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Home › Articles › Your Sexuality › Better in Bed

Better in Bed

How Self Image Affects Sex Life

By Teri Brown

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(Beavers Pond Press, 2003). As the book follows a group of archetypal characters belonging to a fictional women's therapy group, the reader understands better how our culture became breast-obsessed in the first place.

"Most people realize that society's perception of what is or what isn't considered attractive has changed several times during the past century," Sachs says.

The flowing hairstyles and rounded figures of the early 1900s gave way to the boyish haircuts and bodies of the roaring 1920s. The hourglass figures of the next two decades, such as those of Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe, changed to the slender bodies of Mia Farrow and Twiggy. Then came the perfectly-tanned, toned and athletic bodies of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

With all the changes in society's perceptions of what beauty is, women often judge themselves by its capricious fancy and find themselves lacking. This affects self-image, which in turn affects the ability to enjoy sexual intimacy.

"The internal monologues that dominate the thoughts of women with negative body images include 'My body is not good enough', or 'I am forgotten by God or Mother Nature'," Sachs says. "These are draining forces of women's intimate sexual experiences. When a woman is preoccupied by how bad her body is perceived, she may not be able to focus on pleasuring herself or the other person. This preoccupation will use up the energy she would have had for uninterrupted playfulness, seduction, mutual eroticism and the pursuit of sexual satisfaction."

* Last name withheld to protect privacy.

The Connection Between Self-realization and Sexual Intimacy

Nili Sachs, Ph.D., a marriage therapist, believes there are several background events that can make a woman feel negative about her own body:

  • Being raised by a critical parent
  • Experiencing physical/emotional/sexual abuse as a child, including molestation and/or inappropriate relations
  • Loss of a parent who was nurturing, and never replacing them with a significant caretaker
  • Abandonment, neglect, absent parent – physically and/or emotionally
  • Feeling of powerlessness due to the fact they were born females
  • Messages from industries of fashion and media we cannot control

In overcoming these body-image issues, it is necessary to clue your spouse or significant partner in on how you are feeling. Choose a time when you won't be interrupted to discuss the problem, assuming that your partner is supportive and not a part of the problem.

Perhaps you can open the discussion with any of the following:

  • "I know why I feel so bad about my body and I want to fix that perception."
  • "Teach me to love myself just like you love me."
  • "Come inside my head and see how come I am not responsive to your loving gestures. I want to change that."

"This is a journey that will start with realizations," Sachs says. "A woman with poor self image needs to tell herself, 'Some things outside of me and out of my control made me feel that way. I don't have to stay in this predicament. I can learn to love myself in spite of how I feel about myself right now'."

Understanding why you feel the way you do about your body is the first step in changing how you perceive your body and thereby increasing the quality of your sex life. For the woman who feels good about herself, anything is possible, both in her sexuality and the rest of her life.


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