The anti-Sx Sx. How does that show up in your daily thoughts and actions? How did you finally realize you were Sx-first?
Gotcha.
OK, first I've known about being sx-first for about 6 years. I discovered this before figuring out my enneagram type, actually.
I didn't actually figure it out for myself--a bunch of folks on Personality Café all started telling me my posts SCREAMED sx-first. Here I'd been reading all these posts about these crazed sx-first vampires lusting with INTENSITY, needing to suck the lifeforce to fulfill their sxness, grasping and moaning and thrusting and ugh. And I'm just like
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, no way would I be that crazy instinct. And prior to coming to PerC, I was already familiar with Riso and Hudson's description of the SX subtype, and they noted that people often mistype as sx-firsts because they think they're sexy or enjoy sex or something. And that was part of it--I had a reaction against doing what the majority of people did, and no way did I consider myself sexy. So basically I did the opposite things using the same logic loooool.
So I thought I was sx-last. And then PerC was like, No.
And just in the spirit of being open-minded, I considered it, and it actually started making sense.
I mean, my whole life was defined by me being utterly miserable because I could never seem to find a relationship and I believed I was undesirable. I couldn't fit in with others in groups, either, but it didn't torment me to this degree. This was the sort of thing that would leave my crying myself to sleep at night and wondering what was actually wrong with me, swearing suicide, causing meltdowns, and resenting literally everyone. I was verbally abused as a child about my appearance and internalized a lot of that messaging (to protect myself from it actually), and just assumed that I was some disgusting swamp monster that no one would ever want.
So inwardly that was the story. But outwardly, I mean. I'm already of the mindset that it's somehow weak to be beholden to "Love", that romance is silly, and that I don't need a man to make me happy. And combining that with my own disappointment, I was just the most judgemental bitter asshole you could meet. I couldn't stand to talk about sexual issues--not only cause it's basically taboo in society, but also because I felt it was one of those things that the Universe acted like I wasn't supposed to know and, well, when the world turns its back you, you turn your back on the world. Beautiful women really irked me, women expressing their sexuality really irked me...because they were competition, and they were entitled to be attractive, and I would never have that, so why not tear them down? A miserable being must make more miserable beings, then he's happy. I wanted fairness, damnit!! And my life was so unfair.
Rather than wander the world, I just sort of locked myself in my room and lived in my imagination. I didn't go out and do things or have "intense experiences" and was just bitter that life was cutting me out of itself, yet I would say,
Fuck off, I didn't want it anyway. I used to deliberately hang out with the Ned Flanders types and quilting moms (who are like the exact opposite of what I want from life) just because that way I didn't have to directly face my own inadequacies. My self-esteem being dependent on all this stuff. So I had a really negative self-image for years cause I legitimately felt like I was failing in the sx-first realm, but it always came out in this subversive, bitter, moralizing way, and me cutting myself out of stuff and then wondering why I always seemed to get cut out of stuff.
Something I have noticed is that many of my friends over the years (admittedly I've only had 2 like this lol) were sx-firsts who I think at some level saw this about me and felt safe with it. I wasn't a threat to them or their feelings, because I was so busy decrying our sex-obsessed world I wasn't contributing to it. They drew heart from my protestations; I fought against their fears and insecurities...to combat my own. To hide it from myself. When Naranjo says that our dominant instinct is a weakness posing as a strength...it never seemed like a strength to me, but others saw me as very strong in this area. Not in the sense of my being "more attractive" or whatever, but in the sense of holding fast in a tormenting world.
Anyway. Then I got sick (and found my type during this period), and then I got depressed (around sx-first issues, incidentally, because that was my weak point and so the area of my psyche where the link broke first), and then I wasted years locked in my house and realized I was basically going to kill myself unless I got some sort of healing around this. I got into Taoist and Tantric practices, and damned if it isn't working. No partner, I'm just doing the inner work. "Healing sexuality" and stuff. I found out that very many practitioners are sx-firsts themselves, and my story isn't really that uncommon. I dunno why I couldn't have found this stuff 10 or 20 years ago, but thank God I found it at all.
So yeah. That's a quick recap. It was...just so liberating to figure this out. I understood the most tormenting areas of my psyche, and although they still hurt, I feel for the first time that I'm not some freak of nature and there's a pattern behind it, and that the damage can be repaired.
