I came across a good article at EmpowerHer by colleague Marty Klein, a marriage and family therapist, on what's normal when it comes to sex. The section that most interested me was on performance anxiety, a very common but not especially normal problem in America's bedrooms.
When it comes to sex, performance anxiety is a real paradox. The more anxious you are about making the right moves to please your partner in bed, the less likely you are to do it. Not that you shouldn't try, but you need to approach pleasure with pleasure, not with fear and trepidation.
That fear is often about rejection. You may feel that one false move--a lick of the wrong part of the ear, a too loud slurp at your partner's privates--and you're going to be banished from the boudoir. Or show up with the wrong equipment--breasts that are too small, thighs that are too dimpled, a penis that curves--and you might as well call it quits.
Those fears come, in part, from social pressures to be perfect. Look at Susan Boyle--as soon as she was seen to have talent, she had to have the casings to go with it. Or look at television: kisses as choreographed as a Cirque du Soleil performance.
Even medicine gets in on the act, with something I saw referred to in a medical journal as the "sexual performance perfection industry." It isn't good enough to have a semi-decent erection--it needs to be hard, from medicine. It isn't good enough to use natural lubrication--it has to be warming or tingling lubrication bought off the shelf.
It's perfectly okay to show up and be yourself in bed. And it's perfectly okay to ask your partner to accept you as you are. Of course, you can be open to feedback on your technique, and you should ask your partner to listen to you, as well. But learning to make love better with your partner is a lot different than learning to make love perfectly. It isn't necessary. It's better to be real. Really.
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