You’ve gotten over the hump and started to break the freeze of getting confident asking for what you want in bed.
You’ve started thinking about what it is you really want, you’ve started having the conversations with your partner outside of the bedroom, and you’ve felt more confident with asking and giving directions in bed.
Hurrrahhh! Congratulations!
You’ve started making real steps to having more of the sex you ACTUALLY want to be having, instead of putting up with sex you tolerate and feeling resentful.
While this is such an amazing act of courage, there are 3 things I want you to remember that I have to keep reminding my clients.
3 things that could discourage you, make you feel frustrated, and if you didn’t know about them, could make you feel so discouraged that you fall back into a spiral of anxiety about it.
But now you do, forewarned is forearmed, as they say. You now know to expect this rather than freak out when it happens. Because it will.
3 Important Things to Remember When You Gain Sexual Confidence
1. There will be times when it just *works* and you feel confident. It just happens easily and you feel super sexy and empowered. Hell yeah, baby!
AND…
There will be times– usually when you’re under stress, your relationship is going through a rough patch, or life has thrown a doozy at you- where it feels like you have gone back to square 1 again. You will freeze up and appease. Then you could beat yourself up for it because you “should” know this by now.
2. There will be times when you ask for something and your lover is totally game, and you have an epic time together. You reach new heights of ecstasy and connectedness.
You wonder why you made such a big problem about it before.
AND…
There will be times when your partner doesn’t want to do it, or gets triggered too. It can trip up your own shame/rejection/trigger spiral and you can feel like it was all for nothing.
3. There will be times when sex just feels SO DAMN GOOD and exquisite, you never realized sex could be so good before. You feel like a new woman/vulva haver.
YEAH BABY!
AND…
There will be times when sex is boring, you feel tired and can’t be arsed, you and/or your partner are having an off day, you can’t cum, you get vulvar pain again, you feel completely turned off.
Before you get frustrated and ask me what the whole sodding point was, I want you to remember that ALL of this is normal. I repeat: NORRRRMAALLLLLL!
Why I believe you need to know this
I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer or pessimistic, I am telling you this because this is an inevitable part of progress so you won’t get anxious when things go wrong, because they will.
Why? Because you are a messy human being having a messy human experience. Hopefully, this has pissed off your inner perfectionist.
This is actually where the growth happens: When things go, “wrong”, when you’re on the back foot, when life gets in the way.
I do not believe in trying to sell you a picture of being in a place where everything is 100% blissful all the time because it sets you up for completely unrealistic expectations, which will inevitably disappoint you.
You will compare yourself to this fictional, “perfect couple”, or sexy person you see on social media and feel like a failure. It could actually cause you more anxiety than if you had started learning at all.
Instead, I want you to build your capacity, your skill set, and your resilience so that when you do, “slip up” or “go backwards” it bothers you less and less until it’s not an issue anymore.
Sexual Communication is a Skill
Remember that you are learning a brand new skill, or rather, set of skills. Skills that you and I never learned in high school, or anywhere.
Great sex and relationships are SKILLS to be learned, practised, and then mastered.
Often, what feels like an awful problem that could end your relationship or marriage because it’s caused you both so much suffering, is actually just a skills deficit.
Skills we should have been taught, but instead were taught that sex and relationships are, “natural”, and we had to figure them out all of our own.
And like learning any skill, you will have the most spectacular fuck ups while learning them.
How many times did you fall off your bicycle when you learned?
How many times did you nearly crash the car, miss traffic lights, and get frustrated over the gear box when you were learning to drive?
If you have had babies, how many times did you put their nappy on wrong or leave out a crucial step that resulted in a very messy accident?
Now apply this logic to anything you learn in sex and relationships too.
Healing and growth are never linear
This means that it will go wrong for you, multiple times.
In fact, things going wrong are an inevitable part of making progress, and it happens in whatever part of your life you’re trying to make progress in, whether it’s to do with sex or not.
You will dance this wibbly wobbly line where you are adjusting, along with life being life and throwing the unexpected at you.
Think of it like a spiral instead.
Old patterns will constantly resurface, you will have flare ups, you and your partner/s will have rough patches where you just can’t communicate with each other.
In the words of one of my former mentors, Tamu Thomas, “Every day is a school day”.
I really want you to remember that this doesn’t make you, “weak”– or especially if you are spiritually minded or into personal growth– “not healed enough”, “not conscious enough”, or your relationship/marriage isn’t “conscious enough”.
It makes you a human being, in a relationship with another human being, sweetheart.
In fact, what if this relentless policing of yourself, your body, and your relationship, and of holding yourself and by default, your partner to an impossible standard, is the real block to stopping you from confident sexual communication?
From being able to let go in bed?
From being able to throw your head back and moan loudly in delight?
To paraphrase a brilliant sex and relationship therapist, Cyndi Darnell when she was presenting at a conference:
Nobody ever comes to her office wanting to have sex that is perfect, predictable, and starts and ends on time.
I’m guessing you don’t either.
Sex can be messy (not just body fluids either) awkward, and vulnerable.
Sex can also be fun, playful, liberating, cheeky, tender, soulful, sensual, and hilarious too.
If you are an overthinking, smart, and soulful woman or vulva haver, I know that you struggle to take sex out of the box and just let it be ALL of the things. And it is precisely this that stops you having the sex you want to be having.
So please give you and your partner a break. There’s no competition here or prizes to be won.
Focus on what feels good and how to make it more fun instead.
Make sure you’ve downloaded the PDF on how to confidently ask for what you want in bed here.
Want more support to create the sex life of your dreams? Learn more about how we can work together here.
Lucy Rowett, CSC – Pronouns: She/Her/Her