Performance Anxiety: How Being Good in Bed Has More to do With Body Confidence than Skill

We’ve all been there; the moment is heating up, you’re kissing, feeling each other’s bodies, the desire for one another is pulsing through your veins, your genitals are tingling, yet once penetration starts, you become dissociated from the moment and hyper-focused on performance.

You may be thinking about how you look, how you sound, whether your partner thinks what you’re doing is sexy, good or not good, the list goes on. Whether or not you watch porn, the infiltration of pornography’s influence on the modern psyche is fused deeply into our collective bone marrow, fueling the disconnection from body and spirit.

Though I have always been someone good at sex and intimate acts, it hasn’t always felt that way for reasons I will discuss below.

Much of what makes sex “good” is whether we are fully there to experience it. The thought of hot, steamy, passionate sex has often been the main stimulus for me, even above the physical experience of sex itself, because it didn’t require the presence, openness, and vulnerability needed to be inside of that moment with a partner. It is easier to be inside of our imagination and fantasy than to be in raw reality with another person. This being said, let me get my point across clearly:

The potential for great sex increases the better we feel in our bodies, because the better we feel in our bodies, the more present we can be.

The modern sexual liberation agenda promotes passivity when it comes to body confidence. It promotes victimization and a toxic “radical acceptance” model for our health and body liberation. That is why we are offered pills, quick fixes, and endless self-help media for everything- the machine feeds off of our numbness. There is no space for stamina and sensitivity building if we have already given up.

Body confidence isn’t the end all be all to great sex, there are many other factors that contribute such as trust, environment, eroticism, open communication, curiosity, experimentation and more that I will save for another time. But let me tell you why feeling confident in your body increases your chances for experiencing better sex.

One of the main contributors to sexual insecurity has to do with how we perceive our bodies. Being in our head about how we look during sex blocks off the ability for our pleasure receptors to fully release, decreasing our chances for orgasm. In order to travel to the ecstatic place of flow, openness, and receptivity, our critical mind needs to be set aside. The best sex I have experienced has always been during times I felt fucking GOOD in my body and my critical mind was quiet.

So, does this mean you must be fit or look a certain way to feel good in your body? deprive yourself of treats, fresh baked bread, and that ice cream you love so much? No. But it does mean that we are the only ones who must take responsibility to work towards a rooted confidence because the truth is, though confidence can be faked in bed, it won’t lead to deep pleasure.

What I am inviting you into is exploring the why. If you don’t feel confident in your body during sex, why is that? The self-reflection will be different for everyone, but I guarantee that the core of most answers would be linked to disempowerment.

Why?

Do you believe you are worthy of pleasure?

If not, why?

These questions may not be comfortable to ask ourselves, but they are necessary for uncovering the root of the disconnect we are experiencing during sex.

Let me share with you a bit about my experience with this:

I had a numb body for the first 7 years of being sexually active. I accepted the myth that “not all women can orgasm” because I was in a dull, sexually unsatisfying relationship for five years. During this time I was also very insecure, extremely creatively repressed, and formed unhealthy coping mechanism for emotions I couldn’t find words for at the time. It took the existential awakening initiated by the pandemic to shift something inside of me that became the cataclysm for my creative and sexual rebirth and liberation. I went into a very dark place during that time because I was blessed to see behind the curtain and though most of what I saw was dark and exposing, it also awoke me to something greater, powering me up in a major way to let the light in.

I began allowing my natural drive towards all things sensual flow freely through me, beginning with movement and the penetrative force of nature. As I was on this path of self-discovery, nature was my greatest teacher and also my biggest erotic influence. Every free day I had to myself I would go out into nature- hikes where I could get engulfed in the woods, great peaks that would make me feel alive, lakes, rivers, snowy mountains, sparkling deserts, I’d crave being inside it all the time. It would feed me as I felt my wildness rise and my suppressed sexual appetite increase.

I slowly began feeling myself for the first time, like truly who I was at my core, and this powered me up to make decisions that would have me going through underworld initiation after underworld initiation, but, hey, it has all led to this moment right here, where I can speak confidently and passionately about the power of sexual liberation.

The main lesson I learned from getting metaphorically pulled under many times is this:

Your capacity for pleasure is a direct reflection of your capacity for pain.

Or in other words:

Your capacity for pleasure is in direct correlation with your ability to be uncomfortable.

Why? Because we cannot go deep if we only allow in surface level experiences. We cannot swim in the ocean of pleasure if we are always floating on a lifeboat.

So, how does this tie into body confidence and being good in bed? Being sexually liberated is a process, and it often, especially in the beginning, is an uncomfortable process with many hurdles and potential life lessons along the way. We all deserve to feel the potential of pleasure we were given at birth.

Connect with your breath and touch yourself slowly. Find what makes you feel good in your body and keep doing that, no matter how it looks or how it compares to what others are doing around you. Eat healthy, exercise regularly to awaken all of those pleasure receptors, and commune with all things and people that make life feel bright, meaningful, and sensually inspiring.

With love,