9 Tiny Turn-Offs Women Make With Men In The Bedroom
These things may kill your intimacy with him.
Karolina Grabowska | Pexels If you want a fantastic, fully satisfying, and long-lasting intimate relationship that supports a strong and healthy relationship, then you would do very well to take the following 10 suggestions very seriously. Because as amazing as it may sound, most women make every single one of these mistakes, and learning how to avoid even a few of them will set you apart in the mind of any man.
Here are the tiny turn-offs women make with men in the bedroom:
1. You buy into the popular hype that being a great lover means you have to be a “bad girl”
“When I’m good, I’m very good… but when I’m bad, I’m better.” I am guessing that even before Mae West made that line famous, both men and women had a fascination with the forward “bad girl” for thousands of years. In popular culture, characters like Samantha from Sex and the City to an intense fascination with celebrities like Pamela Anderson show that the icon of the “bad girl” is not going anywhere anytime soon. And it does not take a scientific study to notice that men seem to respond very strongly to these women. And, of course, we all worry about the fact that in our modern media-frenzied culture, our teen and even pre-teen girls have noticed that fact too.
But of course, you’re not a teenager. So you should know better. Yes, for most men there is a fascination with women who are very active in the bedroom and use it to get attention. And if you have got some “bad girl” in you, then the good news is your man will enjoy that side of you when you let her out. But if that’s your only trick, prepare for a life without any depth and relationships without intimacy. Part of the pleasure of being human is that we don’t have to be the same person all of the time, and knowing how to use a little “bad girl” to spice up your life is great, as long as you don’t let the attention cut you off from a more authentic experience of love and life.
2. You conform to double standards
We have come a long way, but unfortunately, the double standard is alive and well in virtually all modern cultures. Most men I have talked to still think that if a woman is intimate with him on the first date, then she probably did the same on all of her other first dates and that she is therefore “not relationship material.” So what can a woman do? If she feels drawn to a man, does she have to “hold out” to avoid getting labeled?
On the other hand, is there such a thing as holding out too long? What if he gets frustrated and finds himself a more willing partner? The truth is, there are plenty of very smart and savvy women who get themselves into emotionally difficult situations from trying to figure this out and “playing the game” from either end. Some women try to gain “power” in their relationships by holding out longer than what feels comfortable. And there are women on the other side who fear losing a man if they don’t “put out” and use intimacy to try to get an emotional commitment.
Both of these strategies almost always fail in the end. The only way to win this game is to not play. You can’t get anything by either withholding or giving it. The only thing being intimate can get you is intimacy. And trying to figure out how to trade it for love or attention is almost always a disaster. So what should you do? Commit yourself to working as hard as you can to remain fearlessly authentic to your truth and ethics, no matter what they may be. You should not be intimate with a man either a moment before or a moment after you are fully emotionally ready to do so. If that means that you lose a man because he felt like it was “too soon” or“too slow” then you just saved yourself a lot of heartache by getting involved with a man who either can’t see or can’t appreciate true authenticity.
3. You make your pleasure his responsibility
It’s easy to blame your lover if the intimacy is not what you wished it was. Especially if it does not measure up to another man from your past. Part of this is because we all carry certain imprinting — from early fantasies, something we saw or overheard, or from experience — and we develop preferences for them. We can’t expect our lover to have the same imprinting that we do, and so there’s a good chance that he’s got a different idea about what great intimacy ought to look like. Another common situation is that a couple gets stuck in a rut and they both wish things were different, but neither of them is willing to take responsibility for making changes.
It’s easy to see that he just does the same thing every time. But for some reason, it’s just harder to notice that you might be doing the same thing every time too. And finally, many women believe that if they are finishing during intimacy it must be their partner’s fault. It becomes “our” problem, and he gets sucked into feeling inadequate, or else she just keeps it to herself, either faking it or not, but secretly holding resentment. Most women make every single one of these mistakes and learning how to avoid even a few of them will set you apart in the mind of any man.
4. You make your pleasure your responsibility
And of course, there are just as many women, if not more, who believe that if they are not climaxing or if they don’t enjoy intimacy that is their fault. Many women go around feeling humiliated or even “broken” because they either can't climax or because they can’t climax during intimacy. With every other issue of the women’s magazines telling you that you’re entitled to “the big O” and that if you’re not getting it then you are missing out on what it means to be a fully actualized woman, it’s easy to start to feel like you’re a below average human if you’re not screaming into your pillow for at least an hour a day.
And there are just as many women who walk around believing that they “just have a low drive,” or they “just don’t enjoy doing it,” and that’s just the way it is. The fact is, all women are capable of climaxing because every woman has the anatomy and the circuitry for it. And yes, climaxing, is something that can be learned and powerfully intensified with the right information. Getting past “fault” and the silly idea that being intimate is “supposed” to be a certain way is the essential beginning for any woman who knows that she could be getting more out of it.
5. You think foreplay begins in the bedroom
Men and women are equally guilty of this one, and both men and women suffer because of it. I am constantly hearing from women who say “My husband isn’t attracted to me anymore,” or “his drive has disappeared.” And it almost always has nothing to do with what’s going on between the sheets, but rather what’s going on during the day.
While we like to think that men are all about the physical and that women are the ones with all of the emotion, it’s been my observation time and again that if a couple has not been getting along well during the day, the man is often the one who becomes disinterested in intimacy in the evening. For women, returning to the intimacy of touch is often a way to heal wounds carelessly inflicted during the day. But frequently for men, getting intimate when they are feeling frustrated and unheard is just out of the question. Being in the right emotional frame of mind for intimacy is something that usually does not “just happen” in the bedroom. It’s something that happens through intention and care and in every interaction throughout the day.
6. You're ashamed of your body
It's the one that seems hardest to avoid for most women. There was a time when the kind of female beauty that we elevate to celebrity status would have been something you might see only a few times in a lifetime. Humans evolved in bands of 100-150 individuals, and encounters with other tribes were not overly common. If you take a random 100 people from the street that might be what your tribe looked like, and all the people you’d ever see. Today, however, we live in a global community, and those chosen for jobs as models for magazines and catalogs and to appear in television and movies are a tiny handful of all of the humans alive on the planet. They are the 1 in 100 million.
But that’s just the beginning because these humans of rare beauty are then put into the hands of the best makeup artists, they are carefully lit by the most masterful photographers, and then, finally, they are digitally enhanced by another set of artists who perfect even the tiniest flaws. But here’s the really scary part: Because we live in such a media-saturated world, on any given day you probably see MORE of those people than you do real people. So if you have got 20 people in your office, saw 8 people at the coffee shop, rode public transit, and saw another 30 people, that’s maybe 60 real people for the day.
But if on the same day, you watched 2 hours of television and skimmed a magazine, you probably saw 300 impossibly beautiful people, leading you to believe that the average human looks something like a Victoria’s Secret model. And if you have looked in the mirror lately, you are probably aware of a certain disconnect between the way you look and the way that they look. And it is probably a fact that bothers you. So, like I said, it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Nobody can tell you how to feel about yourself but you. And I could give you at least 100 good reasons why you ought to not only make peace with your physical appearance but even learn to cherish the body you have been given.
But I’ll give you just 1 reason: Of the many men that I have worked with, over 90 percent of them rated your self-image in the top 3 or 4 most important factors to be “good in bed.” In fact, in answer to the question, “What turns you on,” no answer got a higher average response from men than a woman with a “positive body image” who is “comfortable with her body.” When you are fully confident with your body, it is something that men find nearly irresistible. What parts of your body are you afraid to show off? Where are you being critical and judgemental about yourself?
7. You try to substitute techniques for passion
Imagine that you are in bed with a man who reads about some technique that is sure to give you the best intimacy of your life, and he proceeds to get to work on you like a project. He’s furiously working his fingers or tongue and restlessly checking now and then to see if it’s working yet. He’s completely absorbed in his eager task of trying hard to please you and demonstrate to you what an expert he is in the bedroom. As he continues to see away he may become increasingly worried if his plan is not working the way the magazine article he read, assured him it would. Finally, he asks that dreaded question, “What’s wrong?”
Almost every woman I talk to can relate to this one. So it’s a bit shocking that women do the same thing. And for men, it is received in the same way. Sure, it can be fun if you decide to spice things up for us with a new technique you just read. But it could also just as easily become a huge bedroom turn-off to be with a woman who is trying so hard to make something “work.” And nothing is more awkward than the woman who is full of fake bravado because she thinks her secret technique is going to make us fall at her feet and worship her skills.
And if you find that you’re working hard to get something to work and your lover begins to lose his mojo, please save yourself and him the embarrassment of asking, “What’s wrong?” Nobody wants to be treated like a project. And men can tell just as well as women can when their partner is not engaged in what they are supposed to be doing together.
There is simply no substitute for authentic passion. If your attraction isn’t real, if you are trying hard to impress, instead of just allowing yourself to get lost in the fun; if you are not really in the mood but doing it for the sake of peace and harmony in the relationship, then you need to rethink why you are doing it. Unfortunately, for many women, authentic passion does not come naturally. Society, upbringing, and often religious background, and sometimes even abuse from the distant past, often conspire to make women feel awkward about what ought to be natural, easy, and fun. Getting in tune with what is essential and honest about what you want is one of the most fundamentally important things a woman can learn.
8. You kill his soul
What I mean by “killing his soul” comes down to the following: There are certain things that men want and need in our relationships that might not make sense to a woman. There’s nothing wrong with it not making sense. The only time the problem comes in is when you make us “wrong” for it. Making him wrong for things he likes because he’s a man. Once you have made a man feel like he’s wrong for just acting like a man or having masculine desires, you run the risk of having him censor important parts of himself around you. He feels like you don’t accept him for who he truly is. And one of the casualties of making him feel like his masculinity is unacceptable to you is often his passion. Couples that celebrate their differences instead of trying to conform to each other are the ones that build relationships of lasting passion.
9. You get help in all the wrong places
When I work with both men and women, this is the most common mistake. For men, asking for intimacy advice is often embarrassing. But women, by and large, love to talk about intimacy and they love to offer advice and ideas of how it ought to be. Women think that being intimate ought to look like it does in romantic movies, or they learn about what men want from magazine articles, and they are endlessly fascinated by “experts” talking about relationships. In my experience, it appears that men who write articles about intimacy frequently talk about what they like. Women who write these articles talk about what their current lover likes. Experts seem to think that relationships boil down to the things that are discussed in couples therapy, and fill discussions with mature and sterile discussions of such trivia as “using fantasy to spice things up at home.”
Nothing wrong with that, but to think that these simple games can somehow substitute for learning how to be authentically intimately aware is simply never going to lead to a powerful, deeply intimate, and passionate relationship. Worse still, so many younger women and couples are looking at the endless stream of adult videos that crowds the internet and feeling like they should be doing all of the strange things that they are seeing. This leaves a lot of women feeling powerless, frustrated, and confused.
What if you don’t want to do what every actress does in that one video? The good news is that it turns out that you don’t have to. The things you need to learn to completely blow a man’s mind in the bedroom turn out to be surprisingly simple. The fact is, most men don’t even know the kind of pleasure that their bodies are capable of, and many men don’t realize how the right woman can unlock their desire for lasting passion.
Ange Fonce is an international author, speaker, lecturer, and Peak Performance Coach. He is the founder of Dynamic Life Development Systems.