Perfectionism Doesn't Belong With Sexuality

My therapist in Connecticut was an older woman with a cozy office. Once, in the middle of telling a painfully detailed story, she interrupted me, “You’re a perfectionist.”

I grinned, “Oh my god I wish! That’s so sweet of you but really, I’m not.” I said batting a limp wrist at her. Her eyes got wide in that we’re-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat way. I was half-joking. Of course, I had heard that perfectionism is like...bad. But there was a part of me that loved being described with a word that derived from perfect.

I imagine a perfectionist is someone with a sleek ponytail who gets really good grades and is neat as a pin. She doesn’t have gross habits. She’s punctual, smart, and maybe a little emotionally cold (that’s the “bad” part). How could I fix “perfectionist” when that was what I’d been striving for?

Let me paint a picture for you: I’ve NEVER been a good student - even after graduate school, I still don’t even know how to study. I leave clothes on the floor and I’m such a violent nail-biter that my fingers are often covered with scabs. I’m a cryer, I get choked up and teary-eyed at the worst times and I talk too loudly. My vision of a perfectionist is just so far from who I am.

If my therapist had said, “you have impossible standards” or “you’re a procrastinator” or “you have anxiety” or “you have low self-esteem” I would have had something to work with. A problem. What I didn’t know at the time is impossible standards, procrastination, anxiety, and low self-esteem are all sneaky ingredients in perfectionism.

Now, this perfectionism has had all sorts of consequences for my professional and academic life (and maybe personal life too? I’ll save that one for my next therapist). But what I want to share is how I’ve come to understand my relationship to perfectionism and sexuality. More specifically, my version of perfectionism and how it exists in the world of sexuality, professionally and personally. Short answer: it doesn’t.

I imagine my perfectionism is like a big, poorly behaved animal. It jumps on people and carelessly body slams me. Perfectionism has a leash that whips around, I should be able to control it but sometimes I can’t. This perfectionist beast is a bully, tearing information down to facts, charts, citations, making everything fit into a measurable result and throwing out the rest. She criticizes when she feels threatened and covets her degrees and academic research. When the warm inviting home of sexuality is nearby, perfectionism scratches and growls at the door. But sexuality, the most ancient, mysterious, intuitive, ineffable subject in the world, has no time for perfectionism. Sexuality will feed my perfectionism dry morsels through the mail slot in the door. 

Meeting a client? Reread your consultation notes. 

Doing a workshop? Here’s some paperwork.

Struggling with your own issues? There’s a book for that. 

Sexuality as a lived experience, and as a professional, is juicy, it’s for exploration and wonder. In the mansion of sexuality, there are rooms and secret passages connecting seemingly unrelated topics to each other. It’s a map-less place that requires you to navigate using your gut instincts. Perfectionism, the beast, can’t get in, there would not be enough numbers or facts for it to grab onto.

Early in my journey to understand sexuality there was nothing but curiosity. Studying sexual identity, behavior, power, eroticism, and intimacy felt like tying together all of these loose ends in my life and creating a whole new web of possibility for myself and how I saw the world. It was a natural and fluid exploration that helped me grow. I could meander through studying sensuality and toss theories about eroticism just to see what would stick. I fell deep into this subject with so little resistance.

When I really think about it, perfectionism showed up around the same time that someone told me I needed to be an “expert”. Gulp. That’s when I turned from wide-eyed curiosity to if-I-fuck-up-they’ll-find-out-I-actually-don’t-completely-know-this-unknownable-topic.

It’s not the subject of sexuality that my perfectionism is so obsessed with, it’s the onlookers. Perfectionism is a response to everyone else. When I’m being true to myself and unbothered by out there perfectionism can leave me alone.

So where does this leave me in my pursuit of making the world a more sex-positive place? How do I work for others while simultaneously not caring what others think? 

I don’t have an answer and even though I really want to wrap up my problems in a neat bow and cliche life lessons - that’s just my perfectionism talking.