How to Create Confidence in the Bedroom
Confidence is something that many seek help on, especially when it comes to sexual intimacy. If this is you then you may want to feel that when you enter the bedroom that you can feel totally good about your inner Miss Desire. But if you are like many women, you may not feel confident entering the bedroom. You may feel hesitant, worried, or have no idea what to do let alone feel confident about this part of you. Understanding the importance of consistency, collaboration, and courage will give you what you need to feel confident and help your sexual self come out to play with ease.
Consistency
Like the gym, if you want to get the results you want then you need to show up. But not just randomly. Random action doesn’t create the results you want and in this case, that is sexual confidence. Random isn’t what Intentional Intimacy is all about. Intentional Intimacy is all about consistent action toward a strong, intimate relationship. So when you show up consistently this allows your sexual confidence to have a chance at getting stronger and therefore more confident.
This is why I suggest you schedule a weekly in-the-bedroom date night. It’s not to take the spontaneous magic away from your sexual relationship but so you can add it back in. When you set this time aside, it's so you can practice over and over and over again the building of confidence in your sexual self. Because confidence needs repetition. Expecting yourself to be all of a sudden sexually confident after one or two times would be like expecting yourself to learn how to drive after one or two times. There’s a reason that to get your drivers you need upwards of 50 hours of practice. A Weekly date night with your partner is ~52 hours of practice a year so that means you get as much practice in building your confidence as you would when learning to drive a car. Your sexual self deserves the same time and attention.
Collaboration
Doing anything over and over will help but only if we are armed with the right tools and guidance. If we go back to the driving analogy if you were given your license to drive right at the get-go without any teaching and then you tried to drive several times you would likely crash or feel so much anxiety about the experience. Either way, you’d likely reach a point quickly where you’d say “F this I’m done”. But then you can’t be done. Driving is important and you need to learn. Just live sexual intimacy is important and you need to learn.
Unfortunately, we are all given our “license to have sex” without ANY sort of guidance and collaboration or practice in the best way. Often when many of us are left to “wing-it”, which then means we might accidentally repeat the unhealthy, unhelpful, and unhappy ways to explore and experience sexual intimacy. Getting a good sexual confidence instructor, much like a driving instructor, to collaborate with is very valuable to avoid car crashes. That’s what I do! I help give you the tools to understand your sexual self and yourself as a whole so that you know how to confidently show up in the bedroom all on your own. As I tell my clients I work with “my goal is for you to fire me”. Because I don't want to be your instructor forever nor do I need to be. That would be like having a driving instructor in the passenger side of your car forever. Instead, I want you to be confident enough to say “oh I totally got this I don’t need guidance anymore”.
Courage
When building confidence in the bedroom you also need to have courage. Part of this courage is to show up totally as you, not some version of you that is doing a show or performance. Often this happens when you feel like you need to look like or act like someone else, like a movie star or some idea of what you think you need to be in the bedroom. Like maying moaning when you think you should be moaning when it isn’t what you want to do. But having confidence in the bedroom requires you to drop the mask and have the courage to show up as you. You might feel some inner resistance about showing up as purely and authentically you because it’s a display of vulnerability, but as a great book says: Feel the fear and do it anyway. So feel that resistance, take a breath and dive in.
Courage also means that if things don’t go perfectly that you know it’s OK and that next time you will try again. We are not aiming for perfection nor getting it right on the first try. That would be putting way too much expectation and pressure on yourself and that does not help create confidence. Although part of confidence is about knowing that you can achieve the results you want, confidence is also a form of resilience when you know you will be ok even if things don’t go well. Remembering good ol’ Einstein is helpful here in knowing that it’s totally OK to try and try again and having the courage to do so. As he said about inventing the lightbulb, “I didn’t fail, I just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.” Going down Intimacy Road with courage like Einstein and with consistency with the right tools through collaboration with a helpful instructor will continue to strengthen your inner Miss Desire.