When you say to someone “I am afraid of going on top during sexy time.” You can get a few different responses. Here are the ones I have received in my past:
“What do you mean? I get up there and I’m all like wOOOOOoooooooOOOooWwwwwwyyyy” [Thrusting Motions and a big smile]
-Friend One
“Seriously?? Why? You’re super tiny.”
-Friend Two
“But Youre missing out! It’s so much fun!” [Thrusting Motions and a big smile]
-Friend 3
“It’s a matter of confidence. You are my beautiful baby you will figure it out.”
-My Mom (Oh So Sweet)
I started out being afraid of SEX period. THE BIG S-E-X.
But then, after meeting a partner I was happy with, sex would happen. Often. More than I was used to (which was once every 3 months – so you can imagine)
And something new started to happen during all of these sexy times, I realized I was very VERY limited in my understanding of what sex was and how it could be.
I found myself wanting to try things but not knowing how to try them.
I wasn’t afraid of the S-E-X now, I was afraid of the O-N T-O-P.
During my first relationship I had managed to avoid going on top for majority of the time. I think I can trace it back to a point where my first partner had said to me “You are awkward on top. It doesn’t feel good,” on my second attempt.
Now, before everyone gets in an uproar – you have to realize – first partner/first relationship = young/naive/inexperienced. I did not realize that this kind of feed back was unacceptable. Someone who loves you will work with you and support you while you are trying to figure out something that is new to you, whether it be anything from juggling cans of chicken noodle soup to learning how to be the one on top – they will show patience and understanding, because their ultimate goal is that you are both satisfied – and they will draw satisfaction from seeing you happy as well.
Despite understanding that my first partner may not have handled this the best way – or may not have realized that I would stop trying to be the one on top - did not realize that I would apply this to anything and everything when it came to trying something new during sex -
The words still stuck in my mind.
”You are Awkward.”
One of the aspects of GAD is that you OBSESS. You obsess about the same thing for a long long time. You try to see it from a different perspective, but when you are only drawing from your past experience - and it was not a good one – it can be very very difficult to pull yourself out of this frame of mind.
So despite being free and clear - despite being with a different person – despite experiencing something that felt very very good – there was an issue. Here I was, free of the past, and some fun desires and curiosities were bubbling back up during the positive sex that was taking place.
But these curiosities were then being met with “You’re awkward on top. It doesn’t feel good.” That meant, during the good sex, I was thinking about bad things from my past, and the urge to try something new was being overwhelmed by baggage, and by baggage I mean 300 suitcases of it.
So the dilemma:
How do you break out of a learned habit?
IN my case, How do I tell myself – “YOURE NOT AWKWARD, YOU FUCKING IDIOT. SNAP OUT OF IT TRY STUFF ITS OKAY!”
It took about half a year. And a lot of reading. And a lot of rethinking. And it will still surface as a problem from time to time. But here are/were my ways to deal with it:
1 – I said what was bothering me out loud to my counsellor
She helped me pinpoint what my exact fears were and helped me squish them
2 – I said my fear out loud to my partner
Who reassured me that they enjoyed my body, but also gave some sound advice. “Try to focus on the moment, try to focus on what you’re feeling”
3 – I read A LOT of stuff on the internet.
Two sites I found incredibly helpful:
Joy McCarthy of Joyous Health wrote an article on How To Make Peace with your Body
Here we meet Joy, who is super cute – watch her videos and you’ll see – She tells us a personal story about her past experience.
I could completely relate to Joy. I was currently doing what she was doing. I kept obsessing about this “Youre awkward on top” comment. I realized I was awkward because I was uncomfortable with the way my body was/I perceived it to be. When you are on tippity top – you become the focus, I mean hello YOU ARE NAKED AND RIGHT UP THERE. And this made me afraid. I thought – what if he sees this, what if he thinks this. My mind would keep going and going over the WHAT IFS and I couldn’t stop it. This would result in me being uncomfortable, drying up, being unable to have any kind of relaxation or any kind of rhythm when it was my turn to be large and in charge!! And of course, any good partner senses this and then they stop to ask you what’s wrong – because they don’t want you to be uncomfortable either. What A Mess!
I was focusing on a specific insecurity, and I was trying to hammer it down with exercise. I was running and running – which was really good for me, But no matter what changed I was still unsatisfied. I believed that once I had rid myself of this insecurity, I could be the initiator, I would instantly have tonnes of sexual prowess - I would be a master of sexyness. But after reading this article I realized, I REALLY REALLY hated myself, I really hated my body. It wasn’t just one insecurity – there was a whole big jumbly mess of them. I needed to learn to love my body the way it is NOW before I could try and change it. The problem wasn’t how I looked, it was HOW I FELT ABOUT HOW I LOOKED.
And the second site, believe it or not, was Dan Savages’ Sex Advice Column,
Here I learned a lot of new and exciting things. (To be expanded upon) I read about tonnes, and I mean TONNES of people who had faced the same dilemma I was. SO many that Dan Savage had coined a term – DTMFA – which stands for
Dump
The
Mother
Fucking
Asshole.
Amazingggggg!
He also had some very solid advice that I wished I had read years ago: that went something like this:
“There comes a time in those first go around relationships when one partner loses interest for whatever reason. Unable to deal with it – or simply not knowing how to handle it – they act badly as a partner hoping the other will end the relationship. This can drag out the process until ultimately, the other gets dumped anyway, and feels like a big piece of shit.”
Mr. Savage, and his readers, helped me to understand I had not been alone in my crappy situation. That tonnes of people were in the same situation – that tonnes of people forgot they had the option to leave – that tonnes of people let a shitty relationship where they felt shitty become the norm without even realizing it! This helped because it made me realize – it’s no ones fault. “Youre awkward on top. It doesn’t feel good” was one of many statements made over a very long period of time. And like many statements made during that period of time, it was flat out wrong. It could be changed and the importance of it could be diminished – IF I CHOSE TO DO SO.
It was only after making a big effort to overhaul these big thoughts/big insecurities/big perspectives that I was able to come to terms with and face these issues. I had to admit I had some deep deep issues, and even though I seemed and acted very confident at times, I was riddled with some deep-set insecurities that needed to be pulled up and pummelled to pulp.
After all of this, I had just one thing left to do when it came to topping it off, as it eventually has:
Practice.
Practice.
Practice.
