Does Wanting to Be Good in Bed, Make Me Bad in Bed?

I was raised on Sex in the City, I grew up with an inspiring, feminist, single mum and I've always had a very frank attitude about sex. But for the last decade, I have treated my own sexual pleasure as an after thought. In most of my sexual encounters to date, I've been almost entirely focused on making sure the other person is satisfied. And I’ve only just noticed...

Lately, I've been seeing this guy that really gets off on getting me off. Which is great, and a first. It's the first time in my life that I feel like my pleasure isn't just a box ticking exercise to keep my partner's ego well tended. But after a few weeks of some pretty spectacular encounters, I started to feel really selfish and made the decision to take more initiative with his pleasure. You know, more getting on top, more blowjobs, etc.

I felt myself shift back into a well-worn mindset. The whole experience became this technique driven, anxiety-ridden, semi-enjoyable affair. And you know what, I couldn't get him 'there.' I guess it must have been a little bit like fucking a well organised excel spreadsheet.

This begs the question. Does wanting to be good in bed, make me bad in bed? Is the fact that my goal was to get him 'there' the problem? Surely my goal should be for the both of us to enjoy ourselves and, in theory, it is. But if I'm really honest with myself, I don't think I would ever knowingly make a sexual decision that I knew was better for me and worse for my partner's pleasure.

I'm finding this piece of self-discovery depressing for two reasons: A) Because it rankles at my feminism. Most of my sexual encounters have been with men and I can't help but think our society's inbuilt misogyny did this to me (at least partly), and B) Because if I'm focussing so wholeheartedly on the other person's pleasure, it makes my sexual pleasure totally their responsibility, which is unfair.

I wrote that paragraph and then realised that nowhere in my head did an option C pop up to say, 'Hey and it also means you get less sexual pleasure!' This is the brain I am working with. Where did this come from?! I am not of the generation that thought orgasms were something that happened to other people, but somewhere along the line, I must have internalised the idea that my pleasure is less important than my partner's.

At 14 I was reading articles on how to give a good blowjob. The only reason I started watching porn was to learn to be better in bed. I remember treating virginity like an undesirable problem to be solved. Looking back, it all seems like a desperate attempt to be good enough at something that I will never be able to accurately judge. Whether I am sexually proficient. Whether I am good enough.

This thing keeps happening to me where I think that I know something is sexist and wrong but find myself acting in a way that contradicts that knowledge. Take the subject of this article. I know consciously that seeing male pleasure as more important than female pleasure is stupid and wrong. However, for the last decade, I've been acting like that isn't true.

I started this article wanting to explore whether my anxiety surrounding being good enough in bed was making me bad in bed. Now I think that's completely the wrong question. The question should be, why is my partner's sexual pleasure so much more important to me than my own? Or perhaps more importantly, how do I change my mindset?