Hello everybody. Today I am here to discuss
sexual safety and aftercare, which is a topic that has been
highly requested in my Instagram messages.
I thought, well, I've written an article about it and I've talked
about it and I've discussed it on Dialogues with Jacaro, but I
decided why not just talk about it on the podcast as well
because I definitely have updated information growth and
feelings that, you know, have changed over the years.
I would like to talk about some of the things that I do to make
sure that I feel safe and comfortable during and after
sex. Well, as well as before sex
because it's important that my safety is honored.
It's important that I feel very, very secure and I'm just
accepting and consenting to the whole situation because that's
what gives me maximal maximum appreciation and orgasms and
satisfaction when it comes to sex.
And I don't know if this is something that you've thought
about for yourself or you just cruise through it, but I'll
discuss it today so that it's something that you take home and
think about more intentionally just so you can elevate your
sexual experience. So a lot of times when it comes
to sex, I as a woman, I don't know if it's as a human or a, as
a, a woman, but I tend to lead with feelings.
And this meant or this required that I started to cultivate my
emotional intelligence just so that I can understand, manage
and communicate my emotions much better.
So the thing with being very intentional with my emotional
intelligence and you know, my regulation of my emotions is
that it pushed me into a space where I was required to practice
regularly. And this auto LED into me
trusting my intuition a bit more, trusting the decisions
that I make for myself because I'm intentional now.
I'm not just cruising through life or guessing stuff.
I mean, I'm figuring out a lot of things as I go, but for most
part, I'm a little more deliberate about everything that
I do, especially sexually in my life.
This helped me be able to tell the difference between anxiety
and intuition as well, because there's a lot of anxiety around
sex, especially in that African community where we do not have
these conversations much more openly.
And it's, it's fearful, sometimes shameful and scary.
But that's why this platform is here so that we can have this
discussions without any or much fear.
So this led me to become much calmer and much more confident
about sex and about the things that I want.
Because as long as I know I am safe and comfortable, then
everything is OK. This also helps me understand
consent a lot more because I have to confront, you know, what
I understand consent to be as well as, you know, I expect to
relate with my sexual partner. And this discussion is not easy
because we may realize I was having a discussion with a few
of my friends about consent the other day.
And the boys were talking about how the idea of consent has all
has been skewed for a very long time, ever since they were
young, because they didn't really have present male figures
who taught them what was wrong and or right.
And women were really objectified growing up, like 20
years ago, 15 years ago, even now.
It's just that now we're able to have this discussion a bit more
openly. But the idea of consent was
very, very skewed. There was a lot of coercion
still being applied. There was a lot of being taught
that being a macho man means taking sex from women.
It's like women are not supposed to be open and confident about
sex. These discussions help us become
much more educated, even for ourselves, and being able to
define for myself what consent means, it helped me a lot
because now I know what I can accept and what I can't accept.
We were also discussing reactions when you're being
sexually assaulted. If you do not practice all the
things that I'm going to talk about today, your reaction even
towards abuse can be delayed. Because if you don't know what
is consent, how will you know if someone is violating you?
If you don't know what it is that you accept or don't accept,
how will you know when someone is violating you or when you're
violating someone? And if you can't even have these
discussions openly, how are you going to improve and do better
and be a better person? That's why it's so essential to
have these discussions because I I always say it doesn't matter
how learned, confident, intelligent, exposed, well
spoken, outspoken, doesn't matter how and who you are or
older or much more experienced. It doesn't matter if you're not
putting in the work to become a better person internally.
Not just from all the accolades that you get externally,
internally, it can really affect even your nervous system.
It affects you as a person. It blows out the things that you
know you love and like. You're not going to be able to
live as yourself authentically, especially 100%.
It's very, very important that you do the inner work to make
sure that you can even communicate these needs.
And that's why my need for having emotional security and
intelligence came about. It's from me wanting to learn
more about myself emotionally that trickle down all the way
into me ensuring I feel safe sexually consistently.
A number of times I've been about to have sex with someone
and I've had to maybe force them to use a condom or they've tried
to take the condom off during sex or I wasn't even sure that I
wanted to have sex, but they cost me and they begged me and
they they made all these promises will get tested
tomorrow. Don't worry, I love you.
I'll marry you all these things and in the heat of the moment
when especially if you're someone who's been traumatized
by it could be something different, but it could show up
in your sexual life. So you're not able to say no,
you don't know how to say no or you're not able to stand up for
yourself confident and probably most times is it red flags in a
quang at a before being in a sexual situation with this
person because you'll be able to see how they do not respect your
decisions, your autonomy. How do they they do not show up
exactly? Or you know, how do they?
They do not try to show up the way you'd love for them to in
your life. We see all these red flags
before even we get to the sexual situation, but we love to ignore
them. Being able to stand up for
yourself, it's going to show up even when you're in a sexual
situation. And remember I said it doesn't
matter how smart, confident Lanae disposed you are.
When you're in that situation, fight, fight or freeze might
show up and you're not really able to detect Alia.
What will happen to you in a situation that shocks you?
You might just freeze. But if you've been working, my
friends are telling me I need to take defense classes so that I
can do better with my reactions. Because to be honest, the times
that this has happened to me, I just froze.
I froze and I was unable to speak up for myself.
I was unable to advocate for myself.
The normal reaction normally in quotes would be to stand up and
defend yourself, advocate for yourself, walk out of the
situation, leave. But I was telling my friends
about how because of the abuse I endured when I was growing up, I
think such reactions come a bit slower to me.
I don't know if it's because my body just accepts that I deserve
to be abuse, or it's because I, I used to be threatened even
with the death. So it was really, really scary.
You know, I knew fighting for myself meant I could possibly
die, but now that I'm a grown up, it's still showing up.
I still freeze and I'm totally afraid because when I'm in a
situation where I need to defend myself, my reaction has to be a
bit faster and well thought out. You know, when you're watching a
horror movie and you're screaming, I'm able to do that
for other people, but when it comes to me, I just, I have a
blind spot. I'm so unable to see.
Well, I'm walking on it. Please don't come and prey on me
just because I'm exposing myself like this.
But at least I have the awareness and I'm actively
walking on it. And I know a lot of people are
like this. Or you could, you could
automatically want to fight or you could be able to run away,
which I think is much better than pleasing.
And in the situations that I've been unable to say no or maybe I
wasn't even an able to say no, maybe I said no.
But way before I found myself in that situation.
Umm, I had a maybe when it came to consent, it was a maybe or it
was a not today, or it was a when I come to your house.
I don't want to have sex. But if it happens, it's not an
affirmative, continuous and strong yes.
It's just me being unsure anytime I ever felt like that.
But I still went ahead and put my myself in that situation.
I ended up very heartbroken and very disappointed and I felt so
much shame and almost anger for myself because I didn't
understand that it was my body telling me no.
My body was actively saying no, you shouldn't be in this
situation. This is not how you feel, this
is not what you want. You're not giving full consent.
But I decided to ignore anyway. And every time I've ignored my
intuition and my internal feelings, I've always paid for
it. Always.
Your body always knows what you want.
I've actually recorded an episode before about this, about
your intuition and cultivating this internal compass to show
you where you should be or what you should want.
If you don't put in the actual work of cultivating it, like by
practicing, you end up here where you're consistently
confused and you're not sure and then life is happening to you
instead of you taking charge and making decisions that make you a
better person and subsequently help you enjoy better sex.
Your body will always know if you're not comfortable and it
will. It will always react, sometimes
even physically. You know when someone touches
you and you feel unsure and then your body immediately activates
fight or flight to protect you. But you don't even honor this
natural compass because you don't know how to trust yourself
and you don't really ever make decisions for yourself that
honor yourself internally. Or even things like when someone
ignores you, ignores your communication, you say no, they
don't listen or even way before the sex.
Foreplay is not just. You can check out the episode I
did about foreplay. Foreplay is not just you
flirting or you touching each other.
Foreplay goes way before even you guys decide to have sex.
It's the romance, the consistency, the communication,
the way you talk to each other. So there's no way someone can be
ignoring your texts, your messages, your calls, but you
feel safe having sex with them. I mean, there is a way, it
happens all the time. But for me, it just was
something I had to be honest with myself that it doesn't make
me feel safe. It made me feel neglected,
ignored. And when it came time to have
sex with this person, I always felt like I was betraying myself
because I'd ask myself, this guy doesn't even show up for me, why
am I allowing myself to have sex with him?
And anytime I had sex with such a person, like I said, I'd pay
for it emotionally, I always got my feelings really, really hard.
Consent is very wholesome and your body's behavior will be
able to tell you if you want to be here if you start listening
to yourself and listen to the person that you want to have sex
with as well. Listen to their comments around
sex. Listen to their personal
beliefs. Pay attention to the foreplay,
to the way they act before they have sex with you, to the way
they act when you're not allowing them to have sex with
you, to the way they act when you make them wait, when you set
boundaries, when you say no. All this is going to inform the
kind of sex experience you're going to have.
And you have to be honest with yourself and agree.
And I mean, OK, yeah, some people have sex just for, you
know, or not, but be honest with yourself about how you feel
about that sex afterwards, especially if you're someone
that is consistently and actively working on yourself and
trying to be a better person for yourself.
Pay attention. How does your heart feel?
How does your head feel? And even if you don't feel
anything and you don't care about it, pay attention to that
as well because why is it that you're unable to show up
emotionally in your day-to-day life?
You're not able to attach emotion to things that require
emotion. And you might argue that they
don't, but just pay attention and ask yourself these important
questions, whether you're married, single, using toys,
fucking your situation shape, having sex with your work
husband, whatever your situation is, think about it.
Pay attention to how you feel in your head and in your chest.
And I think this is the most important part, even before you
take care of yourself emotionally, psychologically.
Let's get to the physical. Go and get tested.
A lot of you guys are not getting tested before you have
sex. So you look at someone and you
you assume they are fine. Let me tell you, I got into a
relationship with this guy and he was good looking, rich,
handsome, smelled good, amazing. Any everything was checking out
and he was I was happy even when he asked me to be his
girlfriend. It was really nice.
I was actually enjoying the relationship.
But the first time I had sex with this guy, we did not use a
condom, by the way, I I tried to advocate for myself.
Of course I not, of course, but I ended up getting too scared
because I felt like he wasn't listening to me because he said,
you know, now you're my wife. Why do we need to use condoms
wrong. I should have just listened to
myself and kept advocating for myself and we had sex without a
condom and he came in me. I had never let anyone come
inside me ever, ever in so many years.
Yeah. So I was shocked.
I felt, I don't know if I felt violated.
I wasn't sure if I had consented.
I was just so confused because I kept saying he's my boyfriend
and I brought myself here. So why am I feeling very
conflicted about me accepting him to have sex?
But it's because the feelings were not in alignment.
I wasn't sure That's why it wasn't a resounding yes.
It was me being very confused and kind of being coerced
because if I really wanted to I feel like it would have gone
differently. Anyway we had sex and he came
inside me and immediately I got a yeast infection immediately.
I have I had never got a yeast infection ever before in my life
and the only thing that was different was in my life current
that at that time was him having sex with me and coming inside
me. Let me tell you I battled a
yeast infection for like 3 months that refused to go away
and it was so bad. My symptoms weren't bad or
anything, I wasn't suffering from it, but just the fact that
they did. The relationship didn't last.
We were together for like a month, but I ended up having to
treat something for more than three months that wasn't going
away. And you see, I paid.
I paid. That was the consequences of my
actions. I refused to listen to myself.
I refused to listen to my mind, my body, all red signals were
going off. I brainwashed myself into
thinking this is what I wanted and this is what I accepted
while the whole time my mind and my heart were having the
internal monologue to tell me yo something is not right.
Work on this fixes. So don't be like me, be better
than me and pay attention to yourself.
Go and get tested. They're both of you together.
Get screened. Get your tests done and use
condoms. Good pussy management means that
get checked so that you can get healed.
It also means that you have to eat well, you have to love your
body. Pay attention to the things that
make you feel good because this is what will accelerate your
libido. On DWJI did an episode with Kate
when we talked about sex in long term relationships are linked it
in the description so that you can you can see her explanation
of what helps you increase your libido emphasis.
Let me go back to getting tested.
It's like I've skimmed through it.
Use condoms and get tested. You can never trust anyone.
Everyone is a liar, everyone
pretends and a lot of people are very predatory.
You have to get tested. You have to stay on your game
consistently. Make sure that you're in check
with your emotional, psychological, physical health
because all of this is sexual safety.
Vet the people you have sex with and make sure you want to
because the feelings that you get and the thoughts that you
get afterwards are going to be yours to deal with.
Especially if this person is you call them nonchalant or avoidant
or they don't want to talk to you, they don't want to address
anything. Your feelings are going to be
yours to deal with later. Your anxiety, your thoughts,
your overthinking. It is you is going to be alone
in your house overthinking when this person will probably be
fucking the next person because maybe they don't have the
capacity to introspect or maybe to them you're just a nut.
That's why you have to be very intentional from the beginning,
from the kind of people you talk to, not just from people you
have sex with. It starts with who do you
associate with and what kind of person are you to indicate what
are you settling for? Who do you talk to?
Who do you surround yourself with?
Because all of this is going to changia a lot towards your
sexual safety. If you settle for less, you're
definitely going to be sad. You're definitely going to feel
bad about not choosing yourself. And when it comes to self-care,
there is also aftercare. Aftercare is what you do after
you have sex, the things that you enjoy for yourself.
And I'll share a few things that I enjoy for myself so that maybe
you can be able to pinpoint what it is you like for yourself and
you enjoy the most. So for you to experience
aftercare, you have to 1st know what it is that you want and
need after sex. What are your immediate needs?
Some people love to roll over and sleep, but I would advise
that you get out of bed, go to the toilet, pee clean your
yourself. Meet me personally, I like
taking a shower. I hope my sexual people I've had
sex with do not think it's something I have against them
because is it? There's this episode on Sex and
the city. This priest every time he would
have sex with Miranda, he would shower immediately.
Doesn't matter if they fucked like five times in a night, he
would go in the shower all the time immediately.
Or someone sent me M pesa. Oh, it's my mum.
Amazing. I love being her daughter.
She really takes care of me and she makes me make sure I'm
really happy. So this guy would shower all the
time after sex. For me, it's just I don't want
to be sticky and, you know, smelly and I don't want, you
know, all the juices and fluids on me.
But I guess this is how I feel when I'm having sex with someone
I shouldn't be having sex with. So I just decided to prevent
this. Let me just not have sex with
anyone I don't I shouldn't be having sex with.
It's important that you know what you need, especially after
sex. I'll start with financial Mimi,
how my body is set up. I'm very much unable to have sex
when I feel financially insecure, when I'm not safe
financially, like my bills are not paid, I'm anxious about how
I'm going to get things done, you know, blah, blah, blah.
If I'm anxious about that, then chances that I will be able to
orgasm or not are very slim. And this is something I know
about myself. That's why I stay on top of my
game when it comes to my finances.
I make sure I'm very financially secure.
I make sure I'm comfortable and safe, and I feel good about
myself because I know it translates in all the other
aspects of my life. I try to make sure my finances
are good for me, for myself, and I would like for my partners to
also be financially comfortable so that they're not coming to
make me feel weird. That guy who gave me a yeast
infection, this guy, you know, to get me, he pretended that he
was rich. He acted like he had the money
because that is usually a prerequisite for me to even talk
to a man. I don't like men who are
dependent on women financially. I've talked about this because
that's the kind of home I grew up in and that definitely it
gives me PTSD. I don't want a man depending on
my money, so I need him to have his own money.
And this guy, one time he started making me, not really
making me because I did it out of my own will, but like I was
having to start paying for stuff like paying for a lot of things
in the relationship. I didn't mind because I liked
him, but it started to just feel weird.
It started feeling like this is not the kind of relationship I.
I want to be in, I don't want to be in a relationship where my
mom looks at me when it's time to pay for something.
And immediately that changed the dynamics we had around sex.
I stopped being horny for him. I stopped wanting him because I
was thinking I just, and he would make jokes about why don't
you pay my rent for me. It turned me all the way off
because we were really fresh into the relationship and such
discussions were very awkward for me.
For a grown man who was like 12 years older than me to expect me
to pay. Oh my God, it made me feel very,
very weird physical after sex. I love cuddles, I love when my
mind helps me clean up and I love hanging out.
I love touch and just talking and laughing and being in each
other's presence. One time there's this guy who I
really, really liked. He called for me the Uber
immediately. We woke up in the morning and
I've never stopped thinking about that.
And that traumatized me. I don't like going to people's
houses anymore because I don't want to be chased.
I don't want anyone telling me I have a busy day.
You have to leave. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That doesn't make me feel safe. And that's why I love to have
sex in a very secure situation where I can feel safe.
I feel welcomed. I feel like I can hang out
without being scared and vice versa.
Our space needs to feel like we feel welcomed and wanted.
The moment that, you know, goes away, then it ends.
And my emotional needs is, you know, discussing afterwards,
talking about how we feel, talking about the sex that we
just had. Let's have a discussion about
it. You know, I want to know how did
what make you feel when I did that?
When I put my tongue there. Let's talk, let's bond on an
emotional level because it really, really helps make me
feel safe and comfortable. And some of the sexual needs I
have are, you know, let's keep flatting, let's maintain the
romance, let's keep touching, let's be present sexually.
If you realize this needs a wholesome, I didn't say anywhere
to give me money. Kiss me, fuck me said you what?
I, I try to explain it in a very wholesome way because these are
my needs. And I'm realizing the more
honest I am with myself, it helps me also be able to
communicate with my sexual partner and tell them what I
need. And it also helps me never
settle for less because it's important to have the difficult
conversations. They really elevate even your
sex. If you can talk about anything,
you can love each other. You can fuck nasty and talk
about it afterwards. Imagine how comfortable you can
be during and after. Hydrate and eat.
It's even better if you're able to share a meal and a drink
together. It makes you feel like you care
for each other. You know that feeling for after
sex and you're drinking water, then you pass the water bottle.
It's, it's a feeling of like I care about you and I think about
and I want you safe and hydrated.
It's, it's a simple small thing, but it's such a huge gesture to
me. It also when I pay attention to
all these needs that I have, it helps reduce my anxiety around
sex. It helps me not overthink.
It improves the sex and my mental health, my self esteem,
my mood. I made a clear decision years
ago, like over five years ago, that I don't want to have sex.
That makes me feel worse after. You know when you have sex with
someone and you the whole week you're overthinking, you're sad,
you're indecisive, you're scared, you're confused.
I promised myself I was never going to have such sex ever
again. I only want to have sex that
improves my mental well-being, myself esteem and my mood.
I want all the positive feelings towards sex and my lover.
I need to feel safety and comfort and all this really
really heals my insecurities. Please teach yourself to
advocate for yourself by getting to know yourself fast so that
you're able to communicate these needs that you have to your
partner. Your orgasm and your safety and
your comfortability is also your responsibility.
It's not just the other persons, it's yours as well.
Having a stable mind, good financial, emotional, sexual,
physical health and well-being keeps you stable.
It gives you better results. All this is part of sexual
safety and aftercare is part of taking care of yourself and this
is the ultimate show of love for yourself.
Start taking charge of your life sexually.
Do not just sit and wait and be oblivious to the processes that
are happening around you. Take charge, love yourself, be
intentional, and have great sex.