Whether it’s our big bellies or our increasingly gray pubic hair or our no-longer-quite-so-perky breasts, whether it’s our concern about keeping an erection after our partner has had enough thrusting, or our fear of smelling bad while our partner goes down on us, why do we focus on extraneous stuff like this during sex? The reason is that there are, after all, other things we want from sex besides pleasure and closeness. For most women and men, those needs can include:
• Reassurance that we’re sexually desirable
• Reassurance that we’re sexually competent
• Validation of our masculinity or femininity
For some people, reassurance, validation, and relief are the real payoffs of sex. Sure, pleasure and closeness are great, but they can’t compete with feeling whole, feeling real, feeling normal, and feeling “I’m good enough and I can relax for a minute.” And I’ve learned that that’s what many people are trying to accomplish via sex. I’m not saying that people don’t want pleasure or closeness from sex. Most people do want some combination of pleasure and closeness from sex—after their other emotional needs are met.
People don’t necessarily know this about themselves. But if you’re struggling with these emotional needs, pursuing them through performance-oriented sex, and you don’t realize it, you may feel that sex is more trouble than it’s worth, or that feeling alone during sex is normal, or that sex is not the time to feel like yourself.
Attempting to indirectly get validation, reassurance, and other psychological fulfillment from sex—especially if we don’t admit our agenda to ourselves or inform our partner—makes sex complicated, unpredictable, and a lot of work. We make it even harder on ourselves by creating narrow, rigid definitions of the satisfactions we seek; if “manliness” means always being erect regardless of fatigue, or “competent” means bringing your partner to climax every time, you just set yourself up for depression.
Perhaps this helps explain why you aren’t focused on pleasure and closeness during sex. It’s because you’re also looking for something else, whether you know it or not. This also helps explain why so many people are sexually dissatisfied—because sex isn’t delivering what they really want, in fact can’t deliver what they want through genital excellence. And any psychological satisfaction you accidentally get doesn’t stick to your ribs because it’s indirect, unacknowledged, and fleeting.
If you don’t tell your partner about this other agenda, it’s easy to feel alone during sex. And of course, it’s harder to create the sex you want when you don’t involve your partner directly. If you’re someone who wants more “communication” around sex, this is a good place to start: tell your partner that you want more from sex than just amazing orgasms (whether you currently have them or not). But make it clear that you’re not asking your partner to “give” you a good emotional experience (that does sound like drudgery); tell your partner that you see your sex life as a collaboration, and that you realize you need to step up a bit too.
sexual intelligence - marty Klein
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