The Weekly Mindfuck: Getting Stuck in Your Own Head During Sex

Orgasms aren't always easy. For some of us, the pleasure of sex is often countered with an equal force of worry; will I enjoy this as much as I think is possible? Will I perform properly? Get into, get vocal enough? Will I be able to get lost in the moment? (Hint: At this point in an internal monologue, the answer is no.)  

Getting in your own head during sex isn't necessarily a function of anxiety - it's a function of pressure. There's the pressure to have an absolutely stellar, mind-blowing sex life that stands up to the stories of transcendence That One Friend is always telling us about. There's pressure to please our partners with a great performance - to enter a space of disinhibition and pleasure so heightened the experience feels primal. Then, of course, there's the pressure we put on ourselves to come. To come for our partners, to come for ourselves, to come for the sake of life, it all counts, and it all makes our hopes for sex pretty unattainable. It's a bitch like that. 

Sex and relationship coach Layla Martin is one of my favorites to get newsletters from, and this video struck me as particularly insightful. Getting in your own head - and the pervasive worry under pressure so many of us feel - is often simply a symptom of something lying even deeper down in our psyches. She asks herself a question when she gets like this: What am I trying not to feel right now? 

Take orgasm anxiety, for example. Oftentimes, we fear taking so long to get to one that our partner isn't into it anymore. Then there is performance anxiety; after a little introspection, I realized a lot of my inability to become uninhibited was attributable to feeling awkward around being unabashedly erotic and sexual. That could be because consistent messaging has told women their whole lives that being too sexual made them sluts. It could be because it's hard to feel physically sexy enough to have earned the right to be so outrightly erotic and aggressive, as sad as that notion may be. I imagine I'll come to understand it in time. 

Layla doesn't just offer a point of introspection in this short video, though; she gives you something actionable to follow it with. Whatever that thing you're really afraid of is - being too sexual, taking a long time, being too demanding, making too little noise, making too much noise, you name it - be it on purpose. Let yourself feel it, really feel it. I guess you could call that leaning in. Not only does it help you get back on track in terms of your current sexual endeavor, but it also helps eliminate that pestering fear that's been holding you back. Because that's what has really been holding you back - not your anatomy, your time it takes you to get hard or orgasm, or how forceful you are in bed by nature.