I Can’t Perform Anymore
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A few weeks ago, I was sitting in therapy talking through some of the changes I’ve been noticing in myself and in my relationships when something suddenly became very clear.
I can’t perform anymore.
I said it out loud.
My therapist stopped me and asked me to say it again.
“I can’t perform anymore.”
And then again.
“I can’t perform anymore.”
There was something about hearing myself repeat those words that made me realize how much they held.
I wasn’t talking about performing on a stage or in front of a camera. I wasn’t even talking about the versions of ourselves we sometimes present to the outside world.
I was talking about something much more intimate.
I can no longer perform an internal experience that I’m not actually having.
I can’t perform desire when I don’t feel it.
I can’t perform openness because someone else wants an opportunity.
I can’t perform comfort because my discomfort is inconvenient.
I can’t perform enthusiasm simply because someone is enthusiastic about me.
I can’t perform certainty when I’m uncertain—or uncertainty when, deep down, I already know.
I can’t perform a yes today simply because I gave one yesterday.
And I can’t keep abandoning what is true inside me simply because the truth might disappoint someone else.
Maybe that’s one of the unexpected consequences of spending years learning to listen to your body:
Eventually, you hear yourself too clearly to keep pretending you don’t.
When Someone Else’s Desire Isn’t Yours
One of the places I’ve noticed this most clearly is in dating.
There is something powerful about being wanted.
Someone is excited about you. They desire you. They pursue you. They tell you how beautiful you are, how much they want to see you, how much they want to be close to you.
And for much of my life, I think some part of me believed I was supposed to meet that energy.
If someone was interested in me, I should remain interested in them.
If someone was excited about me, I should be excited too.
If someone really wanted me, surely I should at least give them a chance.
I’m realizing I don’t believe that anymore.
Someone else’s desire is not evidence of my desire.
Someone can want me deeply and I can feel nothing.
I can like someone without wanting a relationship with them.
I can be attracted to someone and still not want to move closer.
I can have enjoyed being with someone yesterday and feel differently today.
And I don’t need to manufacture interest simply because someone is offering me theirs.
This sounds obvious when I write it down.
It hasn’t always been obvious in my body.
For someone who spent a long time orienting toward other people’s feelings, their disappointment could feel like something I needed to prevent. If someone was kind, interested, enthusiastic or hopeful, saying I don’t feel the same way could feel almost cruel.
But there is nothing kind about performing intimacy.
Not to them.
And certainly not to me.
The Body Knows Before the Explanation Arrives
I’ve spent years working with embodiment, movement, nervous-system awareness and the body.
And yet I’m realizing there is another level to listening to the body.
It’s one thing to hear yourself.
It’s another thing entirely to believe yourself enough to act accordingly.
Because once I stopped asking only, What should I do? and started noticing, What am I actually experiencing?, things became much clearer.
Am I opening—or contracting?
Am I genuinely curious—or trying to convince myself to remain curious?
Do I want this—or do I want to want it?
Am I saying yes because it’s true—or because saying no will disappoint somebody?
Am I communicating—or am I repeatedly teaching another person how to interact with me so that I can tolerate the relationship?
Those are very different questions.
And sometimes the answers aren’t particularly convenient.
Sexual Agency Doesn’t Expire
This realization has become even more important to me around sexuality.
I am a deeply sensual woman. Sensuality is woven into my work, my creativity and the way I inhabit my body.
Choosing to express that has also been part of healing my relationship with my body after sexual trauma.
And choice is the important word there.
I choose what I share.
I choose how I express myself.
I choose who gets access to me.
And I get to keep choosing.
Being intimate with someone once does not mean I have agreed to be intimate with them again.
Having incredible chemistry doesn’t create an obligation.
Yesterday’s desire doesn’t belong to tomorrow.
Even inside a committed relationship, agency doesn’t disappear. Commitment is something we continue to choose. Sexual consent is something we continue to choose.
At any given moment, I am still allowed to ask myself:
Do I want this?
Am I actually feeling this?
Do I want to be here?
And I’m allowed to listen to the answer.
I’ve also had to understand this in relation to my public work.
I can share sensuality publicly and remain discerning privately.
Someone can fantasize about me without me becoming responsible for their fantasy.
Someone can desire me without acquiring access to me.
Visibility is not availability.
My sensuality can be expressed and still be sacred to me.
Perhaps that’s actually part of what makes it sacred:
It remains mine to choose.
Changing Your Mind Isn’t Dishonesty
I am allowed to change my mind.
A previous yes does not create a future obligation.
Previous intimacy doesn’t create ongoing access.
Attraction doesn’t create access.
Chemistry doesn’t create compatibility.
Someone else’s desire doesn’t create mine.
And being uncertain yesterday doesn’t require me to remain uncertain once I know.
I’ve spent enough of my life believing that consistency meant continuing to honour an earlier version of myself.
Now I think consistency can mean something entirely different:
Consistently telling myself the truth.
Even when the truth changes.
I Don’t Need to Figure Everybody Out
I have spent an extraordinary amount of energy trying to understand other people.
Why did they do that?
What did they mean?
Are they afraid?
Are they hurt?
Did they intend it?
What are they really feeling?
What will they do next?
There is value in curiosity. There is value in empathy.
But there comes a point when understanding another person becomes a way of postponing what I already know about myself.
I don’t always need to know why someone behaves the way they do to know that the dynamic doesn’t work for me.
I don’t need another piece of evidence.
I don’t need to prove someone is bad.
I don’t need to diagnose their motives.
I don’t even need them to agree with my version of what happened.
Sometimes I simply know enough.
And sometimes my peace is worth more than the information.
I Don’t Want Compliance. I Want Congruence.
There has been another side to this realization that surprised me.
As I’ve become less willing to perform for other people, I’ve become less interested in other people performing for me.
I don’t want someone following a list of rules so they can remain in relationship with me.
I don’t want someone suppressing something fundamental about themselves because they know I won’t like it.
I don’t want someone thinking, This is what she expects from me, so this is what I’ll do.
And I don’t want to be tolerated either.
I don’t want someone quietly enduring parts of me—my work, my sensuality, my creativity, my independence—because the rest of me makes the compromise worthwhile.
I want to be known.
I want to be embraced.
And I want to offer somebody else that same freedom.
Show me who you are.
Not who you think I want you to be.
Not who you can successfully perform long enough to keep me.
Not the version of yourself that follows my rules.
Come toward me as yourself.
And then let me decide whether who you actually are and who I actually am can build something together.
That’s the difference I’m beginning to understand between expectations and shared values.
Of course relationships require communication. We learn each other. We make adjustments. We consider another person’s feelings. We compromise. Sometimes loving someone inspires us to grow.
But I don’t want compliance masquerading as compatibility.
I don’t want to spend a relationship repeatedly asking someone to restrain an essential part of themselves so that I can feel safe.
And I don’t want to restrain an essential part of myself so that someone else can feel safe with me.
Sometimes nobody needs to change.
Sometimes we simply need to tell the truth.
This is who you are.
This is who I am.
Do these two people actually work together?
The Old Pattern Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore
I wish I could tell you that healing means I never fall into an old pattern again.
I do.
Sometimes I still overthink.
Sometimes I look for information I don’t actually need.
Sometimes I explain myself longer than necessary.
Sometimes I notice myself trying to make another person understand something that I already understand perfectly well.
The difference is that I recognize it sooner now.
And increasingly, something inside me says:
I don’t want to live here anymore.
Maybe that’s what growth actually looks like.
Not becoming someone who never gets triggered, never second-guesses herself or never revisits something she thought she’d finished.
But becoming someone who knows the way home.
Someone whose self-respect eventually becomes stronger than her need to be understood.
Someone whose peace becomes more valuable than the information.
Someone who can love another person and still choose herself.
Someone who can disappoint another person without immediately abandoning herself to make it better.
Someone who can say:
This was real.
That mattered.
I meant my yes when I gave it.
And I mean my no now.
Maybe I can’t perform anymore isn’t only a declaration about myself.
Maybe it’s also an invitation.
You don’t have to perform for me either.
Show me who you are.
I’ll show you who I am.
And we’ll let the truth decide what belongs together.
Because after years of learning how to inhabit my body, trust myself and listen to what is actually happening inside of me, I’m no longer interested in becoming the version of myself that makes a relationship easier to maintain.
I want something much more difficult—and much more beautiful.
Congruence.
A life where the woman I am on the inside and the woman I allow the world to meet are finally becoming the same woman.
If this spoke to something in you…
I wrote Cherished Woman from my own journey of learning to choose myself differently—to listen inward, reclaim the parts of myself I had abandoned, and discover what it means to become a woman who cherishes herself.
If you’re walking through your own version of that journey, I wrote this book for you.