There is an age old theme that reveals itself in modern films, trashy romance novels, Internet porn, and extramarital affairs alike… the polar attraction of good girls and bad boys. Why is it that so often bad boys and good girls find themselves in erotically charged relationships with one another? And is there a possibility for these types of relationships to create a healthy balance for each partner that transcends the fleeting romance of cursory flings?
Intention, permission, and consent in both love and sexuality reside at the core of the mind-body connection where energy can be transmuted into either physical and mental wellness or dis-ease. The recovering bad boy-recovering good girl dynamic is not just one that makes for blockbuster romance scenes reserved for Patrick Swayze and Ryan Gosling-esque characters. Taoist philosophy asserts there are natural energies that instinctively drive all of us who are connected to our intuition to seek balance. The polarity that exists between good girls and bad boys has the potential to create not only mind blowing, earth shattering sexual encounters, but, when sought with intention, can potentially cultivate healthy balance physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
The key tenets that create the difference between hot, but dysfunctional polar relationships and sexually charged, but healthfully balanced relationships are permission and intention. Unfortunately, the remnants of purity culture that assert that sex is dirty, immoral, and should be reserved for marriage, particularly for women, still permeates modern cultures even in spite of a dualistic popular culture that reduces female sexuality to a function of the male gaze and male sexual gratification. While this same reductionism can, and often does define the good girl-bad boy relationship, when approached with intention and a growth mindset, both parties have the power to elevate and enlighten one another in a complementary interweaving of physicality and energy.
The Madonna-whore complex culturally pigeon holes women into choosing between the role of being respectable wives and mothers or being passionate and free lovers. Most women, however, possess the desire to embody all aspects of being loving domestic companions as well as intuitively wild and embodied bedroom partners. Partnering with a bad boy, when done with intention, can be a healthy way for the recovering good girl who has spent much of her life performing to society’s expectations of her behavior and sexuality to fully inhabit and define what she wants for herself sexually, intimately, and domestically.
The conscious bad boy provides a non-judgmental, safe container for her to take ownership of her own permission and agency over how she possesses her body and expresses her sexuality and, when done with intention, can explore that space with full permission from herself rather than culturally imposed expectations that confine her to a narrow definition of sexuality determined by external factors that do not contribute to her living the fullest expression of herself. A safe and expansive space, free of societal judgment exists outside of the confines imposed by restrictive cultural norms that define female sexuality with conflicting, unresolvable expectations. The conscious good girl is able to embody the fullest expression of her genuine sexuality on her own terms.
The recovering bad boy, on the other hand, is often seeking the adventure of uncharted territories, the mystery of the unknown, and, perhaps on a less conscious level, a degree of depth that transcends more superficial encounters with women who wear their sexuality on their sleeves. The recovering good girl offers both the challenge of solving a sexy riddle and of exploring psychospiritual and emotional depths that he may have intentionally, or not, disallowed himself from stepping into. Her need for sensual and emotional depth invites him to meet her sexual hunger at the intersection of the body-mind connection. This space exists in a magical balance where sexuality cannot only be transformed into more expansive states of physical bliss, but alignment with body, mind, and spirit offers both parties the permission to surrender to personal and partnered growth states potentially not accessible in either singular expression or with the blandness of less polar partnerships.
The recovering good girl and the recovering bad boy both possess the intentionality and understanding of the limits that both ends of the good/bad behavior spectrum impose on their experiencing their wholeness individually and as a couple. It is not that each grants the other permission to explore parts of themselves that may have previously been off-limits, but, rather, that when entered into intentionally, they each give themselves permission inside a safe, non-judgmental container, to expand into the fullest expressions of themselves. Good and bad dissolve into that which just is, and conscious consent can transmute bad into OH SO GOOD!
Exploring the good girl-bad boy dynamic with intention can often mean the difference between entering into a relationship for the purpose of meeting superficial survival needs to transforming the polarity of the union into that which elevates the partnership into one that infuses the sexual charge from the bedroom (or kitchen counter or bathroom mirror) into every aspect of both partners’ lives. The recovering bad boy teaches the recovering good girl how to live while she teaches him how to love.
Sexual energy, particularly when balanced through complementary polarities, is the same creative energy we use to go out into the world to create and innovate the things that make us feel whole and purposeful on an individual basis while also re-engineering the world at large into one that imbues ecstasy on a global scale. Harnessing the potential of the good girl-bad boy dynamic with the intention of channeling that energy into expansive growth states, perhaps, offers the possibility of co-creation that not only expands ecstatic states of pure physical and emotional bliss, but offers the possibility of radiating that same creative energy beyond the walls of the bedroom in a manner that equally infuses the world with the ecstatic healing potential of Eros.
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