Escaping the Trap of Performativity
Until I began healing my sexuality as part of my trauma healing journey, I didn’t realize how distant I was from authentic self-expression. But when I stopped to look, it was clear how decades of conditioning from the media, society, religion, and relationships influenced by pornography had shaped my responses and my preferences.
Even if we don't consume pornography (and I hope you don't — like cigarettes, it should come with a serious health warning), the layers of cultural conditioning we take on around our sexuality are so pervasive, they are hard to see.
Until we start to give ourselves space, it’s legitimately difficult to know what is us, and what we've learned from external influences that tell us what we “should” be, do, or feel.
When we abandon our authentic self-expression and instead act how we think we're “supposed” to, in relationships and intimacy, we create a mask that I call “performativity.”
Performativity is when you align with sexual stereotypes or how you think you’re “supposed to” act, rather than exploring and expressing your own way. It happens when we subconsciously copy what appears desirable in our culture and try it on for ourselves.
Much of human behavior is based on mimicry, and there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s how we learn.
But with performativity, we get confused. We become so caught up in how things look to the other, that we lose ourselves. We stop listening to our own uniqueness. And slowly, the body’s signals get harder and harder to hear, until we feel lost and disconnected without knowing why.
Performativity comes at a cost.
This is especially important to track because, when we have unresolved trauma (whether it's sexual trauma or not), it's easy to fall into performativity during intimacy.
We might not even notice, because we see our behavior as normal. After all, this is what sexuality looks like in the media, social media, or wherever else we are getting our cultural cues.
It often takes doing inner work, like trauma healing, to realize how much of our behavior doesn’t feel authentic to us. With that realization comes the power to explore and express ourselves authentically, sometimes for the first time.
And it's powerful.
Let's take a closer look.
Exploring Performativity
Cultural forces including our family, society, religion, media, work, and friends all influence how we perceive our sexuality. We’re expected to take on external beliefs about what is attractive and how we're meant to act in relationships and intimacy.
These aren’t always negative, per se, but they can give us the cover of a well-made mask and obscure our deeper, more authentic values and self-expression. When we’re told so clearly how to be, do, and feel, it’s easier to follow the popular way and get the reward of knowing we’re “good.”
Even those of us that consider ourselves independent thinkers and leaders carry these culturally conditioned beliefs. They are so good at looking like they’re ours, it’s not until we examine them closely that we see how these beliefs aren’t aligned to our values or meeting our needs.
Let’s explore an easy example: international beauty standards for women. (The kind you see when you walk through an airport Duty Free store with their floor-to-ceiling luxury ads.) Many of us pick up this image of desirability, beauty, and sexuality without being conscious of the airbrushing, behind-the-scenes disordered eating, and whiteness that is being implicitly normed.
We don’t connect the inadequacy that we feel, later, with the parade of unrealistic images we’ve been incessantly exposed to. It’s easy to think, “This is how I should be, but I’m not.” And then turn on our bodies, blame ourselves, and feel bad.
It's easy to get stuck in a cycle of performativity, trying and trying but feeling like we always come up short.
It’s not until we start to unravel the images we’ve been fed and how they’ve obscured our clear vision of ourselves and each other, that we can unravel this and claim authentic beauty for ourselves.
Another example is how the male model of sexual response has been normed for women and men, alike. (This is the pattern of arousal and building to climax, followed by a refraction or rest period.) When women don’t fit that pattern, it’s easy to think that there’s something wrong with us, and that we just need to try harder. After all, that’s what culture and the media tell us.
But it’s not true. Most of us get lost in the performativity of trying harder, and don’t hear the frustration and the shutdown as messages about what we need. We just know something isn’t working, so we try harder to fit the model of how we think we “should” be.
There is another way.
Trauma, Intimacy, and Performativity
Many women and men come to my practice, convinced that something is wrong with them because of past trauma, when they are in fact trying to force themselves into a pattern of sexual response that was never designed with their authentic pleasure in mind.
Once traumatic memories are gently cleared from the body and inner safety is reestablished, there is space for new discoveries.
This is why “post-traumatic growth” often catapults people into new and more expansive states of leadership, connection, and self-expression than they would’ve found without the trauma.
(It doesn’t mean that trauma is a “gift,” like some people insist, only that we can alchemize our darkest moments into goodness beyond our imagining.)
Trauma amplifies performativity because when we're holding unresolved trauma in our bodies, it's nearly impossible to feel our own signals and sensations.
Unresolved trauma means we have a hard time identifying our full "yes" and being able to articulate a clear "no." It’s easy to revert to what’s “expected” of us — even if it’s just the weight of our own self-expectations.
Performativity is a reliable way to mask what we’re really feeling with what we expect will please our partner. It’s a tool we use to hide from ourselves and our wounds, so we never hear the call of our own authenticity.
Performativity is also a way for people with trauma to push ourselves into intimacy that we want, conceptually or even emotionally, but that our bodies might not be ready for.
All in the name of love. Because we want to be a “good” partner. We want our partner to feel good.
It’s only when we let go of performativity that we can claim our own sensual authority. And that is one of the deepest, truest forms of empowerment I know.
Performativity Impacts Our Safety in Relationships
It's common for those of us with trauma to freeze, during intimacy.
We might not even notice how we've subtly tensed or braced ourselves, how we're holding our breath, or feeling suddenly anxious and dissociated for no apparent reason.
Instead of being transparent and vulnerable with our partners about what we're feeling, it's common to push ourselves into performativity.
Sometimes, performativity is the easiest thing to do because it’s hard to know what we're feeling. Especially if we believe, from cultural conditioning, that feeling that way is undesirable or unattractive.
When we have trauma, a partner-pleasing dynamic can happen when we're being intimate with the person we care about.
We might believe that it's “good” to focus on them, so we rationalize checking out of our own bodies. We focus on their pleasure instead of registering our own subtle resistance and even discomfort.
It can be so habituated that it’s hard to notice.
And if we do notice, we often tell ourselves there's something wrong with us or that we just don't have the capacity for pleasure, so why bother (that’s not true, I promise).
We minimize what's happening because we want so desperately to be "normal."
We hide our authentic response behind a mask of performativity because we love our partner. We want intimacy to be amazing. (Surely, if we try harder, it will be amazing, right?). And deep down, we might be terrified of disappointing them — and ourselves.
But pushing through a partner-pleasing response only makes the performativity worse.
That's when we start to feel numbness and shutdown, because the body no longer trusts us to listen to its signals. Over time, the body no longer sees intimacy as safe.
And if we push performativity to that point, we need to take responsibility and make amends to ourselves. We are the ones who did that — not our partner, and not the trauma.
There are clear and simple steps to undo the damage and to repair the relationship with your body, so you feel safe enough to explore your authentic self-expression.
Especially if you have trauma, and sexual or relational trauma in particular, you owe it to yourself and your relationship to focus on this part of your healing.
I promise, the rewards are more than worth it.
How to Overcome Performativity and Recover Authenticity
If we don't learn how to recognize performativity for the mask that it is, and for the distance that it creates between us and our partner, we can easily miss our body's longing for authentic self-expression and aliveness. We might feel like we're on autopilot during intimacy, or even a little disembodied — like we're watching ourselves from outside our body.
We might feel anxious, avoidant, and want to "get it over with."
Performativity impacts relationships because we're not able to be our truest, deepest self and to experience being loved for who we are.
When we wear the mask of performativity, it's easy to feel sad or hopeless after intimacy, or like it's a chore we need to check off our "to-do" list.
When we give ourselves permission to release performativity and external expectations about what our sexuality should look like, we begin to chart our own unique territory of self-expression. We explore new dimensions of our preferences and desire.
It’s normal to feel unsure, in this new space of self-listening and self-connection.
Over time, we create a deep sense of inner trust. The body feels safe to be seen and experience deep connection.
Our relationships benefit because we’re able to communicate our needs and desires with clarity. Trust expands and there is a depth of holding possible that creates a profound sense of safety and “coming home” to each other.
Here are some simple steps to start to reckon with the impact that performativity is having on your self-expression and your relationship. For those of us with trauma, moving out of partner-pleasing can be extra scary and vulnerable.
Just know that every bit of effort you make is worth it, to find your own unique self-expression.
5 Steps to Releasing Performativity during Intimacy
1. Recognize what performativity looks like for you.
We've been deeply conditioned by culture to think that sexuality and intimacy look a certain way. The truth is, they look how you want. The power of your desire, preferences, and self-expression co-create your relational dynamic. You get to decide. It can feel shocking to realize how much sexual self-expression you copy-pasted from external sources (some of which might not be the healthiest). Be gentle with yourself during this crucial step of awareness.
2. Tune out external influences so you can hear your own needs and preferences.
Give yourself some much-needed distance from media, including social media, that has a viewpoint about what your sexuality "should" look like. Get critical about the sources of entertainment you consume. And if you still consume porn, consider cutting it out of your experience for a while (or for good — it's proven to cause sexual dysfunction, including erectile dysfunction, and relationship dissatisfaction, among other significant health issues).
3. Explore the expectations you put on yourself around intimacy and self-expression.
If you have unresolved trauma, notice where you might be using performativity to mask a lack of safety or comfort within yourself or with your body. Give yourself time to reflect upon your authentic desires and responses. Examine the sexual expectations you have, to see where they come from, and if they're truly yours. Keep what you like and leave the rest.
4. Commit to listening to your body, from now on.
Performativity didn't happen overnight. Give yourself patience to create a new way of being with yourself and your body. Maybe you've been overriding your innate preferences because they didn't fit what you thought was expected of you. The only way through this is to learn the language of your body and commit to listening to your needs and wants.
5. Learn your "yes" and your "no."
If you have unresolved trauma, this might be particularly challenging, because trauma makes it hard to know what you need and want. It's easy to push the body into a "yes" it's not fully enthusiastic about. The way I see it, anything other than a full body "yes" is a "no," simple as that.
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Remember, we didn't learn these expectations that society puts on us for how to be, do, and feel overnight. They are the product of decades of cultural conditioning around intimacy.
Be patient with yourself as you're unraveling these old stories. And be creative as you're finding your voice. Claiming your own needs and preferences is a fundamentally courageous act. It has far-reaching implications not just for you and your relationship, but the kind of world we live in.
Thank you for being part of this healing. Thank you for choosing to listen to your body and create your own story.
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