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Sexual Performance Will Destroy Your Sexual Satisfaction

Break down the barriers that ruin sex



Technically boring


We all want to be sexually good in bed. We want to prove to our sexual partner's that we are good and to know that they want more sex with us. We perpetuate this idea in the media, with our friends and even in our families with jokes and quotes about sex. One of the worst insults is being told that we suck in bed...or wherever else you enjoy doing it. 


Sexual performance, though, brings its load of baggage as it creates sexual boredom through routine sex. Since we want to please others so much in sex, we won't really change our techniques that we know work. When something works in sex, we tend to use it abusively to the point where even if it doesn't work, we still go at it the same way. 


That, my friends, is when sex becomes too technical and mechanical which brings redundancy and platitudes. Sex becomes a chore that we must accomplish rather than a game between two sexual charged up people. We exchange orgasms where both partners masturbate into each other to find some semblance of sexual satisfaction. Do you recognize yourself?


Getting rid of orgasms


Orgasms are absolutely GREAT! (As Tony the tiger used to say). They are exhilarating and explosive in our bodies. But if we put it into perspective they last between 6 to 8 seconds in length, sometimes more but very infrequently. We have socially constructed orgasms as the epitome of sexuality and the last HOURRA before the end. To the point where it has become for many the only criteria to determine if sex was good or not. No orgasm, no fun, no sexual satisfaction!







If we consider that a sexual activity lasts between 5 to 20 minutes from the beginning to the end, including flirting and all of it. Is it really fair to judge your sexual satisfaction on merely 8 seconds of intense bodily sensations? The other 292 to 192 seconds must not have been that enjoyable if you answered yes to the last question. 





Fewer orgasms, more satisfaction


What if we changed the sexual paradigm of having the most orgasms possible to obtaining the most sexual pleasure. We would already be making sex better. A lot of people confuse the two as one and the same. That orgasm equals pleasure and vice versa. Which seems like a narrow-minded way of perceiving sex. Orgasms are just a bodily function of sex that demonstrates your physical capacity to stimulation. 

We put sometimes so much effort into getting or giving an orgasm that we don't even take notice at all the sexual pleasure that we can offer ourselves DURING sex. That is also why orgasms take so much importance in our relationships. It becomes the only point where we do have some semblance of fun during sex or masturbation.

Next time you have sex or masturbate, try to be conscience about what you are thinking and focusing on while you are doing it. 

  • Where are your thoughts going during sex with a partner or yourself?
  • What do you think about or focus on?
  • What emotions do you feel?
  • Where is your focus and what do you do with it?

  • What importance does your sexual pleasure take?
  • Are you connected to the various sensations of your body?
  • How do you react when your sexual arousal diminishes (less lubrification or loss of erection)?

  • What importance does you partner's pleasure take?
  • Are you sometimes too focused on theirs rather than yours?
  • Do you feel selfish if you do think of yours?
  • Is there's more important than yours? 

  • What happens and how do you feel if your partner doesn't get an orgasm?
  • Do you need to have penetration to consider that you had sex or for it to be considered complete?



We do not give orgasms to our partner...we give them to ourselves


We like to tell ourselves that we give orgasms to our partner. The more we do, the better we feel about ourselves. It validates that we are good sexual partners and we feel sexually competent as well as confident, but only temporarily. More often than not, we are looking to get our egos rubbed the right way during sex rather than our genitals. In reality, we do not give our partner's an orgasm, but we accompany them towards it. Although, that doesn't help our ego to see things that way, when we aren't the ones actually giving them. 

Like most people, women as much as men, we find ourselves in a sexual performance where we want to prove to ourselves that we are sexually capable. When everything works properly (reaching an orgasm), we are reassured and our sexual ego is flattered.  So most people will put much of their focus on reaching and giving orgasms to be reassured. When it becomes more difficult or even impossible as it often happens in a relationship, we start to doubt our sexual competency or blame the other for it when our own self-esteem isn't very strong.

So, rather than take pleasure during sex with our partner, we focus our attention on being performing. When that becomes too difficult, we start feeling incompetent sexually and it starts getting worse from there. We feel anxious and apprehend having sex rather than anticipate having pleasure. We fear failure and our anxiety grows to the point of creating sexual difficulties such as loss of erection, lack of lubrification, anorgasmia, pain during penetration, loss of libido, etc.)

Sometimes, we are still functional, but it doesn't mean our insecurities are not there. There are camouflaged by our "sexual success" (reaching orgasm). More often than not, people are very anxious during sex without even realizing it. 



Rub my ego and I will rub yours!


As I was saying earlier, we prefer our egos be rubbed than our genitals. Since we want our ego's to be rubbed, we want to rub our partner's ego as well. Therefore, not only do we have to deal with our own sexual insecurities, we also need to watch out for our sexual lover's insecurities. Issh! Doesn't sound like sex is that fun anymore now does it? Unfortunately, that is the case for most people. All this happens because we are in a paradigm of sexual performance

Signs you are in a sexual performance dynamic:

  • Have you ever thought that your sexual arousal took too much time and you were afraid that the other person would be bored?
  • Have you ever reassured your partner about their lack of erection or lubrification or lack of orgasm?
  • Have you ever read books, articles or watched videos on sexual techniques? What were the reasons for it?

  • Do you sometimes feel useless when receiving oral sex or feel that you need to offer it right after?
  • Do you feel that your partner doesn't really enjoy oral sex and they are just doing it to please you?
  • Have you ever done it for that reason?
  • Have you ever stopped oral sex because you were feeling guilty that it was taking too long and your partner was bored?

  • Do you desperately seek the G-spot or highly erogenous zones to increase sexual arousal as quickly as possible?
  • Do you continue having sex when you are physically uncomfortable with your fingers, mouth or during penetration to give or obtain an orgasm?
  • Are you preoccupied with the length or the frequency of your sexual relationships?
  • Is the number of sexual partners you've had ever been a concern or important to you?

  • Do you always do the same sexual positions to ensure that you can obtain or give an orgasm to your partner?
  • Do you fear ejaculating too quickly or lose your erection or not lubricate enough during sex?
  • Are entirely comfortable with your nudity in any sexual position, lighting or the face you do during sex?

Sex without sexual performance anxiety


Do you recognize yourself with the different subjects of this article? Would you like to move on to the next step in your sex life? Do you want more satisfying sex that doesn't necessarily involve just more orgasms?


  1.  Focus more on being sexually present with your partner and focus more on sexual pleasure rather than arousal
  2. Put aside your ego and have fun with your partner
  3. Take the time so savor all the different sensations during sex, and not just the last 8 seconds of orgasm
  4. Look your partner more often and longer in the eyes and take notice when you are touching or being touched
  5. Let your partner deal with their own sexual insecurities, without ignoring them, but knowing they are there. 


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Francois Renaud M.A.
Sex therapist & psychotherapist in Downtown Montreal




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Getting Beyond Communication Issues

How Mind-Mapping Makes Your Relationship and Sex Better


False communication issues


In another article, we discussed how couples create false communication issues so they could fight about that rather than the real issues in their relationship. We also discussed how we are able to do that with the different types of mind-mapping abilities that we have. We are now going to explain how we can use mind-mapping to resolves conflicts quicker and better as well as have better sex with your lover. 



Dealing with the real issues


Now that you realized that you can mind-map and that you and your partner both use it in your relationship. It is time to start being more honest with yourself and with them. This requires skills that are not thought in a class but are experienced by being in a relationship. When we fight with our partner we are naturally threatened on two fronts. Losing ourselves or losing each other. This dilemma is what perpetuates people to argue for days on end because they cannot tolerate either of those two options. 

  It is a push and pull dynamic of protecting our self and the relationship. We want to come on top and not be too damaged but also make sure that our partner still loves us afterward. Sometimes, we know what we are doing is wrong, we just don't want to allow our partner to use it against us. Which they most likely have done in the past. We want to keep the upper hand. 


How vulnerable can you be?


No one likes to be vulnerable and most perceive it as being weak. We also tend to culturally associate it with women, which could not be further away from the truth. All human beings feel vulnerability, and we all try to feel it as less as possible. Women nor men are more prone to it  or want it. We might encourage women to express their feelings more, but not their vulnerability. This is also an important difference most people mistake as being the same thing.

Vulnerability in the sense of being profoundly intimate with another person, requires a strong sense of who we are as a person (self-esteem in other words). It is our capacity to know who we are and being able to fully divulge that which we are proud of and that which we are not. It takes courage, not weakness to show our most inner "self". It also takes strength to be able to stand tall when the person you love the most uses your own vulnerability against you, which unfortunately happens too often.



Tolerating your partner's vulnerability


It is not just a question of being vulnerable, it also has to do with seeing your partner vulnerable (a.k.a. not what you want them to be). When people open up about who they are, it makes people uneasy and question themselves. It reflects your own vulnerability whether you wanted to or not. So when a partner brings things up that we were not ready or wanted to hear, we want them to backtrack. Mind-mapping abilities come into play at this point. When someone is vulnerable, our mind-mapping abilities are at full capacity. We are mind-mapping our partner and ourselves. We might want to mind-mask ourselves or implement a false belief into our partner to eject from the situation.





Calming yourself down


Vulnerability isn't fun to live through and we would rather be doing anything else at that moment. Learning to calm ourselves down during those moments is when you can truly connect with your partner. You see them and they see you and as much as it can bring people closer it can also push them away. We are overwhelmed by the intensity of the connexion we have and we want to stay in it as much as we want to push away. We are utterly naked in this confined space with each other and it makes us human and fragile yet strong all at the same time. 

Learning to tolerate the discomfort changes your "self" to a degree that communication skills will never achieve. You must mind-track yourself and your partner as well as avoid mind-masking. When you feel the emotions come up, try to let them be. Sometimes we will feel a knot in our stomach we want to suppress or we want to push down the tingling ball we feel in our throat. Through hardship comes a deep understanding of ourselves and accepting who we are and our partner for being themselves.


Moving from conflict towards intimacy


When we let mind-mapping be part of our relationship, we allow for connection with the other person and we fight differently and about different things. Being vulnerable in a conflict makes us desirable to our partner. If we can acknowledge that it took courage to do it, we can admire the resilience and strength it took.  It can even encourage the other to do the same. Mutual respect for self and our lover starts growing and this is what creates sexual desire in a relationship and meaningful sex. 


Best sex of your life


Mind-mapping sex makes the best kind of sex. You let yourself be completely connected with one another and you are not putting energy into hiding yourself by mind-masking. You are just letting yourself go completely and utterly to the moment with your partner. Nobody needs to hide and you are letting each other feel fully all the intensity and (sexual) emotions that come with having a sexual RELATIONSHIP. 

You are not just exchanging orgasms or masturbating into each other like most people do when having sexual activities. You are looking at each other in the eyes and you take the time to feel every inch of skin you are exploring at that moment. You want to be seen and to see the other as who you are at your core. There is nothing more liberating than mind-mapping sex!


More than just gooey emotions


Let's not mistake this only for lovey dovey sex, which can be absolutely great to have. The type of sex we are talking about is sexually charged up and passionate. It is not just an emotional connexion, but a sexual one. You can have this connexion in a one night stand if you want. It only requires that you let yourself be vulnerable with a complete stranger. Although, a more deep and profound connexion can be built upon in a long term relationship. It tends to give it more significance, therefore, allows it to be more intense in nature.



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Francois Renaud M.A.
Sex therapist & psychotherapist in Downtown Montreal




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Pretending to Have Communication Issues

Types of Mind-Mapping



Lack of Communication: A Pretend Fairytale


In another article,  I described  that there is no such thing as a lack of communication in a couple and that we have the ability to mind-map each other. This segment will go deeper into the different types of mind-mapping abilities we are capable of.  


Quick Recap: What is Mind-Mapping?


Mind-mapping is our ability to understand other people's intentions and desires as well as moods and emotions through their body language, their attitudes and their tone of voice. Most people pretend they don't have this ability because it allows us to get what we want and be less vulnerable in our relationships. It also permits to argue about "nonexistent communication issues" rather than the real problems in the relationship, therefore avoiding break-ups. Mind-mapping also plays a crucial role in sex and how we go about having it with our spouse.


Types of Mind-Mapping Abilities


There are 4 different types of mind-mapping that we can use in social interactions. Each one requires the last to be able to do the next one. Therefore, there is a hierarchal element to using mind-mapping. Not everyone can use all 4 of them, but you or your partner might also be pretending you can't do it. We've mostly described the first one which is mind-tracking.

Mind-Tracking: I See You!


We are constantly looking out for other people's motives and intentions when they speak or behave. This is how we can finish people's thoughts and know where they are going before they finish their train of thought. We analyze our partner's body language such as where they are looking, how their hands and legs are open or closed, what posture they are taking. This is the basics of mind-mapping that everyone has. This is how you detect if someone is being truthful or lying or misdirecting the conversation. This allows for empathy and understanding of our spouse's emotions as well. It allows you to know when your partner says: "I'm fine...". And you know that it isn't true. 

One might think that if we are all able to do this, then wouldn't relationships be easy and people would just get along. Why would couples argue so much if we can understand each other so well? The answer is that we don't always like what we understand from each other. Sometimes it's because we don't like being vulnerable or that our lover knows things we want to hide. But if we can mind-track, how can we hide things from each other, you say? This is where mind-masking comes into play and complicates things a little bit. 


Mind-Masking: You Can't See Me!


Mind-masking is developed when we learn it from other people, mostly family dynamics. We understand at a young age that there are things we can do, say and think, but other times we cannot. We learn in most societies and social interactions that vulnerability is a flaw that we must hide. Mind-masking allows partners to lie to each other without the other person knowing they are. It also works when we want to pretend that we are not having pity sex (sex to avoid conflicts or hurting partner). Mind-masking is commonly known as the poker face!

This ability to mind-mask from others who are tracking us is a deceptive behaviour that we use to avoid conflicts that are getting too intense or when we want to get away with something we did. We've all done it before. You do something that has crossed the line and you know your partner won't like it. So you play dumb and pretend you didn't know it would bother them. A classic example is one partner isn't feeling well, but they don't want to talk about it so they put on a happy face. They pretend to have an orgasm or they hide their frustration or disappointment from their spouse. 


A typical mind-masking behaviour when it comes to sex is when a partner starts to flirt with the other and they pretend not to understand what the other wants: To have sex. This leads us to the third mind-mapping ability which is false belief implanting.





False Belief Implanting: You Think you can see me!


I know, I know, this is getting confusing and a bit diseasing. Most likely you are following me because you have the abilities that are being discussed in this article. You've either done it yourself before or you are thinking of ways your partner has been doing similar things. Now if you can think of situations where your partner has mind-masked, then you are also able to do it and most likely have done it in the past.

False belief implanting is pretty self-explanatory. It's when you can make your spouse think something is true when it isn't. Such as you not being able to mind-track or mind-mask them. You implement the idea and they believe you. It now becomes part of your relationship dynamic, such as pretending you both don't understand each other or that you have "communication issues".  Men who have the nice guy syndrome are very good as implementing the idea that they are nice, when it reality they are not. Women do it all the time as well. Whether you're a heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual or lesbian couple, you will most likely find false belief implanting dynamics.

So many times in therapy, I have a couple where one of the partners has a lower sexual desire than their spouse. They have sex even when they don't have the desire for it because they don't want to say no again just to have their partner get angry for the 77th time about their sexual desires not being met. 

The partner with the higher sexual desire will blatantly lie in the therapy session saying they didn't know that the other wasn't that into it. Only to have them confess minutes or sessions later, depending on how long they want to keep the false belief implanted, that they knew this all along. They justify their actions by explaining they wouldn't have gotten what they wanted otherwise. 

The next mind-mapping ability is the most twisted of them all. So much so that it actually has the name for it: Mind-twisting


Mind-Twisting: You'll Wish You Didn't See Me!


Still intrigued, are we? How far have you and your spouse fallen into to the downward cycle of Normal Marital Sadism? There are people who will go far to keep the upper hand in their relationship. Who will manipulate to the point where they must crush or make their partner's feel bad about themselves so they don't have to own up to their mistakes and faults. This may sound scary, but unfortunately and frequently long term couples do fall prey to the temptation of mind-twisting.

Mind-twisting requires all three previous mind-mapping abilities to be able to pull it off. You must mind-track your partner, mind-mask yourself and implant the false belief into the other person. The twisting part comes when you are able to conclude the conflict by making your spouse believe that it was all their fault in the first place when in reality your the one who is in the wrongdoing. 

Now this type of behaviour cannot be solved by communication skills. No amount of sentences starting with "I" will save this relationship from self-imploding. Fortunately, there are ways you can get out of this. Therapy with a trained professional such as a sex therapist and psychotherapist can help you. It will require lots of self-confrontation and a hard look at the status of your relationship and your spouse. This is no small feat and will shatter your perception of your relationship. This will test your capacity to hold onto yourself and strengthen your emotional balance and create a collaborative alliance with your partner rather than having no alliance. This will push your limits which you didn't know existed to bring yourself and your lover to another level in your relationship. 

Will you take the plunge?



Ending note


Mind-mapping doesn't seem like a very useful ability to help couples in their relationships. It can seem as though it creates mistrust and cruel behaviours between people who at the basis are supposed to love each other. That is all true! But mind-mapping is also the way we are capable of connecting on a deeper more profound level with our partner. It makes sex way better than just exchanging orgasms with another person.

It is all a matter of how we decide we want to use mind-mapping. Do we want to be vulnerable and connected with each other or do we want to protect our ego and vanity? You can only choose one of those two options, which is why so many couples hurt each other through mind-mapping rather than connect with one another.



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Sex therapist & psychotherapist in Downtown Montreal




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There is no such thing as a lack of communication

Honey...I just don't understand you!


Everyone says it, nobody gets its!


How many times have you said or heard couples or even therapists saying how communication in a relationship is key? A million times I suppose. What if I told you communication is rarely if not ever the problem people face in relationships. Would you be surprised? Confused? Intrigued? Angry?


Saying it isn't the problem


People have no issues communicating what they want,  even if they don't verbally say it out loud. Have you ever heard that communication passes mainly by body language and not verbal words? Communication without body language would be bland, boring and barely comprehensible.  Well, our capacity to read each other through body language is our ability to mind-map each other.

It is a skill we all develop at the age of four years old in a spontaneous manner and it becomes mature at the age of eleven. It is our primal instincts to interpret and understand other people through body language, their tone of voice and their attitudes.  So even if your partner isn't verbally saying things, you are still strongly capable of determining what their desires or intentions might be. 

Now, I am not saying we can mind read, but we have a lot of clues as to our spouse's moods of the moment. If we didn't have this skill, we would never have sex, flirting would be absolutely impossible and you would never be able to have any type of connection with other people. 


Here are a couple of examples you might relate to:

1) Your spouse comes back from work and you feel that they are upset. Just image how that would look like without them even saying a word. 

2) Your partner is feeling flirtatious and they would like to have sex with you. Again, without saying anything, they are able to transmit to you their intentions and desires. What does that look to you if you picture it?

3) You are at a family dinner and they say something embarrassing or inappropriate and you want to communicate to them to quit it, without saying a peep. How would you go along doing it?


Are you starting to catch my drift? Well, that is also your capacity to mind-map. We also have an ability to predict where people are going with what they are saying, even though it is written down. Now I could give you some bogus explanation on human evolution and how it was used to save our butts from predators, but that is not important. What is significant is that you have the ability to mind-map. 


So what am I suppose to do with this mind-mapping ability you say?


It is pretty simple. STOP PRETENDING YOU DON'T HAVE IT! So many couples come into my office saying that they don't understand each other and they lack communication skills or that they don't communicate. That's when I have to refrain myself from having a little smile knowing full well that it isn't the case, yet they want to implement that idea in the therapy. That is another mind-mapping ability called implanting false beliefs. Which we will get to in another article. 

Most people don't want their spouse to know that they can actually mind-map them. It allows them to pretend they don't know what the other wants or that they don't understand them when in reality they do. This serves many purposes in relationships that tend to be destructive. When we pretend that we don't understand our partner's desires and intentions it gives us excuses to avoid doing things that we don't want to do. Like having sex! Being nice or emotionally available for them.

Have you ever kissed your partner wanting to show them you wanted to heat things up and get funky? Then only to receive those duck kisses that let you hang dry (the situation can also be reversed). That is when the partner later says: I didn't understand that you wanted sex, it wasn't clear! This allows avoiding the "I don't want sex with you" discussion and putting the blame on the other person for not communicating properly what they wanted. If you had to choose between telling your partner you don't desire them or arguing about how you both communicate. Which one would you choose? Most people would take the latter option.




Sex and mind-mapping


Mind-mapping also plays a huge role during sex. This sets the mood and tone of your sexual relationship that you are about to have. The way you kiss, touch and what you do will be determined by mind-mapping. Rethink about your last sexual encounter. How did you know when to move on from kissing to touching genitals? How did you know it was time to penetrate or have oral sex? Have you ever felt that your partner wasn't that into it or really was hot for you? If you are capable of understanding the flow and movement of sexual activities, then you can mind-map. Not that anyone doesn't have the ability anyways! Now are you still going to pretend that your spouse and yourself don't communicate well?


 Understanding, just disagreeing


When people come in therapy saying they have "communication issues"; what they are really saying is: I don't agree with you and I want you to change your mind ASAP. Sometimes, they want the therapist to change their lover's mind. It is easier saying that we don't understand each other when in reality we perceive things differently from our spouse. We have difficulty in our relationships when we are faced with a partner who doesn't want the same things as us. We can take it personally and feel unimportant to them. It can break our perception of who they are as a person. It doesn't validate our point of view, which obliges us to confront them. It confronts us to making tough life decisions that we may not want to deal with.

Can we not agree to disagree?


Nope, you may not! When it comes to negotiating our values, our principles, and our integrity, we cannot agree to disagree. You are faced with constant dilemmas in a relationship where you have to choose between what you want and what your partner wants which more often than not, will not necessarily be the same. You cannot have sex and not have it at the same time. You cannot spend money and save it for later. You cannot clean the house and not clean it. You cannot go to your in-laws at the same time that you stay at home. 

When we tend to disagree on numerous things in relationships, that's when the infamous "communication issues" start to arise. Sex, cleaning, in-laws, money and educating the kids are the general subjects we argue the most about. Others are also possible. They touch our most profound values and integrity, which no one wants to lose. 

How to get out of this never-ending cycle?


Like I said earlier: "STOP PRETENDING YOU DON'T HAVE MIND-MAPPING ABILITIES". This will allow you and your partner to stop arguing about something that doesn't exist and discuss the real issues at hand. Be honest about what you want and the fact that you know what your partner wants, but that you just don't want to give it to them. This will end the none sense bickering about the "I already told you this before" and the "how come you still don't understand". Take into consideration that you are not the only one who has made sacrifices in the relationship. That all your needs and desires will not and cannot all be answered. Stop avoiding the hard truths of your relationship and have the conversation with your partner. You will only appreciate each other more for being fully honest about who you are and what you want. 

This can lead you to separation, but mostly it makes you a better person by being more understanding which tends to bring people closer not further apart. Knowing you can mind-map and that you are being mind-map changes the game in a relationship. It is up to you to decide how you want to play from now on. 


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Sex therapist & psychotherapist in Downtown Montreal




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