Savannah* can’t stand the stories of partner-swapping here, or cheating there. She is tired of hearing people give so much importance to their sex life, as if it were an end in itself. An addiction. Or a “fix”. Interview with a woman who has come a long way.
“I’m an alcoholic, I’ve been drinking for over 25 years, addictions, I know that!” “, she declares at the outset, barely seated on a mall bench, last month.
“I am no longer able to hear these stories of “fix”, of people so fulfilled. […] Been there, I know that we don’t flourish like that. »
Savannah, a flirtatious 60-year-old blonde, wrote us a rant message earlier this fall. “I read you often. Despite me. Often this annoys me. It’s like having sex at all costs! »
Sitting in front of us, she says:
We can guess there the reflection of a woman who has lived through it and who has undoubtedly struggled. And we guess right.
“I have an excessive temper. I was in therapy for 30 years,” she confirms. Coming from a rather toxic family, with an abusive father, she started drinking at a very young age. At the family table from 8 years old. “Then at 13 I was going to Old Munich. I was older. On all occasions, I consumed. »
She discovers sexuality around 18, with a guy she believes to be the “man of [her] life”. “I was never his official girlfriend. But I stretched that out in my head for ten years. Come to think of it, to him, she was probably just an “appetizer.”
Then, throughout her twenties, she had a lot of “adventures.” A passage that she describes as “unbridled”. Apart from one man, who had an unusual “technique”, she recalls, these are all rather “very ordinary”.
Nevertheless, Savannah continues, multiplying the meetings, in as many nights. He’s already slept with three different guys, three nights in a row. Always consuming.
Mid-twenties, she becomes pregnant from one of her many one-night stands and then has an abortion. “It’s a trauma,” she blurts out. This sucking…” She blames herself, and an STI later, finally has an “awakening”. “I need to change my sexual behavior,” she decides.
She “calms down”, as she puts it, settles down, and even has a child. How is the father in bed? “Ordinary,” she replies. How to say: it’s not complicated, an orgasm, if he knows what to do…” Does he know? We won’t know.
Savannah, for her part, continues to drink, a glass of port while folding the laundry here, a gin and tonic to end the day there. “It’s not the quantity that makes alcoholism, she insists, it’s how it directs your life. »
A few years later, the father no longer loves her, she leaves him, and finds herself, one evening childless, naked in a hotel with a man she doesn’t remember anything about. A real “black-out” which scares him a lot. And a jolt, too. “That’s not what I want,” she realizes. I have a feeling of shame, did we put on a condom, was it one, or ten? »
Savannah is 35 years old. She ends up here consulting, then joins Alcoholics Anonymous, on the advice of her doctor. She has never taken a drop since.
End of the story ? Not exactly. As part of the encounters, she becomes infatuated with another member, “he didn’t look good” and even bears him a child. “It lasted two years, very painful…”
She does not dwell on the matter because she finally gets to the crux of the matter. “I was so in the dark, she sums up, I wanted to emerge into the light. »
Emerge into the light? It is that very concretely, she decides, mid-forties, to devote herself to what she loves and immerses herself in research, hold on tight, on tantrism. We don’t really know where it comes from, but it’s still a “revelation”. “I did a session by myself, she says, the exercise, the ritual, with candles, the four cardinal points, and I found it very respectful towards me. This rise of desire is like making love. […] And it opened me up to a healthy sexuality! ” How ? “It was a way of reclaiming my body. Use my energy for an intention. There was something big! »
From ? After a final detour through social media, where she only encountered guys “who want sado or masochism,” Savannah decided that was it. “I ended up coming to terms with my loneliness. And to be well within. »
“Behind my door, something is happening,” she says, smiling. I bought myself a king bed and I squeeze my pillows. It is the most beautiful gift of love and respect that I can give myself today. »
And if you want to know everything, yes, she did it again with her tantric ritual. “But it’s work!” she giggles. “Still, for me, it’s the most beautiful sexuality I’ve experienced…”
