So, I’ve been trawling Quora lately and have been absolutely gobsmacked by the amount of people that ask “what turns a woman on?”, “how can I make my g/f wet?”, “how can I make my girl relax and enjoy sex more?”. These are genuine questions, but I can only wonder why they’re directing their answers to the interwebz and not their partners themselves. If you want to know what turns someone on, ask them.
Photo Credit: Joseph Hancock
Now I know that this can be a tricky conversation to have, but it really doesn’t have to be an awkward “sit down - we need to talk” one. Here are some pointers for finding out what your female partner does/doesn’t want you to do:
- Take it slowly – hold your horses, take a few deep breaths and take everything very slowly at first. For example, don’t try to dive straight into fingering her without making sure she’s ready – make sure you take plenty of time to kiss her, touch her, run your hands over her body. Don’t just jump in and expect her to love it. If you try to penetrate her (with a finger/toy/penis) while she’s ‘dry’, it’ll be uncomfortable for the both of you and she’s less likely to want to take it any further.
- ‘Check-in’ with her - While you’re going down on her/fingering her/playing with her nipples – whatever it is you’re doing – ask her if it feels okay, if she wants it faster/harder/slower/softer and be guided by her responses. We don’t expect you to be experts on how to turn us on, and most women appreciate the opportunity to give feedback and feel they’re in control (to some extent!).
- Practice what you preach – tell her what feels good for you, things you’d like to try etc. and she’s likely to follow your lead. Once you start opening up the lines of communication, you might be surprised by the kinds of things that start coming out of her mouth.
- Conversation Killers - NEVER start the conversation with “So, I saw them do this thing in some porn I watched….”. Unless you know she’s into porn or happy for you to watch porn, avoid this one. It’s a sure-fire way to kill the mood.
- Post-play - After you’re finished fooling around/having sex, have a bit of a de-brief. You’ll be be relaxed and (hopefully) sexually satisfied, the bonding & feel-good hormones (oxytocin & dopamine) will be bounding around, so it’s a great time to improve lines of communication. Ask her what she enjoyed, what she wants to try again, if there’s anything else she’s interested in trying. Ask her specific questions about things you want feedback on, and make sure you take it on board for next time.
So these pointers are more about 'how to find out what turns her on', rather than 'how to turn her on' - I'll do another blog entry about things that COMMONLY turn women on, but obviously it's always preferable to find out from the woman herself rather than a blanket approach!
P.S. - If you haven't checked out Quora, you definitely should. It's basically a question-and-answer community and has an amazing and extensive sex/sexuality section. Get onto it. & while you're at it, follow me: http://www.quora.com/Giverny-Lewis.
What always surprises me is that so much of this stuff is so common sense in retrospect. Like, i'm not the world's greatest lover but i think the reason i've never had much trouble at all in satisfying my partner/s in the bedroom is that i'm very receptive and communicative when it comes to stuff like this. How is that not obvious? Every person is different so if you use that as a baseline instead of "one sexual approach fits all" i think it's not hard at all to have good all sides satisfied sex most of the time.
ReplyDeleteOne thing i might add to this though, is that in my personal experience, while i've always been forthcoming about finding out what my partner likes, i think alot of girls are guilty of thinking that the only thing a guy needs to enjoy sex is a naked woman and somewhere to stick his dick. In my last relationship my partner never failed to have at least one orgasm per sexy time, yet in a 5 month relationship, i climaxed all of......7? Or 8 times? I think one small issue is that the negative perception that all men want is sex and that's all they need, precludes alot of women from genuinely caring about what turns on their male sexual partners and so as a result, at least some men are probably not very sexually satisfied even though they pretend to be. Hell,i started making up excuses why i couldn't climax and even faked it a couple of times...
Thanks for such an awesome comment! Very honest :)
ReplyDeleteThere's definitely a misconception that men are dick-centric, orgasm-focused and easily pleased. And with women always being the 'gatekeepers to sex' (ie - they decide when, how and how often) this is often used against men and women often sit/lie back and think "show me what you can do - you need to impress me".
While it's important to stress to men that women have sexual needs/desires, it's just as important for men to be empowered to ask for what they need & want.
Ideally, both partners would be communicating about what feels or doesn't feel good, what they're interested in trying, and negotiating an array of sexual experiences.
This has definitely given me a lot of food for thought & I look forward to writing another blog entry about the other side of all this. There's been a great book writing by Bettina Arndt called 'What Men Want in Bed' which is an incredible illustration of this - lots of diary entries from men talking about what they really want from their female lovers. Worth a read, if you're interested! I might feature an excerpt on the blog :)
Sounds really interesting. I find it somewhat frustrating that like you mentioned, alot of attention seems to focus on how women are sexually dissatisfied and that men don't do enough etc etc and yet, like you mentioned, men aren't the only ones who need to impress. It's kinda sad cause i think that alot of girls/women aren't trying to do much cause whilst it's become okay and perhaps even tacitly accepted to mock men's sexual prowess or lack thereof (i.e talking about whether or not size matters, what he does or doesn't do to get a woman in the mood and his stamina) it's seen almost as sexual blasphemy to say that alot of women don't know much about how to have good sex in general. I think of it like this. If a man can't help his girlfriend have an orgasm a common line of reasoning is that's cause he's not trying hard enough, or doesn't care enough to find out what she wants/is selfish. But a man having an orgasm? That's your own damn problem guys!
ReplyDeleteI really hope this isn't coming across as a woman hating rant. It's really not meant to be like that. I just think that the mainstream discourse on sex has almost exclusively focused on women's needs cause for so long it's been one of the main intersections for gender issues and feminist thought and so has almost become a sexual tug of war, a proxy battlefield for qualifying or valuing one sex's sexual needs/preferences over the other. It doesn't have to be like that though. Great sex happens when you stop looking at man/woman, man/man, woman/woman and start focusing on two individuals and what they bring to the table in terms of sexual preferences/experiences.
Just my two cents. Or 10?
BOOM! Whoever this anon is, you're my hero!
ReplyDeleteI'll be writing a blog on female orgasm, and one of my main points is: ladies, it's up to you to make you cum.
How can we expect men to make women cum when they don't even have lady parts to practice on? We've got all the time in the world, so we should be exploring our bodies, finding out what works and what doesn't, then communicating this with our partner in a respectful and honest way. It's not about criticising or lecturing, it's about working together. No one's orgasm is more important or better than the other, and we need to move away from stereotypical, patriarchal notions of men's virility and sexual power. (sometimes they need some looking after too. & no, it doesn't make them 'less-than')
You do know me, but i (perhaps perversely) enjoy being unidentified in this case as i feel like i could be anyone who's interested in sex and its politics/social dynamics. It's just fun to debate and discuss :)
ReplyDelete