I was at a party once and someone found out what I do. Usually people get wide-eyed and smile and ask me if we have buttplugs (“Yes, duh.”), but every once in a while I meet someone like this guy. “Oh so you think you know more about sex than I do?“ It was an oddly confrontational statement based on nothing other than my blog description, but I remained polite. I explained “I just think that people don’t think about sex as something that requires effort too often,” to which he replied “Who are you to tell me I don’t know what I’m doing?“ Obvious insecure male is obvious.
Sex is something that is sadly too often treated as something that people can naturally do well. Sex, like any other activity, requires everything that every other “talent” requires; practice, energy, experimentation and enthusiasm. Too often do men default to the caveman-esque mindset of “I WILL PENETRATE YOU AND YOU WILL CUM”, when in fact that isn’t the case for most people. Sure you may ejaculate, and sure there are naturals in every field, but they are viewed as genius for a good reason — they can do something naturally that most people have to work towards.
I had sex with someone semi-recently who acted like a wet fish gasping for breath as it lay on the sand of a deserted beach waiting for death. It was all very bland — kiss kiss suck, kiss kiss lick, kiss kiss are we done yet? Granted chemistry plays a role as well, but at the end of the day you can chose to have fun with something you are doing or you can chose not to, and in this instance he chose the latter. The problem here isn’t that he specifically chose not to, but rather that we as a society aren’t trained to think of sex as something that requires extra thought, much less that we can train ourselves to improve.
WHAT! Are you saying I am bad in bed?! No.
HEY NOW, just because I didn’t get your picky ass off doesn’t mean I am a boring lover!! Maybe so.
Well aren’t you the one that says that everyone is different and people like different things?! Absolutely.
But the problem is that people aren’t engaging their partner or themselves when they are in bed with someone. That is a blanket statement of course and if you and your partner are having great sex then you are having great sex! But so many people are wrought with thoughts and feelings that inhibit their ability to truly appreciate sex to the fullest — a lack of connection with their partner, no communication, insecurities, the list goes on.
A customer opened up to me last week while we were trying to figure out why he was having so much trouble bottoming and admitted that he couldn’t do the things that he sees in porn. This is a common thought that many people share, and my response is always the same. Porn is porn, not real life. Porn is supposed to be a tool to entice your fantasies, and like any fantasy tool it is not always based on tangible situations. Sure the guys in the flick look like they’re having a wonderful time, but they are also being paid a lot of money to contort their bodies in those often very uncomfortable positions.
There is a short checklist that I give people when they seem to have problems being happy in the bedroom. It’s an easy checklist to remember and if you can answer the various points then you are on your way to improving your sex.
What do I want?
What does he want?
How do we get it?
You are in bed with somebody, not at somebody. If you want to have as good a time as you can, it is your responsibility to be brave and speak up about what it is that makes you feel good. It’s your partner’s job to do the same, but it also behooves you to ask “What can I do to make you feel good?”
Communicate with your partner. It’s super important, and will yield nearly immediate results every time. But most importantly, drop your baggage and communicate with yourself.
What is holding you back?
What do you want to try?
Why have you waited this long to tell someone “I want you to make me smile”?
