Society and Your Sex Life
Society and it’s social norms strongly shape your sex life. As a child and adolescent, you absorbed messages from your family, friends, school system, neighbors, community, place of worship, politics, movies, books, magazines, social media and anywhere you were exposed to someone else’s ideas.
You were, and are like a sponge. As a kid, you didn’t yet have the full capacity to decide what messages to keep or which to discard. Unbeknownst to you, you took them all in, like a sponge absorbs liquid.
This includes any messages that you got about sex.
Males receive a specific set of stories that become beliefs. These stories create expectations of men when it comes to sex. Females receive a different set of stories that create an entirely different set of sexual beliefs and expectations for women.
I’d bet that no one ever asked you, as an emerging sexual person, what your ideas, questions or curiosities were about sex. Instead, you had to rely on these stories or scripts as your go-to guidelines about sex.
This article focuses on some of the most common sexual scripts that females grow up with, along with some sprinkles of scripting for males. Taken from the book For Each Other, Sharing Sexual Intimacy, written by Lonnie Barbach, Ph.D., the scripts below seem to resonate with many clients in my practice, of all genders.
What’s Your Sexual Script?
Take a moment to read through the scripts below. Consider which ones might apply to you. While these may seem like they apply to cisgender, heterosexual couples, society’s gender norms and sexual scripts influence everyone’s sexual blueprint, no matter how you identify or who you engage with. If you grew up with even a small measure of exposure to these scripts, they travel with you into the bedroom, regardless of orientation or gender identity.
Sexual Script #1: Puritanical/Victorian
In this script, sexual purity and innocence is valued over sexual pleasure. Females learn to downplay any interest or desire for sex. Any female seeking sexual pleasure is deemed as selfish. She’s not supposed to like sex, at least not in an obvious way. Instead, she should stay focused on helping others.
Daughters are taught “not to go down that path” or receive no education from their parents at all, leaving them to rely on other means to obtain a sex education. She learns that if she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, “she deserved it” or is being “used”.
This results in sexual suppression. The female grows into a mature adult, unable to access her own sexual pleasure. She struggles to feel healthy and confident in her sexual exchanges or feels guilty and morally wrong talking about sex or engaging in it.
Sexual Script #2: Sex is Good/Sex is Bad
Females grow up confused about sex due to the mixed messages they receive from others.
On the one hand, they’re taught that sex is “dirty”. On the other hand, they’re told, “But save it for someone you love”. Why would anyone want to save something dirty for someone they love?
Encouraging virginity, females learn that their genitals are dirty and disgusting, especially once menstruation begins, but to “keep their genitals pure because it’s the greatest gift that you can give your spouse on your honeymoon”.
This script values landing a “mate”. In order to land a mate, females walk a fine line between being attractive, flirtatious and seductive enough but not to the point of becoming pregnant.
This results in a bodily detachment and walking a sexual tightrope. Instead of being in her body during sex, she’s mentally assessing what she should or shouldn’t be doing, or whether or not she is dirty.
Sexual Script #3: Don’t Touch Me Down There
During infancy and early childhood, children naturally explore their genitals. In this script, females are taught not to look at their genitals or even touch them.
Females experience a negative relationship with their bodies from an early age since body exploration is often punished. It leaves many females feeling concerned that they might look bad, smell bad or taste bad.
As a result, females struggle to relax, let go and enjoy oral pleasure. They also fall behind men in developing a healthy masturbatory practice due to the “sinful” nature of the act. Sex then tends to bring more shame and guilt than pleasure.
In contrast, males are praised during early childhood for learning how to hold their penis properly during urination. While they may or may not be encouraged to masturbate, it is expected that they will do so.
Sexual Script #4: Sex is For Men
In this script, unmarried women who have sex are used and married women who have sex only do it out of duty. Again, female sexual pleasure remains absent from the script.
As a result, women never develop their own sense of sexual agency. They remain uncomfortable with sexual assertiveness around their wants, needs and desires. Women default to sexual participation as an act for their partner, not for themselves.
Sexual Script #5: Fantasy Model of Sex
Influenced by the movies, books and pornography, this script sets both men and women up to feel pressured into having unrealistic sex.
Males grow up believing that females want a perfect lover, who gives her sex hard and fast, with long lasting erections. Females also submit to performance, believing that sex should continuously build in intensity, resulting in mutual orgasms.
As a result, partners stay focused on the goal of orgasms and fake “hot” sex, and minimize or ignore moments of real intimacy. They override the natural waxing and waning of various sexual feelings that can arise during the exchange. The intimacy is lost.
Sexual Script #6: The Romance and Candlelight Script
Romance novels can set females up to believe that candlelight dinners will help them achieve orgasms. While candlelight dinners can be nice, it’s not a replacement for assertion, sexual communication and knowing how to experience real bodily pleasure.
This results in females leaving the sexual initiation to their partners. They do not talk about sex or what they long for, and follow, instead of lead, in their sexual exchanges, in an attempt to selflessly please their partner, just like in the novel.
Sexual Script #7: The Men Should Know Script
In this script, males are expected to be all-knowing sexual partners, able to anticipate his partner’s every need and to completely satisfy all desires.
Most men receive little to no education on how to be a good lover, yet he is expected to perform well. If he asks for guidance, he could be viewed as less masculine, or inadequate.
His partner, in turn, may not make corrections or redirects, out of fear of injuring his ego or threatening his masculinity.
This powerful script keeps many couples stuck in less than satisfying sex lives.
Sexual Script #8: The Woman Can’t Talk Script
It’s extraordinary to me that so many couples have sex, yet so few actually talk about sex. Women in particular aren’t given the permission to freely engage in sexual conversation. Instead, women tend to feel embarrassed and awkward, unable to find the language that can help them get their sexual needs met.
Fearing labels of being too “demanding” or “bitchy”, women learn to stay quiet. Yet research shows that women who speak up, state their preferences and who assert, have considerably more satisfying sexual experiences.
Sexual Script #9: Sex Equals Intercourse
Males and females tend to identify “real sex” as penetration or sexual intercourse and all other acts as less than. Females grow up engaging in “everything else”. They can spend hours in various sexual acts but those acts won’t count in the way penetration would. Typically, once intercourse occurs, all other acts become abbreviated.
Yet, the majority of women do not achieve orgasm by penetration alone. Over the lifespan, men can struggle with sustaining erections.
This script leads to a less than satisfying sex life for the female partner, and/or, sexual pressure for a male partner to perform.
Sexual Script #10: The “One Right Way”
This script requires sex to result in an orgasm yet most women don’t orgasm during penetration
Lonnie Barbach notes that “We let the man’s erection designate the beginning of sex and his ejaculation mark its termination”.
If the male partner wants his female partner to orgasm first, there is often pressure felt by the female partner to orgasm in a certain amount of time and not “take too long”.
The emphasis on orgasm as the ultimate marker of good sex limits each partner’s ability to be in the pleasure of the journey. It supports sex as a goal-oriented experience and not a pleasure oriented experience, robbing both partners of a free flowing, organic, pleasurable exchange.
Conclusion
You may resonate with just one of these scripts, or parts of all of them. These stories run in the background of your sexual engagement, quietly influencing your ability to feel pleasure.
Once you’ve identified the beliefs that sit in your story, grab a pen and paper and consider writing a new script. When it comes to sex, what matters to you most? How would you like to feel? What stories would you want to let go of? What would bring you pleasure?
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