Talking about sex is not only about genitality, practices, or positions. Behind every sexual encounter there are desires, emotions, expectations, and norms that influence how each person experiences their sexuality.
On the occasion of the World Oral Sex Day, celebrated every September 6 in reference to the 69 position, psychiatrist and sexologist Walter Ghedín proposes widening the view: “Sex is included in a larger and more complete experience that is sexuality.”
For the specialist, sexual practices cannot be understood only from biology. “The poses and the other sexual practices are influenced by social and cultural patterns and are not mere models determined by the coupling and biology,” he explains.
In that sense, the sexual encounter involves much more than bodies: “Humans are beings who desire and possess emotional capacities to turn sex into a more complete experience, with an impact on the emotional area.”
When Pleasure Becomes Performance
Despite the changes sexuality has undergone in recent years, Ghedín warns that models of relationship tied to performance and success still persist.
“Models of relationship that respond to patterns of performance and success still prevail,” he asserts.
And there appears one of the main difficulties: “It is hard to consider that the value of the encounter and the enjoyment is far above genitality and achieving orgasm as a goal.”
The pressure to meet certain expectations can turn the sexual encounter into a kind of exam. “One must please,” “one must perform,” “I have to be attractive,” lists the specialist as some of the premises that still weigh on sexuality.
For Ghedín, the rise in sexual problems and dysfunctions can also be read from this perspective: when pleasure is subordinated to the obligation to perform, anxiety ends up occupying a central place.
More information, but also new demands
The specialist recognizes that there have been positive transformations in how sexuality is talked about and lived. “The positive changes respond to greater information about sexuality, more open communication between parents and children, among youth and in couples,” he notes.
He also highlights social changes that broaden the possibilities of choice: “Women defend autonomy and the right to decide about their bodies; LGBTQ communities make visible their different ways of living and feeling sexuality.”
However, those advances coexist with resistances. “There is still resistance to change, attempting to sustain a model of sexuality that only favors repression, limits communication, and encourages rejection of differences,” he warns.
And he adds a blunt definition: “The repression of desire is not free, nor is maintaining a model of correction in others’ eyes. The repressed becomes a symptom.”
Social Networks: The Pressure to Measure Up
Social networks have added another layer of demands. The constant exposure of bodies, relationships, and models of seduction can generate the feeling that one must always live up to what is shown.
Ghedín talks about a “hypersexualization on networks that urges rapid acquisition of more conquest skills,” especially among young people.
But conquest, he argues, does not function as a skill that can be acquired instantly: “It’s a process that requires time and self-knowledge.”
The pressure also reaches the body and sexual performance. “The external world today urges and pressures to keep up with its fashion proposals —one must live up to what is shown—, equipped with demands on the body and on sexual performance,” he asserts.
In that context, even the construction of one’s own identity can be conditioned by external models: “The construction of one’s own world is dominated by external cues amplified by the networks and AI.”
Ghosting, Orbiting, and Breadcrumbing: New Ways of Relating
The transformations in sexuality coexist with new ways of establishing and ending connections. Ghedín mentions phenomena increasingly known in relationships mediated by networks.
Ghosting appears when someone commits to the other and then disappears. Orbiting consists of “orbiting” in a person’s life to know how their life continues, while breadcrumbing involves “dropping breadcrumbs,” that is, showing some interest that never fully becomes a relationship.
For the specialist, these behaviors are part of a scenario where the bond can get trapped between expectations, illusions, and lack of commitment.
“The common denominator is lying, the lack of commitment, creating an illusion of continuity of the bond when it is already known it will not be so,” he explains.
Ghedín also mentions the so-called “involuntary celibates” or incels, young men who do not feel attractive and believe that women choose another type of men.
The Most Common Sexual Problems
Facing this scenario, Ghedín identifies five factors that may lie behind the most common sexual problems:
1. Incorrect information, myths, and rigid ideas.
The lack of information or wrong beliefs about sexual and social interaction can condition the experience.
2. Guilt and anxiety.
“Guilt and unconscious anxiety related to sex” can interfere with desire and pleasure.
3. Anxiety or rush to consummate the act.
The need to quickly reach the sexual encounter can increase pressure and hinder connecting with one’s own sensations.
4. Poor awareness of the body.
Ghedín notes the importance of paying attention to “the sensations that come from it,” rather than focusing exclusively on performance.
5. Lack of communication in the couple.
Talking about “desires, preferences, fantasies, emotions” is essential to build a shared sexual experience.
A Sexuality That Is Not a Test
At a time when sexuality is increasingly exposed, the challenge seems to be reclaiming space for one’s own desire outside external demands.
Ghedín’s view proposes shifting the focus away from genitality and performance to rethink sex as part of a broader experience. Because when the encounter becomes an obligation to fulfill, please, or prove something, pleasure may end up taking a back seat.
The goal, then, would not be to reach a particular model of sexuality but to build a personal experience based on self-knowledge, communication, and enjoyment.
