The Recovering People-Pleaser’s Field Guide to Empowered Sexual Intimacy
Do you ever agree to sex when you‘re not in the mood? Over-focus on your partner’s pleasure and under-focus on your own? Fake orgasm? Accept sex when what you really want is emotional intimacy? Say yes to sex when your body says no?
If so, you’re not alone. The number of times I have heard:
“I didn’t really want to, but I didn’t know how to say no, so I said yes instead.”
“It was just one orgasm. He’ll never know it wasn’t real.”
“It’s hard for me to receive pleasure. I don’t know why. It just is.”
Sexual people-pleasing is extraordinarily common among people of all genders. Generally, we develop the people-pleasing pattern in childhood as a coping skill to handle adverse environments. Difficulty saying no or setting boundaries is not a sign brokenness; it’s simply a coping skill that has overstayed its welcome. You are not broken and there is nothing “wrong with you.”
With intention, you can break these people-pleasing patterns and develop a higher tolerance for genuine sexual intimacy. All it takes is a little practice. Read on to explore five common sexual people-pleasing patterns and accompanying exercises for cultivating an empowered relationship to your own sexuality.
People-Pleasing Pattern #1: Saying Yes When You Mean No
People-pleasers, by definition, prioritize others’ needs and wants over own. We trespass our personal boundaries to make others happy, a pattern that extends naturally to our sex lives. We may violate our own sexual boundaries to please others and offer consent for activities that we don’t actually want.
Why? Perhaps we don’t want to hurt others’ feelings. Perhaps we simply feel awkward pressing pause, so we forge ahead instead. Perhaps we were never taught how to set nuanced boundaries in delicate situations.
When we participate in unwanted but consensual sex, it isn’t necessarily obvious to our partners that we aren’t enjoying ourselves. After all, people-pleasers have this down to a science: feeling one way, but acting another. We are among the world’s greatest performers.
Unfortunately, when all is said and done, our bodies have been present for encounters that we truthfully didn’t desire. As a result, the repercussions of sexual people-pleasing can range from mild remorse to post-traumatic stress. Panic attacks, flashbacks, shame, anxiety, revulsion, and a feeling of profound un-safety are just a smattering of repercussions my clients have shared with me.
Those of us who experience these repercussions rarely feel comfortable sharing our stories because our trauma isn’t the result of sexual assault. After all, we said yes — often enthusiastically. There is no “assailant,” no one “to blame.” As a result, many of us blame ourselves, carrying our trauma in a shroud of silence and shame. We feel alone in our experience — which couldn’t be further from the truth.
I shared my own experience with sexual people-pleasing in a recent Instagram post and a flood of comments arrived immediately from individuals who’d had similar experiences:
“Thank you so, so much for this. I felt so alone, and ashamed, and I blamed myself too. This is such a relief to understand why it happened and that I’m not the only one it happened to. Thank you.”
“Omg I was just speaking of this yesterday. People who haven’t experienced it don’t get it or think you’re making it up. Thank you for always touching and identifying parts of me I don’t or can’t quite explain.”
“I’ve never heard anyone else speak about this before. Thank you for putting it together so well — I’ve always felt this but didn’t know how to explain it others (or even myself)”
“Thank you so much for posting this. All these years I felt so alone and I thought I was just over thinking or being over sensitive and thought this was normal… Apparently the trauma is real.”
At first, I wondered why setting sexual boundaries felt so difficult for me and seeming effortless for others. Was my inability to say no in the bedroom simply an extension of my people-pleasing pattern: trying to make others happy and deriving value from being a giver? Or were other factors at play?
A History of Trauma
Many individuals develop a pattern of people-pleasing in response to traumatic experiences in childhood. In the early 2000s, psychotherapist Pete Walker, author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, expanded upon the widely accepted flight/fight/freeze stress response model with a new addition: fawn.
As opposed to running away or freezing, a person with the fawn trauma response will attempt to please, compliment, or gratify someone when they feel stressed or endangered. Walker explains that in childhood, these individuals may have learned “that protesting abuse leads to even more frightening parental retaliation, and so [they] relinquish the fight response, delete ‘no’ from [their] vocabulary and never develop the language skills of healthy assertiveness.”
Many children hold onto this coping mechanism long after it ceases to be useful. In adulthood, when confronted with a situation that provokes fear or anxiety, they may “fawn” by agreeing to things they have no interest in — sex included.
Similarly, individuals who were sexually traumatized early in life are prone to learned helplessness, a phenomenon in which they feel powerless to protect themselves or escape uncomfortable situations. Such individuals learn that “their only form of escape is within their own minds — a powerful incentive for dissociation.”
Bessel van der Kolk M.D., esteemed psychiatrist and trauma expert, expands on this point, explaining that survivors of sexual abuse are “vulnerable to develop ‘emotion-focused coping,’ a coping style in which the goal is to alter one’s emotional state, rather than the circumstances that give rise to those emotional states.”
From this perspective, it’s easy to imagine how, when confronted with an anxiety-provoking sexual encounter, an individual may choose to proceed and dissociate instead of actively discuss their sexual boundaries.
Restrictive Sexual Scripts
Similarly, traditional gender roles influence sexual decision-making in incalculable ways.
The prehistoric narrative that “men always want sex” pressures men to engage sexually in order to prove their masculinity. In a 2019 study of 87 boys enrolled in middle school, high school, and college, researchers found that over half of the participants “described feeling an omnipresent pressure to engage in sexual activity, saying this pressure came from parents and family, friends and teammates, and media.” Participants “generally felt that to fully accomplish masculinity, they should be having sex.”
Likewise, a 1994 study found that heterosexual men who experienced unwanted sexual contact “expressed strong negative reactions including… concern about their own heterosexuality if they resisted the advance, and a fear of telling others because they may not be believed.” Later analyses reported that “these findings are consistent with the notion that it may be culturally unacceptable for a man to receive a sexual opportunity with anything less than enthusiasm.”
Such cultural attitudes may disable men from comfortably setting sexual boundaries. If saying no puts their masculinity or heterosexuality at risk, it might feel safer to simply proceed with an unwanted interaction.
Try: Drafting Sexual Boundaries
If you struggle to say no or press pause in sexually charged scenarios, write down verbal boundaries you can use to pause or refuse sexual intimacy. Planning the verbiage in advance will save you the trouble of finding the “right words” in the moment. Phrases I use include:
“This is fun. I don’t want to go any further.”
“Let’s stop at kissing tonight.”
“The connection I’m feeling with you is more friendly than sexual.”
“I don’t want to be intimate with you.”
“Let’s take a break.”
When you have some sound bites that feel comfortable, practice them aloud. Role play with friends. Say them in the mirror. It might sound like overkill, but practicing the language in advance will allow these phrases to arise more naturally in the heat of the moment.
Try: Setting Proactive Boundaries
If you’re concerned about your ability to set sexual boundaries in the moment, set them in advance — before meeting in-person. Send a quick text saying “Just so you know, I don’t want to have sex tonight” or “Let’s keep things friendly tonight, and if there’s chemistry, we can do more another time.” If, during the interaction, you genuinely want to move deeper into intimacy, you can renegotiate your boundary then.
People-Pleasing Pattern #2. Spectatoring
Spectatoring, a phrase coined by human sexuality researchers Masters and Johnson, occurs when a person “focuses on oneself from a third person perspective during sexual activity, rather than focusing on one’s sensations and/or sexual partner.”
An 2014 article in InStyle succinctly explained, “Spectatoring is essentially the opposite of being ‘in the moment’ during sex. You are so busy analyzing the situation and judging yourself that you can’t fully enjoy the sexual experience — instead, sex becomes a spectator sport.”
In the bedroom, an anxious inner narrative often accompanies spectatoring. We wonder, What do I look like? How do I smell? What do I taste like? Do I sound okay? This incessant third-person focus distracts us from experiencing our own sensations and pleasure.
Unsurprisingly, spectatoring can increase performance fears and have negative impacts on sexual performance. Research shows that women who engage in spectatoring are less satisfied, have fewer real orgasms, and have more fake orgasms.
We may find ourselves spectatoring for a number of reasons. Body image insecurity, shyness, and a history of trauma can all contribute to distraction and performance anxiety in the bedroom. Under such conditions, we’re far less likely to experience sex presently — or pleasurably.
Try: Sensate Focus Therapy
Sexuality researchers Masters and Johnson created sensate focus therapy in the 1970s to assist patients experiencing “disturbance of natural [sexual] functions” including erection, lubrication, and orgasm. It involves “focusing on, and enjoying, one’s own sensations of being pleasured.”
Sensate focus therapy helps individuals release sexual performance anxieties by touching for their own interest as opposed to their partner’s. Participants “focus on sensations, especially tactile sensations, rather than on trying to make themselves or their partners aroused.”
In order words, sensate focus therapy helps redirect one’s attention away from any sort of “goal”and toward the simple curiosity and experience of touch, thus enabling the body to relax and respond positively to sexual stimuli.
(To find a sex therapist versed in sensate focus therapy, check out the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) directory here.)
People-Pleasing Pattern #3. Accepting Sex as a Substitute for Emotional Intimacy
In the absence of emotional intimacy with a partner, people-pleasers may use sex as a tool to instill closeness, repair broken affections, or regain a sense of power and control within the relationship.
The pattern of accepting sex when what we really want is intimacy can be explained in part by our attachment styles. Formed in childhood by our caregivers’ attentiveness to our needs or lack thereof, our attachment styles are our embedded patterns of relating and connecting with others.
People-pleasers tend to have an anxious attachment style, desiring proximity and connection above all else. In Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find — And Keep — Love, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Amir Levine depicts the anxious attachment style:
You love to be very close to your romantic partners and have the capacity for great intimacy. You often fear, however, that your partner does not wish to be as close as you would like him/her to be. Relationships tend to consume a large part of your emotional energy. You tend to be very sensitive to small fluctuations in your partner’s moods and actions…
Anxiously attached individuals will go to great lengths to restore intimacy and closeness with a partner. A 2012 study notes that “anxiously attached people often report having sex to gain a partner’s reassurance and avoid rejection,” while a 2004 study reports that folks with an anxious attachment style often engage in sex to pursue proximity, reassurance, and approval.
As a result, studies show that anxiously attached individuals “rely heavily on sex to meet their attachment needs” and, as a result, are more likely to have “unwanted but consensual sexual experiences” both within and outside of committed romantic relationships.
Try: Discerning Your Motivations For Sex
If you consistently find yourself using sex as a substitute for emotional intimacy, practice discerning your motives when initiating sex.
The next time you feel tempted to reach for your partner in bed, pause. Breathe deeply, scan your body, and consider:
Does my body physically want my partner right now? Am I aroused?
Am I feeling disconnected, distant, resentful, lonely, or sad?
What do I most want from my partner in this moment?
If you find that your drive to initiate sex is masking a deeper need — perhaps for emotional intimacy, for attention, to feel seen or heard, or to feel loved — consider discussing this core need with your partner. If the thought of doing so feels intimidating or awkward, you might try…
Try: Couple’s Therapy
Couple’s therapy is a safe space for partners to discuss sexual misalignment and have difficult but important conversations about sexual needs and expectations. Frank discussions about sexuality can feel awkward or taboo, and couples therapy can be a refreshing opportunity to be guided by a professional through such conversations.
Especially if your sex life is masking a deeper need for vulnerability, attention, affection, or care, your therapist can help you discern, and communicate, these needs.
People-Pleasing Pattern #4. Difficulty Receiving Pleasure or Reaching Orgasm
While people-pleasers have no difficulty prioritizing others’ desires, we struggle to prioritize our own. In her article “How to Improve Your Capacity to Receive Sexual Attention and Pleasure,” psychosexual somatics therapist Emma K Harper shares her own experience of difficulty receiving pleasure:
“When receiving sexual attention from my partner I can easily find myself leaving my body and pleasure and going off into thoughts in my head, feeling a sudden and urgent desire to stroke my partner or reorient the situation to put attention fully back on them or even feeling suddenly afraid that my partner is not enjoying themselves and that they might tire of me as a sexual partner.
I put pressure on myself to orgasm quickly, which usually delays, or even prevents my orgasm, or requires me implementing some old strategy that limits my full-bodied aliveness and pleasure, like holding my breath. I find myself fixating on my partners genitals and how I can reach them to ensure I keep my partner in a state of arousal, not trusting their experience of pleasure in the giving itself.”
Sound familiar?
Whether we’re worried about our partner’s pleasure or simply struggling to access our own, anxious rumination can distract us from the present moment and render us incapable of enjoying the experience.
Performance anxiety about reaching orgasm, in particular, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more anxious we are about reaching orgasm, the less likely we are to orgasm at all. A 2004 study explains that “orgasm requires a tension and excitement, but also an ability to let go and surrender to sensation (emphasis mine)… Orgasm, at least in women, involves deactivation of the hippocampal regions of the brain associated with anxiety.”
In the absence of the ability to relax, folks who grapple with people-pleasing may fake orgasm instead. One study determined that 28% of men and 67% of women reported having faked an orgasm, and the most common reasons for doing so were (1) that orgasm was unlikely, (2) they wanted sex to end,(3) they wanted to avoid negative consequences (e.g., hurting their partner’s feelings), and (4) to obtain positive consequences (e.g., pleasing their partner).
Try: Timed Other-Focus
To increase your tolerance for receiving pleasure, consider setting aside an evening to practice timed other-focus with your partner. For intervals of 10 or 20 minutes, focus only on receiving while your partner focuses only on giving. Then, switch.
The purpose of this exercise is not to reach climax, but simply to enjoy the experience of sensation. While in the receiving role, consider giving yourself permission not to make sounds or “perform” in any way. Notice how this experience differs from your usual sexual interactions.
Try: Proactively Communicating With Your Partner
If you’re concerned about being unable to orgasm with your partner, consider setting realistic expectations with them in advance — for your own benefit. Simply saying “It takes me a long time to climax” or “I don’t usually orgasm during sex” can give you the space you need to relax without any pressure to perform or reach a “goal.”
A Note For Partners
If your partner shares that they are unlikely to orgasm or don’t orgasm easily, be sure express support without pressuring them inadvertently. A partner’s difficulty reaching orgasm is not a personal challenge for you to “beat” or a way for you to “prove” your sexual prowess. Treating it like one simply compounds the pressure on your partner to climax — and makes them less likely to do so.
People-Pleasing Pattern #5. Not Knowing What You Like In The Bedroom
People-pleasers’ preoccupation with others’ needs — combined with the four factors depicted above — can result in ignorance toward our own, true sexual preferences and desires.
Advocating for our own sexual desires is the holy grail of breaking the people-pleasing pattern. But we can’t advocate for our desires if we don’t know what they are. Luckily, there’s a wealth of information at your fingertips — literally and figuratively. Give yourself permission to do some research. Spend some time learning what lights you up sexually. You might…
Try: Watching Some Porn
While many still believe pornography to be taboo, hundreds of ethical, feminist porn sites have emerged in recent years. The guides below suggest sites that pay workers fairly, treat performers with respect, and prioritize consent above all else:
Mindbodygreen: “Your Guide to Ethical Porn: What Makes it Different and Where to Find It”
Bustle: “8 Places to Watch Ethical Porn That Focuses on Female Pleasure”
Glamour: “15 Porn Sites for Women That You’ll Really, Really Enjoy”
Try: Reading Some Erotica
Video porn not your thing? Consider diving into some written work instead:
Literotica.com offers 100%, all-original, user-submitted stories ranging from short vignettes to novel-length works of art.
Bustle: “Get in the Mood with these 10 Online Erotica Sites”
Try: Listening to a Podcast
For a titillating combination of sex education, bedroom advice, and personal stories, consider giving a sex-positive podcast a listen:
Sex With Emily is a podcast by Doctor of Human Sexuality and sex/relationship expert Emily Morse. Emily consistently aims to help singles and couples of all ages become more comfortable with themselves and their sexual wellness, “because life is too short for bad sex.”
Savage Lovecast is a weekly love and sex advice podcast by author, sex-advice columnist, podcaster, pundit, and public speaker Dan Savage.
SexualiTea is a monthly podcast by Seattle-based AASECT Certified Sex Therapist Mia and Sex and Kink Educator Kia. Through an intersectional lens, these two interview fellow sex educators around the world in a journey to queer up sex education as we know it!
Try: Following Instagram Sex Educators
Instagram has become one of my favorite sources of sex-positive, sex-educational content. Instagram sex educators offer Q&As, no-shame tips, and inspired, empowering content to help followers regain connection with their bodies and desires. My personal favorites are:
@WhatsMyBodyDoing by Sex Educator Eva Bloom
@FeministSexEd by Sex Educator Cassandra Corrado
@AskASub by Lina Dune (for the kinky folks!)
Try: Touching Yourself!
If you want to learn what type of touch your body likes, ask it. Set aside intentional time to explore your body and luxuriate in your own touch.
Give yourself permission to create an experience: house to yourself, mood lighting, good music, phone on airplane mood, lube, and toys. (My personal favorite is the Original Hitachi Magic Wand.)
Communication is the Bedrock
When it comes to sexual people-pleasing, the most unhelpful thing we can do is to carry our stories in a veil of shame and silence.
I have personally grappled with every people-pleasing pattern on this list — and still do from time to time. The more I talk about it with others, the more I realize that my experiences are commonplace.
Identifying sexual partners with whom we can communicate openly and unabashedly is the most important step we can take on our journey to empowered sexuality. When we can preface sexual interactions with our unique needs— e.g. “I don’t usually reach orgasm” or “I need certain forms of aftercare” or “It takes me a while to feel comfortable with oral sex” — we carve out a sexual container that is comfortable, safe, and performance-free.
