Negative body image issues can take a toll on various aspects of life, including sex. In this article, we'll explore five effects of negative body image on your sex life and what you can do to combat them.
Body image issues afflict a large number of girls and women in today's world. Blame it on TV, social media, and all types of celebrities that promote unhealthy, unrealistic beauty standards.
Body image issues affect a person's opinion about their own level of beauty. This can have a negative impact on a person's sexual expression.
Eventually, this can also affect a person's sex life as satisfaction becomes much harder to achieve.
When a girl thinks she is not beautiful enough, because she is subconsciously (and maybe consciously) comparing herself to sexy celebrities, she is limiting her sexual expressions.
There are many sexual expressions she thinks she shouldn't do because she's not beautiful or sexy enough to express herself that way.
As outlined in the Springer article, when a young woman perceives herself as lacking in beauty, she unconsciously begins to compare herself with others whom she believes possess a greater sexual appeal. This process inadvertently restricts her range of sexual expressions. She starts to believe that there are various forms of sexual expression that she cannot engage in due to her perception of not being attractive or alluring enough to manifest herself in those ways.
This then limits her explorations and possibilities. Such a negative body image may make a girl stick with just one or two very simple ways of expressing herself sexually.
If you believe that you are only deserving of very limited sexual expressions, this actually causes a lot of anxiety within yourself.
There is a part of you that wants to be bold and daring, perhaps like the celebs you are watching, or your more confident friends.
But you keep thinking you can't because you're not deserving enough to express yourself or your desires in a certain way. This anxiety could put a damper on your sex life.
With so much anxiety and a feeling of being unfulfilled, orgasm is hard to achieve. After all, an orgasm during sex is all about a release of tension.
If you're always anxious and unable to release tension, you can't orgasm. A woman needs to feel comfortable in her skin to be able to enjoy sex which leads to an amazing orgasm. Feeling sexy is a must.
A negative body image issue makes a girl thinks she is not beautiful enough. There are many parts of her body she feels a lack of confidence in. In some cases, there are girls who even hate certain body parts.
According to information presented in Psychology Today, when a young woman perceives herself as inadequate, it can lead to a decline in her self-confidence. Additionally, some females develop negative feelings toward specific aspects of their bodies. The accumulation of these thoughts generates mental turmoil that can ultimately impede the ability to fully engage and find pleasure in sexual experiences.
Maybe she is unsatisfied that her belly is not flat enough. Maybe she feels anxious about her arm's skin flapping. Maybe she doesn't want to be viewed from a low angle because she fears a double chin.
All of this creates too much noise in your mind and this affects your enjoyment of sex. When your partner wants to try different positions, you may be so anxious about looking ugly in those certain positions that you hold yourself back or stop your partner.
You may refuse and this may put a strain on your intimacy with your partner.
The longer you allow this negative body image to plague you, the more it meddles with your sex drive. The activity of sex itself may be so stressful each time you have to do it. Over time, this may cause a negative association in your brain.
Sex=stress. Over time, your libido will continue to drop and you will gradually lose your desire for the excitement of sex. If you struggle with a negative body image issue, you need help.
There are many helpful videos on YouTube that can help you develop a love for yourself. Engaging in the right social media content that boosts people's love for the self and forgiveness for any imperfections is also a good idea.
Based on the findings documented by the National Institute of Health, seeking assistance from qualified counselors and therapists could be beneficial. If you're struggling with body image concerns, know that they are treatable. It's advisable not to delay seeking help, as allowing these negative body image perceptions to persist can increasingly interfere with your sexual desire and satisfaction over time.
If you need professional assistance, there are counsellors and therapists you can try to contact. Body image issues persist but they are totally curable.
Girls who struggle with body image issues tend to struggle alone. Even if they have friends who struggle the same, it’s not like girls can help each other a lot if all of them are dealing with the same issues.
Meanwhile, girls with body image issues are even less able to talk about such concerns and worries with their partners. If anything, it is their partners they don’t want to know about their insecurities.
Girls with body image issues try so hard to look perfect for their partners. There are a lot of things you may hide from your partner because you want to maintain a certain awesome vibe.
But this is all just a persona and this may meddle with your real intimacy with your partner. It’s like you can’t really get to know each other because you can’t be vulnerable.
To summarize everything, we discussed five effects that negative body image can have on the sex life of people. We are confident that our information is supported by evidence and can help people improve their body image.
Most of us keep worrying about the libido loss but don t often have time to look back at our own lifestyle which could be the main reason for the problem. Everyone first looks at various options available to enhance female libido but don t look at the possible reasons behind the problem. There are various factors that contribute to libido loss and they have to be cautiously looked into for healthy sex life.
These days the hectic lifestyle leaves us with no time for each other and sex has taken the backseat. With increasing work demands and load it is quite a challenge to manage home and office and you’ll end up with little time for yourself. The day-long work at Office and again at home might make you physically and mentally tired.
Under such conditions, it becomes inevitable to postpone sex and many times it becomes a weekend or fortnight activity. Although there are many options available in the market to enhance female libido it’s easy to find solutions within. Many times it is our lifestyle to blame for the libido loss. It is always self-created problems that we find difficult to come out.
The following tips will help you to determine how your lifestyle could affect your libido and ways to cope with it.
Come out of your thoughts:
One habit that most of us suffer from is being in the office even after reaching home. That means to say that even though you are at home if you still continue to think about it and cannot come out of those thoughts then it could hamper your personal life. Most of the people work till late at night and cannot switch off their mind from work even when they go to bed.
This kind of lifestyle would surely have an effect on your libido since you can’t concentrate on lovemaking and constantly think about work. You need to be mentally present with your partner to increase sex drive and it is one of the natural ways to enhance female libido.
Insufficient time:
In this fast-paced world, we often give very little time for our personal lives. Likewise, we would like to finish the sexual intercourse in a hurry and try to go ahead with the next task which might be either sleeping or going to work or any other stuff. People often spend most part of their night in front of the TV or computer and thereby allowing very little time for sleep.
So when you reach bed late it’s very likely that you’ll be left with little time for foreplay and sex. On many occasions, you might prefer to sleep than having sex. When you feel sleepy it’s difficult to enhance female libido and you might end up disappointing your partner. If this continues over a period of time then there will be a drop in libido for sure.
Late night partying:
By cultivating this habit of partying till late night you’ll have very less or no time for sex. Late night parties will make you tired and sleeplessness would have an effect on your sexual desires. It’s very unlikely that you’ll prefer to have sex after reaching home from a late night party. With either of you drunk, it’s difficult to enhance female libido.
It is better to find solutions within by changing your lifestyle rather than going behind pills to enhance female libido.