THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Prioritizing Your Pleasure and Performative Sex

When it comes to the bedroom, there’s often a lot of pressure. It shouldn’t have to be like that – and in incredibly open and loving scenarios, it’s not! But sometimes, we find ourselves prioritizing our partner more than ourselves, which can be a major problem. Especially for women.

For starters, in most heterosexual realtionships, the orgasm gap is real. The gap refers to the disparity in frequency between the amount of times that males orgasm versus their female co-participant during sexual encounters. And okay, we get it – it’s a little more complex for many women to orgasm. But should that be an excuse? A write off? Dismissed? Absolutely not.

So what do women resort to in order to keep men happy in the bedroom? Two words: Faking it. If you’ve ever spent time during sex being hyperaware of your body, your movements, or your partners nuanced microcommunications, and leaned into them more than your own pleasure, you’ve engaged in performative sex. Oftentimes, that can result in a fake orgasm so as to not disappoint your partner. And hey, no shame – we’ve all been there. But we need to stop.

Performative sex pulls us out of our bodies and into our minds. We are so locked in to appearing sexy, based on a status quo derived from cinema and pornography, that we forget that sexy can be anything – messy, animalistic, imperfect, and carnal. It’s not meant to be perfect, and it’s especially not meant to be geared towards only a straight man’s sensorial pleasure.

When layered with the patriarchal view of society – including constructs of the female body, the female purpose, and the male gaze – it’s no wonder we keep perpetuating performative sexual encounters. After all, we’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s a win for men to have sexual needs and demands while women must remain demure and reserved. We expect men to be able to just go out and find someone else to knock boots with – while women try to keep a hold on one.

It’s time to flip the script. Instead of leaning into what a dominant straight male seems to want, try asking for what you want. Get into the position that makes you excited, and say no to those you don’t love or find comfortable. Ask for more clitoral stimulation, gentler strokes, a spank, or whatever you’re into – and stop worrying about what your body looks like in certain positions.

In order to close the orgasm gap, we need to focus on our pleasure rather than our performance. As a general rule of thumb, men are going to have a great time, and most always achieve orgasm. The best gift we can give in the bedroom is our unapologetic, authentic, fullest and most sensual self.