Are You Afraid Of Sex?

Are you afraid of sex? Now that might seem like a strange question to ask. You might say, well, no, sex is great. I mean, everyone loves sex, right? That's kind of the image that we get in the media and other places that, oh, sex is fun and everyone just wants to have sex and sex is great and it's great if you get it and you're awesome and all these things are positive. And yet what I found is a lot of people that I work with with confidence challenges, with social anxiety. Sex is a more mixed experience. It's not just all positive. And in fact, people can have experiences around sex that make them associate it to something that's a little more stressful, a little more anxiety provoking. And this shows up in a variety of ways. And so that's what I want to look at in today's video. It may be a little uncomfortable to look at this, but trust me, when you look at this and see what's going on, it's another step to liberation. And I think confidence isn't just in one area of your life. It's not like just your social life, it's your social life. It's your dating life, your career. And when it comes to sex, I mean, that's a big part of your dating life, your intimate relationship. And people can have fear around sex, not just with a new partner that they're dating or something, but even in their intimate relationship. There can be fears around sex. There could be so many fears around sex. In fact, for someone to have no fear or no insecurity around sex is probably the unusual. That's an outlier. Most people got some issues here. So what are some of the ways that we can be afraid of sex or anxiety can show up? Well, one is people are straight up aware. Like they feel nervous, they feel tense. So tension is one example. There's tension around it. Now why would we be tense around sex? Well, one is you might have ideas about how you need to be. You might feel like I need to look a different way than I do. So when I take my shirt off now I feel anxious because I don't look good. Right? That's stories about how you're supposed to look. Maybe it's stories about how you're supposed to be. I'm supposed to move like this, or I'm supposed to make these kind of sounds, or I'm supposed to be carefree, but I actually feel a little more tender or whatever it is. So you have ideas about how you're supposed to be, and then there's how you are. And when they're different, now you feel tense, you feel anxious, you feel scared, and you think, now I gotta perform. Right? Sometimes people are tense because they're like, I have to have an orgasm. My partner has to have an orgasm. Everything's gotta go perfectly. Ah, right. And there's this perfectionism around it. And sometimes people call that perfection performance anxiety. Now, that's already a problem if you're thinking of sex as a performance. So if you ever use that term for yourself, I have performance anxiety. Dude, you're not. This isn't like the NBA championship. This is like two primates having sex. Like, it's. It's fun, it's play, it's bonding, it's social, it's sincere, it's love, it's excitement. It is something, but it is. It is not a performance. Right? Because again, performance needing to be a certain way that you're not. Are you seeing a theme here? It's a theme of inauthenticity. A theme of you can't enjoy yourself and your body and this other person in this experience until you've become something better and different than you are. Just notice that that's going to be a source of anxiety. It's also a source of pain. You know, another reason people have anxiety around sex is they've had past experiences that were challenging. You know, maybe they. The common story is the way people lose their virginity and it's like, it's uncomfortable. They have a lot of anxiety, or it's with someone that they don't like at all, but they feel like, I gotta lose my virginity so I'm not a loser anymore. Or there's some issue with consent around that. And they feel like they didn't fully wanna say yes, and then they did. And there's pressure and it was weird and it was uncomfortable and they have all these mixed feelings about it. That's not just the first time of losing virginity. That could be any past experience in which someone felt pressured and. And you might think, oh, that's always got to be the man pressuring the woman. That can. That is the more common dynamic. But I've worked with male clients who felt like it was almost like they were. They had to follow through, even though they didn't really want it. And maybe she was actively pressuring them, but maybe they just felt this, like, as a man, I have to do this, and I'm using he, she pronouns as if it's men and women having sex. But it could. This could be the same dynamic between two men having sex, two women having sex, transgender. It's the dynamics. The particulars might be slightly different, but the dynamics of how you need to be and consent, those things are all going to be the same, regardless of the gender, the sexual orientation. And what we're looking at here is we might have some experiences that were not great, and then we're thinking we got to be these certain ways to be good enough. And then I can't make this sound, and I got to have this face, and I got to look like this, and I got to be this. And. And now the next thing you know, I'm scared. I'm scared of sex. And then, of course, a common thing can be a fear of, like, am I going to be able to have sex or intercourse? Right? So men can have concerns about erection and erectile dysfunction, and women can have concerns around being, you know, be able to be open or have enough lubrication. And there's, like, this sense of, oh, my gosh, am I going to be able to pull it off and perform? And what does that do? That makes us more anxious. So how do we shift this? Let's start by taking a full breath in and letting it out, because we're going to start by just relaxing a little bit. Like, sex can get so charged, and we can have so many strong ideas, and it's so tender, and it's so vulnerable. And it goes back to, like, our earliest experiences of sensuality as humans with breastfeeding and connection with other people. Like, it's a very intimate experience. Sex is. And it's very primal and primitive in us. And so it's also very young. It's very tender, and we want to just bring more calmness and more gentleness to this whole thing. So if there's any way that you're being really hard on yourself about it and calling yourself a loser and feeling shame, like, let's start by saying, hey, I gotta be on my own side. You know, I gotta ease up on myself here. If I'm having a hard time getting erection, that's okay. If I'm nervous, you know, and I clam up, and I don't want to have sex with someone that even though I really like them, that's okay. It's okay. Just think, like, you're dealing with a scared animal or a little kid. You're just like, it's okay. It's all right. You know, you don't need to freak out. And you start to soothe yourself, start to calm yourself, and then take another full, deep Breath in. And then we can start to get curious and say, you know, I wonder if there's a way to expand my perception of sex. There is the checklist version of sex, which is like, I got to do this and I got to do that, and she's got to do this and he's got to do that, and then we're gonna do this and then that, and then, boom, we've all been successful, and we got a report card at the end of it. And you could do that. I mean, you know, the why. Why it was a different way to hold sex. Maybe you view sex as about connection, and it's about being with somebody. And this is something that really helped me in my relationships. I used to have a lot of anxiety around sex. And beautiful thing about my relationship with my wife is we have a very spacious way of holding sex. And it's not like, okay, we're going to. We're going to penetration. Here we go, right? It's like, let's be together. And so sometimes that is. We're naked and we're just being with each other. It's not. We're not even moving that much. Maybe we're just naked and talking. Maybe we are being. Maybe it's more cuddling and letting it move and flow and be different things and being able to explore it. Another aspect to look at is, what do you really enjoy? We want to come back to remember, a lot of the anxiety comes from being inauthentic. We want to come back to more authentic. You like, what do you. What do you actually like? What do you like? And how do you naturally want to move? It's almost like, think of sex instead of this performance, like this set dance maneuver, think of it as more like freestyle dance. Like, you can just kind of move. However, like, how does your body naturally want to move? Well, kind of when you're with your partner, there's a way of, like, what really makes sex, like, passionate for people? Sometimes we think it's like, well, I got to do everything they want. I got to please them. It's actually what really lights people up is when you are delighting in them, right? You're like, you want to drink them in. Like, you're so you love it. And the way that you love it is you kind of like, you find what you. What really excites you about that other person. You know, as a former nice guy, I used to be when it came to sex, like, okay, what does she want? I gotta do just all the right things. I gotta make Sure. I do the checklist and everything's okay. So she likes me still, right? Not the most sexy energy. This is more like, what do I wanna. What do I wanna do with her? Right? And then there's a certain way that you touch and a certain way that you move. And it's very like you're taking the other person to account. It's not like, this is what I wanna do. Shut up and take it, right? It's like you're getting feedback about whether they like things or not. And you're even asking them at times too, like, they want this or not. And though it's like really relishing the other person. So, like, drinking them in, like, how do I want to touch? What do I want to do here? And then you start to put that forward and bring it, bring it out. And then all of a sudden, now you're being more you in that experience and less performance oriented. And then drop the agenda. Like, this isn't a freaking work meeting that you got to get through all the points, you know, this is just. We're gonna have some sexy time. That's what my wife also would call it. Let's have some sexy time together, right? Sounds like Borat. It's time for sexy times, right? You know, it's like, I don't know exactly what's gonna happen and it doesn't matter. I know that by the end of this, we're gonna feel closer together. We're gonna have fun together. It's gonna be sweet, it's gonna be intimate, it's gonna be hot or whatever, but there's gonna be going to have an experience that's going to be positive. And that doesn't. No one has to have a certain orgasm or a certain. That doesn't have to go any way for that to occur, right? It's just like, think about. It's like going out to dinner with someone, you know, you're going to have a good time going out to dinner with someone that you're excited about or having fun. And look, if the food is fantastic, great. If the food is okay, great. If it's not that great, you just laugh about it, right? You're going to have fun. It's not like, well, the food wasn't great, so that whole dinner sucked. Look, you're not going to the dinner to eat the food as much as you are to have the experience of the person, right? So think of, like, the specific acts around sex as, like, the different courses. Like, sometimes you do this, sometimes you do that, sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's not. But you and me, we're connecting during this whole thing, and it's going to be awesome no matter what. There's so much more I can unpack here, but I want to give you some tips on how to become less afraid and more authentic and more confident in sex. Share down below what you're finding, what you're learning from around this and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and so know on a deep level that you're awesome.