Are You Spectatoring in the Bedroom?

Key Points

• The act of spectatoring is when a person is distracted from worrying about sex while having sex.
• Spectatoring can cause sexual dysfunction in men and women.
• Both single and coupled people experience spectatoring, but therapy can help.

It's one thing to be a spectator at a football game, but what happens when people become self-critical spectators in the bedroom?

If left unchecked, spectatoring—the distracting act of analyzing oneself during sexual activities—can cause sexual dysfunction for men and women. In 2018, researchers described spectatoring as the mediator between male sexual performance anxiety and actual erectile dysfunction.

What is spectatoring?

Have you ever felt critical of yourself during sex? Were the thoughts so distracting they robbed you, and maybe even your partner, of an orgasm? You may have been spectatoring.

A term coined by researchers in the 1970s, spectatoring describes people who focus on themselves from a third-party perspective during sexual activities. It's a person who worries about sex while having sex.

Spectatoring is often an obstacle to good sex, according to Jenn Kennedy, Ph.D., a licensed marriage and family therapist in Santa Barbara, California, and the founder of The Pleasure Project and Riviera Therapy.

"So they're imagining how they look and sound, and judging what they're doing from an outsider's perspective," Kennedy said. "We all do it to some degree. However, the voices can get very loud and very discouraging during sexual play."

How common is spectatoring?

Spectatoring is more common than you might think.

"People are spectatoring all the time," said Katie Schubert, Ph.D., a licensed sex therapist and the CEO of Cypress Wellness Center in St. Petersburg, Florida. "They do it when they're talking. They do it when they're riding bicycles. It usually causes faux pas, right? If you're thinking too hard about what you're saying, you're going to say it wrong. You're going to screw up the words or get the inflection wrong. It's the same kind of thing when people are having sex."

When the brain is focused on appearances rather than physical sensations, that's when sexual dysfunction can creep in.

"If you're thinking too hard about what you're doing and the activity that you're engaged in, I tell my clients, 'It'll f**k with your head,'" Schubert added. "It'll mess you up."

Her clients are often 20- to 40-year-old men seeking erectile dysfunction (ED) solutions. Often, her patients see their ED reversed without the need for medication, thanks to therapy.

"It's not erectile dysfunction, it's anxiety, where they're so worried about their penis and [its] performance that they can't perform," Schubert said. "So as soon as I teach them how to masturbate and get back into their body mindfully, and then do some education on normal penis sizes and normal sexual behavior, they're fixed."

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How to ID the symptoms and stop spectatoring

The underlying theme behind most sexual spectatoring is insecurity or anxiety, or a combination of the two.

"You might notice yourself feeling anxious, awkward, impatient, self-critical and disconnected from your partner or your pleasure," Kennedy said. "It's caused by insecurity and a fear that we don't know what we're doing or that somehow we're inadequate. It's distracting and leads to disconnection."

It's not all bad news, though. If you catch yourself spectatoring, there are several ways you can snap out of it.

First, remember to breathe.

"The antidote is to tune into your partner and your own body," Kennedy said. "This can happen through taking some deep breaths and noticing body sensations and/or making eye contact with your partner and noticing their arousal and/or needs."

Sometimes, prioritizing the act of physical touch is all that's needed, she added.

"For couples struggling with spectatoring, I often suggest sensate focus as a way to build confidence, trust and experience with giving and receiving erotic body sensation," she said.

Sensate focus

The same researchers who coined spectatoring in the 1970s, developed an exercise in the early '90s called sensate focus to help return the mind's focus to how the body feels, not how it looks or performs.

"It's nonsexual initially, actually, but it allows for you to have a physical connection with your partner that doesn't have anxiety attached to it," Schubert said. "The goal of it is to get rid of any anxiety and negative baggage you've attached to the physical intimacy you have with your partner."

Centered on the simple act of touch and being touched, sensate focus can help people with sexual anxiety tap back into physical sensations, whether alone or with a partner. Plus, it's a free sexual dysfunction aid anyone can try in the comfort and privacy of their home.

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How to mentally prepare for sex

Being more mindful outside the bedroom is the first step in becoming more mentally and physically present inside the bedroom.

Schubert offered these three mindfulness tips to try:

1. Focus on physical sensations during nonsexual behaviors. During mundane household tasks, like washing the dishes, try tapping into your senses. How does the soap smell? How does the water feel on your hands?
2. Take a break from porn and sexual fantasy. Schubert suggests people experiencing spectatoring should try mindful masturbation. That is, focus only on the actual physical act and the sensations that come with it.
3. Try moving your new mindfulness techniques to the bedroom. Whether it's deep breathing or deliberate physical touch exercises such as sensate focus, being mindful before and during sexual experiences can alleviate sexual dysfunction caused by spectatoring.

The bottom line

Sometimes, our thoughts can get in the way of fulfilling our needs, sexual or otherwise.

If you find yourself trapped in your head during sex more often than not, it may be time to seek the advice of a licensed sex therapist.

"Remember that there's hardly anything you could say that would shock a sex therapist," Schubert said. "There's nothing you can say to us as sex therapists that we would have any kind of feeling about. We certainly wouldn't shame you for your behaviors or your feelings."