Let me just tell you now: None of that is going to solve your problem. The good news is that you can improve your sex life, dramatically, and pretty quickly too—and you don’t have to spend a dime. Too many women just check out from sex because they don’t know how to get their insecure brains under control—but everyone deserves great sex, and you can use your thoughts to get there. Below, let’s go through some of the most common orgasm-blocking thoughts and how to dissolve them with a new way of thinking. (Here are more small ways to stop hating your body, if that’s where you’re at.) So if you find that you are uncomfortable with a session where you have an orgasm and your partner doesn’t—but you feel fine when it’s the other way around—then you’ve got some thoughts about this that are worth investigating! A variation on this is the fear that you are taking too long to reach orgasm—which is similar in that it considers your orgasm as somehow separate from the rest of the sexual experience and your partner’s orgasm. There are a couple of different kinds of thoughts that can give rise to going radio silent, even when your partner asks you what you like (my least favorite response has always been “um, everything is good”). You might be thinking that it’s embarrassing or awkward. You might be worrying that they will think what you like is weird or that they won’t want to do it. You might have been raised to think that sex was shameful and not something to talk about, or that “good” people don’t talk about sex or want it too much or, heaven forbid, want anything kinky. Or you may have been unconsciously warped by watching too many romantic comedies and thus have the completely erroneous belief that good sex should just “happen” if the connection is right. Whatever the thoughts producing your silent mime act in bed, they are worth working on! So there are a lot of thoughts in your brain making it uncomfortable to ask for what you want. But you should do it anyway. Just acknowledge to yourself that it will probably feel scary, and you’ll fumble it the first few times. That’s OK. If you’re not getting what you like in bed, you’re not having great sex. Are you willing to feel awkward a few times so you can have amazing sex on the other side? I’ll take that deal any day of the week. But here’s the secret: Most of your desire for sex or desire to not have sex comes from your brain. It comes from how you are thinking about sex in general and how you are thinking about your partner in specific. If you think of sex as an inconvenience or something that you’re too tired to do, you’re never going to be in the mood. Similarly, if you think about sex as an obligation or have thoughts that your partner will be upset or not love you if you don’t have sex, you are also never going to feel very sexy about it. Society teaches women especially that their job is to have sex with men to keep them happy—so there can be a lot of anxiety around saying no. On the other hand, some of us tend to blame our partner for not “making us feel sexy.” But someone else’s behavior isn’t what makes you feel sexy or not. It’s how you’re thinking about it. If you think, “I know I should have sex, but I’m just so tired” or “I don’t want to have sex, but my partner will be mad if I don’t,” there’s nothing they can do to “make” you feel different. The change has to start inside your brain.
