How Cultivating Confidence, Embracing Your Body, and Unique Sexuality Can Lead to Deeper Connection and Unmatched Pleasure

When you hear the word “sex appeal” what comes to mind? I am positive this phrase can conjure up a myriad of images in your mind, some may be your typical gorgeous human (the kind society and media tend to highlight), perhaps the likes of Magic Mike or Megan Fox.

However, over time I have come to discover that sex appeal isn’t a standardised set of criteria that we need to conform to but is directly linked to confidence. We often fall into this idea that beauty (in the typical sense) equals sexy but that could not be further from the truth. Now this is good news for the majority of the population that the rest of us fall into, who are just your ordinary average Joe.

This brings me to the idea of self-esteem, we all know what this means and it’s a part of ourselves that is extremely critical to our growth and development as human beings, particularly when it comes to interactions with others. Our self-esteem is an area we need to be working on and improving on a consistent basis, but this first comes with an awareness of where we stand first.

So, why are we talking about self-esteem? The reason is because this exists in the bedroom too, it’s called sexual self-esteem. Have you ever felt like you lack that “va va voom” between the sheets? This may be due to a low sexual self-esteem, and confidence in the bedroom is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Now, there are a plethora of things that can contribute towards this, namely:

• Body image issues
• How the topic of sex was treated in your formative years
• Previous sexual trauma or bad sexual experiences
• Prolonged exposure to pornography, bringing about feelings of inadequacy or skewed expectations and the list goes on

The reality is that we are all sexual beings that desire pleasure but even more than that we NEED connection. When these two things collide, magic happens.

This all begs the question of how do you improve your sexual self-esteem? First and foremost, you need to get out of your head! Sex is not a mathematical equation, it’s a dance that flows and moves spontaneously. Our largest sexual organ is our brain and if we are preoccupied with other things, the pleasure will be lacking. Over thinking every detail is just going to rob you of experiencing it fully.

Secondly, how do you feel about your body? Are you comfortable in your own skin? What are you telling yourself when you look at your naked body in the mirror? How you feel about your body translates to your body language during sex, and is constantly sending messages nonverbally to your partner, if you think they don’t sense it, you are sorely mistaken.

I spent so many years of my marriage avoiding certain lingerie, being in certain positions and having lights off or covers on because I was so embarrassed of my body. Although I tried to hide the fact that I was doing this, my husband could feel me holding back and my lack of confidence.

Not feeling attractive made me appear unattractive and that is the last thing you want, particularly in the bedroom. I despised this feeling and chose to make a concerted effort to improve my body image.

This included the usual things, like exercising and making healthier choices but the biggest shift was acceptance of the fact that my body was now different, after two kids, as well as getting older. I chose to stop mourning the body I used to have and accepted my new model. This model is definitely softer and has a lot of scars but man can she do the job just as well (if not better).

I also became mindful of the negative self-talk that I was entertaining, by increasing my awareness of when this happened and intentionally changing the narrative in my head to positive affirmations towards myself.

This was a game-changer, as it changed my entire perspective of how I saw myself and I could look in that mirror and see the face of a gorgeous and sexy woman. With this change in mindset came an awakening that the sexiest person my husband would lay eyes on in the bedroom was me and I was more than happy to don that title.