Someone asks what you like, and your mind goes quietly blank.
You might know exactly what your partner enjoys. You might know how to keep an intimate moment easy, how to respond well, how to be accommodating. But when the attention turns the other way — what do you actually enjoy, what makes you soften or want more — the answer can be oddly hard to reach.
If you've caught yourself thinking "I don't know what I like anymore," it doesn't necessarily mean something has been lost. Often it means you've spent a long stretch paying close attention to everything except your own experience. And what feels good was never a fixed list you were meant to have memorised years ago. It shifts with age, relationships, stress, confidence, hormones, health and the accumulation of life.
Why the answer can be so hard to find
Most women are taught a great deal about the risks and responsibilities of sex and very little about how to notice pleasure. On top of that sits years of quiet adaptation — learning what a partner likes, which responses land well, how to be desirable and responsive and uncomplicated. None of that necessarily tells you what your own body prefers. Research into women's sexual pleasure has found that sexual autonomy and assertiveness are associated with greater pleasure, while sexual compliance and gendered power imbalances tend to work against it.¹ Going along with something and genuinely wanting it aren't quite the same experience. So sometimes the sharper question isn't "why don't I have preferences?" but "when was the last time I was myself enough to quietly notice them?"
A person can be sexually experienced and still feel uncertain about what she likes, because experience and self-knowledge aren't the same thing. For years the attention may have been pointed outward: is my partner enjoying this, am I taking too long, do I look alright, should I seem more into it, is this even what I'm supposed to want? When your attention is taken up with appearance, performance or the other person's experience, there's little left over for the quieter information coming from your own body. Studies have linked appearance- and performance-based distraction during sex with lower sexual pleasure and poorer sexual functioning in women.² Add caregiving, demanding work, the routines of a long relationship, menopause, divorce, illness, or simply years of being the one who anticipates everyone else's needs, and "what do you want?" can start to sound like a question in a language you used to be fluent in.
Receiving isn't the same as performing
Receiving sounds passive, and it isn't. To genuinely receive, you have to stay connected enough to yourself to register what's actually happening — whether something feels comforting, neutral, irritating, enlivening, too much, not enough, and whether you want it to continue at all. Performance keeps asking how you're doing. Receiving asks what you're experiencing. There's no required response in the second: you don't have to become aroused, reach orgasm, make appreciative sounds or demonstrate that something "worked."
Sometimes rediscovering pleasure starts much more modestly than people expect — noticing that your shoulders dropped, that one kind of touch let you breathe more easily, that your body preferred stillness to stimulation. That's information too.
What is a pleasure map?
A pleasure map isn't a diagram of erogenous zones, and it's certainly not a search for one magic spot. Think of it as a living picture of how your body actually responds. Where do you feel ease, and where do you brace? Which sensations draw you closer, and which make you mentally leave the room? What feels nourishing, or warm, or grounding, or simply pleasant?
The map covers more than the body. Privacy, pace, trust, the words that may be used, feeling appreciated rather than used, having enough time, knowing you can change your mind — all of it can change how the same touch registers. Research with women has long shown that sexual interest and arousal are highly contextual, and that desire doesn't always arrive first: for some women interest precedes physical arousal, while for others desire only surfaces once something has already begun to feel good.³ Your pleasure map, then, isn't a test of whether you're "sexual enough." It's information about you- rediscovered.
Your body's yes, no, maybe, more and less
You may not hear your body in full sentences at first. A yes can feel like leaning towards something, softening, a genuine wish for it to keep going. A no might come as pulling away, tightening, a flicker of irritation, or the plain thought that you don't want this. Maybe matters just as much — not aversion, but not yet a real yes either. And more and less are their own useful signals: pleasure, comfort, ease- just might want more time, less intensity, a slower pace, a pause, or for nothing to change at all.
These signals help you understand yourself, but they aren't a stand-in for conscious consent. Physical arousal can happen involuntarily; consent can be changed or withdrawn at any time. Learning this language isn't about monitoring yourself constantly. It's about making your own experience count again.
Pleasure isn't a checklist
Modern sexuality slips easily into another form of achievement — have I tried enough, am I adventurous enough, should I like this, should I want it this often? But doing more things isn't the same as knowing yourself better. You're allowed to find ordinary things intensely pleasurable, to dislike something other women rave about, to enjoy a fantasy while having no wish to live it out, and to change your mind about something you once loved. What feels wonderful in one relationship, one stage of life, or even one evening can feel completely uninteresting in another. The point was never to assemble an impressive sexual résumé. It's to get more honest about what your body actually says- not even today- but at that moment.
Borrowed ideas of what sex "should" look like
None of us form our ideas about sex in a vacuum. We pick up scripts from partners, pornography, films, social media, friends and the wider culture. Some open up genuinely useful possibilities; others quietly harden into expectations. Seeing a practice often enough can make it feel normal, and being told that something is "wild" or "empowering" or what confident person supposedly enjoy can create pressure to read your own participation as preference.
Research on pornography and sexual choking, for instance, has found an association between person's exposure to pornographic depictions of choking and their own experience of being choked by male partners.⁵ That doesn't mean pornography dictates what any individual person wants, but it's a good reason to separate familiarity from desire. A quietly useful private question is whether you'd still want something if nobody expected you to — and, alongside it, whether you're curious before it happens or mainly relieved when it's over, whether you want the sensation itself or the feeling of being wanted for agreeing to it. There's no shame in finding that an idea came from somewhere else. Most of our ideas do. What matters is whether, once it reaches you, it genuinely becomes yours.
A specific note about sexual choking and neck compression
This is one area where personal preference and physical safety have to be held apart clearly. What's casually called "choking" during sex usually means external pressure on the neck — in medical terms, strangulation or neck compression. It has also become surprisingly common among younger Australians: in a study of 4,702 people aged 18–35, 61% of cisgender women reported having been sexually strangled or choked at least once.⁶
Common doesn't mean medically safe. Neck compression can affect blood flow to and from the brain, the airway and other vulnerable structures in the neck. Serious injury can occur with no obvious external marks, and Australian clinical guidance treats non-fatal strangulation as a potentially life-threatening injury.⁷ The current medical literature continues to warn about the serious consequences that can follow. There's a further distinction worth sitting with: Australian research into how people make sense of sexual choking found that trust, consent, or a sense of control over the apparent intensity can get mistaken for safety — and the researchers are clear that none of those things removes the underlying physical risk.⁸ Consent is essential, but consent cannot make every physical practice medically safe.
It's simply information worth having before deciding whether something that's become familiar actually belongs on your own map. And if pressure has been applied to your neck and you notice breathing or swallowing difficulty, a change to your voice, loss of consciousness, a severe or unusual headache, any neurological or vision symptoms, or swelling of the neck, seek urgent medical assessment. In an emergency in Australia, call Triple Zero.⁷
Curious, without turning it into homework
Rediscovering pleasure works far better as curiosity than as a task to complete, and it doesn't have to begin with sex at all. Notice what your body already enjoys in ordinary life — hot water over your shoulders, fresh sheets, stretching, a particular song, firm pressure rather than something barely-there, stillness, being held, or having enough room around you not to be touched at all. Notice what makes you want to stay present. Then bring that same quality of attention into intimacy. Rather than asking what should happen next, try noticing what you're actually feeling now. Rather than asking whether you like this kind of thing in general, try asking whether you like it today. Preferences get much easier to hear once they're no longer being interrogated.
Relearning your own body
There's something quietly freeing about no longer needing to produce an answer on the spot. "I don't know yet" is an answer. So is slower, or not today, or "I thought I liked that, and I don't think I do anymore" — and so, sometimes, is a plain, uncomplicated yes.
That's the thinking behind the Sukh Pleasure Compass: not teaching you what you ought to enjoy, and not shrinking pleasure down to genital response, but making room to notice where ease, sensation, boundaries and aliveness actually sit for you. At Sukh Tantra Newcastle that exploration is professional, consent-led and one-directional. Josh stays fully clothed, there's no body-to-body massage, and no sexual response is expected of you. What's included is agreed clearly beforehand, and you can pause, change something or stop at any point. It's body-awareness and wellbeing work.
You don't need to arrive already knowing what you like. Often that's exactly where the finding-out starts.
Tantra-informed bodywork at Sukh Tantra is therapeutic and non-sexual, and is not a substitute for medical care, psychotherapy, sex therapy or pelvic-floor physiotherapy.
References
Reis J, et al. Psychosocial and Behavioral Aspects of Women's Sexual Pleasure: A Scoping Review. The Journal of Sex Research, 2021.Roles of Genital Self-Image, Distraction, and Anxiety in Women's Sexual Pleasure: A Preregistered Study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2021.Graham CA, et al. Turning On and Turning Off: A Focus Group Study of the Factors That Affect Women's Sexual Arousal. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2004.Healthdirect Australia. — consent.Wright PJ, Herbenick D, Tokunaga RS. Pornography and Women's Experience of Mixed-Gender Sexual Choking/Strangulation: Eroticization Mediates, Perceived Similarity Moderates. Journal of Health Communication, 2022.Sharman LS, Fitzgerald R, Douglas H. Prevalence of Sexual Strangulation/Choking Among Australian 18–35 Year-Olds. Archives of Sexual Behavior, published 2024, with correction published September 2024.NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation. Managing Non-Fatal Strangulation in the Emergency Department. Clinical Practice Guide, 2022; Victoire A, de Boos J, McMillan J, White C. Harmful effects of sexual choking. BMJ, 2026.Conte I, Sharman LS, Douglas H. Choking/Strangulation During Sex: Understanding and Negotiating "Safety" Among 18–35 Year Old Australians. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2025.
