Sexual confidence kya hai? The answers to the question of what is sexual confidence are multiple. There is no one way sexual confidence looks, but we can tell you what it is not.
Sexual liberation is not being Lord Fuckalot. It’s about figuring out your own sexual nature and then trying to live it out as well as you can, without harming self or others. It’s not about how much sex you have. It’s about how you have sex.
Sexual confidence is not linear (so little about sex is straight in the end). It shifts from context to context and is related to the rest of what’s happening in our lives and in our minds. It’s not only an individual thing, it is also related to social hierarchies and prejudices about identity and appearance.
Sexual confidence is not homogenous – sexually confident people are not all studs and Casanovas. They can be funny, odd, poetic, charming, quiet, outgoing or prosaic.
Therefore, there is no template, there is no formula. But here are a few steps to reach your own plane of sexual confidence.
1) Don’t Be A Throwback
Boasting about conquests, listing all the positions you’ve tried, dismissing other people as old fashioned, repressed or moralistic – many people try to communicate they are sexually confident by doing this. But they are following a very outdated formula based on an unsustainable idea of mardangi. Trash talk doesn’t make you sexually confident. It just makes you a trash talker. So, ditch this fakery, jaldi fast. It’s a prison that will trap you in shame and hiding.
2) It’s Not How It Looks In Porn
Real world sex is different from porn sex. Porn can be fun and it can also tell you a few things about sex, but don’t make it your go-to resource. Sex in life is not a series of edited shots – it’s a continuous story, one thing leading to the other and in between there are burps, giggles, bumps and liquid pleasure. Be open to it – don’t judge it by unrealistic standards or you will be perpetually confused and disappointed aka not confident, or faking confidence, which means also, not confident!
3) The Body Is More Than How It Looks
We worry about how our bodies look. And they don’t look like bodies in porn or advertisements or even super-filtered Instagram posts. But if you learn to think of the body as something that gives and takes pleasure, which is different for everyone, then the way you relate to bodies will become more relaxed.
4) Khud Se Dosti Karoge?
Your first and forever sexual relationship is with yourself. So, make it a loving and curious one, which helps you know yourself. Fantasising freely without censoring or shaming your fantasies, masturbation, understanding your body, learning to gauge your comfort levels, are all ways of building a stronger sexual self – and a stronger sense of self generally too.
5) Experience Is Your Teacher
Don’t think that you already have to know everything about yourself before every experience. Experience is a way of knowing yourself too, as are mistakes and confusions. Reflect on experiences you have, whether of flirtation, sexting, romantic relationships or intercourse. What felt good and why? What didn’t feel good and why? Learn from your mistakes and learn from your pleasures, what works for you as you continue on your sexual journey, always open to change.
6) Throw Shame In The Waste Bin
We are brought up to feel shame for our bodies, for our desires, for the idea of sex itself. Work on letting this go. But, don’t fall victim to any sex-positive shaming either! The yay-yay life-is-a-sex-picnic of hooking up and knowing everything funda can become as much of a norm and you can feel you are falling short and feel shame about not being cool enough.
Don’t like sex without romantic attachment? Cool, nothing to apologise for. Just find someone on the same wavelength. Like to frolic sexually and try many things out? Go for it, with someone that wants the same. Feel you are asexual? Then you are and do what works.
7) Jankaari Matters
Learning about sex, even in theory can be helpful. This can be sexual health related – knowing the body, understanding what is safe sex, how you can get STIs, the circumstances in which pregnancy is caused. Being grounded in knowledge is a great beginning. Even if you are nervous in your early sexual journey, at least you are not panicking from ignorance and letting other people decide things for you.
Knowing there are techniques for sexual pleasure is helpful as a starting point too – then it’s a matter of seeing what works differently for whom.
Because learning is forever, don’t feel you have to know everything. Learn from others, instead of feeling you must compete with them – whether sexual partners or friends you speak to about sex.
8) Masti Hai Minimum aka Sensual Bhi, Consensual Bhi
Wanting to have fun is a big part of sexual confidence – not setting your mind on a goal and waiting to get there, but enjoying each phase of interaction. That way you go one step at a time, feeling your way to intimacy through pleasure.
This attention to pleasure – verbal, physical, emotional, intellectual – helps you become sensually confident and as importantly, creates a capacity for communicating and understanding consent at every step, verbally and non-verbally.
The more you understand mutual fun, the more you attend to consent, the more trust and confidence grows.
9) Selfishness Is Not Confidence
Putting yourself first, getting what you want – there’s a lot of rhetoric about that online. But simply getting what you want without caring about partners is not sexual confidence. It is the opposite. Remember, sex is a mutual activity. Your partners and you have to find a meeting point and it comes through having confidence to express yourself as well as being open without insecurity to what others feel and like
Also remember, good sex is not just about protecting yourself from harm or ‘scoring’. It’s about mutual pleasure – learning to give and receive compliments and sensuality, learning to enjoy other people and yourself together!
10) Good Old-Fashioned Values
Honesty – with yourself and as far as possible and safe, with others (honesty is to be shared responsibly, not just unloaded on others without discernment). Respect – wanting to be respected, building a sense of deserving to be respected – and acting with respect for others’, their privacy, their preference, their personhood. Kindness – everyone is vulnerable, aap akele nazuk nahin hain. Courtesy – good manners go a long way in behaving well and asking for good behavior. Saying please or may I, saying thank you, texting after a date, telling someone you don’t want to see them romantically instead of ghosting– all these are confident behaviours. Do it. Expect it.
Most of all, remember – sex is not a competition. Equality is an attitude, not an exam in which we all have to come first. So, don’t be intimidated by someone else’s sexual confidence. Enjoy it and allow it to make you open to new things. And don’t judge other people’s still developing sexual confidence if you have lots of your own! Be sweet to them, instead of bossy or mocking, and share your confidence for some together fun.