Written by Precious Nwosu
Just like I do before writing any piece, I typed “safe sex” into Google’s search bar and as if in a race, widely cited definitions popped up on my screen within seconds. Wikipedia defined it as sexual activity using protective methods or contraceptive devices (such as condoms) to reduce the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially HIV. Although it was a textbook definition, it was nonetheless thoroughly researched. Up next was Health Direct, which explained safe sex (sometimes called safer sex) as when you and your partner have sexual contact whilst protecting yourselves against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unplanned pregnancies. They, however, went further, noting that safe sex also requires consent and attention to physical safety. Health Direct’s explanation was well-researched and received extra credit.
These framings are repeated constantly for good reason: they are life-saving, indispensable, and urgently necessary. The manual you might read out to your prying teenager or a student in biology class.
But…but is that all? Is that the entirety of safe sex? The whole story?
The Missing Piece in the Definition
These definitions focus almost entirely on physical risk: the safety of the womb, recommended condoms (made of latex or polyurethane, not natural materials), the importance of avoiding douching after sex, regular pap tests, and limiting your sexual activity to only one partner. And while these guidelines are essential for health, they rarely address how sex feels emotionally or psychologically.
Such neglect raises the question: If sex can be physically “safe” and still feel coercive, anxiety-producing, or diminishing, what’s missing from the conversation?
Safety Isn’t Just Physical: It’s Emotional, Relational, and Situational
When women say they want to feel safe in bed, they’re often speaking in a language that doesn’t quite exist yet. The phrase comes up frequently in interviews, therapy rooms, and private conversations, but it’s seldom examined in public discourse. What women mean by safety extends beyond consent frameworks into emotional terrain that’s familiar to them but largely absent from public discussion. The responses of these women confirm it:
(All names are changed for security reasons). Yemi, a recent graduate and a single mother, explains, “My understanding of what ‘safe sex’ means has evolved over time. Earlier, what safe sex meant to me was from a risk-based perspective (STIs, pregnancy, physical harm, or abuse). Now, safe sex extends and becomes less about protection and more about permission. Permission to want, permission to pause, permission to speak, permission to feel and even permission to abstain when needed.”
For Aminat, a wife and mother, emotional security and being desired are central to feeling safe: “When it comes to sex, there are lots of factors to be considered. Like the mood and ambience, the level of affection and attraction matters as well. Knowing that you’re attracted to your partner and your partner is also attracted to you gives room for sex. Being desired is a top-tier safety.”
For Hafsat, a project manager, safety translates to being her authentic self: “Safe sex requires my comfort, needs, and wants; my choices whether to use protection or not; my ability to scream; not having multiple partners; and being okay with being naked. That defines safe sex for me, not having to hide who I am sexually also.”
“I Didn’t Want to Ruin the Mood”: Why Asking for Safety Feels So Hard
Even when women know what makes them feel safe, asking for it can feel risky. Safety often comes with a cost: the fear of being labelled “complicated” or of killing the mood. Many women suppress their needs to appear easygoing or desirable, prioritising their partners’ comfort over their own. Studies explain this pattern: in heterosexual relationships, the partner who suppresses their desires and feelings to enhance another’s well-being is predominantly the woman. This phenomenon is also prevalent in the bedroom. But is the safety women ask for really attainable, or is it “if wishes were horses”—a dream tucked deep in the heart?
Yemi meditates on this dynamic: “There’s this unspoken rule of enduring discomfort or agreeing to things before I’m ready just to be tagged as an easygoing or desirable person. I rarely ask for as much safety as I want from my sexual partners because it can be tagged as being “complicated” or “killing the mood”.
24-year-old Tee, a writer, frames the issue as emotional labour: “Men usually do not genuinely care about your feelings before, during, and after sex. Most times, they are occupied with how they feel, what they want and how quick it can happen. Telling them how you feel, since it doesn’t matter, is pointless.”
At times, seeking safety requires defying an ingrained belief that a man’s desire should take precedence over a woman’s comfort. We see that in 23-year-old Ann’s sexual experiences with men:
“I have never been in danger while having sex; however, I don’t think I’ve ever relaxed wholly, even when they reassure me. For me to feel safe enough or relaxed, I need to have the assurance that I don’t actually owe a man sex. Like he wouldn’t see me some other way when I don’t want to. But unfortunately, I still put a man’s need over mine, even if it’s for a minute. Because, somewhere in my mind, I think I owe them sex.”
And also in Gift’s highlighted experience: “I wanted to do things to the first person I had sex with. I ended up doing everything he likes even though I didn’t enjoy it and it affected our sex life so much that I started faking orgasms. I was not relaxed in that relationship. I still regret it today, but I’ve learned. If I don’t like something a partner is doing or I am not comfortable with it, I stop.”
What Safety Looks Like In Practice (According To Some Women)
When women talked about feeling safe in sexual encounters, they rarely described grand gestures. Instead, safety shows up in small, specific moments, in how a partner responded to hesitation, how boundaries were received, and whether reassurance felt genuine rather than procedural.
Gift was able to describe a specific sexual experience where she felt safe both physically and emotionally: “It was with the last guy I had sex with almost two years ago. I was comfortable with him because we connected sexually and he was easy to talk to. I would suggest positions that I wanted to try out, and he would go with them. I think that’s what made our sex very good compared to the ones I’ve had before him. He made me realise that I wasn’t the one with issues when it comes to getting wet; I had just been with the wrong people. I was soaked and ready for him and I didn’t have to rely on lube or anything. I was free to tell him what I liked and what was working and he listened. He wasn’t selfish and he put me first.”
What Gift describes is not performance or chemistry alone, but the physical consequences of feeling safe: a body responding without pressure, self-doubt, or fear of being dismissed.
Hafsat described safety not through what happened during sex, but through what no longer needed to be asked for: “I need to be wanted, even more often than I want my partner. It makes me comfortable and enjoy the sex more. I have gotten to the point of not needing to ask for it; if I don’t feel like having sex, it’s enough to not do it (for both of us).”
Conclusion
As the popular saying goes, if you want to know the road, ask those who walk it. In other words, nothing about us without us. It’s with that knowledge I gathered women to hear directly from them, not through hearsay or cultural assumptions, but from the source itself, to understand what safety feels like beyond the familiar rhetoric of protection and physical risk.
Their accounts do not encompass all women’s experiences, nor do they claim to. Far from that, actually. But they reveal something essential: that safety, when it exists, is felt emotionally, psychologically, bodily, and physically. And without this kind, even though physically protected, safety is rarely inhabited.
