Sex is a favorite activity of many, but it is also one of the most vulnerable. It’s literally taking off all your clothes and facing someone who you hope finds you attractive and “enough”. Don’t like your stomach? Too damn bad, you can’t suck it in the whole time.
It can even be vulnerable for couples who have been married for decades, especially when there is a lack of validation or open lovingness. And it’s especially vulnerable for partners who haven’t known each other long or are hooking up for the first time.
Almost impossible for me to believe, Haley might think (worry) about her hot body more than I do
In my experience (and in the opinions of many a New York Times Bestselling author), women have a deep desire to be wanted for their physical appearance and are extremely sensitive to how attractive they feel or how much it seems that you are interested in them.
When they wear clothing to show off one part of their bodies that they like, they are simultaneously drawing attention away from areas they are incredibly insecure about with their outfits or covering them up with make-up. The surest way to piss off a female partner and cause her great pain is to insult or act disinterested in her naked body.
Almost equally as important as feeling desirable for a woman is feeling emotionally connected through the experience of sex. This is especially true for Haley, who always says that she feels most emotionally connected through physical contact, especilaly sex. Whether rough or passionate, in a woman’s mind sex is an opportunity for the two of you to feel connected. Good sex means your relationship (or its potential) and emotional connection is strong.
What to do when you’re not in the mood
In the past, sexual rejection has made Haley feel like she isn’t enough for the guy, neither important enough or attractive enough. Since we started dating, Haley and I have had a few hiccups with sexual rejection. Sometimes one of us is really horny and the other isn’t in the mood, which feels kinda bad but really isn’t that big of a deal. What causes the biggest, most painful feelings of sexual rejection is when one of us makes an effort to be romantic, sexy, or set the mood in some way and the other responds poorly. Of course it is always absolutely okay to say no to sex, no matter how horny or persistent your partner seems. However, not giving any kind of explanation about why you aren’t in the mood typically sends the other person into a negative thought spiral and feels really shitty.
Haley and I both aspire to not needing any reassurance, but a few words of explanation or reminder that it’s not about attractiveness, we just aren’t in the mood goes a long way. It can be very vulnerable to ask for sex, and Haley and I have agreed to be respect that vulnerability with good communication.
Men are sex-crazed animals. There’s no way they have coping mechanisms too…
It can be easy to miss the fact that sex is just as vulnerable for men. We like to portray them as the animals that just want to get off, and who use women to get this physical pleasure. Yeah, some guys do use women for sex and that physical pleasure, which is certainly a shitty thing to do. But what we miss is that this is often a coping technique in a similar way as to how women hide their vulnerability over their physical appearance. By pretending to create a purely physical experience, guys try to avoid bringing their oh so hated feelings into the mix.
One of the reasons so many guys turn to porn is because of these insecurities. Porn and masturbation have no risk of rejection and no emotional investment. It’s like having sex with the lights off because you don’t want the other person to dislike your physical appearance — you remove the chance to be rejected over the thing you are most vulnerable about.
Sex is actually incredibly vulnerable for a man who is honest with himself (including me). He either tells himself the experience is entirely physical, or he feels like he enters sex with his masculinity on the line. We have been taught or have the idea in our heads that it is our job to be good at sex, to initiate sex, and to not let the woman down. If the sex goes badly, we feel like it is our fault (and then we put up our defenses and pretend it is just physical). And the thing we absolutely hate most is to be a failure at our manly duties and at our jobs.
Having good sex makes us feel like a successful man and feel really good about ourselves. It makes us stand up a little straighter, gains us points with other men, and makes us wear our red Tiger Woods polos to work.
What’s better than sex? Remove the insecurities and discomforts and you arrive at the Mount Everest of orgasms
So what do we do with this knowledge? How can we make it feel like there is less on the line when we engage in sex and allow sex to be an enjoyable and bonding experience that simultaneously allows for growth and communication?
For Haley and I, the first step is to embrace the vulnerability. You can’t change some parts of your body, and those that you can take a long time to work on. So I suggest you get used to them and try your damnedest to get the negative thoughts out of your head. A steady stream of compliments and comments on how attractive you find your partner certainly can’t hurt.
At the same time, we need to get rid of many of our bad assumptions about how our partners feel about us. For a guy to want to have sex with you, he has to find you attractive, end of story. No guy will ever go around saying, “Damn she’s ugly but I still had sex with her”. And when the clothes come off she only gets more attractive, not less.
As always, it’s more than just the physical. Helping your partner feel comfortable in whatever environment and in whatever sexual acts you get up to is going to make the experience much better for both of you.
Communication is one of the easiest ways to relieve some of the vulnerability. Vulnerability truly stems from uncertainty. It can actually be easier to deal with a constant negative opinion than being uncertain about how someone feels about you, even though they may feel positively. Clearing up some of this uncertainty by talking to your partner about your vulnerabilities and what you are unsure about will go a long way to feeling more confident in bed.
Sometimes I feel like I come too soon during sex, and it took a lot of guts for me to admit it to Haley. But it really paid off, as she reassured me that it is not at all a problem, and she actually even can feel sexier when I do.
Haley is really good at letting me know that she is into it during sex to encourage me and keep me from wondering if I am doing what she wants. For her, it can be vulnerable to moan or make noise during sex because she doesn’t want to be annoying or sound ridiculous. I like to know that she is enjoying it, and I make sure not to discourage her instinct to tell me that with noises.
By embracing our vulnerabilities, it allows us to be totally comfortable with each other and take our sex to the next level.