How To Be A Sexually Confident Woman: Reclaiming Your Sexual Self

Have you ever done something sexually brave and it’s gone horribly wrong? I have. I was 22, in my first serious relationship, and I thought I was being wildly sexy. It was my boyfriend’s 23rd birthday and I wanted to surprise him. So I ordered a sexy schoolgirl costume online. Think tiny tartan skirt, little white shirt, tie, suspenders, the whole thing…but when I walked into the room, expecting him to be delighted, I was met with horror. I remember him staring at me in disbelief and saying, “where is my Sabina?”

I wanted the ground to swallow me whole. I was so embarrassed. I felt ridiculous and exposed, and I had to hold back the tears of shame and disappointment. There is something incredibly painful about taking a risk and being met with a reaction that essentially communicated, what are you doing? This isn't you.

I threw the costume in the bin. And I never did anything like that again. I didn't play with role play. I didn't experiment with costumes. I didn't explore that particular part of my sexuality. I certainly didn't put myself in a position where I might feel that exposed again. There was no conversation afterwards where we unpacked what had happened or where I could understand that his response to that particular fantasy wasn't actually a verdict on me.

It just got pushed away, like so many things did in that relationship. At the time, I didn't have the language for any of this. I simply absorbed the experience and made a decision somewhere along the way that this wasn't something I did.

Looking back now, I can see how much bigger it was than one awkward sexual experience. I had outsourced my sexual confidence.

Instead of developing a sense of I like this, I don't like that, I'm curious about this, this feels sexy to me, this doesn't, I had started using someone else's response as information about whether what I was doing was okay. And that's a really vulnerable place to be sexually. Because if your confidence depends on someone else's reaction, you're no longer entirely free to explore. You start monitoring yourself.

Is this sexy enough?

Is this too much?

Do they like what I'm doing?

Do I look ridiculous?

Am I being a good sexual partner?

That costume experience didn't make me stop being sexual. It made me more careful about which parts of myself I was willing to reveal.

What Is Sexual Confidence?

Sexual confidence isn't about feeling sexy all the time, loving your body every day, knowing exactly what you want or having mind-blowing sex every time you get into bed. And it definitely isn't about performing confidence for someone else or becoming the kind of woman you think you're supposed to be sexually.

For me, sexual confidence is being able to stay connected to yourself while you're experiencing intimacy. To notice what feels good, what doesn't, what you're curious about, what you want more of, what you want less of, and even when you've changed your mind.

It sounds simple, but it requires something much deeper than confidence in the traditional sense. It requires self-trust. Sadly, for many women, that self-trust has been interrupted long before we even get into a bedroom.

Why So Many Women Struggle With Sexual Confidence

Before we talk about how to actually be a sexually confident woman, it might be worth asking yourself how much permission you've actually been given to develop it in the first place.

For most of us, growing up meant we received a long list of contradictions about what a “good” woman should be and how she should behave and sometimes we don't even realise this conditioning is still running the show.

Notice which ones feel familiar:

• Be attractive, but don't try too hard.

• Be sexy, but don't be too sexual.

• Have desires, but don't have too many.

• Be desirable, but don't appear desperate.

• Know how to please your partner, but don't ask for too much yourself.

• Be adventurous, but don't be a slut.

• Be confident, but don't make anyone else uncomfortable.

And then we're somehow expected to arrive in adulthood knowing how to feel sexually confident, communicate what we want, set sexual boundaries and comfortably inhabit our sexuality.

No wonder so many women struggle.

You might find it easier to focus on whether your partner is enjoying themselves than on whether you are. You might worry about being perceived as too sexual, too demanding or too inexperienced. You might have learnt to wait for someone else to initiate, or become very good at being desirable without necessarily feeling connected to your own desire.

Sexual confidence becomes very difficult to build when you've spent your life learning to look outside yourself for permission to be sexual.

How Good Girl Conditioning Affects Sexual Confidence

Good Girl Conditioning teaches us to become highly attuned to other people's needs, reactions and expectations. We're rewarded for being agreeable, accommodating, easy to love and selfless, but the problem begins when we become so focused on everyone else's experience that we lose touch with our own.

If you've spent your life asking, “What does everyone else need from me?” it can be surprisingly difficult to answer, “What do I want?”

And nowhere does this become more obvious than sex.

You might say yes because you don't want to disappoint your partner, keep doing something because they're enjoying it even though you're no longer into it, avoid initiating because rejection feels too vulnerable, or hold back a desire because you're worried it will seem weird or too much.

You can become incredibly good at performing pleasure knowing what you're supposed to look like, sound like and do to make someone else feel desired while becoming increasingly disconnected from what you're actually experiencing.

If this sounds familiar, read How Good Girl Conditioning Affects Your Sex Life, where I explore how people-pleasing, self-abandonment and the pressure to be “good” can follow us right into the bedroom.

The Madonna-Whore Complex and Women's Sexual Confidence

Then there's the particularly complicated territory of the Madonna-whore complex: the idea that women are expected to fit into opposing categories: respectable or sexual, good wife or adventurous lover, Madonna or whore.

The rules can shift throughout our lives. As young women, we might hear, “Don't do that people will think you're a slut.” Then we're expected to be sexy in relationships, respectable in marriage, and somehow reconcile being a mother with being a sexual woman once we have children.

No wonder it can be difficult to integrate all the different parts of ourselves.

Sexual confidence doesn't require you to choose between being respectable and being sexual. You get to be a whole person: a mother and a sexual being, soft and dominant, sensual and playful, curious and awkward, adventurous one day and uninterested the next.

You get to decide what your sexuality means to you.

Sexual Confidence, Body Image and Feeling Comfortable in Your Body

It's hard to feel sexually confident when you're busy wondering what your body looks like from your partner's angle. Maybe you're thinking about your stomach, your thighs, your breasts, cellulite, whether the lighting is flattering, or whether they've noticed the part of your body you've been trying not to think about all night.

You can be having sex and still be watching yourself have sex.

Do I look sexy?Does my stomach look big from here?Are they actually attracted to me?Are they noticing my body?Why isn't my body responding the way I think it should?

If you've found yourself doing this, you're certainly not alone. But it's very difficult to fully experience pleasure when part of your attention is busy monitoring how you're being perceived.

And this is why sexual confidence isn't always something we can build by simply telling ourselves, “I'm beautiful.” You can know intellectually that you're attractive and still feel incredibly self-conscious when you're naked with someone.

Sometimes the work is less about learning to love every inch of your body and more about learning to come back into it — to notice your breath, your sensations and what actually feels good, rather than constantly stepping outside yourself to assess how you're being seen.

The goal isn't to have the perfect body so you can finally relax during sex. It's to feel safe enough to actually inhabit the body you have.

Sexual Confidence and the Fear of Being “Too Much”

Maybe you've worried about being too sexual, too needy, too demanding, too experienced, too inexperienced, too vocal, too quiet, too interested, too uninterested, too dominant, too submissive…basically, too much of something.

Sometimes the fear isn't even conscious. You just notice yourself holding back. You want to initiate, but you wait for them. You want to ask for something, but you worry about how it will sound. You want to say “more”, but you don't. You realise you don't actually like what's happening, but instead of saying “I'd rather do something else,” you keep going because changing your mind feels awkward.

If you've ever found yourself doing this, your sexual confidence might have less to do with how sexy you feel and more to do with how safe you feel expressing yourself.

Sexual confidence isn't about always saying yes, being adventurous or knowing exactly what you want. It's trusting yourself enough to be honest about what is true for you in the moment.

Sometimes that sounds like:

• “No, that's not what I want.”

• “I'm not sure yet. Can we slow down?”

• “Actually, I'd like something different.”

Being able to say those things without abandoning yourself to keep someone else comfortable is a pretty powerful form of sexual confidence.

Can You Rebuild Sexual Confidence?

Absolutely.

You rebuild sexual confidence through small acts of self-trust: noticing what you want, communicating it, tolerating someone else's response, discovering what feels good, changing your mind, experimenting again and learning that you can stay connected to yourself through all of it.

Over time, your sexuality becomes something you experience from the inside rather than perform from the outside.

This is a big part of what I explore through sex coaching for women and intimacy coaching online. I'm not interested in asking, “How can I make you more sexually confident?”

I'm much more interested in asking: “what would help you trust yourself more?”

Sexual Confidence Reset

I was introduced to this practice early in my own journey by a sex coach, and it became particularly meaningful when I used it to work with the memory of that schoolgirl costume.

The practice uses your two hands to represent what happened and what you wish had happened instead, before bringing the two experiences together. I've adapted it here specifically for sexual confidence.

Before you begin

Time: 15–20 minutes
Setting: Somewhere private where you won't be interrupted
Lighting: Soft, warm lighting if possible
Music: Something gentle that helps you feel present
Props: Nothing required; a blanket or cushion if you'd like
Partner or friend: No — this is just for you.

If you feel overwhelmed at any point, stop. Look around the room, feel your feet on the floor and reconnect with your surroundings before deciding whether you'd like to continue.

1. Remember the experience

Bring your left hand into your awareness. Think of a moment when your sexual confidence was knocked. Maybe you were rejected, laughed at, criticised for your body, made to feel ashamed of your desire, or felt exposed sexually. Picture the experience as clearly as you comfortably can. Where were you? Who was there? What happened?

Then ask yourself: What did I decide about myself because of this experience?

Perhaps: I'm embarrassing. I'm too much. I'm not sexy. I shouldn't do things like that. I shouldn't initiate.It's safer not to show that side of myself.

Notice what comes up. Then place your left hand down.

2. Imagine it differently

Bring your right hand into your awareness. Return to the same situation, but this time imagine the best possible outcome for you. Get creative. You can change how the other person responds, what you say, what happens next anything you need to create a different experience.

For me, I might imagine walking into the room in that costume and my boyfriend absolutely loving it. He’s completely into the surprise, and I can feel myself relaxing into the experience instead of wondering whether I look ridiculous. We laugh, flirt, play with the fantasy and it opens up a whole new flavour of our intimacy something playful, cheeky, a little bit naughty and very passionate. We love that this new experience has ignited something neither of us had explored before.

Let yourself experience this version as vividly as you can.

• What does it feel like in your body to be desired, received and completely free to enjoy yourself?

• What would it feel like in your body to be received differently?

• What if you stayed connected to yourself rather than collapsing into shame?

• What if someone else's response didn't determine whether your desire was valid?

Stay with that experience for a little while.

Then place your right hand down.

3. Bring the two experiences together

Now slowly bring both hands up together. Return to the positive version of the experience. See it, feel it and let yourself experience it again. Repeat it a few times. The original experience happened. You're not pretending it didn't. You're giving yourself another possibility. You don't have to erase the shame to reclaim your sexual confidence. You're giving your body another reference point, one built around choice, self-trust and possibility. When you're finished, pause and notice what you feel. What did you notice? What was interesting? What feels different now?

You Don't Need to Become More Sexual

I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions about sexual confidence.

You don't need to become more sexual, have more sex, be more adventurous, louder in bed or become someone else's fantasy. You don't even need to feel sexy all the time.

You need to become more you.

The woman who knows what she wants, knows when she doesn't want it, can stay curious without needing everything to go perfectly, and can hear a no without turning it into a judgement about herself. The woman who can hear her own yes and doesn't need someone else's approval to know that her desire belongs to her.

That, to me, is sexual confidence.

And honestly, I think that's what 22-year-old me needed to know. She didn't need to throw the costume in the bin. She needed to know that her sexuality was still hers, even when someone else didn't know what to do with it.

Keep Exploring

If this article has you thinking differently about your own sexual confidence, here are three places I'd go next:

Wondering why orgasm still feels elusive? Read Why Can't I Orgasm? How To Feel More Pleasure During Sex especially if you suspect you don't need another technique so much as a deeper connection with your body and pleasure.

Wondering how “being a good girl” might be showing up in your sex life? Read How Good Girl Conditioning Affects Your Sex Life where I explore how people-pleasing, self-abandonment and the pressure to be “good” can follow us right into the bedroom.

Carrying shame around your body, sexuality or desire? Read Reclaiming Pleasure: Healing Shame, Desire & Women's Bodies a deeper exploration of what happens when shame gets in the way of feeling at home in your sexuality.

Ready to Come Home to Your Body?

If you've been reading this thinking, I think I've spent a long time trying to be the woman I thought I was supposed to be, this is exactly the kind of work we explore inside Come Home to Your Body.

It's my monthly live embodiment session for women who want to slow down, reconnect with their bodies and create more space for pleasure, desire and self-connection.

We'll breathe, move, notice and feel — without needing to perform, achieve or get anything “right.”

Come Home to Your BodyA monthly live experience for women ready to feel a little more at home in themselves.

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Just 45 minutes. Once a month. A chance to stop performing and come back to yourself.

About Sabina Wilde

Sabina Wilde is a 500-hour Certified Integrative Sex Coach & Educator, holding a Bachelor of Psychology and a Master of Teaching. She specialises in helping women reconnect with their bodies, desires, pleasure, and authentic selves through a trauma-informed, body-centred approach. Drawing from psychology, embodiment practices, nervous system education, and intimacy coaching, her work supports women to move beyond shame, numbness, burnout, and self-abandonment into deeper self-trust, aliveness, and connection. She is the founder of the Wonderfully Wilde Women's Collective and offers 1:1 online coaching, women's circles and workshops around the world.