Performance pressure

What is performance pressure in bed?

Sexual performance pressure is the fear that you have to perform in bed, and that you fall short if it does not work. That pressure works against you: the worry about having to “deliver” pulls you out of the feeling and blocks the very arousal that would come on its own. It happens to both men and women, and it feeds itself: the harder you try, the further it goes away.

What performance pressure looks like: the spectator in bed

Performance pressure has a name that catches exactly what happens: spectatoring. Spectatoring is watching and judging yourself from a distance during sex, instead of focusing on your own feeling and on your partner. The term comes from the sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson, who coined it in 1970 in their book Human Sexual Inadequacy. Take a man who during sex is in his head checking whether his erection holds: it is exactly that watching that pulls him out of the moment and lets the erection soften. For a woman the same can play around the question of whether she is aroused enough or climaxes in time. The watching and the arousal do not go together.

How performance pressure works

Under the hood sits a simple, nasty mechanism. Psychologist David Barlow showed in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology that in people with sexual problems, anxiety pulls the attention away from the cues that arouse, toward worries about performing and the consequences of failing. That shifted attention, and not the anxiety on its own, is what undermines the arousal. So a loop arises: you are afraid it will not work, you start checking yourself, that makes it work less, and that confirms the fear. The next time you already step into bed with that expectation. Arousal is a response that only comes when your head is with the senses, not with the judging.

Who is affected, and why it is so stubborn

Performance pressure touches almost everyone at some point, and it is exactly the people who want to do it well who are sensitive to it. For a man it is often about the erection or about climaxing too early or too late; for a woman about arousal, about getting wet, or about the pressure to “have” to reach an orgasm. For a couple it can become a quiet tension that no one brings up. What makes it so stubborn is that the usual solution, trying even harder, works exactly the wrong way. The way out is not in more effort, but in less obligation. That is easier said than done, and that is why it often stays until someone deliberately takes the bar away.

What performance pressure is not

“Performance pressure means you don’t find your partner attractive.” No. The pressure is about yourself and about failing, not about a lack of attraction; someone can be deeply in love and still get stuck in their head.

“If you just try harder, it goes away.” The exact opposite. More effort strengthens the watching; the arousal comes back when you let go instead.

“It’s a man thing, around the erection.” That picture is wrong. In women it plays just as much, around arousal, getting wet, and the pressure to “have” to climax, only it is less visible.

What you can do yourself

• Take the goal away. Agree that nothing is required, no orgasm and no erection to reach. That is exactly what makes room for what comes on its own.
• Bring your attention back to your senses. Notice what you feel, smell, and hear instead of checking how you are doing; that is the antidote to spectatoring.
• Say it out loud. Tell your partner that you are in your head; the pressure halves the moment it is no longer a secret you carry alone.
• Slow down deliberately. Touch without an endpoint, without rushing toward penetration, gives your body the time to let the fear settle.
• Get help with persistent complaints. If it keeps playing or there is a physical side, as with erectile dysfunction, the GP or a sexologist can think along.

What I see

In twenty-five years, performance pressure is maybe the subject I run into most often, often without it being called that. Women who are afraid they “take too long”, or that they are not exciting enough. What I see again and again is that nothing works as freeing as the agreement that nothing is required. The moment climaxing is no longer an exam, the body relaxes, and then all sorts of things happen. I’m not a therapist in bed, but taking the bar away is exactly what I am good at, and it is the core of how I work.

More reading on performance pressure

Within this glossary, the sexual response cycle explains how arousal normally runs, and orgasm gap why the pressure to climax works against you. Beyond this site, the work of Masters and Johnson on spectatoring gives the classic description of the mechanism.

Where this fits on this site

If you recognize the pressure to have to perform, a meeting where nothing is required may be exactly what takes the tension off. How that works, and how I deliberately leave the bar out, you read at intimate togetherness. Talking can always come first, and that commits you to nothing.

Sources

• Spectatoring. Wikipedia. Provides that spectatoring, judging yourself from a distance during sex instead of focusing on your feeling and your partner, was described by Masters and Johnson (1970) and counts as a core factor in psychologically driven erection problems.
• Causes of sexual dysfunction: The role of anxiety and cognitive interference. David H. Barlow, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54(2), 140-148, 1986. Provides that in people with sexual problems the anxiety pulls the attention away from arousing cues toward worries about performing, and that this shifted attention undermines the arousal.
• Human Sexual Inadequacy. William H. Masters & Virginia E. Johnson, 1970. The book in which the term spectatoring was introduced as a core cause of sexual problems.

Related terms

Performance pressure disrupts the sexual response. The terms below place it in that frame.

• Sexual response cycle. The model of arousal, plateau, orgasm, and recovery that performance pressure throws off.
• Arousal. The response that only comes when your head is with your senses, and that performance pressure blocks.
• Orgasm gap. Why the pressure to “have” to climax works against you, especially for women.
• Libido. The appetite for sex, which can decrease under persistent performance pressure.