The Self-Cockblock
Are you committing it, like my husband?
What would make your sex life (or really, your whole life) feel mind-blowing in 2026?
I bet you know the answer. If it’s not immediately to mind, I imagine it would come while you sat in a hot shower for ten minutes and thought of nothing other than arousal1.
Now, what do you need to do to have that come true?
We talk about dreams like they’re only available with our eyes closed, but really, it’s often so simple to see them, to have them, in real life. But how many people do the work to fulfill them?
Take my husband, Joe, for example. He’s hardworking. He only procrastinates on things like replacing the fridge light. He never compromises on his passions. He’ll only skip a meal for an emergency, and even then, he’d rather wait to enjoy his dinner. But even though sex is of equivalent life importance to him as cuisine, and even though he has me here, on a platter for him, every day, he doesn’t often take what he really, really wants.
We have sex. We have great sex. We’re both sexually satisfied. But there are still big, deep, dark, super longings he yearns for, but he doesn’t initiate.
In fact, we built a sexy activity with a tarot deck (I’ll explain this one day), and one of the cards symbolized his one true wish, and when we went to play, inside his mind, he hoped he wouldn’t get that card.
Guess which we pulled?
The thing he wanted more than anything, of course. The thing he was afraid to take.
Sometimes, it’s easier to accept dreams staying fantasies than to make them happen.
There’s mental anguish required to fulfillfantasies. Perhaps from a limiting self-image, fear of growing outside our comfort zone, shyness, shame, or, really, innumerable potential blocks. The one thing that connects them all is ourselves. We can blame society or circumstance. But ultimately, we cockblock ourselves.
I’ll share Joe’s dream and the sex we had after we pulled that card to demonstrate. But first, I’ll share my own cockblock, and how I work(ed) through it.
I’ve had many dreams I was once too afraid or too lazy to fulfill. To do the things I had to do in order to have them — rewire my brain and habits to be the person who had it, take the small steps, the big steps, until I’m walking the dream walk.
The first that comes to mind is how I wanted to have a relationship where my bisexuality wasn’t completely lost. It took being honest with myself and being honest with my partner. Which, practically, is a two-step process. But, emotionally, a heavy load.2
The other big one took longer. It’s how badly I wanted to be a writer.
I’m hardworking to the point that Joe chastises me for my unending putzing. I’m unafraid of effort and professional ambition. But writing — opening a word doc or grabbing a pen — felt so out of reach.
I wrote and hand-bound countless self-illustrated books as a kid. I sat at my mom’s Macintosh LC 580 for hours retyping Little House on the Prairie. But that ego developed, and culture imposed itself upon me, and before I realized, it’d been decades since I’d done the thing I really wanted to do because it scared me.
All I had to do was sit down and type enough to feel confident enough to put those words out there.
The mental is more Olympic than the physical.
I’m not lying when I say I wanted to vomit for the first 12 times I clicked publish on Happy Endings.
Why is it that we keep our deepest fantasies in the dark?
My Joe, who helped me get the nerve to finally put my stories out there, struggles with his own version of that.
When I asked him why, he said, “I think getting what you want all the time seems inappropriate.” He said he was afraid of being selfish. The way he talked about it, it was like he was so afraid he’d become Gollum, he restricted himself from what he really wanted.
But I think it’s more than that. He also said, “What if I take it too far?”
He wanted to protect me.
He said, “What if you thought I was a nutter?”
He wanted to protect himself.
But the overprotected are isolated from experience. From opportunity. From love.
After I fulfilled Joe’s wish this week, I told him that he not only deprived himself of his dream out of honor or fear, but also deprived me of the praise, gratitude, and love he had given me when he had his dream.
Really, you should’ve seen his face.
I want to see him living his dream every day. I want to see everyone living their dreams.
So, anyway, Joe’s dream…
