What A Fear Of Letting Go Sexually Really Means Underneath

12 minute read

What is the fear of letting go sexually really all about? Well, sexual anxiety is oftentimes rooted in deep-seated worries and fears of getting things wrong. For some, it’s about a fear of not being good enough in bed. For others, it’s about not looking the way you feel your body should. 

At its core, it’s about a fear of not being accepted by your partner – and sometimes even yourself.  

Because whether you have lots of casual sex or only sleep with your spouse – sex can be a vulnerable experience at heart. 

Not only are you getting naked in front of someone – you’re showing off a side of yourself that tends to be private for a lot of people. A side of yourself you may feel is way more raw and animalistic than anything else you show in your day-to-day life. 

And with increased vulnerability, comes increased fears about being hurt and rejected.

What’s going on in your head when you’re afraid or intimidated to let yourself fully experience pleasure with your partner?

Oftentimes, you’re worried that your reaction to sex or the way you are during sex won’t be the way that it “should” be. 

In order to combat this, we disappear into our heads in the hopes of controlling the sexual experience. Unfortunately, when we do this, the chances of sex being a positive experience are slim to none. 

This is because when we’re stuck in our heads, we’re not clued into the stuff that’s turning us on.

Essentially, we’re not present, and this leads to a lacklustre experience all round. It also unfortunately increases the risk of that very thing you fear – happening. 

For example, if one of your worries is not being able to get or sustain an erection, the more you fret about it during sex, the likelier it is this fear will come true. This doesn’t mean anxious people are doomed to a life without great sex – it just means you need help in this area (like so many others!).

The thing about being in your head during sex – is that it often feels safer than being in your body. Because when you’re consumed with sexual anxiety, paying attention to bodily sensations can feel torturous. Disappearing into your head allows you to escape those feelings and thus, it usually feels better, temporarily. 

How anxiety affects your body

Worry and anxiousness is your body’s way of trying to help you survive a potential threat. It does this by mobilizing stress in order to help you either fight the threat, flee the threat, or play dead. 

When this happens your body kicks into gear and you might notice:

• Increased heart rate, 
• Your body gets flushed, 
• You become sweaty or hot. 
• You have rapid shallow breathing 
• Your blood pressure increases.

It goes without saying that a lot of these symptoms are incredibly uncomfortable. However – they are also symptoms of what most of us are trying to experience during sex – sexual arousal. 

When we become sexually aroused our heart rate increases, our breathing often becomes more rapid and shallow and our blood pressure goes up. This can lead to a flushed face and body and becoming hot and sweaty. 

If we’ve experienced a lot of sexual anxiety in the past – it’s not unusual for these same symptoms of sexual arousal to be misinterpreted as anxiety.

This in turn can make it even harder to let go sexually as we’re consumed with how uncomfortable our racing heart is. 

Anxiety is meant to overpower everything

Not only can sexual arousal be misconstrued as sexual anxiety – anxiety is also a feeling that’s meant to overpower everything. 

Oftentimes, we want to believe we can just put mind over matter when it comes to feelings. But anxiety is a powerful state our body has designed to protect us. We’re not meant to be able to ignore it. 

Struggling to get into the right headspace for sex isn’t a question of willpower or being “strong”. Anxiety is telling you something is wrong and it will keep sounding off alarm bells within until it feels you’re in safety again. This is why sex and stress often aren’t a match made in heaven.

So, if your body is doing what it’s supposed to – how do you get out of anxiety and drop the fear of letting go sexually?

You work on the underlying issues by addressing what the fear, at its core, is really about.

Overthinking and obsessing

As we talked about before, disappearing into our heads when we’re experiencing sexual anxiety or general anxiety is common. It’s a way of dissociating from our body so that we don’t have to experience something that simply isn’t worth experiencing. 

But other times, overthinking during sex isn’t just a way to disconnect from our body – it’s a subconscious technique grounded in the assumption that we can think our way out of uncomfortable feelings. 

That if we can just think about it in the right way, we’ll reach a conclusion that will help us feel differently during sex. And for a lot of us, overthinking isn’t just contained in the sexual experience itself – it happens throughout our day. 

Perhaps you notice your partner is interested in sex as soon as they snuggle up to you in bed. This sets off alarm bells and questions of “does this mean they want sex?”. Along with these thoughts, you’ll often find a string of stressed-out thoughts like: 

• “Oh no, I’m not in the mood.” 
• “How will I be able to orgasm now? I’m too tired.”
• “Why do they always want sex?!”

You’re not doing anything wrong nor are you choosing your thoughts. However – this doesn’t mean you can’t change these thought patterns (because you definitely can!). 

It’s so easy to be hard on ourselves when we notice our negative thoughts racing through our minds. As if it would be easy to “just stop”. But if that were the case, sex therapists like myself wouldn’t exist – because changing ingrained ways of thinking and being is hard (yet possible). 

My free resource Manual For Emotions gives you the tools needed to understand the connection between sex and emotions and feel better.

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Common Fears People Have About Letting Go During Sex

When you’re afraid of letting go sexually it’s not uncommon to have several fears playing a part all at once. Below are some of the most common trepidations I see in my work with clients as a sex therapist and intimacy coach. 

Your body’s response to sex 

A lot of fears center around your body. You might be worried your body is going to make awkward sounds or be too noisy during sex. You might also be worried your body isn’t going to be attractive or sexy enough to turn your partner on. Perhaps even despite them explicitly telling you they think you’re beautiful and hot. 

Given the above fears, it makes complete sense you’re struggling to let go sexually – because letting go means relinquishing control. Control over how your body looks in certain positions. Control over the noises you make and the way your body reacts to being turned on and pleasured. 

These fears tell the story of being afraid of judgment and feeling like we’re not enough. 

That who we are when we strip down to our bare selves isn’t okay. 

And it goes without saying that a fear that looms this large is going to have some negative consequences on your sex life if left unattended. 

Because when we can’t stop picturing what we look like in bed or controlling our bodily sounds – we’re not focused on the things that could be turning us on. We’re knee-deep in sexual anxiety, creating a negative cycle where we check in on ourselves again and again to see how we’re measuring up against our own set of rules and fears. Often only to find that we’re not.

Fear of disappointing your partner

There is also the highly common fear of not being good enough in bed for your partner. 

Perhaps you already know your partner had great sex in their previous relationship. Or there’s one thing your partner wants, but you don’t feel comfortable exploring it. 

As a result, you might find yourself constantly asking yourself during sex: “Is this good enough for my partner?”

When we’re afraid of not living up to a certain standard, it’s easy to lose focus on our pleasure and instead worry about whether our partner is enjoying the sex we’re having or not. 

Maybe you’re worried about stamina and endurance, or how long the sexual experience lasts before one of you has an orgasm. 

For others, it might be the fear of not being able to give your partner multiple orgasms, despite them being capable of them. Or you fret about not being adventurous enough or not taking enough initiative. 

Sometimes we’re consumed with our arousal and whether or not we’re lubricating or getting hard fast enough. Most of us have been conditioned to believe that physical arousal is the measuring stick of how attractive our partner finds us.  

Perhaps you’ve even been in past situations where your partner has questioned you, gotten angry and upset that you’ve lost your erection or don’t seem to be getting wet. To prevent this from happening in the future, you tell yourself you mustn’t let go during sex. Because if you do – it might just happen again. 

Underneath all of these fears are beliefs in our minds about what a good sex partner is. And if they go unchecked and unchallenged – they often have a big sway over the quality of our sexual experiences. 

In turn, these thoughts wreak havoc on desire, arousal, orgasms, and the sexual experience as a whole. 

Fear of sexual consequences

Fears of letting go sexually also sometimes boil down to a natural side effect of sex – pregnancy and STIs (sexually transmitted infections). 

If you never want children or don’t want them right now, it makes sense there’s apprehension regarding the possible reality of getting pregnant. And if you’re in a casual sexual relationship, the fear of getting an STI can compound your sexual anxiety – even if you’re taking the necessary precautions. 

Fear of getting turned on by the wrong thing

One lesser talked about, but common fear is the fear of getting off to the wrong thing, sexually. You might worry that if your partner knew about your sexual fantasies – that they would reject you. 

Because no matter how confident you may be in life – sexual rejection hurts for everyone. And the more unusual the fantasy or taboo it is, the more nervous you may become. 

If you’re afraid of showing this side to your partner, it makes sense you try your hardest during sex to not let go sexually – for fear of “slipping up”. 

Fear of intimacy

Finally, a fear of intimacy is also a common reason why you might struggle to let go sexually. For some, this turns into what is known as Erotophobia.

This is because sex, for some people, is one of the most intimate of experiences you can share with another. 

This in and of itself raises the stakes. Because the more vulnerable you are – the greater the risk you might get hurt.

So when you’re fearing letting go sexually, it might not be in relation to a sexual matter per say – but rather an emotional one. 

Sometimes these fears have their roots in previous relationship hurts – affairs or things being said that you can never take back. Other times it has to do with what happened way before our relationship; in our relationship with our caregivers. If you had parents who neglected you or didn’t take care of you emotionally, you might grow up to perceive the world as a place where close relationships are a threat – not a safety. 

To be close is to be vulnerable and to be vulnerable opens you up to potential hurt. Because if you trust your partner and let go sexually, they might abandon you emotionally, just as your caregivers did. 

When you judge yourself sexually

Just as we can fear we’re not enough sexually for our partner – we can fear not being enough in our own eyes.

In fact, sometimes our sexual anxiety has more to do with us critiquing ourselves than our partner being disappointed or frustrated. 

For instance, your partner might not take it personally when you can’t get or sustain an erection. But for you – it’s like a personal failure every single time. Maybe you feel like you’re less of a real man, or like you’re broken. Perhaps you’re successful in so many other areas of life that this feels completely out of character. 

The same thing goes for body image. You might not feel sexy when you take your clothes off – even though your partner obviously does. So you lash out at yourself, berating yourself for not looking the way you want to, or maybe used to. 

It would make complete sense then that your desire and arousal plummet further – leading you to avoid sex. Cause who wants to have sex when all they’re thinking of is how awful they look or how they’re not fulfilling their duties as a partner? 

Being disappointed in yourself is painful. The good thing to know is that once you acknowledge these mean thoughts – you can actually change them. 

What you can do about your fear of letting go sexually

There are lots of ways to overcome sexual anxiety and to get past the fear of letting go sexually.  It starts with getting really clear on what you’re actually afraid of. 

Because what might seem like one thing on the surface, could actually be something completely different at its core.

A fear surrounding erectile function might seem like a fear of being a bad sex partner. But when you start to peel away the layers you may realize it’s about a fear of not feeling like a “real” man (whatever that means to you).

Other times, what we believe our sexual anxiety stems from – is completely true. There might however be multiple fears lurking that need to be addressed. 

If we skip trying to understand our fear of letting go sexually, we might end up missing the mark – because the techniques we’re trying aren’t targeting our real difficulties.

Tools range from the thought-based to body-based. For instance, you may wish to work on acknowledging and changing your thought patterns, so that you can feel more confident in bed and find it easier to let go sexually. 

Other times it’s about working with your body’s nervous system and learning ways of dealing with the physiological aspects of stress and anxiety. This can have a positive effect on your mind, leading you to not have to deal with nasty thoughts about yourself anymore. 

When nothing is working

And then there are those of us who try various things and yet cannot seem to move past our sexual anxiety. Or we try things that work for a bit and then, to our surprise, stop working. 

This is where the help of a sex therapist is going to be paramount in order to move forward.

Because while it may feel like you’re doomed and like you’ll never be able to let go sexually and experience what others seem to so freely – your feeling likely isn’t right. 

There’s lots you can do, and if the thing you’ve been doing up until now isn’t working; there are always other things to try. 

In my online course Re:Desire, I help my clients work through their sexual anxiety so sex feels exciting and fun again, instead of pressuring and stressful. Click here to find out how Re:Desire can help you have more and better sex today.