Sex and the HSP Woman: How Meeting "Pre-Sex" Needs Contributes to Her Enjoyment and Desire for Sex

/
 

When it comes to wanting sex and then enjoying it the most, for HSP women the process starts way before they enter the bedroom. In fact, these “pre-sex” needs have nothing to do with sex at all. It’s not about sex.

Because these needs are not about sex confuses women and their male partners, leading them to conclude that they’re not necessary or important. And they cannot be more wrong!

The truth is that meeting her pre-sex needs has a direct impact on whether she wants sex, seeks out sex, and enjoys engaging in it. It then follows that ignoring these critical pre-sex needs or not prioritizing them over other things leads many HSP women to lose their desire for sexual intimacy altogether. That can precipitate a downward spiral in their relationship, which only adds to the stress of not getting needs met.

Here are three “pre-sex” categories of needs that are critical to HSP women when it comes to building sexual desire and wanting sex because they attend to her sensitivity. I’ve written about what it takes for HSP women to enjoy sex and intimacy in a blog post here.

A couple of notes before you read this:

  1. While meeting these needs is what the woman needs to do for herself, most of these are not her responsibility to meet alone. They require a partnered approach where both people join in to create these together through intimacy, closeness and caring. These specific elements add to the romantic element of feeling in love with each other that highly turns an HSP woman on.

  2. On a regular day, these needs have to be met in the order they’re presented here because they speak to her hierarchy of needs. Once you read through them, it will make sense why.

 

1. Recovery from Overstimulation

Situation: Being a highly sensitive person (HSP) means that on the sensory level, you pick up a lot of noise around you — auditory noises, smells, visual stimulation, energy from others, and if you’re around small children, constant touch — and you feel it all. At the end of the day, simply put, overstimulation feels terrible. More than that, it arouses your nervous system as if you’re being attacked and mobilizing your system to fight or shut down. When there is pressure to then have sex at the end of this kind of day, you’re asking an HSP woman to engage in more stimulation on top of overstimulation — and naturally that does not work. It takes a lot of energy to process the overstimulation and find your way back to some semblance of inner calm. The idea of sex at this point can be repulsive. What I just described is “every-day life” for many women, which means that she does not have the space to offer or share sexual energy with another by the end of a busy day — because she cannot give from an empty cup.

Solutions:

  • It is imperative for HSP women to prioritize themselves, even for short moments, throughout the day to regain their grounding and fill their cup. Build in transitions time for yourself between a hectic work or family environment to intimacy time.

  • To make that happen, couples need to work together to organize family life in such a way that supports these needs and tackle them together as partners for the woman’s wellbeing and the wellbeing of others in the family.

2. Emotional Engagement

Situation: Needing deep emotional connection to open up sexually and desire sex is one of the hallmarks of being a highly sensitive woman. HSP women need to feel emotionally engaged with their beloved. That can mean anything from feeling heard when she shares about the struggles of the day without her partner trying to fix the problem, to acknowledging something her partner sees in her such as joy or tiredness, to revealing something intimate about their own day, to engaging with her playfully or joyfully.

More than that, an HSP woman needs to feel in love with her partner — and that can be created with daily moments of heart-opening connection, expressing words of affirmation or doing caring acts, or simply acknowledging how important she is to you.

Solutions:

  • Design daily practices where you engage heart to heart with each other. In my work with couples, we spend considerable time discovering what these daily actions are for each woman and couple and designing a framework where these become daily habits that work their magic every day. And work their magic they do!

  • Do not leave the task of building connection to the once-a-week date night — it’s not enough to move throughout the week as strangers only to connect over a romantic dinner. Build in these intimacy-building practices to connect daily.

3. Slow Engagement in Physical Touch

Let’s recap. On a regular busy day, an HSP woman (especially if she has young children) is most likely overstimulated, torn in different directions by work and home responsibilities, exhausted, and disconnected from her partner because the only conversations they have are about the logistics of life. It is not surprising that there would be little to no room for sexual feelings or desire for touch. For many HSP women, unsurprisingly there’s often a feeling of revulsion towards sexual engagement at this point in the day because it feels like yet another way to get overstimulated and be more exhausted.

That is why it’s important to tackle these in order: first, addressing overstimulation; second, creating a heart-to-heart connection. Once the HSP woman feels more grounded in herself, and she feels connected to her partner, she has more capacity to engage in touch.

But not just any touch — it is goal-ness touch without an ulterior motive that you’re now working to get her going towards sex. If there is one thing that shuts down a HSP woman’s openness for sex is feeling that her partner is “trying” to get her in the mood for sex. It feels like petting a cat against her hair. She might not claw you in the face for it, but she will quickly sense it (she is highly sensitive after all!), become suspicious of the touch, and either no longer be willing to engage or disassociate and just get sex over with.

Solution: HSP women love a non-goal-oriented progression of the Connection Sex framework, where sensual touch conveys her partner’s enjoyment of her body, going from supportive, to affectionate, to finally sexual. It allows for her body to go through a “de-armoring” process that allows her to switch from protecting herself from overstimulation to letting her guard down and opening up to her partner. It is a slow-burning process that allows for the turn-on to be authentic and profound.

It takes learning to be a very attuned sensual lover to stay with the slow-burn of sexual and erotic energy that HSP women tend to enjoy and thrive in. The quality of touch is important here. Most importantly, however, it is her partner’s calm, confident and attuned presence that sends her the message that she is safe and not under pressure to perform.

That is the magical moment when her sexual energy starts to come alive. The tingles running up her arms turn to electric jolts down to her genitals. Something begins to awaken. She looks up, presses her lips against his and linger for a while, feeling his warm body pressed next to her. Her hands start to wonder in explorative touch, enjoying the sensation of his skin on her finger tips. Her body begins to shiver with excitement and she leans back and invites him closer, wanting more of him, his touch, his sexual energy.

Most couples rarely have the patience to get to this slowly-burning unveiling … but that’s where the magic starts when you learn to work with a woman’s high sensitivity. It takes daring intimacy to engage in Connection Sex.

Dare to follow your heart. Dare intimacy.

 

P.S. When you’re ready to create a sex life that reflects the deep love for each other, here are a few options for you:

Beautiful watercolor by permission from https://tinamariaelena.com/