Years ago, one of the biggest things that I wanted to change about my sex life was my ability to have an orgasm with a partner. For years, I found it hard to relax and enjoy myself and I would get stressed about how long it took me to climax. I thought there was something wrong with me or that I was just someone who didn’t find it easy to have an orgasm with a partner.

I wanted to change this, so I began to study about female pleasure and orgasm. And not too long into that journey, my ability to have an orgasm with a partner radically shifted where it became easy for me.

I went through a phase when I was younger. To chase after musicians, writers & dj’s.

I believed that if I was chosen by them, that it meant I was special, that I was cool.

That I would brag in later years when they would be invariably famous, that I slept with that dude.

I idolised their talent and saw the brightest futures ahead of them.

I wasn’t giving much thought to my talents back then.

I was a mess of anxiety and heavy drinking.

Panic attacks and going to therapy.

Feeling like I had potential but no power to express it.

I have hit on hundreds of people in my life

I started off as a 15 year old teenager in Dublin. I was restless and hungry to party, to discover new things and I was boy OBSESSED.

I had a fake ID, friends who also had fake ID’s and we hit the town hard. We trawled the pubs of Dublin looking for live music and hot guys.

As soon as a band kicked off with a song that we liked, we marched onto the dance floor and threw ourselves around it with wild abandon.

All the while eyeing up the guys around us.

I had a few approaches back then.

One was the fairly classic, look over at them and start to move around them until you are dancing together and then snogging. WIN.

And the other approach was to walk straight over to a guy I found attractive. Hold out my hand to him to shake it and say ‘Hi, I’m Caoilfhionn. What’s your name?’

My logic with this approach was that it was better to talk to them and find out if we’re into each other instead of spending the whole night thinking ‘what if’ and also I figured, most guys wouldn’t turn down a woman hitting on them.

This turned out to be pretty solid thinking on my part.

Most men were a yes.

The other approach was to go to the smoking area and ask hot guys for a smoke or a lighter.

For a non-smoker, I smoked a lot over those years

One of the ways to expand the pleasure you feel is to look at all of the places where you block it

I was on the phone to a good friend yesterday, a coach and I was sharing about something that I was unhappy about. I was having a bit of a whinge.

I listed out all of the things that were annoying me, feeling aggrieved and sorry for myself.

Now she’s a smart woman and listened patiently.

When I was done speaking, she reminded me of all the positive things that had happened too, wonderful happenings that I had brushed over and dismissed in my story.

One of the ways that I expand my capacity of pleasure is my paying attention to all of the lovely moments interspersed throughout the day. Below is a list of some from yesterday. Hit reply to this email and share with me yours!

✨the sight of Autumn Leaves 🍂 in The Chilterns with the crunch of them underfoot

✨melted Irish butter over new potatoes with wholegrain mustard mashed in

✨Matt crying and wheezing with laughter over a funny observation I made about him

✨connecting with an old client and feeling my heart expand with joy

✨heat and steam in the sauna and my rosy cheeks as I emerged from it

I’ve been on a trip with my libido.

It’s fluctuated wildly at different points in my life.

I’ve had periods of intense desire and longing for s/ex

And other periods when that’s been shut down.

Closed. Focussed on pain that I’m experiencing or some emotional turmoil.

I was a horny teenager growing up.

Devouring Mills & Boons and fiction where women had lots of s/ex.

I couldn’t wait to have sex and masturbated all the time.

I had this vision of it being this ecstatic, transcendental experience.

When I started to have sex though, I remember feeling profoundly disappointed.

Where was the ecstasy and pleasure that I imagined penetration would be?

Matt and I were out walking yesterday and I was talking him through some of the content for my new program, The Pleasure Upgrade.

And we naturally progressed to talking about our s/ex life.

Even though we’ve had many of these conversations, I still felt a little nervousness.

Thoughts that floated through my mind were

‘What if I say something that he misinterprets?’

Or ‘what if he says something that hurts my feelings?’

What happened instead was totally different.

Years ago I was in a relationship. With a good man.

We started off with lots of attraction and things in common.

The future felt bright.

Slowly over time though, the relationship started to feel disconnected and the attraction began to wane.

Looking back I can see why that happened.

Shoulds suck the fun out of life

Or at least they do for me.

I’ve found myself feeling creatively stuck recently.

Between two loud voices in my head, both telling me how I should be creative.

You are the boss of your vulva

This may sound obvious and yet it can be very easy to put someone else’s knowledge on a pedestal instead of your own.

Maybe a lover who you judge as more experienced then you

Or the health professional with the credentials

Or the practitioner with the years of experience

Or the healer who’s very spiritual

Or the book author that everyone is raving about

✨My name is Caoilfhionn, which is pronounced like Qweelin. When combined with my surname, my name translates to the blond and fair daughter of the hound of the sea from Irish, which by the way I speak. Although I’m pretty rusty at this stage

✨I’m a life coach specialising in Desire, S/ex and Relationships. I want to live in a world where s/exuality, the earth, our bodies, loving community and honest expression are all treated with reverence. Working as a coach is my way to contribute towards that world.

✨I’m engaged to Matt, we’ve been together 2+years. We had a whirlwind romance where we connected online during the pandemic, when I was in Ireland and he was in London. Within a week of connecting online, we agreed to move in together, which then happened within a month, and then a month later we got engaged! I feel so happy to have found him and we feel very much in love and lucky to have each other

One of the biggest shifts in my relationship to pleasure, came not from my training or courses I attended but from reading Caitlin Moran’s book ‘How to build a girl’.

There was a moment in the book when the protagonist talks about how she used to masturbate thinking about all the pleasure she would give the other person.

Her focus was on her touching THEM and how it would feel for THEM. She wasn’t even the main event in her own fantasies.

And as I read that, I realised that I was doing the same thing.

As I masturbated, I fantasised about all I could do for the other person.

How skilled and adept I would be.

I was getting off on their pleasure, not on my own.

A fixed masturbation style is when we masturbate the same way each time we do it, whether that’s with our own fingers, hands, bedding item, vibrator etc

The reasons why this can make it difficult to experience sexual pleasure with a partner are..

Why thinking positive thoughts doesn’t work to actually shift your life

I see lots of memes online about how we need to change our thoughts from negative to positive, to have our desired life.

They usually talk about how our thoughts impact our actions, which impacts our lives and how the same repetitive, negative thoughts can often keep us stuck.

What these memes are missing though is that our thoughts reflect our state.

So if our thoughts are fearful or angry or sad, its because we have the energy of these emotions in our bodies, and that to shift them, we need to feel them.

Pleasure is experienced in the present moment

This may sound obvious, so why am I writing it?

What I’ve found that I do, and many of my clients do too, is that we put off feeling pleasure until some fantasy moment in the future.

Oh I’ll let myself feel pleasure when …

… I’ve lost weight

… I got this promotion

… My business is in this place

… My health is fully recovered

… My kids are at this stage

… My house is properly organised

… Everything on my to-do list is done

… I have the perfect partner

You are allowed look for a partner

There is a common saying, that you’ll find love when you stop looking

I used to repeat this saying to myself and friends when I was growing up, I took it to mean that I shouldn’t actively look for a partner, instead I should devote my time and energy to living a fulfilling life

Which sounds like solid advice

Except that it reinforces that we need to be passive in our desire to find a partner, that we need to wait for them to find us, and we need to create a perfect fulfilling life to deserve them

Which isn’t how it worked out for me

Years ago, I was working with a coach (@brenda_fredericks) and one of the themes that came up was my desire for a boyfriend. I really wanted one. And in her wisdom, Brenda asked me to list out what I wanted to experience with a boyfriend. Where did I want to go, what would we do, how would he treat me etc. I listed them all out and she told me my assignment for that week was, as much as possible, to do that for myself. Which I did. Brunch is my favourite meal and so I took myself out to brunch somewhere lovely and I really treated myself. I had a great time, so much so that I took this on as a regular practice.

There’s a saying in Irish that goes, ‘Ní saoirse go saoirse na mban’. Which translates to that there is no freedom until the freedom of women.

I love the punch and power of these words, their left wing, anti-colonialist and feminist message.

To me, they evoke this sense of Irish women’s resistance to the status quo. Women who fought against the British Occupation. Women who stood up to the Church and its choke hold over the nation.

Growing up, I didn’t get on well with the other kids around me, so I spent a lot of my time in the school yard, walking by myself, daydreaming.

I don’t remember what I used to dream of then but I do know that the habit stuck with me.

All through my adulthood, as a big walker, I spent hours a day in fantasy as I was getting from a to b.

Dreaming of a life, where I was rich and influential as a creative with my own business. Confident and at ease in all situations. Having hot s/ex, travelling the world and in a loving relationship.

These fantasies were a wonderful escape, and a source of huge inspiration but the drawback was that the contrast between my fantasy life and my real life was stark.