Distracted During Sex About How You Look?What Research Shows

You’re with someone you care about, and partway through your mind steps out of your body and takes a seat in the corner, checking how your stomach looks, how you look down there, whether they’re looking. Sex researchers call this spectatoring.

Women report more appearance worries

A study of 237 college women and 220 college men asked about two kinds of distraction during sex:¹

• Performance (am I responding the “right” way?): similar in women and men.¹
• Appearance (how do I look?): higher in women.¹

In women, appearance distraction went with negative body image, distress, and not being in a relationship.¹

It costs pleasure

In 74 young women, those more distracted during sex with a partner reported lower sexual satisfaction, less consistent orgasms and more often faking orgasm, even after accounting for body dissatisfaction and desire.²

A review of 57 studies concluded that body image issues can affect every part of women’s sexual function, with self-consciousness a key factor.³ It can also lead some women to avoid sex.³ Most of these studies show links rather than causes.

Can the watching be turned down?

The evidence is indirect. A Canadian trial put 148 women with low desire and arousal into eight weekly group sessions of either mindfulness-based therapy (training present-moment, non-judging attention) or supportive sex education:⁴

• Desire and arousal improved substantially in both groups, and the gains lasted 12 months.⁴
• Sexual distress improved more with mindfulness.⁴
• About half the women reported moderate or great improvement.⁴

That trial treated low desire and arousal, not spectatoring itself, but mindfulness trains the exact skill the corner seat wears down.

Things to try

1. Notice when you’ve left, and name it to yourself without judgment.
2. Come back through one sense: your breath, the weight of a blanket, the warmth of a hand.
3. Change the conditions if a lamp or position keeps sending you to the corner.
4. Take the finish line away for a while: agree on touching with nothing expected next.
5. Say one true sentence to a partner: “I get in my head about how I look sometimes. Slow down with me.”

If the worry is steering what you wear, whether you date or whether you’re considering surgery, a therapist who works with body image or sexual concerns can help. See what labia measurement studies show and responsive desire.

Try: “I’ve been so self-conscious about my body that I can’t relax during sex. Is there a therapist you’d recommend who works with this?”

Down There, Decoded covers this in Chapter 10, “What It’s Supposed to Look Like,” in a section called “Watching Yourself.” Its thirty-second practice, noticing three sensations and coming back when your mind wanders, trains the skill where nothing’s at stake. See the book.