Sexuality: Expansive & Exploratory Mindset to Sexual Intimacy
In his latest reflection, CFR Senior Director of Clinical Programs and Staff Therapist Allen-Michael Lewis examines how sexuality, sexual intimacy, and an expansive and exploratory approach to self-understanding shape the ways people connect with themselves and others. He also considers how social conditioning, culture, and personal history often influence what feels acceptable or off-limits in expressing desire and identity.
Drawing inspiration from cultural figures like Taylor Swift, Lewis explores how creative expression mirrors the therapeutic process—inviting curiosity, vulnerability, and growth. In therapy, individuals learn to define intimacy and authenticity on their own terms.
Knock on Wood: Exploring Sexuality Through Art and Authenticity
With an initial listen to Taylor Swift’s new album The Life of a Showgirl, and with reference to the Reputation, Midnights, and The Tortured Poets Department eras, I’ve been reflecting on how Taylor Swift continues to explore and expand her understanding of sex, sexuality, and sexual intimacy through her art.
Entering the music industry at such a young age can create a kind of artistic and personal confinement. You’re expected to remain the rich, charming, bubbly blonde singing about crushes and fairytales. This expectation can persist even as you grow and evolve into adulthood.
As we’ve seen through tabloids and social media, revealing new, more complex parts of oneself—especially as a woman in the public eye—rarely comes without backlash. Consequently, for Taylor Swift, words like ‘slutty,’ ‘disgusting,’ ‘attention-seeking,’ and ‘inappropriate’ began to circulate as her music shifted from innocent fairytales to sexy, sensual fantasies, and explorations of desire.
The Pressure to Stay the Same: Sexuality and Social Expectations
Society shapes rigid lenses around what is and isn’t considered appropriate, filtered through gender expression, sex, race, religion, and culture. In addition, these imposed standards often collide with our innate desire to explore and expand our understanding of sex and sexuality. They can also conflict with how we experience our sexual intimacy parts of self.
Conversations about these topics have long been treated as taboo—things to avoid, whisper about, or hide altogether. As a result, society falls into a pattern of ‘shoulds’: this is who sexual intimacy should be with, what sexuality should look like, and when sex should be addressed. Any deviation from those “shoulds” invites judgment, shame, and guilt.
Taking an Expansive and Exploratory Approach to Self and Connection
While exploration has become more accepted in conversations about sexuality and intimacy, there’s still resistance when it comes to sex itself; often dismissed under the belief that ‘it should come naturally.’ However, the idea of expanding our understanding of sex, sexuality, and intimacy can feel unfamiliar or even uncomfortable. These parts of the self are often viewed through a binary lens—this or that—with little space for nuance, complexity, or curiosity. Because of that, the work can feel disorienting at first.
The Gray Area of Growth
Expansion and exploration invite understanding and often exist within a gray area. This gray area allows space for boundaries, morals, and cultural and/or religious beliefs. It also makes room to define what community and connection look like as you explore these parts of yourself. Within this space of exploration, there are also difficult conversations and the need for collaborative and honest communication. At times, there are moments of grief and emotional reckoning.
Being exploratory and expansive allows for collaboration.
Much of this work begins with the self and a willingness to question, to reflect, and to lean into the discomfort that comes from exploring your sexual and intimate self. While external motivation and support are valuable, true growth requires turning inward: finding the courage to ask hard questions, examine the roots of long-held morals and beliefs, and consider how they align, or no longer align with, the life you want to create.
The Challenges of Exploring Sexuality Within Relationships
Beginning this journey of exploration and expansion while in relationship with others—whether friendship, romantic partnership, or marriage—can be challenging. It demands significant internal work. Yet, this kind of work also opens space for collaboration and connection. It calls for open, ongoing communication. This is especially important as you explore which boundaries feel important to set, expand, or redefine.
Collaboration, however, does not mean surrendering your autonomy; it’s an opportunity for others to offer feedback, perspective, and support as they, too, adapt to your process of growth within this expansive and exploratory space.
Navigating Discomfort and Disapproval
Some people might be upset by your exploration and expansion mindset.
Growth looks different for everyone, and not everyone will respond positively to your process of exploration and expansion. Your choices might clash with someone else’s moral compass or the life they envision for themselves. At times, that may lead to judgment, disappointment, or even outright disdain. Managing the emotions that surface in those moments can be especially difficult when they come from someone you care about deeply.
It’s common to swing between extremes. You might avoid the feeling to continue the work, brush it off with “I don’t care, it’s whatever,” or retreat with “Fine, I’ll just drop it.” Both responses can distance you from the emotions you’re feeling and disrupt the deeper work of self-understanding. Two questions often emerge in this process:
- “Am I okay with this person being unhappy as I explore these parts of myself?”
- “What if they choose not to be part of my life anymore?”
These are hard questions precisely because answering them honestly forces you to face the consequences, whether good, bad, or somewhere in between, and to sit with the emotions that follow.
So much of this work is about building the willingness to face your emotions head-on: not avoiding them, not letting them consume you, but allowing them to be part of your journey toward understanding yourself more fully.
Expansion allows you to maintain cultural, religious and moral boundaries.
Honoring Boundaries While Expanding Sexual Intimacy
When beginning a new journey of self-exploration, many people believe the first step is to discard all the cultural, religious, and moral foundations that have guided them up to that point. However, it can feel easier to throw everything away than to do the harder, more vulnerable work of examining where those beliefs come from and how they might still have a place, if redefined, within your evolving understanding of sex, sexuality and sexual intimacy.
Balancing Belief and Authenticity
For those with deep faith or strong cultural ties, this process often carries grief. It can feel like choosing between your community and your authenticity, your faith, and your happiness. The reality is that some people in your life may not approve of, understand, or accept your desire to explore your sexual self. That fear of judgment, rejection, or loss of belonging is profoundly human.
That’s why building a support system is so important as you begin this work. Support can take many forms. It might include a trusted therapist, an open-minded faith leader, community organizations, or people within your circle who can hold space for your growth. This kind of exploration can be destabilizing at times. Having grounded, compassionate voices coming alongside you helps you navigate how your cultural, religious, and moral boundaries can evolve with you instead of feeling like they must be abandoned entirely.
Growth, Authenticity, and the Journey Toward Sexuality and Self
Exploring collaboration in something so deeply personal can feel uncertain. Some of the people closest to you might struggle to understand your need to expand and explore. Along the way, you may wonder how your faith, culture, and values will shift as you grow. These are the kinds of questions that inevitably surface in this work.
This work is hard work. The process of exploring and expanding one’s relationship to sex, sexuality, and sexual intimacy is rarely linear. It shifts, pauses, and reshapes itself over time. It can feel safe to stay within the roles society assigns and deeply unsettling to step beyond them. Yet that discomfort is often where transformation begins.
Transformation Through Exploration
Taylor Swift’s journey from ‘he’s the reason for the teardrops on my guitar’ to ‘Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see his love was the key that opened my thighs’ has been long, hard, and messy. But it shows what’s possible when we allow ourselves to lean into expansion and exploration, to meet the parts of ourselves that have been waiting to be seen.
Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Council for Relationships.
Interested in working with Allen? Contact him today.
About Philadelphia Therapist Allen-Michael Lewis, M.S, LMFT, AS
Allen-Michael Lewis, M.S, LMFT, AS, is the Senior Director of Clinical Programs and a Staff Therapist at Council for Relationships. He specializes in helping individuals and couples deepen connections and understanding through conversations about sexuality, relationships, and identity. His expansive and exploratory approach to therapy encourages clients to embrace curiosity and compassion as they navigate change, growth, and healing. Allen-Michael’s work often centers on fostering sexual intimacy and communication that leads to greater authenticity and emotional fulfillment.
Ready to begin your own journey of growth? Contact Allen-Michael to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
More from CFR
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