The One Sentence That Made Me Present in Bed
- Rick Hogart
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
by Rick Hogart
The first time I noticed how hard I was working during sex, it wasn’t because my partner complained. It was because my brain sounded like a sweaty stage manager with a headset.
Okay, okay, we’re doing great. Keep tempo. Keep pressure. Don’t lose the thread. Make sure she thinks you’re a god. What’s your face doing? Why is your face doing that.
Meanwhile, my body was there, technically present, like a guy who showed up to help a friend move but keeps checking his phone and asking where the “heavy stuff” is. I was touching. I was kissing. I was doing the moves. And yet I wasn’t with her so much as I was auditioning at her.
There’s a particular strain of sexual anxiety that isn’t about fear of failure in the obvious way. It’s not “what if I can’t get hard?” or “what if I come too fast?” (Though those are very much invited to the party.) It’s the deeper, more exhausting question: What if I’m not impressive enough to justify being here?
And once that question sets up camp, you start treating intimacy like a performance review. The goal stops being connection and starts being a result: the big reaction, the cinematic moan, the “oh my god” that sounds like a Yelp rating you can frame.
I’ve heard men talk about sex the way they talk about their resumes. I’m great with my hands. I have stamina. I can go down forever. We turn pleasure into a list of competencies, and then we wonder why we’re anxious. Because now your nervous system thinks you’re on stage. Your body is trying to be a body, but your mind is busy pitching itself like a product.
So here’s the thought that’s helped me crawl out of that spiral—one sentence I return to when I feel the stage manager clearing his throat:
“I’m here to give, not to prove.”
That’s it. That’s the whole trick. Not a mantra you yell into the mirror like you’re training for a fight. Just a quiet reorientation. A gentle robbery of your own ego.
Because proving is a bottomless pit. You can always imagine someone better. You can always invent a harsher judge. You can always raise the standard until pleasure becomes a chore with lighting cues.
Giving, on the other hand, has a very simple job description: Pay attention. Offer care. Stay curious. Let the other person have a good time.
When I say “give,” I don’t mean “perform service.” I don’t mean martyrdom, or “I’m going to do everything for you and nothing for me,” which is just another kind of anxious control disguised as generosity. I mean giving in the way you give someone a good song you think they’ll love, or the last piece of pizza without announcing it like a press release. It’s the energy of: I like you. I want you to feel good. I want to learn you.
That little shift does something weirdly physical. Your chest drops. Your jaw unclenches. Your attention stops ricocheting between “How am I doing?” and “How is this being received?” and lands somewhere more interesting: What is she feeling right now? What’s changing? What’s working? What’s not?
And that’s when sex starts behaving less like a test and more like a conversation.
I’m convinced most performance anxiety is just misplaced focus. Not because men are monsters or selfish or broken. Because we were trained, by porn, by locker room folklore, by the general cultural hobby of turning masculinity into a scoreboard, to chase reactions like they’re trophies. We learn to treat our partner’s pleasure as evidence that we’re valuable.
Which is understandable. Compliments feel like oxygen when you’ve grown up in a world that measures men by output. But there’s a cost to trying to extract validation from a person you’re also trying to connect with. You turn them into an audience without meaning to. You start fishing. You start checking for the applause.
And audiences are stressful. Audiences make you self-conscious. Audiences make you rush. Audiences make you overthink your tongue like it’s a mechanical device with settings.
What I’m talking about is smaller and kinder: choose to be a giver in the moment. Choose to let generosity be the North Star. It doesn’t mean you don’t want to be desired. It doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy being seen as wild, or skilled, or whatever adjectives your inner 14-year-old carved into a tree. It means those things get to be side effects, not the mission.
Here’s what “I’m here to give, not to prove” looks like in real life, in bed, with all the awkward humanity intact.
It looks like slowing down when your brain wants to speed up, because speed is how you outrun doubt.
It looks like asking a question without turning it into a formal survey. A quiet, “Like that?” A whispered, “More?” Or sometimes, “Show me,” which can be both practical and hot in a way that feels unfair.
It looks like noticing your own body’s panic signals, tight shoulders, shallow breathing, that sudden urge to switch positions like you’re trying to reset the Wi-Fi, and responding with generosity instead of strategy.
If you feel yourself spiraling, you can literally make the next action an offering. Kiss her neck like you’re saying thank you. Hold her hand and squeeze like you mean it. Put your mouth where you already know she likes it and treat it like you’re not trying to win anything.
The mind hates emptiness. If you don’t give it a job, it will invent one, and that job will be “monitor your performance like a hawk with anxiety.” Giving gives your mind something to do that’s actually useful: be attentive. Be responsive. Be present.
There’s another strange perk here: generosity makes room for your own pleasure without forcing it. When you stop trying to impress, you stop gripping the wheel so hard. A lot of men discover that erections, arousal, and stamina behave better when they’re not being interrogated every ten seconds like a suspect.
And yeah, sometimes the other person does end up with their tongue out, blown away, telling you you’re some kind of animal. That can happen. It’s fun. You can enjoy it. You can let it hit your ego like a warm wave.
Just don’t chase it like it’s the only proof you’re worthy of affection.
Because the real flex, if you want one, is being able to stay generous even when you’re not sure how you’re being graded. Being able to love the act of giving pleasure the way you love giving someone a gift: not because they’ll clap, but because you wanted them to smile.
That’s the thought I return to when the stage manager starts barking orders again. I’m here to give, not to prove.
And if I forget, and I do, because I’m a man with a brain like a browser with thirty tabs open, I try to come back to the simplest thing I know: the reason I wanted to be close to this person in the first place.
I like you. You feel good to me. I want you to feel good too.
Sometimes that’s enough to bring me home.
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