 Hi everybody and welcome back to our podcast from the Kamasutra to 2020 where we look at your questions, your concerns, even your worries around all things to do with sex and sexuality. So as always we have with us Dr. Anvita Madan-Bihel. Anvita is a psychosexual therapist and she brings the psychological perspective to the advice that the Kamasutra has to give. Welcome Anvita. Thank you Seema and welcome to our vlog this week. So Anvita today I want to touch upon a subject that has suddenly come up in a very big way again which is performance anxiety. I find it's interesting, I mean performance anxiety has always been there for people, I mean we've always had questions about am I too small, am I too big, do I look like this, do I, you know, but suddenly I think post lockdown especially in certain places like in India where things have opened up, people are meeting again for so many months of lockdown where you weren't seeing anybody face-to-face and you were sexting and you had that screen to hide behind suddenly you're back physically, you have that intimacy, you're back in the proximity, you're face-to-face and all of these fears have come back and actually they've redoubled because from months of not having to deal with it suddenly we're dealing with it again. Absolutely and I think your performance anxiety actually has been the biggest drivers for more sexual problems and it has been there forever but there is an element that people were exchanging conversations and otherwise behind the screen and they hadn't met people for seven months so you could come up with the persona or you could be more liberated or have less inhibitions because you knew that you were not meeting in person and now suddenly you have to convert everything that somewhat you had shared in life and that can cause a lot of stress or anxiety. Yeah so the first question that I want to bring up is from this young boy who says that he's a senior at school so he's about 19, he's very athletic, tall, he's the captain of the football team so he's got everything going for him and he says that he has a high sexual drive that he's easily excitable, he watches a lot of pornography but he'd never actually had sex before and just to learn a little bit or to give himself some experience he decided to visit a prostitute so he did go and he said that for some reason he went there and his brain just seized up and he had so much anxiety that he couldn't even get an erection and he came away feeling really awful about himself, he came away feeling like oh my god will I ever be able to do it, am I shit at this, what happened and he's really really distressed. This is a very common problem what I want to say is that it is and of course he had lots going around it but people come in really struggling like they might not get an erection or that they have these expectations and somebody who is popular and has this physique there's an aura around you know there are these ideas that you need to be a really good lover and if you're seeing porn you have an expectation that your performance needs to be like porn stars, we have said it multiple times on our podcast that porn is made out of software there's editing there's everything but the image the expectations that are there for especially young people is that I need to be a certain way that there is something known as a really good lover or a perfect lover there's something known as a good body or I need to perform, yeah and there's standards and the question we always ask is who made these rules where are these standards who decided these standards but what happens is that you go with all that pressure and anxiety and expectations you know just the way somebody would say in the exam you must get 95 percent it's similar and who like what is that 95 percent you know you have no idea what that 95 percent is so when you go in and you want to have a sexual experience you're worrying about what those criterias are and if you're meeting those criterias rather than actually enjoying or having fun or engaging like the engagement stops because in your head you're saying am I doing this right am I looking okay have I put this right have I done this right have I kissed properly have I touched properly so you're worrying what we call spectaturing you're worrying more about your performance that actually engaging in the intimacy or the sexual experience with the other person you know I like what you said about this this criteria the standard that you have to meet about you look a certain way and you've got the school persona so you have to be a good lover and I just want to say this and I'm probably going to have to say again and again many times the kamasutri doesn't say that you become a good lover it says you have to be a desirable lover which is a huge difference which means that how you come across to the other person makes you more desired it's something that makes somebody want to be with you but there isn't like a flag that you get you know like I finished this milestone and hence I give myself a gold star so there isn't any such thing as a good lover because everybody's needs are different exactly and once again you know the the idea is that if you're a desirable lover in some ways what I hear is you're somebody who is into intimacy you're listening to what your partner wants or you know you're noticing what excites your partner or doesn't excite your partner or you're actually paying attention to yourself and your partner and that's what makes you desirable like somebody you are somebody who's interested in the other person and the other person is interested in you and that changes from partner to partner so there isn't a blanket I'm a good lover and exactly what you're saying because what works with one partner doesn't work with the other one you know somebody might love their ears being bitten and somebody else might think it's the most disgusting thing to happen so there isn't a criteria and to make yourself desirable you need to be able to connect with the partner that you have so yeah so I just want to also say that you know a lot of young people particularly young men but generally young people will go to sex workers in the initial stages of their sexual explorations and it's not an unusual thing it's not a new thing it's something that a lot of people do but there's a lot of guilt around going to a sex worker you know I've even had people in the past saying that okay you know we went to the sex worker because you know we were on a high we really wanted to experiment and you know there's a lot of excitement about going but by the time we came back we have a stone cold sober and feeling not very good about ourselves and I think that comes from two things one is the reality of a sex worker's life it isn't glamorous and beautiful and exciting as we imagine this whole scenario to be and I think that reality hits you to begin with and I think that the other thing is just the guilt that then comes with it and I think that has a huge impact on performance but and I think I'd like to really say this Anvita and I'd love your advice on this as well that there are institutions with sex workers it isn't an ideal place nobody says that that's an ideal life but they're there and they do fulfill a certain need so if you don't have a partner if you wish to experiment if you want to try something out instead of getting aggressive or letting that actually build up inside you to something worse there is an outlet over here well you know there are a lot of politics around sex workers and everything and a lot of researchers now work to support them and organizations because it is an exploited life and it's a tough life and you know their health and the violence that they might face is quite significant but as you know we're talking about performance anxiety so I will not go into the politics of it but the reality is that if you've chosen to go to a sex worker and I will empathize with young men because once again they have the burden and the pressure of you need to be this good lover or you need to know how to have sex and what and where do they learn you know there is no sex education nobody is teaching them nothing's happening so sometimes they learn the ropes from sex workers because that's where they can go and they can you know and so once again but obviously that's not a relationship there is an intimacy it is pure sex and that's why and it's an interaction it's a transaction in some ways at the end of the day you're paying for sex so that experience will feel different because it's a transaction it's not coming out of a relationship where there's intimacy and trust and you have a relationship and you're doing it and so transactional sex which happens in non-paying partner as well it's common amongst people now to have friends with benefits so that's transactional sex which will feel different but if that's the need of the other and that's what you're looking for that's your choice so don't like accept that that's what you engaged in because that's what you were interested in in the moment rather than feeling guilty about it but at any point if transactional sex is actually coming in the way of you having healthy relationships so you're unable to have relationships then maybe you need to pay attention to it if not like you're saying it's a sexual need and you decided to fulfill it and it's consensual so it's actually better to have consensual transactional sex than you know forcing or coercing someone to have sex with you when they're not interested yeah I think that's a hugely valid point and I do hope that people do take that away because I know that most young men will come away with a sense of real guilt from this but if it is consensual if it is the need of the moment then don't let guilt overtake you there are different ways of dealing with certain things okay also from a lot of young women performance anxiety problems based around the fact that when they're with their partners they love the foreplay it makes them really wet everything is going great but the moment it comes to the actual sex they get really distressed about it they become more dry it becomes more painful they're backing off and this is starting to impact them any number of women yeah so I'm going to answer that question in couple of parts because I think part of it is when it comes to penetrative sex morality kicks in because people think like kissing touching like all other bases is okay but they remain a virgin until penetrative sex happens so somewhere they feel like all this is okay but not the penetration in some ways so I think there's an element of that being present and they get nervous about it and they don't know how to negotiate that they don't know how to pre-negotiate saying I only want to have foreplay I don't want penetrative sex and they feel pressured into giving up into it and they might not want to and the other aspect also is that I think a lot of women have now feel that there are expectations from them of being a good lover as well like they need to have a certain performance sexually so they might need feel like they have to have an orgasm they need to come they need to be other things and once again that's not true for every person that's not true for every woman but they they they also feel that they are those criterias and standards for them and they feel very nervous that once somebody in some ways if you think about it when penetration happens you lose control you don't have control over the situation and you might or might not orgasm and they feel very nervous that if it doesn't happen then they would not be good enough lovers or people their partner wouldn't feel satisfied in some ways so once again there's a lot of anxiety for them as well you know I wanted to actually tell you about a couple of our ancient texts so in one of our chastras one of our chastras it actually says that for a woman the foreplay is where she's extremely close to her lover so she absolutely loves it a woman loves that part of it because she's being touched she's being hugged the moment penetration has to begin he has to draw back in order to penetrate and the breaking of that contact is very distressing for most women so they don't like it the other interesting thing is that in the ancient chinese erotica I've always said that Indian erotica doesn't deal with the act of penetration it doesn't deal with all the thrusting and things you know it's all very sort of beautiful and elegant ancient chinese erotica had this thing about they actually set standards so they would say that if you are a really good lover then you should be able to trust 4000 times before you come or 5000 times before you come and and then they would put the same thing on the woman that a woman who gets tired after 200 trusts is not a good lover so I think that somewhere these things have come down to us and I just think that that's a hell of a it's a it's a hell of a burden to carry to think that you know that's what you're actually aiming for now I don't think that a lot of our audiences would have read those texts and they're aware of these numbers so I don't think that's necessarily what's bothering them I'm just using that that as an example but I think that this idea of thrusting is what puts a lot of women off because you know after a little while it's it becomes monotonous it becomes boring it becomes unexciting and we know that that's going to happen so you start to back off from the beginning yeah and and and like we're saying like it's interesting that the chinese actually had a criteria of what it makes it or not but that's missing as in we don't know what it is and and I would say somewhere we have learned that one formula doesn't work for everyone and so you adapt or you might do certain things like partners learn that when I do x y or z my partner gets very excited and tends to orgasm at that time could be for male or female like they know what helps bring climax but that is something that you observe and learn with your partner it cannot it will not work each time and I can guarantee you that that you can't like people say oh he can make you do this no that is just a myth that you're perpetuating that is not true and that's true for women as well and you know we will love to do maybe a video on orgasm because it is not something that most women can have easily especially penetrative orgasm clitoral orgasms are easier penetrative orgasms are very difficult and these days the pressure that both men and women feel to make sure that a woman gets a penetrative orgasm is so high and so problematic that it causes a lot of stress anxiety for them and a lot of problems then and one of the things that performance anxiety is based around of course is size yeah and so once again like you know there are all these myths around the sizes of the penis and that there is an ideal size or somebody feels like I'm too big will I hurt my partner I'm too small I won't and you know there are size does not matter we know this it doesn't matter the vagina is a muscle it expands or contracts it fits in like you can still have sex with your partner the size doesn't matter but you know and and and pornography is a problem because they show a certain size of a penis or they see or their ideas around it which are once again manufactured like those are they use they use different models for different parts of the body and they might use somebody else's hand and somebody else's leg and somebody else's penis and get it all together and and so they perpetuate these myths but they are myths size does not matter and you shouldn't feel anxious about it and if that is where your anxiety is about size then I have to say that this is what the positions of the kamisutra were created for to help you to bring your sizes and sink with each other so if you are too small and the woman is too big then the ideal position would be where the woman would bring her legs together or draw her knees in things that would actually help her to contract herself then there is ways of actually positioning your body in such a way that you can penetrate more deeply and so on so there are lots of different things that we can do but of course that's that initial thing to worry about but a lot of men have this thing about that they are just not the perfect size and as we've said there is no such thing as the perfect size and actually as a couple you would have to see what position works with you focusing on what gives giving you pleasure right so you know seema just mentioned certain positions try different positions and you would understand that oh this gives me most pleasure as a woman or a man and it might be different for you and a partner so once again this performance anxiety of we both need to orgasm at the same time and it will happen doesn't exist as it obviously happens at time I'm not saying it doesn't happen but a lot of time it might mean that you're getting your partner to orgasm or giving her a clitoral orgasm and then penetrating and having an orgasm there are multiple combinations you might one position might work for the woman and another position might work for the man and you would switch positions because it gives more pleasure to each of the partners so once again these ideas of like what that perfect sexual act is doesn't exist it's going to be yours and yours only with your partner and that is the combination that you need to work towards and of course orgasm is not the be all and end all you can happily have sex without both partners orgasming or only one partner orgasm orgasming or both coming together or whatever it's the variety is all there yeah and and a lot of women actually might not want the pressure of the orgasm they're just happy with the foreplay and the intimacy and the and they just actually sometimes the orgasm actually adds the pressure so when we give exercises we might actually say penetration is off limits you know you can only engage in foreplay and oral or just the touching you know the penetration is off limit and so many people come back saying we finally could like enjoy each other because the pressure of penetration wasn't there so the other pressures of like having an erection being able to insert a penis to have an or like the none of the pressures were there and they actually could you know enjoy being with their partner and have intimacy and enjoy the sexual experience and I think what I would like to add to this is that there isn't just one way to have sex which means that there isn't just one emotion that you're expected to have with sex there's a very famous book called the Amaru Shatak where which basically deals with 1000 different emotions during sex so each time you have sex you can feel differently you come differently you act differently so you can be wild one day you can be calm one day you can be almost sleepy one day you can feel musical one day it's every day is a different thing there isn't a criteria that okay we've gotten together and this is what we've got to actually you know like it's a race to the finish you've got to get to this point so if your performance anxiety is based around this idea of you reaching a certain bar that's not the bar for that day yeah that's not the bar yeah there's a thousand different ways you miss the point if you're making sex a race to get to orgasm you've missed the point completely I totally agree um that you've really as in and then you made it a formula so what's the fun in it in some way so yeah absolutely and I think that we started off this thing about how a lot of people feel guilt and once again Anvada and I've said this many times that sex should be about joyousness I know that in society outside we associated with sin we associated with guilt but while you're actually having sex if you're lucky enough to actually be with somebody that you really want to be with and it's consensual and you're having sex put aside those societal notions for a little while and give yourself the permission to enjoy it so for a little while put aside the guilt and just give yourself over to it and just see what happens being present so we speak a lot about mindfulness and being present in the act rather than being outside and looking in and saying you know am I doing this right am I doing that right rather than looking at your performance just be with your partner and be present you know so mindfulness and being present is way more important than actually judging yourself and giving yourself marks on what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong yeah your gold star sheet so I think to wrap that up from everything that Anvada said and what the Kamasutra suggests is that there's no such thing as a good lover or a perfect lover what you're aiming is to be a desirable lover because that automatically means that somebody wants to be with you and that you are trying very hard to make that a great experience the second is that if you are feeling guilty about it taking on all those notions if you've chosen to have sex then for that time and if it's consensual for that time drop the idea the guilt be mindful be present enjoy it if you are choosing to visit a sex worker and it is something that you wish to do or it's a need for whatever reason then don't keep feeling guilty about what you've done you've chosen to do it it was a need go with that don't don't judge yourself and beat yourself up over it and that the orgasm is not like a flag that you have to hoist the orgasm is a wonderful byproduct of sex it can come in many different ways and it's not necessarily something that happens at the end of a particular set of acts have I missed anything out Anvita yeah just this idea that these expectations rules criterias are we have no idea who's made them and why they made them and what they are so you know they become like they've become written in stone and they are not written in stone there are no these are mostly myths they do not exist so don't hold on to them so tightly that you know they actually cause problems in your sexual life let them go they are myths absolutely because as we said that you know people think of the kamasutra the ultimate book on sex and the kamasutra at no point talks about penetration it doesn't even talk about that on the other hand the chinese texts do talk about it so everybody has a different idea enjoy what you are doing don't judge yourself and just this idea we understand that you are going to feel anxiety for something or the other it's only human to do so but if you actually get into the pleasure part of it if you let your mind focus on that you'll find that the anxiety becomes less and less because you're thinking less about self-judgment let that be before you begin don't let that be part of the act absolutely totally focus on the pleasure yeah so as always do comment like subscribe on the video if you have any further questions i am on info.seema.anand at gmail.com and if you need any personal help or therapy anvita can be reached on anvita madan behel.com we'll see you here next week until next time