When Our Insecurities Masquerade as Preferences
An existential sex therapist’s perspective
In existential sex therapy, we often come to a gentle and sometimes unsettling realization: what we call sexual “preferences” are not always expressions of desire. Quite often, they are expressions of protection.
This is not a pathology. It is a human response to vulnerability.
Our sexual selves do not develop in a vacuum. They are shaped by early experiences, relational ruptures, embodied memories, cultural narratives, and the meanings we’ve made about safety, worth and visibility. Over time, certain ways of wanting — or not wanting — begin to feel fixed. They acquire the language of preference. But beneath that language, there is often an unspoken concern about exposure.
In my work as an existential sex therapist in Houston, I frequently see how preferences can function less as expressions of freedom and more as carefully maintained boundaries. They keep people safe. They also quietly limit possibility.
When preference becomes protection
Clients may arrive with statements that sound definitive:
“I only date people with a certain body type.”
“I’m not someone who initiates sex.”
“I only want sex when I feel completely confident.”
“I need to be wanted more than I want.”
Taken at face value, these are reasonable preferences. Existential work does not rush to dismantle them. Instead, it listens for what they might be guarding.
With time, different meanings often begin to surface:
A fear of rejection that has never quite settled.
A discomfort with being seen before feeling prepared.
An anxiety about reciprocity: if desire is equal, something might be lost.
An identity that feels safer when it remains intact and unquestioned.
In this sense, a preference is not wrong. It is protective and protection once served a purpose.
The existential dimensions beneath sexual preference
Rather than interpreting preferences as problems, existential sex therapy explores them as locations where core human tensions quietly organize sexual life.
Freedom and responsibility
Some preferences narrow choice in ways that reduce risk. If desire stays within tight parameters, the responsibility of vulnerability can be postponed.
Connection and isolation
Preferences can regulate closeness. By controlling the conditions of intimacy, one can remain connected without fully entering the uncertainty of being known.
Meaning and identity
Over time, preferences often crystallize into roles: the pursuer, the one who is pursued, the low-desire partner, the self-sufficient one. These identities provide coherence, even when they no longer feel entirely alive.
Anxiety and exposure
Sex reveals. Preferences can function as a way of managing that revelation, limiting how much of the self comes into view.
None of this requires correction. It requires understanding.
Existential Sex Therapist
How existential sex therapy approaches this work
The aim is not to challenge preferences head-on or encourage clients to override themselves. The work is slower than that.
An existential sex therapist listens for meaning rather than compliance. Curiosity replaces instruction. The questions that quietly guide the work often sound like:
What does this preference protect you from?
When did it become important to you?
What feels at stake if it loosens, even slightly?
Who are you allowed to be when it stays in place?
What anxiety emerges when you imagine choosing differently?
Often, nothing needs to be changed for a long time. Staying with the meaning is the intervention.
A glimpse inside the therapy room
Consider a client who insists they dislike when partners initiate affection. On the surface, this appears as a clear preference. With careful attention, other possibilities may emerge: a need for control, a fear of being touched before readiness, concern about disappointing someone or anxiety about being perceived as uncertain.
As these meanings are allowed into awareness, the preference often softens on its own. Not because it was challenged, but because it was understood. Desire begins to move again, less governed by fear and more informed by choice.
This is the quiet heart of existential sex therapy: not pushing clients toward different behavior, but helping them recognize when their sexual lives are organized around protection rather than freedom and allowing them to decide, in their own time, whether that still fits.