Ladies Don't Ask For Pleasure. They Just Fake It.

This episode is about about deep, emotional, life-level pleasure and why so many women don’t have it. Women are disconnected because they were never taught they’re allowed to want it. So we fake it. In relationships. In work. In lives that look “fine” but feel empty.

In this episode, we talk about why pleasure gets labeled selfish, the emotional and hormonal cost of living without it, and what shifts when a woman stops performing satisfaction and starts asking for more. If life is functioning but joy feels missing, then this one’s for you.

Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/mountaineer/break-it-down

What is That's Not Very Ladylike?

That’s Not Very Ladylike is the podcast for every woman who was told to be polite, stay calm, or stop being so dramatic, meanwhile her hormones, boundaries, and sanity were quietly falling apart.

Hosted by Tracey Willingham, licensed social worker and the voice behind That Hormone Girl™, each episode starts with one rule: Ladies don’t…and then they do it anyway.

Together, we unpack the unspoken expectations, the emotional labor, the generational BS, and the hormone chaos modern women are carrying and we get honest about what it actually takes to feel like yourself again.

If you’re ready to question the rules, trust your body, and stop shrinking to make everyone else comfortable, you’re in the right place.

Tracey: 00:13

You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week, we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome to another episode of That's Not Very Ladylike. You may notice a theme for the month of February. We're talking all things that we're not supposed to talk about. If you listen to last week's, we're not supposed to talk about this over 40.

Tracey: 01:00

And guess what? We're going to do it anyways. But I do want to say a couple of things before we jump in. So first, if you've got little ears, little little kids running around this episode talks about pleasure. It's not in a graphic way, but it is still kind of an adult in an emotionally honest way.

Tracey: 01:19

So if that's something you don't really want to play out loud right now, it's okay to save this one for later. Also, I talk about pleasure in this episode, I want to be clear about what I mean because this could just be another physical one that we talk about. But I want to take it a little bit deeper and talk about emotional pleasure. And what I mean by that is like you feel connected, supported, safe, wanted, and allowed to want. So yes, physical pleasure matters too.

Tracey: 01:47

And not pretending that it doesn't. But I want this episode to be a deeper layer of pleasure that many women were never even taught to name at all. So as I've said in some previous ones, and I think this is super important that we say these things sometimes before we just jump in, Not all women have had safe experiences around sex or intimacy, and not all women grew up with healthy models of pleasure, emotional or physical. And for some women, intimacy has been confusing, harmful, or maybe even not very affirming. So if that's part of your story, nothing I say here is meant to dismiss that.

Tracey: 02:29

And so it's just really important to me that we also name that when I talk about pleasure, I'm talking about adults' consensual experiences where choice, safety, and agency matter and where consent is respected and can be changed at any moment. And this is the only framework I am willing to work from. So if anything in this episode brings up kind of a realization that a relationship in your life, emotional or physical, isn't safe or respectful, I want you to know that you're not alone and that support is available. So you deserve safety, you deserve choice, and you deserve care. Full stop.

Tracey: 03:12

All right. Let's jump into it. So today's topic that we are going to be taking a look into is ladies don't ask for pleasure, they just fake it. So I know from that title, you could kind of think, well, are we going to be going physical? But just let's go a little deeper.

Tracey: 03:33

So ladies don't ask for pleasure, they just fake it. And women don't usually fake pleasure because we're dishonest people. We fake it because honesty hasn't always been welcomed or safe. And because wanting more felt awkward, because asking felt selfish, and because silence so many times for women is just easier. So this episode is about that silence and what it costs women emotionally when their pleasure becomes something to manage instead of something to claim.

Tracey: 04:11

So we're going to name the rule, my friends. We're going to name it out there because pleasure is bigger than sex. Pleasure is joy. It's ease, feeling connected, laughing without bracing, being supported without having to earn it. Pleasure is friendship that fills you up instead of draining you.

Tracey: 04:36

It can even be rest without guilt. And many times women weren't taught how to ask for any of that. We were taught to be grateful, to be flexible, to not make a fuss, to take what's offered and don't ask for anymore. So women don't just fake pleasure in bed. We fake it by being fine in friendships.

Tracey: 05:05

We fake it by being fulfilled in roles that actually exhaust us. And we fake being happy in lives that leave no room for true joy. And then we say things like, Well, I mean, it's not that bad. I shouldn't complain. This is just how it is.

Tracey: 05:24

And that becomes the emotional equivalent of faking it. Because asking for more joy, more support, more connection has been framed as selfish, immature, and frankly unrealistic. And so instead of asking for pleasure, what women instead do is we learn how to endure. So let's talk about the quiet trade that most women are making, often without realizing it. So a lot of times women are trading pleasure for approval.

Tracey: 06:03

Joy for reliability, desire for stability, honesty in the sake of harmony because harmony feels safer than truth when you've learned that truth disrupts things. So women become the glue, the steady one, the easy one, the one who doesn't need much. But inside, inside something goes so, so quiet. And it's not loud. Sometimes you might even be missing it.

Tracey: 06:36

And why this is so disorienting. This is why when women finally find themselves in spaces where pleasure is allowed, where joy is encouraged, and where support is mutual, where someone asks, What do you want? Their nervous system doesn't celebrate right away. It freezes. Because wanting was never the skill they were taught.

Tracey: 07:02

We were taught to adapt. And that's why I didn't understand for a long time. I didn't understand that. I thought pleasure was something private, something personal, and something you figured out quietly without inconveniencing anyone else. And I didn't realize how rarely women are actually invited into pleasure, emotional pleasure, relational pleasure, the pleasure of being met until I was sitting in a room where someone asked me what I wanted.

Tracey: 07:37

But here's where it went further than it ever has in my life, and they actually waited for the answer even when I didn't have one. So I want to tell you why I showed up to my women's circle in the first place because it actually had nothing to do with sex. And so I thought about it for a while. I had seen some advertising here in town and y'all, I'm so blessed with the women's circle I have. Man, some of you are going to be jealous and you should be because this is utopia.

Tracey: 08:11

This is how it should be among women, not pitted against each other. So I didn't go and join a women's circle because I was lonely. I joined because I was tired. I was tired of fighting. I was tired of advocating.

Tracey: 08:32

I was tired of standing up for things that mattered to me in my work and in my life and being told I was making things messy. I'm too much. You just like to stir it up, don't you? But the thing was, all I was doing was pushing back against situations that didn't sit right in my body, things that I disagreed with and things that felt misaligned with my values. And instead of being heard, I was being managed.

Tracey: 09:03

And that kind of exhaustion hits differently. This is not burnout exhaustion. It is numbness, full numbness that comes from constantly having to justify your integrity. And inside, I felt flat, disconnected. I felt like all my energy was going towards explaining why something mattered instead of actually living a life that felt good.

Tracey: 09:32

And what I wanted, or at least what I thought I wanted, was connection. I wanted safety. I wanted a ritual, a place where I didn't have to defend myself just to exist. So I joined a women's circle. And I'll be honest, I really in the beginning, I really did think I was joining for friendship and maybe some support.

Tracey: 09:55

And maybe even a place to talk and feel a little less alone. But y'all, what I got was something I didn't even have language for yet. Because I walked into a room of women and I sat down in a circle, and I made eye contact with these women who didn't interrupt me. They didn't rush me. They didn't try to fix me or reframe me or make it more positive.

Tracey: 10:27

Y'all, they listened. And then they changed my life when they asked a question that I was completely unprepared for. And they said, What do you want? And y'all, I had no idea. And I'm not saying this in a cute way or do I go, Oh, give me a second.

Tracey: 10:49

Let me think. I do know, but how do I say? I genuinely did not know. And what surprised me most wasn't that I didn't have an answer. It was that no one made that a problem.

Tracey: 11:03

They didn't fill the silence. They didn't suggest answers. And they didn't tell me what I should want. They just let the question sit. And circle after circle, something started to shift for me.

Tracey: 11:20

And at first, all I could name was what I didn't want. I don't want to keep shrinking. I don't want to keep explaining myself. I don't want to keep apologizing for having an opinion, and I don't want to feel numb in my own life. Slowly, that started to change.

Tracey: 11:43

And what came next wasn't some perfectly formed dream or vision. It really was a lot quieter than that. It was a lot smaller than that. But I started saying what I did want. I want to take up space.

Tracey: 11:56

I want to trust myself. I want to say what I think without bracing for a backlash, and I want to try the things that scare me. And instead of being told to calm down or be realistic, I was met with one simple response from these beautiful, amazing women. And what they said was, then go do the damn thing. And so I did.

Tracey: 12:30

And sometimes it went horribly. I came back to the circle in tears more than once, not embarrassed and not like ashamed. But you know what I was? I was held. And no one said, Man, you failed.

Tracey: 12:46

I guess you shouldn't have tried that. No one told me, You should have known better. They clapped. They told me I was brave. And they reminded me that trying matters.

Tracey: 12:59

And when things did go the way I hoped, when I made hard, terrifying life changes, They celebrated me like it mattered because it did. And that's when it hit me. This experience with other women was pleasure. And it wasn't I'm not sexualizing it here. It was the pleasure of being fully alive.

Tracey: 13:30

The pleasure of being seen without performing, the pleasure of being supported while stepping into my damn power and the pleasure of not having to fake being fine. I didn't manage myself in that space. I didn't shrink and I didn't fake contentment because you couldn't. Because for the first time in a long time, someone actually wanted to know what I wanted, and they were willing to stand with me while I figured it out. Pretty amazing, right?

Tracey: 14:03

I told you all you were going to be jealous. And if you got a women's circle in your town, find the right one and you can send me your thank you in an email. I would love to hear that. So there is an emotional cost of faking it. So here's what that experience showed me and what I think a lot of women never get the chance to see.

Tracey: 14:23

So faking pleasure isn't just about sex. It's about learning to stay quiet when something doesn't feel right. It's about managing yourself so other people stay comfortable. And it's about performing okayness when inside something is shutting down. Because when you spend years advocating, explaining, standing up, and being told you're too much, you don't just get tired, you get careful.

Tracey: 14:54

And you start asking things like, Is this worth the pushback? Is this worth the long explanation I'm going to have to spell out? Is this worth the fallout? And eventually, a lot of women silence themselves because it's just easier. So then women, we just decide I'm going to fake being satisfied.

Tracey: 15:17

I'm going to fake being fulfilled and I am definitely going to fake being fine. And y'all, I love social media. My business relies on social media. But if you want to see women faking it, scroll on through. There are so many times where I'm like, we all lying.

Tracey: 15:33

We are faking it. So naming what we're feeling has always felt costly. And over time, that cost adds up and it shows up as numbness, not as disconnection, but as that quiet feeling of I don't feel like myself anymore. And that's what happens when your needs have been treated like inconveniences for too long. So what I want to look at next is what that women's circle gave me wasn't answers.

Tracey: 16:06

It gave me permission. I was given permission to not know. I was given permission to want slowly. And I was given permission to start with what I don't want. And that was enough for that moment.

Tracey: 16:19

I didn't have to be positive. I didn't have to change my words instantly, be like, No, what I want is, I don't know what I want. And that's when pleasure stopped being something I tried to access and it started becoming something I experienced. Because pleasure, in its truest sense, my friends, it isn't about getting it right. It's about being alive.

Tracey: 16:39

It's about feeling safe enough to speak, being supported when you try, being held when you fail, and being celebrated when you succeed. That kind of pleasure doesn't require performance. All it requires is presence. And that is often the shift that happens in this season of life. Women stop asking, How do I keep the peace?

Tracey: 17:02

And instead, we start asking what actually feels good to live inside. Not flashy good, not impressive good, honest good. And once you've tasted that, I'm telling you, once you've tasted it even once, faking it starts to feel unbearable because now you know what's possible. So let's look at the part of history we were never shown. So here's something most women really are never taught.

Tracey: 17:25

For most of history, women's emotional pleasure was not considered important or even relevant. Women weren't expected to feel fulfilled. They were expected to function. And life was about survival, duty, obedience, and service. We don't have time for joy, rest, self expression, or even asking, Does this feel good to me?

Tracey: 17:48

And women were valued for what they provided. So labor, care, children, stability, emotional regulation for everyone else. But their own emotional needs were rarely centered. There was no cultural permission for women to want ease, joy, spaciousness, safety, choice, a voice that didn't need defending. And so emotional pleasure, feeling supported, seen, delighted, connected, that was a luxury few women were allowed.

Tracey: 18:25

And so women learned something from that. They learned how to endure. They learned how to tolerate lives that didn't nourish them, how to find meaning in sacrifice, how to normalize exhaustion, and how to confuse duty with fulfillment. And because asking for emotional pleasure wasn't modeled or rewarded, silence became the norm. You don't ask for joy.

Tracey: 18:47

You accept what you're given. And you don't question whether a life felt good. You questioned whether you were being grateful enough. And that history still lives in us. It didn't disappear.

Tracey: 19:01

It lives on when women feel guilty for wanting more ease, when they apologize for needing to rest, when they downplay loneliness or dissatisfaction, and when they say I should be happy instead of I'm not. And it lives on when women fake being fine because emotionally women were taught that wanting more than survival was indulgent. And this matters now and it matters so much when women reach midlife and feel unsettled. We have done what we were taught to do. We have shown up.

Tracey: 19:39

We have been responsible. We held everything together. And then suddenly one day you realize, I don't know what brings me joy. I don't know what feels nourishing. I don't know what I want emotionally.

Tracey: 19:55

And that awareness is often the first doorway into pleasure. Because the truth is women do not fail to create emotionally fulfilling lives. We were never shown how. And this season of life is often the first time women stop surviving and start asking what it would feel like to actually enjoy being alive. So let's reframe this together, my friends.

Tracey: 20:23

This is why this season of life feels so unsettling for so many women and also why it feels unavoidable. Dissatisfied, and it's not that you stopped being numb enough to tolerate what never nourished you. This is the season where endurance wears thin, where pretending gets expensive, and where faking fines starts to cost more than telling the truth ever did. So this is the first time that we're not asking, How do I keep going? We start asking things like, Do I even like the life I'm living inside?

Tracey: 20:57

And y'all, that question can feel terrifying, not because it's wrong, because once you've asked it, you can't unask it. Right? Because once you experience emotional pleasure, real pleasure, you start experiencing things like being listened to without interruption, being supported without strings attached, being encouraged instead of managed, being celebrated instead of tolerated. And the absence of those things becomes impossible to ignore. Because something is happening, you are going through an awakening.

Tracey: 21:34

You are craving more because your system finally knows what nourishment feels like. So if this were allowed to be said, and I'm not talking about a polished language, no Instagram caption language, real language, the kind that might feel awkward in your mouth at first, this is what it would sound like to yourself. I'm not actually enjoying my life the way I want to. Maybe a little deeper. I've been surviving for a long time, and I'm tired.

Tracey: 22:08

Maybe you say it to someone who's safe, I don't want to keep pretending I'm fine when I'm not. Maybe with some honesty, I want more joy, more support, and more room to be myself. And then if you're stepping into that ownership, it's going to sound like I'm allowed to want a life that feels good to live in, not just one that works. And once again, you don't have to say them out loud. You don't have to explain.

Tracey: 22:36

You don't have to have that conversation today. Just letting yourself hear those statements matters. So let's do our reflection and wrap it up today, friends. So don't go instantly into, Okay, so what do I need to change, Tracy? We just want to sit with this for a little bit and think on it.

Tracey: 22:57

Where in my life have I been faking being okay? And what does emotional pleasure actually feel like in my body? Not in theory, but in practice. And when was the last time I felt supported without having to earn it or explain myself? And what have I been telling myself to tolerate that actually drains me?

Tracey: 23:20

And what do I already know I don't want anymore, even if I'm not ready to name what I do want yet? And please, if these questions bring up discomfort, grief, anger, relief, confusion, that's perfect because you're not being ungrateful. It means you're listening. And listening is often where pleasure begins. So here's what I want to leave you with.

Tracey: 23:46

Women didn't start faking pleasure because we're dishonest human beings. We started faking because for a very long time, being honest didn't feel safe emotionally, relationally, or socially. We have learned how to survive. We have learned how to adapt, and we have learned how to endure. But we're in a different season now of womanhood, and it asks a different question.

Tracey: 24:11

It asks, do you actually like the way this feels to live? Emotional pleasure, joy, connection, support, safety being seen is not a luxury, and it is not a bonus you earn after everyone else is taken care of, and it is definitely not something you age out of. It is your right to want a life that feels nourishing, to say what drains you and what fills you up, and to stop faking fine just to keep the peace. What you're asking for is something real, and you're choosing not to fake it anymore. You're choosing to listen to yourself even if it changes things.

Tracey: 24:57

And that's you finally honoring your own aliveness. And that is the most unladylike thing of all. Thanks for joining me today for that's not very ladylike. If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice. And help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at that hormone girl.

Tracey: 25:33

And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.