We often shy away from the raw sensation of intimate situations because we believe we have to know how to operate inside of them. Performance is a cover for when we can't admit we don't know what to do. It is an insidious and primary aspect of the tumescent mind that creates distance from the true nature of what's meant to happen in an experience.
Were we instead to simply admit we didn't know, the sensation we were trying to touch by performing would be allowed to arise naturally. Allowance like this is a deeply vulnerable activity, where we allow ourselves to be touched and felt and moved entirely without layers. It is, in fact, the opposite of performance.
Performance can look like serving people, adding in a layer of politeness or submission in place of noticing and connection. Yet, in the areas where the greatest service we could offer is the raw contact of intimacy, we often throw up a smokescreen of performance.
We try to please our partner by focusing our attention on how good we think we are doing, rather than on what we are feeling; on how they seem to be responding, rather than on what's arising in the connection; on our own desire to be aroused by validation, rather than on being in the more vulnerable and quiet experience of simply opening and responding to the moment of connection.
Not only does performance look for these signals, it also manufactures them, adding in a layer of drama or flair or poetry or romance with the notion that the experience itself isn't good enough. We believe we're enhancing the experience with our performance.
However, when we add those things in, the other person feels obligated to perform for us or obligated, period. Obligation cannot inhabit the same space as release, relaxation, or enjoyment. When we add in performance, we don't develop the skills to be in relationship with the real thing.
Performance can become second nature; we've operated that way for so long we're not even conscious we're doing it. It can be truly humbling to see and admit we have spent lifetimes building big, dramatic expressions on top of simple things. And that in order to know these things, we need to clear away everything we think we know.
We can't know over the din of our drive to perform, to please, to self-validate, to feed our perfectionism, to compulsively grip to comfort. In truth, we cannot ever know what's being asked of us in the moment where our experience actually occurs. We can only clear away the performance we have added on top and be intimate with experience as it is happening.