How can you not feel self-conscious when having sex with someone more experienced? Cosmopolitan US advice columnist Logan answers one reader...
Q: I feel very self-conscious when hooking up with guys who have been with a fair amount of other women because I worry that I can't perform the way the others have. Likewise, if I do end up hooking up with them, I'm so stressed out about it that I don't enjoy it. This has caused me to settle for guys who I'm not really interested in or attracted to. I feel like this was slightly more understandable when I was younger, but I'm 25 now, and I still have these fears. I don't want to continue to settle but I can't find confidence to hook up with guys that I'm actually interested in. Help!
Here at this very website, you'll find lots of lists of tips that might expand all the ways you can enjoy yourself in bed and feel more connected to your partner. One reason Cosmopolitan does this is that it’s fun as hell. Another is that there’s so much fear and misinformation about sex nearly everywhere else in the media: Most of the time people talk sex, they’re trying to scare you, shame you, or profit off your anxiety.
Of course, sometimes I hear from readers who feel insecure because they feel like they’re falling short of some imagined, more perfect sex goddess out there: a woman who’s memorised all 1,073 positions, coloured in all fifty shades of grey, and perfected each and every sexual technique from porn-star gymnastics to tantric soulfulness. I hear from readers who worry they won’t match up to their partners’ internet-search fantasies, their real-world exes, or some hypothetical women out there who magically don’t have the flaws they see in themselves. (Guys do this too, of course.) In regards to your question, I think it’s worth reminding you that such idealised, sexual wonder women don’t really exist.
I don’t know if this is good or bad news, but this is definitely not fake news: Everyone feels insecure like you sometimes. Everyone gets a little jealous. Often, we just can’t help but compare ourselves to some sexier idea of somebody else and find ourselves lacking. It never goes away. And, damn, it’s a drag.
Obviously, we all know better. And you know better too. As you say, you know this fear of inadequacy is causing you to settle for guys you don’t like because it seems easier to avoid your fear of rejection and settle for men you don’t want. At the very least, it sounds really healthy to me that you recognise that you’ve got these fears and that they’re getting in the way of your happiness.
The next step, I think, is to remind yourself that these fears, which nearly everyone has at some point, are irrational — and to keep reminding yourself of this, all the damn time, so you can work through them until they aren’t holding you back quite so much.
Ultimately, we all have to remind ourselves of what I’m going to remind you: that nobody’s perfect; that you’re absolutely fine; that sex itself is a messy relationship between two people and is never about one person “performing” for another. Nobody has a perfect sex life. Sex isn’t something that can be perfected.
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