. Less to prove, a clearer sense of what you like, and finally the standing to dress for the woman you are now rather than the one who signed the contract.

Trying things on

This is a good chunk of what I do. We look at what’s going on in your body right now, why desire feels different than it did, and how to get back to it, including the parts you never got round to the first time. Some of the work is somatic, in the body rather than only in the talking. We go at your pace. No faster, no slower.

Want to change your sexual wardrobe? Do it through my archetypes course, or with me directly as a sexological bodyworker. Book a call, tell me where you’re at, and we’ll find the right place to start.

No pressure, mind. You can carry on wearing the 1998 collection for the rest of your days, and plenty of people do.

But you’ve got more selves than you think. Might as well meet a few of them.

A few things you might be turning over

What are sexual archetypes?

Different erotic selves you move between: the bold one, the tender one, the bossy one, the curious one. Not boxes to be sorted into, just aspects of you that take turns. Everyone has several.

Can desire really change over time?

Constantly. What worked at twenty-five often won’t at forty-five, and things you once ruled out can fit later. Desire moves as your body and your life do.

Isn’t it too late to explore this?

No, and midlife is one of the better times for it. The wardrobe’s been shut a while, that’s all. Nothing in it has gone anywhere.

What if I don’t know what my other erotic selves are?

Most people don’t at first. You find out by trying things on, not by solving it in your head like a crossword. That’s a lot of what I do with clients.

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