This week’s sex tip offers a playful way to teach your partner what kinds of sexual touch you like, and what kinds you’re not so hot on. Nothing in our sexual response is set in stone, so don’t think of this as writing the definitive story on what you like. It’s more of a way to open up a line of communication often shut down by embarrassment and fear.
The Set Up
There are so many things we don’t share with our partners about our sexual feelings. We might be embarrassed to disclose a sexual desire for fear of being rejected, laughed at, or told we’re perverted. We might not tell a partner that we prefer one kind of touch or activity to another for fear of hurting their feelings. We all do this at times. Not telling a partner that you’d rather them go faster or slower, a little to the left or a little to the right, isn’t the end of the world. But it’s a silence where we all lose out. If you’re in a long term relationship and have established patterns of being sexual with each other, it can seem especially hard to break that pattern by saying you do or don’t like something new. This sex tip offers a fun way to do just that.
The Exercise
The exercise is simple. Pick a time when you have (ideally) a few hours of uninterrupted time and privacy. Pick a place you’re both comfortable physically and a setting where you can both get as naked as you want to be. You’re going to take turns touching each other. You begin by touching any part of your partner’s body. Stroke their hair, offer a back massage, move in right for a handjob, whatever. Your partner takes a minute or two to feel your touch and then has to say one of six words: “stop,” “slower,” “faster,” “softer,” “harder,” or “keep going”. If they say stop, then you switch and your partner begins to touch you. If they say any of the other words, you need to do what they ask. You go for five minutes, and then switch (yes, even if you’re almost “there”, you must switch at five minutes!)
The point of this sex tip isn’t to help you find each others “perfect” way of being touched. There’s no such thing as a touch that’s always perfect. It might be frustrating that you only have four words to choose from, but the game is designed to make you more aware of the limits you put on yourself and your mutual sexual pleasure by not talking at all. It’s also meant to make the mechanics of sexual touch more like a game, just for the time being.
Try to do this for at least three turns each. Once you’re done, you may want to keep having sex. Whether you do or don’t, at some point later on, talk about how it felt both to give such structured feedback to your partner and also to hear the feedback. Did you feel bad when you’re partner said stop? We’re you surprised at the times when they wanted faster or slower touch? Are there things you learned doing this that you think will change the way you both give and receive sexual touch?
As always, try to have fun!