You deserve a standing ovation

just not during sex

This post was written by Community Partner, Pleasure Coach & Sex Educator Andrea Bertoli.

Does sex actually feel good for you? 

Lucky for you if that answer is an easy HELL YES! 

For many people, sex might not feel good sometimes. Maybe it never feels good. Maybe it always feels like work. 

So many of my clients talk to me about how sex feels like a performance, a chore, or a duty. I’ve had my own experiences in an abusive partnership where sex felt like an obligation. Maybe it feels like you need to show up in a particular way and ‘perform pleasure’ for your partner.

When our sex life runs on unconscious scripts, misguided stories, and misinformation, we’re not able to connect to the richness of our sexuality. When you take a peek into your unconscious and become aware of your needs, desires, and your sensation, you can become more inquisitive and playful about pleasure, and set your sex life free! 

In this article we’ll talk about why, for many of us, sex can feel like a performance. And we’ll look at how various socio-cultural messages put us into these roles. Most importantly, we’ll talk about how to take back your sexual expression into one of embodied pleasure, joy, and healing. 

Shame, Stigma & Unconscious Assumptions 

There are many different ways that performative sex might manifest in your bedroom, and most of them have roots in shame and stigma. 

Your particular blend of shame might be familial (what did your parents teach you about sex—implicitly or explicitly); interpersonal (the negative messages you got from previous or current partners); socio-cultural (what society ‘teaches’ you about sex); or maybe religious indoctrination. If you were raised in the United States, our puritanical roots create deep shame and confusion about sex and pleasure. We’re both highly sexualized (think provocative advertisements and porn obsession) while being deeply sex-negative (think slut shaming, victim-blaming, church sex scandals, and the current government’s weird obsession with the genitals of trans folks). The good news is that wisdom, practice, and pleasure all work as antidotes to these shameful messages. 

For those of us raised as women, we have been taught that our pleasure is not our own, that our bodies are for others to admire and use, and that we ‘owe’ our partners sex. In fact, it wasn’t until 1993 (!) that all US states outlawed marital rape. 

No wonder so many of us don’t know what we want in bed, are embarrassed of our pleasure body, and don’t have access to our organic arousal. 

For those raised as men, the expectations are different. Men often tell me they are expected to always lead, always know what to do, always show up rock-hard, and to perform sex in certain ways. And definitely don’t show any emotion while doing it. 

No wonder so many men have performance anxiety, body shame, penis shame, and don’t feel comfortable being vulnerable, submissive, and/or soft during sex. 

When we do not interrogate these misguided and unhelpful socio-cultural scripts, we might find ourselves stuck in them, and constrained in relationships where no one knows the HOW of sex. 

Performing Pleasure & Sex-pectations

This quote came from a woman during a recent workshop: 

“My experience is that sex can feel performative and sort of automatic—it feels like a response to an unspoken expectation rather than an intentional choice.”

When we don’t make choices about our sexuality consciously, we may find ourselves relying on some of those shameful scripts. 

If I’m not tuned into my innate pleasure capacity, I might say yes when my partner asks to play, just to make him happy. Sexpert tip: most people want their partners to have an enthusiastic yes… and understanding responsive desire is how you get to the happy place and exploration of ‘willingness windows.’

If we don’t learn about how desire works and how arousal manifests, we might assume that if our partner doesn’t have a rock-hard erection, he’s just not that into us. Sexpert tip: soft cock play can be delightfully pleasurable and is a natural part of the ebb/flow of sexual arousal in people with penises. 

When we don’t talk about sex in our relationships, we might have unwanted sex because we’re measuring our own quantity against a false standard of what ‘average couples’ do. Sexpert tip: there is no true average, there’s no magic number, and the best way to measure your sex life is the quality!

Research shows us that couples that talk about sex more often have better, more frequent sex. This is because these conversations can help us get clear with ourselves and each other. Conversations about sex also make space to unwind these expectations and assumptions. While it may be scary at first, having conversations about sex helps unwind shame, stigma, and removes barriers to pleasure. It gives us space to be vulnerable, curious, and create a deeper sense of consent with ourselves and others.

Maybe you need a therapist or coach to guide you into these conversations (I’m here for that!. Maybe you want to start solo: here’s a free workbook that I created to help individuals explore sexual wholeness. It’s journal prompts and practices to help you dismantle some of these social, cultural, religious narratives that tell us we’re not enough and that our sexuality is deeply shameful. Your body is perfect, your sexuality belongs to you, you deserve to be safe in it, and it’s beautiful work to explore it! 

Finding your Organic Arousal & Reclaiming your Pleasure

Sex is natural, yes. Literally our entire body is wired for pleasure. And yet that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take skills, practice, and knowledge to make sex GREAT. Most of us don’t get comprehensive sex education as kids, creating so many challenges in the bedroom. Working with a great Sex Coach can help you set a solid foundation for embodied pleasure, consent, knowledge, and safety.  

And yet, ultimately your pleasure starts with you. You get to work with your body, your desires, and your expression to practice pleasure and play in ways that work for you. It’s a bonus if you find a partner to work with you on this.  

When my students and clients want to explore how to make sex better, we start with innate desires—what do you really want? And we look at organic arousal—what feels good… and how do we stay with it? Yes, keep going! 

Most of us have never interrogated our dynamic, multidimensional sexuality or fully explored our orgasmic capacity. I’m bisexual, but that’s just part of my sexual identity; I’m also a kinky Tantrika, meaning I like to explore a more conscious type of kinky play. I’m also just a human female that sometimes likes it rough and sometimes needs tender touch. My own eroticism is an expression of how all these different needs, desires, and facets are moving through me in the moment. 

What are your facets that could use some exploration? Have you always desired to play with a power dynamic, or maybe explore butt stuff? Maybe you want to dive into sacred sexuality and connect to the divine within… via spanking? Your sexuality, your Erotic Blueprints, your needs/desires, and your newest fantasies are all part of who you are, and they deserve to have safe, consensual, shame-free expression. Once you know these for yourself, you can bring it into partnership.

You deserve a healthy, playful sex life—yes, YOU! No matter what you were taught, what you have endured, or your current situation. Sometimes it might take some work to unwind the shame and deeply interrogate the messages we’ve received, but on the other side is sexual wholeness, deep joy, and embodied pleasure.

Want to get deeper, higher, and more sexy? 

For those that want to explore more about sacred sexuality and find deeper realms of pleasure, join my free, monthly online Mindful Sex workshops focused on juicy topics like this. I’ll be teaching a free workshop exploring erotic practice on June 7, 2025. Until then, my work is available for your exploration: find my writings here on Conscious City Guide, get my shame-free pleasure education on Patreon, find me on my Instagram, or reach out to connect. 

More About the Author: I help people build stronger relationships, create intimate communication, explore their desires, and practice sensual connection in a grounded, holistic way. My approach to coaching and teaching uses tools from Tantra, mindfulness, and yoga to help you find new ways of relating to yourself and others, and will create space for you to rethink sex and pleasure.

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