Why some women ignore sexual discomfort and settle for bad sex

Women aren’t just more likely to experience consensual sex that’s bad and painful; they are also socialised to prioritise men’s pleasure over their own.

By Kellie Scott

Amelia*, 38, recently told her long-term boyfriend she experiences pain during sex.

He asked, “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I did tell him the times it was unbearable … but there were times where the pain wasn’t ‘that bad’ so I endured it,” Amelia says.

“His question made me question myself as to why I hadn’t said anything.”

Amelia says she realised she felt a “looming threat” to keep him satisfied.

“Luckily my boyfriend is amazing, and he was very understanding. It’s such a shame that as women we grow up with and deal with this garbage.”

Women aren’t just more likely to experience consensual sex that’s bad, painful and unsatisfying, they are also socialised to prioritise men’s pleasure over their own, explains sex and relationship therapist Lisa Torney.

And those messages begin as early as childhood.

“My mother, when she would serve food, would always serve more food to men. Right from the start there is almost this ‘Your needs are greater than mine’.

“It’s this subtle social messaging throughout our lives that then turns into sexual messaging.”

Women ignoring discomfort and not prioritising their own pleasure is at the heart of many sexual issues.

So how can we unpack these issues to have healthier, more meaningful relationships and better sex?

Bad sex for women vs bad sex for men

Bad sex can look like a lot of different things for women.

Pain, discomfort and fear of being hurt are some, says Ms Torney, referring to 2010 research.

The study, led by feminist psychologist Sara McClelland from the University of Michigan, found men and women imagined a very different “low-end” of a sexual satisfaction scale.

“Female participants described the low end of the scale in extremely negative terms, using terms like ‘depressed’, ’emotionally sad’, ‘pain’, and ‘degradation’. No male participants used terms with this degree of negative affect,” Professor McClelland writes.

Ms Torney says basically for women it’s about protection and pain, whereas for men it’s about “getting it at all” and orgasm.

We also know straight women are much less likely to orgasm through partnered sex than men.

Why women are more likely to experience bad sex

More likely to experience sexual pain

Australian data shows 20.3 per cent of women have experienced painful sex, compared to 2.4 per cent of men.

Jane Ussher is a professor of women’s health psychology at Western Sydney University.

She says sexual pain is more common in the context of penis-vagina penetrative sex, and can arise in the context of lack of lubrication or vaginismus.

Because of a gender inequity in healthcare, helping men have better sex has been a higher priority than for women.

For example, journalist Lili Loofbourow found medical journal PubMed has five times as many clinical trials on male sexual pleasure than it has on female sexual pain.

It’s why so many women with conditions like endometriosis (which can cause painful sex) go undiagnosed.

‘Part of the contract’

Professor Ussher says many women feel having sex is just “part of the contract” in heterosexual relationships.

“A lot of women have sex without desire. A lot of women fake orgasms to pretend to enjoy it,” she says.

Women are also socialised to not hurt men’s feelings, says Ms Torney.

Ella*, 29, says she used to find speaking up in the bedroom difficult.

“I would occasionally mention [what I liked or didn’t like] to past partners but wasn’t firm about it so sometimes would just drop it.

“We’re told not to speak up and keep things to ourselves, especially for our partner’s sake.”

In cases of sexual violence, women may also not feel safe to say no to sex.

“Men are less likely to be subjected to that kind of violence,” Professor Ussher says.

Lack of education and shame

Not only are we not taught about pleasure as part of our sex education growing up, women are often told their first time will hurt.

“This is often how vaginismus starts for some people,” says Ms Torney.

“That’s heavy social messaging right there that can lead to a condition as debilitating and painful.”

She says women need to learn about their bodies and what feels good.

“There is lots [of information] about male genitalia and their health, less so about women.”

Ella says she was never taught her own pleasure mattered, or encouraged to explore her own body — two things that held her back during those early sexual experiences.

“Female sexuality and pleasure has been swept under the rug for centuries, so having any type of sexual urge or desire is often met with guilt, shame or a dirty feeling.”

Sex as a performance

Professor Ussher says there is an expectation for women to be sexy for men.

This “sex is a performance” messaging is reinforced through pornography, for example.

“The idea of your own desire within you, what you want, is really quite absent.”

She says men are also harmed by these representations; for example, the idea that sex should last a long time can lead to performance anxiety and erectile dysfunction.

Learning to prioritise our own pleasure

There are several things women can do to learn how to prioritise their own pleasure.

Masturbate

When Ella began to masturbate, she learnt more about what turned her on.

“So I wasn’t willing to just let things slide and accept that is how sex is like.

“It felt great, I felt more confident and I realised what I had been missing and never wanted to go back to that.”

Professor Ussher says learning about your own body and what feels good is important.

Widening your definition of sex can also help.

Professor Ussher works with patients who have been impacted by cancer and says when penetrative sex is off the table it leads to other enjoyable experiences.

“Massaging each other, mutual masturbation — they often say sex is better than ever.”

Janelle*, 27, says after years of feeling pressured to have sex with her ex-boyfriend, which was painful for her, she reframed her understanding of intimacy.

“It doesn’t always mean that it has to be sex. There are many, many other ways of showing this between two people.”

Talk to your partner

While it’s not easy, Ms Torney says talking to your sexual partner is important.

“Talk about what you find pleasurable and what you don’t — have an open conversation about the real nitty gritty.”

Ella is married now and says she really enjoys her sex life.

“I learned that communication is vital, and you need to be upfront with your partner, no matter what.

“Tell them — or even better, show them — what you like so there’s no disappointment or resentment.

“A good partner will always listen and want to make sure you’re satisfied.”

Outsource some help

Ms Torney also recommends seeking professional support, whether it’s therapy or from your GP. You can also chat to your peers.

“Ask friends how they talk about things. Talking about it is what will make it easier.

“Because we build this stuff up as awkward and embarrassing, then not talking about it just makes it worse.”

Prioritising your pleasure is worth it, she says, because everyone will benefit from women having better sex.

“Everyone can benefit when sex lives are improved, which includes people of all gender expressions.

“We need to be mindful of our partners’ sexual needs and enjoyment and ensure we check in with them during sexual encounters to make sure things feel OK.”

*Names changed for privacy.

Complete Article HERE!

Your brain on masturbation

Let’s get some things straight about auto-euroticism.

by Tibi Puiu

Like all things taboo, there are a lot of myths and speculation surrounding masturbation and its effects on the human body.

There’s even a global movement called #nofap, whose followers (mostly men) are abstaining from masturbation in order to reap supposed health benefits, such as enhanced mood, energy, and self-esteem.

While there is still much to learn about how our bodies react to the chemicals and hormones released during sexual release, there are quite a lot of physical and psychological benefits to masturbation, supported by evidence-based science. Most researchers who study sexual health concur that masturbation is a healthy and universal behavior in the human sexual repertoire.

Masturbation releases feel-good hormones that boost your mood

During masturbation, the brain releases a number of hormones, the most important being dopamine. Also known as the “happiness hormone”, dopamine is heavily involved in the brain’s reward system. Along with oxytocin, a hormone that improves social bonding, dopamine also improves mood and satisfaction.

Other hormones that are released during sexual release also include endorphins, testosterone, and prolactin. These have roles in reducing stress, increasing arousal, and boosting immune system function.

However, it’s yet unclear how these ‘feel good’ hormones differ based on the various forms of sexual release involved (sex vs masturbation or sex with a long-term partner vs sex with a short-term partner).

“I don’t think the science can answer this yet. It appears that the same types of hormones are released but I think it would be very hard to ever say whether or not they are always released in the same quantity, ratio, or in the same way, regardless of the method to orgasm,” Heather Armstrong, Lecturer in Sexual Health at the Department of Psychology at the University of Southampton in the UK, told ZME Science.

“In terms of outcomes, I think sex (and masturbation) is so contextual that it’s impossible just to tease out one specific thing (i.e., orgasm) and say that that is the one thing causing good outcomes,” she added.

It alleviates stress and anxiety

During sex, hormones like oxytocin cement pair bonding, which is why it’s also known as the “love hormone”. However, even if you experience sexual release by yourself, the boost of oxytocin is associated with lower cortisol levels (the stress hormone) and relaxation.

You fall asleep faster

Many are aware that using masturbation before bedtime can ease one’s way into slumber. That’s because serotonin, oxytocin, and norepinephrine are released during sexual arousal and orgasm — and all three of these hormones are associated with reductions in stress and boosts in relaxation, which promote sleep.

Masturbation may improve immune function

The hormones serotonin and norepinephrine are known to boost REM and deep non-REM sleep, during which immune system proteins known as cytokines are released. These proteins identify infections and inflammation, thus enhancing protection against pathogens and disease recovery.

And also eases or prevents pain

Thanks to its immune system enhancing effects, orgasms can also ease chronic pain, which is often linked to poor immune function.

In a 2013 study published in the journal Cephalalgia, researchers found that sexual activity relieves pain caused by migraines or cluster headaches in up to a third of patients.

The authors of the study claim that endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, are released during orgasm thus numbing the pain of migraines.

Masturbation isn’t associated with mental illness

Some believe that masturbation can lead to depression in some cases.

At first glance, this doesn’t sound like a ridiculous idea. Like all sexual matters, masturbation is still a taboo topic even in western societies, which have made great strides in the past century in opening up about sex.

Even so, there are many people who have been socialized in religiously strict households and who might feel anxious or guilty when they masturbate as a result.

A 2018 study found that about 62% of male participants who were diagnosed with clinical depression also experienced some form of sexual dysfunction. Among this group, myths about masturbation were prevalent.

However, there is no evidence that suggests masturbation triggers or amplifies depression symptoms. If anything, masturbation should help ease depression thanks to mood-enhancing hormones released post-orgasm.

Low sex drive is a common symptom of depression, and masturbation might help boost it. A 2015 study found that female masturbation enhances sexual satisfaction, and helped women have more orgasms when they had sex with a partner.

Nevertheless, those who feel guilty and very anxious because they masturbate should see a therapist specialized in sexual health.

Masturbation is actually better than sex (for most women)

Sorry to break it to you, guys, but women generally climax quicker and more easily during masturbation than sex. No reason to feel too bad about it though, because it helps both sexes. A 2014 study showed that 35% of women who regularly had orgasms when they had sex also masturbated compared to only 9% of women who could climax regularly during sex but reportedly did not masturbate. As for heterosexual men, 95% climax regularly during sex, according to a 2017 study, regardless of their masturbation habits.

But although studies indicate that self-pleasuring leads to better and more frequent orgasms in relationships, many women believe that their masturbation habits can be perceived as a threat, or even an insult, to their male partner’s sense of sexual prowess. As such, many women refrain from masturbating while in a relationship or avoid proposing the use of sex toys during heterosexual sex with their partners.

This widely held belief was reported by a recent systematic review of hundreds of scientific papers relating to women’s experiences, motives, and perceptions of masturbation, where Dr. Armstrong is a co-author. The review goes on to highlight the most common reasons why women masturbate, including “as a practical alternative when a sexual partner was not around”, “if a woman did not reach orgasm with a partner”, or “as a tool to enhance partnered sex and partnered intimacy”.

Regarding differences between males and females in the positive outcomes for masturbation, Armstrong said: “There is no consensus on whether or not there are significant brain differences between male and females to begin with. Further, because attitudes toward male vs. female masturbation (both individually and socio-culturally) tend to be quite different, it would be nearly impossible to tease out whether there is a “biological” brain difference, or whether any differences (if there are any) were because of other external factors.”

Is masturbation ever harmful?

Like all things, moderation is key. Excessive masturbation can damage relationships when it becomes the sole outlet of sexual expression. Masturbation can also be physically harmful when people experiment with objects that should have no business near their genitals, nevermind inside them.

“There are very few risks associated with masturbation. Skin irritation may be associated with frequent masturbation if adequate lubrication is not used,” Armstrong said.

There are many myths, however, that claim masturbation can cause prostate cancer (false), is addictive (the American Psychological Association doesn’t recognize masturbation as an addiction), is not safe while pregnant (false), that vibrators cause nerve damage (false), lowers sperm count (false, men don’t have a finite amount of sperm), or lowers testosterone (false — the idea dates from Greek and Roman times, but has no scientific evidence to back it up).

A note on porn

In this day and age, masturbation often goes hand in hand with porn usage. While masturbation, in and of itself, is generally healthy and normal, excessive consumption of video pornography can be associated with some negative effects.

Porn use can hijack the brain’s neural wiring, leading to a surge of unnaturally high levels of dopamine that can damage the reward system. Long-term, frequent use of pornography is also associated with sexual dysfunction, lower levels of marital quality and commitment to one’s romantic partner. Some researchers have gone as far as likening porn use to substance abuse.

“It’s very difficult to separate out porn use from masturbation. Also, there could be differences between porn use without masturbation vs. masturbation without porn use vs. porn use with masturbation without orgasm vs. porn use with masturbation including orgasm. I think the jury’s still out as well on the positive and negative effects of porn use. It appears that for the majority of people, porn use is not problematic.  For the minority that do experience problematic porn use, it’s difficult to say whether porn itself leads to problematic use, or if the problematic use is the result (or a side effect) of other factors,” Armstrong said.

Bottom line: Masturbation is a healthy, normal, and very common (universal) form of human sexual behavior. However, sometimes it can have negative effects on mental health if people feel guilty about it, which is why it’s important to normalize it and have conversations about it. Porn use is a different discussion, but in order to reap the full benefits of masturbation, one should stay clear of excessive consumption of pornography.

Complete Article HERE!

How Sex and Masturbation Are Changing in Quarantine

 

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Quarantine has changed our everyday existences, from the workplace to how we consume content to the way we go out and interact with others. The question, however, of ways self-isolation is affecting our sex lives has remained speculative thus far. Because while people have joked about a post-pandemic baby boom and latched onto the idea that everyone is masturbating based on anecdotes and data about sex toy sales being on the rise, it seems as if these beliefs may be completely off-base.

Last month, sex toy company Lora DiCarlo commissioned a study about how quarantine is changing our views on sex and self-pleasure, as “there’s a lot of excitement out there about like, ‘Oh, people are home all the time now, so they must be having a lot of sex. We’re gonna have a baby boom in 9 or 12 months,'” said Sarah Brown, a certified sex educator and the brand’s director of product.

“But people make a lot of assumptions based on just what they think would happen,” she continued, “And we wanted to make sure we understood what’s really happening, so we can help people and consumers with their sex lives.”

According to new data collected by Lora DiCarlo and Persuasium Research, it turns out that for many people, it’s not all masturbation and constant sexual activity. After speaking to 443 men and women, the study found that while half of those surveyed said their sex lives have stayed the same, a third of respondents reported that their sexual relationships were actually in decline. And the big reason why? It’s anxiety.

“What we found was, regardless of gender, a lot of people are really stressed. They’re stressed, they’re anxious, they’re worried about their finances,” said Carey Plunkett, the founder of Persuasium Research. “That’s not really conducive to feeling sexy or feeling aroused.”

“We had quite a few comments about how people aren’t getting dressed up. They aren’t able to get their hair done. They’re eating comfort food, and that’s also not conducive to feeling sexy,” she said, before sharing a few specific quotes from people who explained that “getting heavier,” “sleeping worse,” having too many people in the house, and not having the ability to “get pretty or dressed up” has equaled a “declining sex drive.”

Women in particular have been negatively impacted by the pandemic, with 40% of female respondents saying they were masturbating less now for similar reasons.

“It’s not happening as much for men as it is for women,” she said, before hypothesizing that it could have something to do with the fact that — in between work and having too much going on in the household — women are bearing the brunt of this decline in libido.

“Just in other data I’ve seen, women are the ones doing the cooking, the shopping, the home chores,” she said. “Women are taking care of everyone, and that’s not giving them enough time or energy to take care of themselves.”

Brown further posited that many women are likely feeling drained from all the emotional labor they’re having to do as well, saying that this “invisible labor becomes a lot more visible when it’s layered on top of everything else.”

She went on to refute initial speculation surrounding a baby boom by pointing toward pervasive feelings of anxiety and existential dread as reasons why it’s too soon to say whether or not it’ll actually happen. In the wake of the pandemic, Brown’s friends who were going to try for a baby “pretty much said ‘nope,'” and are “reupping their birth control and being very, very careful.”

“Because they don’t want to get pregnant right now — and not even nine months from now — not knowing what the hospital environment is going to be like,” Brown explained. “That’s the huge question for all of us. Yes, potentially, there’s more people having sex, but we also have a lot of people who are super anxious right now.”

There were also some heartening takeaways from their findings. LGBTQIA+ consumers and those quarantined apart from their partners have been more likely to report better sexual relationships with themselves — something that may explain the data related to an increase in sex toys sales. Brown interpreted this as people using this time to “explore a bit more,” as well as using masturbation to “release stress and tension… for a sense of well-being.”

Both Brown and Plunkett said it makes sense that the LGBTQIA+ community has been masturbating more as a whole, given the trends spotted in their past Sexual Pleasure Study. “LGBTQ+ persons tend to be more comfortable with masturbation than heterosexuals in terms of how they use masturbation,” Plunkett said. “It’s more integrated into their overall health and wellness routines… for stress relief. They just use masturbation more productively and positively for their overall health and wellbeing.”

One of the biggest takeaways has been about how our communication styles surrounding sex and intimacy will likely change thanks to the pandemic. After all, according to the study, live-in partners have been doing more touching that is comforting, rather than sexual — with 40% more hugging and 17% more intimate touches being reported.

“To me, one of the things that get missed on a lot of the studies on sex, sexuality and pleasure is that missing part of intimacy and communication. I thought it was pretty interesting to see in a pandemic situation, where stress is very high, that comfort has come into the conversation,” Brown said, pointing out that couples — many of whom spend their days apart at work — are now together all the time. “In this case, we’re seeing it’s happening in other ways than experiencing pleasure with genitals. I think there’s a lot we can learn on the communication side of sex and relationships here.”

That said, while couples quarantining apart have seen improvements in communication as they’re being forced to keep in touch digitally, Plunkett added that some have felt a lack of intimacy from trying to keep their sex lives alive this way.

“People may be sending more texts, and a lot of them said that they were communicating their sexual fantasies a lot more than they ever have to their partner. There’s more video chat sex,” Plunkett relayed. “But [as one respondent wrote], ‘I miss the touch of my partner, both sexual and for affirmation of closeness. But we have improved our text and phone conversations and have experimented with more sexy selfies which has been fun.'”

Which means that while Brown believes that there’s a lot of positives to be gained from improved communication techniques, nothing will change our intrinsic need for physical contact, as “there’s something very primitive to us as humans when it comes to physical contact and being touch-starved is an absolute thing we’re not necessarily going to get away from.”

She concluded, “The future is basically open, and we don’t really know. But I think there’s a lot of opportunity for people to take skills they learn in quarantine and with different technologies for connecting with people and carrying that forward.”

Complete Article HERE!

Pornography has been linked to easier, better orgasms in women

This study has linked female porn consumption to orgasms that are easier to achieve and more satisfying during both masturbation and partnered sex.

A new study has linked the use of pornography to better sexual outcomes in women.

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  • A new study has linked the use of pornography to better sexual outcomes for women.
  • Researchers had 2,433 women complete an anonymous survey in which they provided both demographic information and completed several assessments related to their sex lives. Both masturbation and partnered sex were taken into account.
  • Studies like this can alter misconceptions about how porn impacts our relationships.

A new study has linked the use of pornography to better sexual outcomes in women. In fact, according to this new research, the use of pornography among women is associated with several positive outcomes including better orgasms that are easier to achieve.

“In this particular study, we examined whether frequency of pornography use during masturbation can predict sexual response outcomes such as difficulty reaching orgasm, latency to orgasm, and orgasmic pleasure during both masturbation and partnered sex,” explains study author Sean M. McNabney.

Will watching porn really make your sex life better?

In this study, researchers had 2,433 women from the United States and Hungary complete an anonymous survey, in which they provided demographic information and completed several assessments related to their sex lives. This study unearthed some very interesting observations that challenge much of the stereotypes and misconceptions people place around female porn viewing habits.

Pornography use is more common in…

Pornography use during masturbation was more common among pre-menopausal women, women who reported persistent anxiety or depression, non-heterosexual women, and women who had two or more partners.

Pornography use during masturbation was also more popular among American women than women from Hungary.

Positive outcomes related to pornography use can include…

More frequent use of pornography was related to positive outcomes during masturbation including less difficulty becoming aroused, less orgasmic difficulty, greater time to orgasm, greater orgasmic pleasure, and a higher percent of time reaching orgasm.

More frequent use of pornography for partnered sex was related to positive outcomes like less difficulty becoming aroused and greater time to orgasm.

Pornography use does not negatively impact relationships as much as many people think.

There was no association between pornography and sexual relationship satisfaction, which challenges the assumption that pornography is harmful to partnered sexual relationships.

More frequent pornography use was not associated with lower sexual responsivity. In fact, pornography use during masturbation predicted great ease becoming aroused during partnered sex.

The missing parameters of this study are important to note.

The study did not assess whether some women perceive themselves as dependent upon (or addicted to) pornography in order to achieve orgasm. This is important to note because distress resulting from pornography use may independently interfere with the female sexual response cycle.

Some other things impacted impaired sexual function in women that are worth taking note of, including lower levels of educational attainment and mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression were also associated with lower relationship/sexual satisfaction.

It’s time to rethink how porn impacts our relationships

It’s more common than ever for women to consume porn. Back in 2016, the average percentage of women who consumed porn was 26 percent worldwide. In 2018, that number was much higher, with 3 out of every 10 PornHub users identifying as female.

While this may be surprising to some, it really shouldn’t be considering the lengths this industry has gone to in order to become inclusive, accepting, and more appealing to people of all genders and sexual orientations.

Visual porn platforms (such as PornHub) are still on top, but not for long.

In 2019, there were over 42 billion visits to PornHub, one of the largest visual porn platforms around. This means there was an average of 115 million visits to the website per day. Their statistics outline that the amount of content available on the site at any given time that year would have taken 169 years to watch.

Other visual pornography platforms have similar statistics, however there is a new kind of porn rising—and it’s captivating the imagination of women, in particular.

Audio porn is offering a more widely accepted, inclusive, and all-encompassing approach to sexual health and happiness.

“Audio porn” has been around for longer than you may realize, with the first phone sex line being launched in 1977 by Gloria Leonard. The 2010s saw a rise in audio porn, with platforms like Quinn and Dipsea breaking onto the pornography scene in a big way. Now, in 2020, platforms like Audiodesires, Voxxx, and more are following suit.

Audio porn offers a more in-depth, immersive, imaginative experience for women who previously found visual sex to be off-putting, offensive, or crude. More than that, it’s making the concept of pornography more “acceptable” and appreciated in mainstream media, with more attention being paid to these new platforms from sources like Yahoo and the New York Times.

Studies like this can alter misconceptions about how porn impacts our relationships.

“Some readers may be relieved to learn that pornography use is fairly common among women and is unlikely to interfere with sexual functioning during partnered relationships. Other variables such as ongoing anxiety/depression or sexual relationship dissatisfaction appear to more consistently predict sexual problems,” said McNabney.

Complete Article HERE!

It’s Time to Solve All That Sexual Frustration You’re Feeling

No more pent-up dissatisfaction.

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No matter your relationship status—whether you’re trying to reap the benefits of being single or find yourself in a marriage that’s lacking intimacy—feeling sexually frustrated is no fun, nor is it something to ignore. Satiating your sex drive is important, as experts say it’s closely tied to overall quality of life. So if you’re feeling regularly dissatisfied, here’s how to identify what might be happening—and how to fix it—so you can get back to feeling nothing but pleasure in between those sheets.

Let’s start by defining what exactly sexual frustration is.

Simply put, it’s exactly how it sounds—any feelings of frustration or dissatisfaction with your current sexual interaction or lack thereof, says Shamyra Howard, LCSW, sexologist and author of Use Your Mouth: Pocket-Sizes Conversations to Increase 7 Types of Intimacy In and Out of the Bedroom. “[It occurs when the sexual experiences you want are not in alignment with what you’re getting.”

And yep, it’s 100 percent normal to feel frustrated (sexually or not, TBH). “Most people—regardless of gender, sexuality, or relationship status—will experience sexual frustration at some point in their life,” Howard says. “Those in non-monogamous relationships deal with sexual frustration as well, especially since not all open relationships involve sex.”

What are some symptoms of feeling sexually frustrated?

People experience and exhibit symptoms of sexual frustration differently, Howard says. Some, for instance, might lose interest in sex and consistently decline it, she explains, whereas others may seek more of it (potentially with someone who isn’t their current partner) or decide to masturbate when they’d prefer sex. Symptoms of depression may start to crop up as well, and changes in mood are common, she adds.

Physically speaking, “you might feel a sense of buildup or tension without the desired sense of relief,” says Jessica O’Reilly, Ph.D., sexologist and author of The New Sex Bible. “It can be as simple as experiencing blood flow to the genitals (or another region you’ve come to associate with pleasure or orgasm), and when you don’t experience the pleasure or orgasm, you might find yourself feeling frustrated.”

To help identify how you’re feeling, O’Reilly suggests asking yourself why you have sex. “What benefits do you derive, and how do you feel before, during, and after?” she asks. “Are those feelings overwhelmingly positive, neutral, or negative?” If your answer is landing more in the neutral to negative territory, you may be feeling a little (or a lot) frustrated.

That said, symptoms of sexual frustration are not the end-all be-all, as O’Reilly says sometimes it’s about resetting expectations. “Feelings are not permanent states of being,” she says. “They’re temporary experiences and you can make attitudinal and behavioral adjustments to change the way you feel.”

But what exactly causes these frustrated feelings?

There are a wide variety of experiences that could lead to sexual frustration. Anything from not being able to orgasm and not having your pleasure prioritized, to feeling pressured to have more sex or not having enough of it—all can be a major hindrance, O’Reilly says.

That said, there are a few common causes sex therapists often encounter. The first: unclear sexual boundaries and motives. “Sex is more satisfying to people when they feel they are getting what they expect,” Howard says. People in long-term relationships likely want to feel love and intimacy, for example, whereas those who solely engage for sexual pleasure may want more raw desire. “When these expectations are discussed and agreed on upfront, each person can commit to the outcome,” she adds. In other words, you can’t just expect someone to know how to please you—communication is key.

Speaking of communication—or a lack thereof—not discussing mismatched libidos and falling into ho-hum routines can also cause frustration. If you know what to expect and there’s no variety in your sex life, it’s tough to feel motivated to, well, keep doing it, Howard says. Same goes for feeling like you “should” have sex because society tells you to (we’ve all heard the “have sex at least three times a week rule”), or because you have a partner with a higher sex drive than you. To be clear, having mismatched libidos doesn’t mean your sexual relationship with this partner is doomed. But it does mean you have to talk about it so those feelings of sexual frustration can be put to bed.

Other experiences ranging from medical conditions and treatment side effects to sexual identity, relationship issues outside of the bedroom, and external factors (think work-related problems, child rearing, or societal stressors) could be at play. The key thread is to examine all areas of your life to help identify the root cause.

How do I deal with it?

Rectifying sexual frustration is one of those things that needs to be done with lots of care and consideration for both yourself and your partner. First up: identifying the actual cause of the frustration.

“Start by ruling out any medical issues or possible interaction from medications or supplements,” Howard says. Next, use your mouth—by talking to your partner. “Lots of people have sex, but rarely talk about it,” she says. “Create a regular sex check-in where you discuss what’s working well, and what you’d like to see change.”

From there, you may want to shift the way you view sex. “Frustration often results from outcomes not meeting expectations, but it’s important to note that when you have a specific outcome in mind, you may be setting yourself up for frustration,” O’Reilly says. “One way to avoid sexual frustration is to explore sexual pleasure for pleasure’s sake, as opposed to focusing on a specific goal.”

And again, talk to your partner—alone or potentially with the help of a sex therapist—as Howard stresses it’s important your partner knows, understands, and agrees on your sexual expectations and boundaries each and every time they shift. (And yes, it’s always OK for them to shift.)

If you’re single, or just riding solo in the midst of a pandemic…

Partner or not, you don’t have to be abstinent. If the sexual frustration you’re feeling is due to a lack of sex, Howard suggests practicing solo touch and solo sex. “Masturbate, take yourself out on dates, and appreciate all of the things about you that you’d want a partner to,” she says. O’Reilly agrees: “Don’t let the absence of a partner hold you back from lending yourself a hand or reaching for your favorite toy.” (Don’t know where to start? Here are our favorite options for beginners.)

Regardless of your relationship status, remember to take care of you. “Oftentimes we complain about being sexually frustrated as though it’s someone else’s job to address our feelings—it’s not,” O’Reilly says. “You’re responsible for your own sexual fulfillment…It’s up to you to decide what works.”

Complete Article HERE!

Cybersex, erotic tech and virtual intimacy are on the rise during COVID-19


Preliminary research has found that people are increasingly incorporating new behaviours — including technology-based ones — into their sex lives during the coronavirus

By , &

The coronavirus pandemic is affecting sexuality and relationships. The confinement and social distancing measures protecting us are unintentionally exacerbating intimacy-related difficulties and limiting people’s access to partners.

For some, COVID-19 is synonymous with loneliness and relationship stress. Many people end up choosing between intimacy and security. Singles looking for partners resign to celibacy, while couples experience tensions related to forced isolation.

But creativity loves adversity.

In the face of a global pandemic, we are finding new, innovative and safe ways to (re)connect intimately and sexually through technology.

As researchers studying erobotics, a field intersecting sexuality and technology, we are interested in how human-machine erotic interactions can contribute to well-being — even in times of worldwide health crisis.

Sex in the time of coronavirus

The COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing measures are impacting human life. Paradoxically, these protective measures also generate unintended stressors. For example, illness-related anxiety, heightened grief of losing a loved one, loneliness, domestic violence and financial stress.

When it comes to sex and relationships, the pandemic is creating a situation where people are either living in close proximity (possibly with partners, children or other family members) or are limited in their opportunities to find partners for prolonged periods of time. These circumstances can directly impact our intimacy.

A recent online survey found that a majority of participants in a sample of 1,559 adults reported a decline in the quality of their sex lives (43.5 per cent) during the COVID-19 pandemic, while only a minority reported improvements (13.6 per cent). Interestingly, however, despite people reporting a decrease in the frequency of sexual behaviours compared to the past year, one in five individuals (20.3 per cent) added at least one new activity to their sex life, such as a new sexual position, incorporating pornography or engaging in cybersex. Compared to people who made no change, those who spiced things up were more likely to report improvements in their sex life since the beginning of the pandemic.

Additionally, preliminary evidence from another study suggests that believing that a partner is caring and understanding, can partly shield against some of the impact of COVID-19 stressors on the relationship.

Sex tips for the pandemic

Suggestions for safer sex during COVID-19 have been proposed. These include: hand-washing; limiting sexual activities to partners who are part of the household; using physical barriers such as masks, condoms and dental dams; creatively enacting positions that reduce risks of transmission and masturbating.

As the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene says: “You are your safest sex partner.”

This same department also suggests taking a break from in-person dates and instead trying virtual dating, sexting and kinky “Zoom parties.”

Necessity is the mother of invention, and this is particularly true of technology. Including a suggestion like the video-conferencing platform Zoom is telling. The integration of social and interactive technologies in work and relationships accelerates exponentially with confinement.

COVID-19 and sex technologies

Sex tech is more than sex toys or objects used for sexual stimulation. It is a billion-dollar industry that builds a wide range of products for interactive, immersive and connected erotic experiences. This includes but is not limited to: virtual, augmented and mixed reality, “teledildonics,” dating applications and platforms, online erotic games and artificial erotic agents (or erobots) such as sex robots, virtual partners or erotic chatbots.

Sex tech is perhaps one of the only industries resilient to pandemics. The sale of sex toys skyrocketed, companies have reported an increase in sex and love doll purchases and sex-tech startups are thriving. While numbers from the private sector should be interpreted with caution, COVID-19 is affecting how we explore intimacy with ourselves and others.

Sex tech is a safer way to fulfill our sexual and emotional needs in times of lockdown and social distancing. It offers innovative and inclusive ways to erotically engage with humans and machines that can address our desires for sexual pleasure and also cater to our needs for affection and companionship. Sex tech could help alleviate the suffering borne out of solitude or forced celibacy and let us keep touch with our loved ones while we wait for the storm to pass.

In sum, the pandemic could be a chance for us to become a bit more “digisexual,” or sexually oriented towards technology.

Beyond the pandemic

Historically, societies are deeply transformed by great pandemics. COVID-19 is no exception, with a renewed interest for remote work — and the adoption of new erotic behaviours. As such, we can realistically expect that norms and practices regarding love and sex may open up as we are currently exposed to a diverse range of more positive and safe intimate technological possibilities.

Several studies assessing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on human intimacy are currently seeking responses.

Whether this will lead to enduring change remains unknown. We should take full advantage of the connectivity established by technology to extend the boundaries of love and sex, now and for the future.

Complete Article HERE!

How and when to have sex for the first time after giving birth

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  • Doctors suggest waiting four to six weeks after giving birth to have sex again, but new parents shouldn’t feel pressured if they aren’t ready.
  • When they are, it helps to ease back into the experience with self-pleasure and oral sex. Going on dates or spending quality time with your partner before sex can also help boost intimacy in the bedroom.
  • During sex, focus on enjoying yourselves rather than going in with the goal of orgasm, which can add to feelings of pressure and frustration.

When you first bring your newborn home, sex may be the last thing on your mind. But once you get settled in with your new bundle, you and your partner may start to think about being physically intimate again.There’s no set amount of time a new parent should wait before getting back into the bedroom, but according to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, doctors often suggest a period of four to six weeks after giving birth. During that time, a new parent who recently gave birth may experience fatigue, vaginal dryness, pain, or low sex drive, according to the Mayo Clinic. And if you experienced a vaginal tear during the birth that required stitches, doctors suggest waiting until the area is completely healed to prevent pain or re-injury.

If you don’t feel ready at the six-week mark, that’s OK too.

“I think that we as a culture expect new parents to get right back into their pre-pregnancy routines, but there is no going back — a completely new routine must be figured out, and that routine is likely going to change from month to month when a newborn is changing so rapidly,” Sofia Jawed-Wessel, an assistant professor in the School of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, told Self.

But when you are ready, there are a few steps you can take to have the most comfortable and enjoyable experience possible.

According to Christine Leistner, a relationship health scientist and assistant professor at California State University – Chico, easing into sex with masturbation, finding ways to be intimate outside of the bedroom, and overcommunicating with your partner during sex can help after birth.

Start with masturbation

Before getting intimate through partnered sex, Leistner suggested taking a solo approach.

“I would say don’t go from zero to 60. Start with masturbation,” Leistner told Insider.

At any stage in life, self-pleasure can help a person feel more connected to their body, and that’s especially important after you’ve gone through hormonal changes that come with being pregnant and giving birth.

In fact, a June 2012 study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine found women gravitated towards self-pleasure or oral sex after giving birth, rather than going straight for penetrative intercourse.

Rebuild intimacy in your relationship before having sex

The same study authors found that how women felt sexually, and how they perceived their partner to feel sexually, were more important factors in their post-partum sexual satisfaction than physical factors like breastfeeding or vaginal trauma.

The findings suggest rebuilding an intimate connection with your partner can help make your post-baby sex more fulfilling, and Leistner suggested taking the time to do so outside of the bedroom.

“Talking it through, going slow, and doing other things that are pleasurable besides sex,” can help Leistner said, like going on a date could boost your feelings of connectedness.

When you feel supported and in tune with your partner in other aspects of your life, that will translate to feeling connected and comfortable with them during sex.

Take your time and overcommunicate with your partner

  • When you and your partner decide to have penetrative sex again, it’s important to discuss your needs and expectations to ensure the experience is pleasurable to both of you.”Both partners need to be open with each other about their fears, concerns, and desires in the face of a changing sexual relationship as to avoid any misunderstandings,” Dr. Jennifer Conti, a clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University, told Self.In addition to offering each other verbal support through compliments, saying “I love you,” or reiterating how excited you are to be intimate together beforehand, it’s also important to set boundaries in case the sex becomes painful or uncomfortable, Jawed-Wessel said.She added that going into the experience with the goal to feel connected and enjoy yourselves, rather than the goal of orgasm, can also help take the pressure off.

    “If penetration is causing pain [and/or] anxiety, take it off the table entirely and explore each other’s pleasure in different ways that don’t include penetration,” Jawed-Wessel said.

    Lastly, being prepared with lube can help ease potential physical discomfort from vaginal dryness, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Complete Article HERE!

5 Expert-Approved Ways To Spice Up Your Sex Life

By Hannah Coates

Has your sex life taken something of a nosedive in recent months? It’s likely, at this point in lockdown, that the answer is yes, since the majority of us fall into one of two camps: those who have been unable to see (or meet new) sexual partners; and those who have now been inseparable from the apple of their eye for a little bit too long. Throw in the stress and anxiety caused by current events, and it’s no wonder our libidos are feeling the effect. Research has shown that not only are we having sex less in lockdown, the quality of the sex we are having is lower.

So as lockdown restrictions start to ease, what can we do to spice up our sex lives? Here, Mia Sabat, sex therapist at Emjoy, offers her expert advice.

Try listening to audio erotica

Tapping into our senses is an excellent way to address a flagging sex drive, and Sabat recommends audio erotica to help revive the libido, stimulate the mind and reconnect with your own – and your partner’s – sexuality. “One of its primary functions is to appeal to the body’s most important, and often neglected, sex organ: the brain,” she says. “Research has actually shown that listening to erotica can be one of the most successful practices women can utilise to achieve sexual satisfaction.”

Unlike pornography, which tends to cater to a male audience and focuses on the visual side of sex, audio erotica delivers the script via sound, encouraging our imaginations to go wild. “It’s great for couples because, when listening, each individual can engage with their own fantasies, preferences and turn-ons, while still connecting over the same storyline or narrative, as they act out the story that is being told.” Sabat says. Emjoy is but one of an array of audio erotica apps that offers guided sessions to get you started.

Consider the kind of pornography you watch

Since many forms of pornography are created with a male viewer in mind, it’s a good idea to look for erotica that is being made by women, for women, and that appeals to both sexes. “The story you watch is so important when choosing any form of erotica,” says Sabat. “And because of this I recommend women engage with porn that is going to engage their mind first and foremost, so that their pleasure, preferences and fantasies are able to come to life. By engaging with less conventional and more creative forms of pornography, individuals are better able to cultivate their sexual energy, because it allows people to connect their brains to their sexual desires more tangibly.”

Experiment with touch

Consider incorporating touching “rules” to up the ante on your intimate time together. “You may want to lie together, listening to an audio story, with a no-hands policy in place,” suggests Sabat. “Equally, you might be curious about experimenting with mutual masturbation. My best advice is to let the story build heat and tension between you and your partner and to enjoy that feeling – the mind is so powerful!”

Schedule sex

It may sound a bit, well, unsexy, but making plans for intimacy can actually ensure you look forward to and enjoy precious time together: “Not only will you both feel mounting excitement by looking forward to it throughout the day, but you’ll both feel less on edge, knowing what to expect. Use this dedicated day or hour as a special time for intimacy, exploration and play, and engage with one another’s pleasures,” says Sabat.

Masturbate and explore yourself

“It’s important to remember every sexual experience begins within ourselves, and masturbation embodies this journey. Beyond stimulating our sex drive, self-pleasure allows us to connect with our minds and bodies within a context we often aren’t able to explore,” says Sabat. “It can help us really focus on what we enjoy, without worrying about anyone else, and this can be excellent for both our own wellbeing and our sex life as a whole.” Getting to know our bodies allows us to understand what makes us tick, what doesn’t, and importantly makes us better able to communicate what we want and need, with confidence.

Complete Article HERE!

Vibrators had a long history as medical quackery before feminists rebranded them as sex toys

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In the contemporary moment of sex-positive feminism, praises for the orgasmic capacity of the vibrator abound. “They’re all-encompassing, a blanket of electricity, that’ll course through your veins, producing orgasms you didn’t know you were physically capable of having,” wrote Erica Moen in her web comic “Oh Joy Sex Toy.” Vibrators today go hand in hand with masturbation and female sexuality.

Yet for American housewives in the 1930s, the vibrator looked like any other household appliance: a nonsexual new electric technology that could run on the same universal motor as their kitchen mixers and vacuum cleaners. Before small motors became cheap to produce, manufacturers sold a single motor base with separate attachments for a range of household activities, from sanding wood to drying hair, or healing the body with electrical vibrations.

In my research on the medical history of electricity, vibrators appear alongside galvanic battery belts and quack electrotherapies as one of many quirky home cures of the early 20th century.

Vibrating for health

The first electro-mechanical vibrator was a device called a “percuteur” invented by British physician Joseph Mortimer Granville in the late 1870s or early 1880s. Granville thought that vibration powered the human nervous system, and he developed the percuteur as a medical device for stimulating ailing nerves.

Current medical opinion held that hysteria was a nervous disease, yet Granville refused to treat female patients, “simply because I do not want to be hoodwinked… by the vagaries of the hysterical state.” The vibrator began as a therapy for men only. It then quickly left the sphere of mainstream medical practice.

By the early 20th century, manufacturers were selling vibrators as ordinary electric household appliances. The merits of electricity in the home were not as obvious then as they are today: Electricity was dangerous and expensive, but it promised excitement and modernity. Electric commodities, like sewing and washing machines, became the hallmarks of the rising middle class.

Vibrators were another shiny new technology, used to sell consumers on the prospect of modern electric living. Just as banks handed out free toasters for opening checking accounts in the 1960s, in the 1940s the Rural Electrification Administration distributed free vibrators to encourage farmers to electrify their homes. These modern electric devices were not thought of as sex toys.

Vibrating snake oil

In what may sound surprising to 21st-century readers, these appliances promised relief of a nonsexual variety. Users of all ages vibrated just about every body part, without sexual intent.

A 1913 advertisement for the White Cross Electric Vibrator in the New-York Tribune.

Vibrators made housework easier by soothing the pains of tired housewives, calming the cries of sick children and invigorating the bodies of modern working men. They were applied to tired backs and sore feet, but also the throat, to cure laryngitis; the nose, to relieve sinus pressure; and everything in between. Vibration promised to calm the stomachs of colicky babies, and to stimulate hair growth in balding men. It was even thought to help heal broken bones.

A 1910 advertisement in the New York Tribune declared that “Vibration Banishes Disease As the Sun Banishes Mist.” In 1912, the Hamilton Beach “New-Life” vibrator came with a 300-page instructional guide titled “Health and How to Get It,” offering a cure for everything from obesity and appendicitis to tuberculosis and vertigo.

As such advertisements suggest, vibrators were not standard medical treatments, but medical quackery, alternative medicine that didn’t deliver on their promises. Yet the electrical cure-alls sold by the millions.

The classic form of medical quackery in the U.S. market was patent medicine – basically useless concoctions made mainly of alcohol and morphine, sometimes containing downright damaging ingredients like lead and arsenic. After the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, the federal government began regulating the sale of patent medicines.

Vibrators and other electrotherapies were not covered by the new law, so they took up the market share of older medical concoctions. The White Cross Vibrator replaced Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup as a popular home cure rejected by the medical establishment.

In 1915, the Journal of the American Medical Association wrote that the “vibrator business is a delusion and a snare. If it has any effect it is psychology.” The business was dangerous not because it was obscene, but because it was bad medicine. The potential, acknowledged by doctors, for the vibrator to be used in masturbation was just further evidence of its quackery.

The Shelton vibrator’s motor head with various attachments, made by General Electric in the early 20th century.

A cure for masturbatory illness

Sex toy scholar Hallie Lieberman points out that nearly every vibrator company in the early 20th century offered phallic attachments that “would have been considered obscene if sold as dildos.” Presented instead as rectal or vaginal dilators, these devices were supposed to cure hemorrhoids, constipation, vaginitis, cervicitis and other illnesses localized to the genitals and the anus. Hamilton Beach, for example, offered a “special rectal applicator” for “an additional cost of $1.50,” and recommended its use in the treatment of “Impotence,” “Piles—Hemorrhoids” and “Rectal Diseases.”

The two most prominent scholars of vibrator history, Rachel Maines and Hallie Lieberman, argue that vibrators were always secretly sexual, but I disagree. Vibrators were popular medical devices. One of many medical uses of the vibrator was to cure diseases of sexual dysfunction. And this use was a selling point, not a secret, during an era of anti-masturbatory rhetoric.

Special vibrator attachments like the rectal applicator offered dubious treatments for dubious diseases: remedies for ailments purportedly caused by “ruinous and prevalent masturbation.”

Masturbation was thought to cause diseases like impotence in men and hysteria in women. Masturbatory illness was a pretty standard idea in the early 20th century. One of its surviving formulations is the idea that masturbating will make you go blind.

There’s no way to really know how people were using vibrators. But the evidence suggests that they signified medical treatment, not sinful masturbation, regardless of the use. Even if users were doing physical actions that people today think of as masturbation, they didn’t understand themselves to be masturbating, and therefore they weren’t masturbating.

By 1980, vibrators had been rebranded in the public imagination.

Rethinking the vibrator’s history

For most of the 20th century, vibrators remained innocuous quackery. Good Housekeeping even bestowed its seal of approval on some models in the 1950s. When the sexual revolution hit America in the 1960s, vibrators were largely forgotten, outdated appliances.

In the 1970s radical feminists transformed the vibrator from a relic of bygone domesticity to a tool of female sexual liberation. At Betty Dodson’s bodysex workshops, electric vibrations changed “feelings of guilt about masturbation to feelings of celebration so that masturbation became an act of self-love.” She and her sisters embraced vibrators as a political technology that could convert frigid anorgasmic housewives into powerful sexual beings capable both of having multiple orgasms and destroying the patriarchy.

This masturbatory revolt erased the vibrator’s fading reputation as a cure for masturbatory illness and replaced it with a specific, powerful, public and lasting linkage between the vibrator and female masturbatory practice.

Complete Article HERE!

A guide to getting off to your own sexual fantasies and imagination

Your brain is your best sexual partner.

By Jess Joho

They say the mind is the biggest, most powerful sex organ in the body. But, uh, don’t try visualizing that mental image too vividly or literally, unless you’re into that sorta thing?

Instead, imagine your favorite fictional crush pressing you up against a wall, or think back to the hottest sex you ever had in your life. Now stop imagining, because this magical place where all your desires are possible and acceptable exists. And literally anyone can tap into it.

While sexual fantasies are by definition not “real,” their effects on your sex life (especially when explored during masturbation) are — shall we say — palpably physical.

“Engaging your imagination rather than relying on visual porn for example helps to build, enhance and strengthen your erotic mind,” said Dr. Britney Blair, co-founder and Chief Science Officer of the sexual wellness Lover app. “You can bring that imagination to life when you want to prime the pump on your desire or push yourself over the edge to climax while solo or with a partner.”

“It’s incredibly liberating, recognizing our own power to design the scenes and situations that turn us on.”

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with porn or other forms of erotica. But there’s something especially powerful in orgasming to smut that couldn’t be more personally tailored to what you like.

“In our minds we’re not confined to our studio apartments or our current sexual partners. There are no rules or judgments. Not even the laws of physics apply,” said Gina Gutierrez, co-founder of the popular audio erotica app Dipsea. “It’s incredibly liberating, recognizing our own power to design the scenes and situations that turn us on and to scrap the ones that don’t work for us.”

Don’t take our word for it, though. There’s science to show exactly how real the effects of a healthy erotic imagination are.

In a landmark 2016 study, Dr. Nan Wise — neuroscientist, sex therapist, and author of Understanding the Neuroscience of Pleasure for a Smarter, Happier, and More Purpose-Filled Life mapped the brain’s response when subjects merely imagined pleasurable stimulation on their genitals. Just by thinking about it, the pleasure centers in their brains “lit up like a Christmas tree,” Wise said.

“The mind is really the recipient of all the body’s sensations. So there’s this empirical evidence of a huge connection between the mind and pleasure,” she said.

While everyone can benefit from using their imagination as a sexual aid, it’s an especially potent practice for women and others who society has conditioned to feel ashamed about their sexuality.

“We have to do more work to lay down the connections, the neural pathways, between the genitals and the brain’s sensory reward regions,” said Wise. “Using your imagination to masturbate not only gives us the information about what stimulation we need, but also actually strengthens the connections between our genitals and the brain.”

Beyond that, getting off to our own sexual fantasies tackles another negative effect that patriarchy can have on women’s sexuality.

“We’re socialized to think of ourselves as the objects of other people’s desires, like we need to borrow someone else’s idea of pleasure” said Wise. That’s why learning how to be the subject of our own desires, to embody the pleasure we conjure up in our own mind, can be so empowering.

Everyone with a brain, genitals, and desire is already equipped to masturbate to their own sexual fantasies. And while the practice does come more naturally to some, it only takes little guidance and patience to unlock the endless possibilities tucked inside your erotic mind.

Set the right environment

A major key in setting your mind up for erotic success is to ensure your environment allows your brain to feel fully relaxed, safe, and free from distraction.

Pick a time and place where you’ll have full privacy without needing to worry about any interruption, whether from roommates or notifications. For most people, that place will naturally be the bedroom. But put some effort into also making it a true fortress of sensual solitude, like by locking the door, setting your phone to airplane mode, putting on an eye mask, or maybe even using some essential oils and putting on your favorite sexy playlist.

Blair even recommends purposefully scheduling these more exploratory kind of session and making them habitual. So maybe it can be something you add to your nightly ritual before bed: Brush your teeth, do the skincare routine, put on some pajamas, then let your mind wander as you touch yourself.

Create a safe space in your mind

Of course, priming yourself with the right mindset is vital to unlocking your brain’s full fantasy potential. 

One of the biggest hurdles to exploring our erotic imaginations is actually the engrained social shame many of us have picked up (even subconsciously) through sexism, homophobia, social stigmas, religion, etc.

“It’s important to know if that is coming up for you, you’re not alone. But there is no such thing as a wrong or right fantasy.” said Blair.

Treat your imagination as a judgement-free zone. To be fair, clearing or redirecting your mind away from feelings of shame is easier said than done. But certain exercises can help (which we’ll get into more in the mind-body connection section below).

Blair suggests that, while exploring sexual fantasies in your mind, try to distinguish between when you’re having a reaction versus a judgment to a certain scenario. Judgments often come from values imposed on you by something or someone else, while visceral reactions can be an indication that your mind wants to explore it further — especially if it’s something your never thought you’d be into.

It’s easy to get scared off by an intense response to a fantasy, and write that off as being too weird or outside the norm for your taste. But if you give yourself a second to assess where that response is coming from, you might actually find that the intensity comes from a part of you that you’ve never tried tapping into before. 

“Everything is okay in the world of fantasy. No fantasy is a crime.”

Or maybe not, and that’s fine too. The point is, if you feel safe doing it, just try leaning into parts of your erotic mind that feel challenging and see where it goes.

“Everything is okay in the world of fantasy. No fantasy is a crime,” said Blair. “Whatever turns you on in your mind is totally healthy. Your fantasy doesn’t say anything about you except that you are lucky to have a rich imagination that you can use to have an exciting and enduring erotic life.”  

That’s another major benefit of sexual fantasies versus traditional porn, too. You don’t have to worry about any ethical concerns, because your imagination can’t hurt you or anyone else. You’re in total control.

“You imagination is a completely safe space,” said Dipsea’s Gutierrez. “We can play out fantasies that are risky or illicit that we would never actually want to happen in real life. In our minds we’re free to experiment without consequences.”

Familiarize yourself with (but don’t feel limited by) common sexual fantasies

While the whole point is to tap into the unique potential of your own mind, a good jumping off point is to explore whether the most common sexual fantasies spark your interest. Researchers have labeled them into different categories, though there’s a world of possibilities within those labels as well.

Dr. Blair described these categories as multi-partner sex like group sex or threesomes; power, control, or rough sex; novelty, adventure, and variety; taboo and forbidden sex; partner sharing and non-monogamous relationships; passion and romance; and erotic flexibility like homoeroticism or gender-bending.

Jess O’Reilly is a sex educator, author of The New Sex Bible, and Astroglide’s resident sexologist. She explained that through each of these fantasy categories you can help identify the specific core erotic feelings that get you into a heightened state of arousal.

“Oftentimes, they relate to fantasy, escapism or subverting otherwise ‘negative’ emotions. You might find that sex is really hot when you feel powerful, submissive, challenged, mindful, or playful,” she said. “You may also find yourself aroused by feelings that you don’t naturally associate with pleasure, like jealousy, inadequacy, fear, and even humiliation can be exciting.”

What our brains often gravitate to most is pure novelty. What gets you off in a fantasy can actually be the total opposite of your real-life sexual orientation or even completely removed from you, as an abstract scenario happening to someone else entirely. 

So don’t be weirded out if you learn that you’re as horny for that fish-god monster from The Shape of Water as the Academy Awards were in 2018. Or maybe you’re one of the many women who enjoys a rape fantasy — which, as Dr. Wise points out, in a fantasy context is the opposite of a real-life rape since, “you’re choosing to have the fantasy and who’s overpowering you. You’re in complete control.” 

One other general rule of thumb Wise found is that while men tend toward more visually-oriented fantasies centered around preferred body parts, women tend to focus on overall scenarios. However, it’s impossible to distill the endless possibilities of human sexuality into neat categories. Which is why you also shouldn’t get discouraged or ashamed if none of these common fantasies do it for you.

“Our capacity for imagination is limitless,” said Wise. Don’t feel pressure to confine yours to a specific label.

Start building your erotic imagination through fiction, porn, memories… anything!

The truth is that, while other obstacles might make it hard initially to give yourself permission to explore sexual fantasies, using your imagination is a very natural and innate part of being human. Who doesn’t fantasizing about getting up from their desk in the middle of a hard work day and quitting, or spend time daydreaming about how they’d furnish their dream apartment?

“We make Pinterest boards and save Instagram photos, collect and catalog all these things that we like. I recommend starting to do that for your sex life,” said Gutierrez.Become more mindful observing what attracts you to someone. The moments where you feel sexiest. What you want to say out loud during sex but hesitate to. Then the next time you want to use your fantasy for pleasure, you know exactly where to draw from.”

Everything in your life can become part of your horny mood board.

Everything in your life can become part of your horny mood board.

We all have that one fictional character or public figure — whether from books, tv, movies, video games, or even politics and the internet — that just does it for us. Begin there, expanding into a specific sexy scene that got you going or whatever comes to mind when you think of that person. Heck, maybe you’re like me and realize that a silky, authoritative voice is actually your kink, leading a bunch of non-erotic popular podcasts to become your go-to spank bank material.

Audio erotica can be a great place to start if you don’t want to take the training wheels off yet to explore sexual fantasies of your own making. Unlike visual porn, audio erotica still exercises the muscles of your erotic imagination, asking you to fill in the details and paint the full picture. While we always recommend Dipsea, there’s also plenty of free ways to try audio erotica like r/gonewildaudio and Girl on the Net.

Once you’re ready to bring yourself more to the forefront of the fantasy, begin with a memory of the hottest, most visceral sex you’ve ever had. Really ground yourself back in that moment by recalling your senses: What position were you in? What did the person’s lust feel like? Were you sweating? How exactly did they touch you?

Touch yourself while pulling from all the erotic mental material you’ve curated, and don’t be afraid to really get your whole body involved in mimicking the sensations you’re creating through your mind. Maybe that means masturbating while you’re on all fours, or matching the tempo of the fantasy, or even dry-humping a pillow. Don’t put any pressure on yourself to orgasm throughout any of this, though, and instead just zero in on embodying the experience of your imagination.

“It’s about giving yourself full permission to explore all our internal pleasure places, and how we experience them in both our minds and bodies at the same time,” said Wise.

Try these exercises to strengthen your mind-body connection

Through her research and other studies in the field, Wise has ultimately found that, “This distinction we make between the mind and body is really a very arbitrary one.”

One of the best ways to embrace this in a way that engages your erotic fantasy life in is through something called mindful sex. 

This increasingly popular branch of sex therapy describes a bunch of different practices and exercises that add a layer of sexuality to mindfulness, to help you stay present in your body while experiencing pleasure, train your mind to focus on whatever arouses you, and engage in a non-judgmental curious sexual mindset. Try out basic exercises like pleasure mapping (which Dipsea has a guide for), mindful masturbation (which you can read about here), and sensate focus (which you can read about here).

Wise also suggests a very simple exercise for getting your imagination more connected with your genitals on a neurological level: Just start by tapping or pleasurably touching your genitals, then stop, then think back on the sensations you felt while touching them. Try to recall and summon them back in your body: What did it feel like in your body when the stimulation was building, then dissipating?

At first, it might not feel like much at all and the pleasure may be pretty mild compared to what you’re used to while using more immediate erotic visual aids like porn.

“But you’ll slowly start to develop a better connection to that pleasure sensation channel in your brain,” she said.

Use your imagination during partnered sex

While sexual fantasies are a great way to enhance self-love, learning how to engage with them during partnered sex can also do wonders to get people over the edge and into orgasm. 

At this point though, you might be wondering: Is it even OK to fantasize about other situations — or maybe even other people — while having sex with a partner?

“It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, as long as you’d come home to eat.”

“Yes, it’s an unequivocal yes! Because thinking about stuff is not the same as doing it,” said Wise. As the famous saying goes, “It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, as long as you’d come home to eat.”

It’s totally normal for your mind to desire novelty, especially if you’re not in a new relationship anymore. In fact, Wise found that one of the best ways to ensure a couples’ longevity is precisely this kind of openness and understanding that people need to fuel their erotic imagination with new stuff.

“If we can get over these kind of hang ups, get past this fear of our partners having a fantasy about somebody else while they’re with us, and instead use it as an opportunity talk about: What would you like? What haven’t we tried? What are you afraid to tell me? Because that’s hot. That’s really hot,” said Wise.

Or maybe instead of thinking about someone else, you’d simply rather use your imagination during partnered sex to transport you both to a setting or scenario that heightens your arousal even more.

In the end, what you do with your erotic imagination is up to you. You can share it if you’d like — or keep it all to yourself. That’s what’s so great about sexual fantasies you cut from your own cloth: They’re all yours, and no one else’s.

Complete Article HERE!

Masturbating techniques from a self-love sexpert

(A timely message as National Masturbation Month come to an end)

By

This May is #masturbationmonth – and these imaginative masturbating ideas will level up your self-loving techniques

There is no shame is self-pleasure. In fact, more and more women are recognising masturbating as a form of  sexual self-care (read: wellness). Because the fact is, when you reach climax, your body really does release chemicals which encourage mental wellbeing, something we need more than ever right now. This month is known as Masturbation May, a national celebration of self-love. With all of us having more time on our hands, we asked journalist and sex educator Alix Fox (her portfolio includes being a script consultant for hit Netflix series Sex Education and resident X-rated Agony Aunt for Channel 4’s The Sex Clinic) for her expert, imaginative ideas on how to level up your masturbating techniques, and lead your own personal re-vulva-lution this #MasturbationMay.

Right, it’s time to go and practice some sexual wellness during lockdown.

Massage your hands before your glands 

Giving yourself a hand massage – there are great tutorials on YouTube – is a fantastic way to wind down as part of a self-care routine…and helps distribute silky, softening, sensual oil over your mitts before you caress your bits. It’s especially enjoyable if you’ve been typing all day.  WooWoo Bliss Arousal Oil does excellent double duty, containing CBD and aloe vera, as well as geranium extracts for a heavenly scent.

Learn the subtle art of ‘self sensate focus’

Becoming more aware of tiny, everyday scrumptious sensations can help you ‘tune into’ your body, heightening your ability to feel thrills, and giving you clues as to new kinds of touches or erogenous zones that you could harness for sexual satisfaction. For instance, when you’re in the shower, move your attention slowly from your head to your toes, noticing how the water feels in each place. As you apply lotion, see how it feels to flutter your fingers on your thighs, or grip your own wrists.

When you notice something that feels luscious, like a beautiful smell, a cool breeze, or the sounds of nature, take an extra moment to savour it. It sounds deceptively simple, but the more you get used to honing in on small, delightful sensations, the easier it is to practise in an erotic context.

Get lippy 

Partnered sex often starts with kissing, yet in solo sex the lips are frequently neglected. Apply a little balm, and try stroking and pressing your lips with a fingertip as a form of “for-me foreplay” – some women find this really turns them on. Sucking and licking your fingers or toys during masturbation can be highly erotic too, and connects you with your own intimate scent and taste.

Enjoy a little pain (au chocolat) 

A degree of controlled, consensual pain is deliciously pleasurable for many people, as it triggers the body to release endorphins which can give a blissed-out, floaty feeling…but it doesn’t occur to a lot of us to experiment with BDSM without a partner. Explore how it feels to pinch your nipples or slap your bum cheeks with a paddle or crop as you masturbate.

Invest in some coloured wax play candles and drip hot drops artfully on your skin, painting patterns as you savour the sizzle, then taking artful x-rated self-portraits afterwards: I’m a big believer in the body-acceptance and esteem-raising power of taking sexy photos for no-one but yourself.

Combine ‘oh la la’ with ‘ha ha’ 

Good times come in many forms, and masturbation doesn’t always have to be slinky and sultry, or a hallowed spiritual experience. One of the loveliest things about solo sex is that it’s entirely on your terms. Try getting comfy in bed or on a ‘pleasure picnic’ blanket spread on the floor; have your favourite snacks, drinks and toys set out; and play a comedy series on your TV or laptop while you have a leisurely play with yourself.

The world’s largest global survey of masturbation habits, carried out by toy company Tenga, found that 90 per cent of Brits state that self-touch positively boosts their mood and sense of wellbeing; add the old adage that ‘laughter is the best medicine’, and lazy night of climaxing and cackling at Park & Rec could be just what the doctor ordered if you’re feeling low.

Add the latest power tools to your ‘downstairs DIY’ kit 

Innovative new sex toy designs mean there’s no need to ration yourself solely to vibration. The Zumio X looks like nothing you’ve seen before – kinda like a water flosser for vagina dentata – but instead of buzzing, its pinpoint tip moves in miniscule circles, delivering sensation that’s intense, precise, yet oh so quiet it should be sponsored by Bjork. Then there’s the Womanizer Premium – this time looking like an ear thermometer – which uses pulses of air to caress the clitoris and quickly coax out an orgasm like some kind of coochie conjuror (a vagician?!). The Smart Silence feature means it automatically turns off when you take it away from your body, so you’re not frantically jabbing at buttons trying to shut it down before throwing it out the window in a panic if you’re accidentally interrupted by kids or flatmates.

Use the fabric of your imagination

For a new take on breast stimulation, wear a top woven from a sensual material – think a loose silky-satin vest, or a super-soft fluffy jumper, without a bra – and use the fabric to tease yourself instead of touching your chest directly. Gradually, languidly draw the garment up and down the side curves of each breast; graze it over the nipples; and use it to cup and slide against the undersides scintillatingly slowly. Need to stay silent? Slip your knickers off and stuff them in your mouth as a gag, or hoist up the folds of your T-shirt or even a long skirt using your teeth, preferably in front of a mirror so you can see how hot you look. Filth.

Complete Article HERE!

Sexual healing

– using lockdown to ignite desire

Home truths: sex boosts our mood and increases feelings of connection.

This could be the perfect time for couples to boost their sex life

By Karen Gurney

For many of us right now, sex couldn’t be further from our minds. Our usual routines have been turned upside down and the way we are living can be challenging for even the most harmonious of relationships. But what if we viewed this time as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset and refresh our sex lives?

The fact that sex isn’t a priority for a large proportion of people fits with findings from sex research along with, well, common sense. Stress and anxiety are known to reduce our sexual desire and a preoccupation with the news, our finances, the health of our loved ones, or how much is in our store cupboards, can understandably slow the wheels of our sex life to a standstill.

But for some of us, the opposite happens. Sex boosts our mood and increases our feelings of connection and wellbeing. Some people are motivated to have sex to relieve stress or find that they naturally feel more sexual in times of fear and anxiety, so for them desire might be on the up and an important means of coping.

For the good of your relationship, it’s worth considering whether you know how each of you relates to sex in times of stress and make this knowledge explicit. How does dramatic change affect the libidos of you and your partner? What if one of you sees a rise and the other a fall in sexual appetite in the next few months? How can you manage this discrepancy? Research shows again and again that it’s not the difference that can be damaging, but the lack of discussion and acknowledgement around it.

It’s also useful to know a little bit about how desire actually works. We have been socialised to understand sexual desire as a drive, a feeling you have out of the blue. It’s true that many of us experience these feelings – and more so in the early years of a relationship – but this is certainly not the only way to experience desire, and definitely not the most common way in a long-term relationship.

Every day of the week I see evidence of the 34% of women and 15% of men in the UK with concerns about their lessening interest in sex as they arrive at my clinic for counselling. The truth about desire is that we don’t truly understand how it operates and, if we did, we’d manage our sex lives very differently indeed.

This is the opportunity we have ahead of us right now and some of us may be in the right headspace to take advantage of it.

It’s important to know that in long-term relationships, many people don’t ever feel like sex out of the blue, but instead need to have their desire triggered. These are the people who say to me in therapy: “I never feel like having sex, but when we do it’s great and I say to my partner, we should do this more often!” This is a normal manifestation of desire in a long-term relationship and not feeling like it from the outset shouldn’t be something to worry about.

Our societal expectations of desire have trickled down from the findings of sex science in the middle of the last century, as pioneers such as Alfred Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson made headlines with the study of human sexuality and how sex “worked”.

In sex research, the popular view of the time was that desire came first, before our bodies become aroused. When I speak to my clients for therapy, I hear the practical legacy of this societal understanding: “We don’t kiss passionately other than as part of sex”; “I never feel like it so I avoid going to bed at the same time as him/her so he/she doesn’t get the wrong idea.”

Over the decades, attitudes and understanding have progressed and we know now that sexual desire is a more complex process. Often we can start from a position that isn’t triggered by sexual longing alone, but other factors – think “stress relief” or “wanting to feel connected” or even “wanting to feel like it”. This motivation – which is neither a sex drive nor unbridled lust – encourages us to either make advances, or be open to advances in the right circumstances. Only once there is sexual stimuli – such as a passionate kiss – might desire then make an appearance. This means we’re often instinctively doing the very opposite of what our desire might need, and curtailing any opportunity we have to trigger it.

When I talk through these newer understandings of desire with my clients, it can be a complete game changer. Not only do they realise that they are not broken, but they understand that the way they have been managing their sex lives is all wrong.

Waiting to feel like it in the context of a busy life when you only have half an hour alone together a day and you’re both exhausted, does not constitute “the right circumstances” and is very unlikely to work anyhow. All the elements that we rely on to fuel sexual desire, such as novelty, a lack of pressure that “A must lead to B” and a lack of predictability, make it even more challenging in long-term relationships. Challenging, but not in the slightest bit impossible.

Another danger is to assume that sex should be the last thing on our minds at the moment, with so much else to worry about. Even though it is viewed in our society as a frivolous recreational pursuit, it is anything but. Sex meets psychological and relational needs, and sexual satisfaction has been shown to boost mood, self-esteem and wellbeing.

A good sex life has also been shown to act as a buffer against a drop in relationship satisfaction – and I think we can all agree that feeling connected to our partners and experiencing improved psychological wellbeing are important right now.

In this sense, there is no better time for many couples to nourish their desire. Long-term monogamous relationships bring with them the most challenges for maintaining desire – especially for women – and there are many reasons for this. One is the dilution of our roles as sexual partners by the prevalence of other less sexy roles, such as being housemates or co-parents.

Many of us currently find ourselves suddenly seeing an increase in the amount of childcare in our day, or by the introduction of a new role at home together – as work colleagues. These changes are necessary and temporary, but risk the squeezing out of any time we might have left to relate to each other as sexual partners.

There are two ways we can respond to this. One is to increase the moments in the day we relate to each other as sexual partners, which I call “sexual currency”. Sexual currency can be defined as anything that’s not “sex”, but you would only do with a partner. It might look like a five-second lingering kiss rather than a peck on the cheek, a suggestive glance, a compliment, an unexpected touch as you pass each other in the kitchen. Sexual currency not only marks out and reminds you both of your role as sexual partners, but can also be a stepping stone to a natural transition to more sexual ground, should you wish to head in that direction. Sexual currency is also, of course, a trigger for desire.

The second change you could make is thinking about how you spend the time you have together. Research tells us that couples who engage in challenging, exciting or fun activities together have more desire than couples who spend that time doing something else (think Netflix). This means that swapping one of those evenings watching TV to cook something elaborate together, play a game or even planning where you’ll go when you can finally travel again, could be just what you need to feel connected sexually.

Only you can know whether this time is fertile ground for your sex life or not – and whether you use these weeks to nurture it, or put it on hold. One thing is for sure – your sex life is unlikely to be unaffected by the strange and difficult times we find ourselves in

Dr Karen’s top three tips for boosting desire

Stop Faking It Faking orgasms reinforces the sexual scripts we currently have available to us by creating the illusion that women are just as satisfied by the way sex is happening as men are. Faking it also affirms the false belief held by society that most women can come from penetrative sex.

Plan time for each other The mistake many couples make is waiting for desire to emerge without doing anything to encourage it, so no desire emerges. The key thing here is that having a good sex life is not always about needing to be on the same page, or wanting as much sex as your partner, but the success with which you navigate these differences.

Plan time for yourself Masturbation provides a great opportunity for people to enjoy their sexuality outside of a relationship, connect with their sexuality, know what works for them, and trigger arousal and desire.

Complete Article HERE!

Happy Masturbation Month 2020!

It’s May!

It’s National Masturbation Month!
YES darling, there is such a thing.

masturbaion month

Tra la! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That darling month when ev’ryone throws
Self-control away.
It’s time to do
A wretched thing or two,

And try to make each precious day
One you’ll always rue!
It’s May! It’s May!
The month of “yes you may,”
The time for ev’ry frivolous whim,
Proper or “im.”
It’s wild! It’s gay!
A blot in ev’ry way.
The birds and bees with all of their vast
Amorous past
Gaze at the human race aghast,
The lusty month of May.
— Alan Jay Lerner

 

GO AHEAD Squeeze one out! Diddle yourself senseless!

It’s the patriotic thing to do.

Let’s All MASTURBATE!

jillin off life is too shortowes me money

Goal-Oriented Sex Could Be Ruining Your Intimate Life

By Vanessa Powell

While many women understand that overall pleasure, exploration, intimacy, and play should all be at center stage in a sexual experience, and not simply an orgasm (although, let’s be clear, it is still an important component), the latter often eclipses all else — which is why and how things can often go south. In fact, sex experts agree that goal-oriented sex can actually take the fun out of it for women altogether.

Thanks to social movements like The Cliteracy Project, an art series with the mission of educating a largely “il-cliterate” culture, women are more open to talking about their sexual experiences, preferences, and struggles than ever before. One of the major focal points of female sexuality to emerge in recent years involves the very real orgasm gap between men and women and the root of its existence. According to a 2016 study from the Archives of Sexual Behavior that looked at more than 52,500 adults in the U.S. — including those who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual — 95 percent of heterosexual men reported they usually or always orgasmed during sex, compared to just 65 percent of heterosexual women.

So, why are people creating a goal around something that should just have to do with mutual pleasure? Well, much of it can be traced back to a more archaic view of male and female sexuality — and orgasms in general. “Because the male orgasm is crucial to procreate, our society has built this idea that the male orgasm is crucial for sex; that sex begins with a hard penis and ends with a flaccid penis. Since women don’t have to orgasm to create life, it took a different level of societal importance,” says Shan Boodram, certified intimacy educator to The Zoe Report. “With that said, the majority of sex today has nothing to do with the desire to procreate. In fact, the orgasm numbers for women skyrocket in same-sex partnerships compared to heterosexual relationships. When you are with a same-sex partner, there is nothing to prove — it’s just about what feels good, and that is when naturally more orgasms and more pleasure occurs.”

Moral of the story here? Sex should be about being in the moment, true intimacy, and enjoying one another. It’s not a race to the finish line. “If you look at sex like, how good can I feel for as long as I want to feel it and for as long as my partner wants to feel it, great,” says Boodram. “And if an orgasm is the final result, even better. But if it’s just that you got more play time and felt great and relaxed, it’s still a successful sexual experience.”

Why Goal-Oriented Sex Is Sabotaging Your Intimate Life

Ashley Manta, sex and relationship coach and creator of lifestyle brand CannaSexual, seconds this notion. “Goal-oriented sex often robs the participants of the pleasure and joy of the experience,” says Manta. “Often the pressure to be demonstrative while receiving pleasure and to reach an arbitrary goal, in this case the orgasm… keeps them fixated on a point in the future.” Like anything in life, if you take yourself out of the present moment, it becomes difficult to enjoy.

Again, to be clear, orgasms are absolutely important and should be enjoyed by all, however, according to Sensual Embodiment Coach and Priestess of Passion, Ani Ferlise, “our attachment to the orgasm is ignoring all the amazing, healing, and nourishing pleasurable experiences in our bodies! We as a society are addicted to this very specific kind of pleasure based off of a male-bodied orgasm — a buildup of sensation, then a release. It’s the false promises that movies and porn portray. It’s two minutes of extreme penetration and there are fireworks… probably not going to happen.”

When one can detach themselves from the notion that climaxing makes the overall sexual experience a success, one can then truly become sexually free. Redefining what the orgasm is for you can actually help you relax more easily into one.

How To Be More Mindful With Your Sex Life

Ferlise holds Sex Magic coaching programs and workshops to help women cultivate their sacred sexual energy which, in turn, become a microcosm to nurturing passion, vibrancy, and connection in their overall life. One thing prevalent in her teachings is mindfulness, which is about remaining present in the moment and being aware of one’s bodily sensations. Intimacy starts with eye contact and can trickle into a conversation, a physical touch, or an energy exchange, even before any clothes are taken off. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable and to feel the desire, lust, and emotions as they come can help redefine the orgasm.

“Letting yourself sink into all the subtle sensations of pleasure, really leaning into it and feeling it in your body, and taking the same stock in that, can help you come back into your body and turn up the pleasure all over,” Ferlise says. When one is hyper focused on outside factors, they can train themselves to disassociate during sex, pushing their minds away from sensation, which ultimately decreases the amount one is able to feel.

Top Sex Tips For Ultimate Pleasure

Teach Your Partner What You Like

Manta tells her clients to “relax and breathe… and focus on what brings you the most pleasure, instead of what you think is going to get you off. Mimic the things you do when you’re masturbating and show your partner how you enjoy being touched.” Exploring self-pleasure is a great place to start in knowing what you like and dislike. Intimacy is uniquely personal — everyone’s body and interests are different, and we should communicate that to our partner or partners.

Get Out Of Your Head

One major complaint Ferlise says many women have during sex is that they think too much about how they look, how their partner feels, and how they are performing. “Adding all the body shame, the fear of being seen, and the fear of vulnerability, the fear of being broken because you think you can’t orgasm, the shame of not performing right — that so many women experience — it leads to a disconnect in your body and can cause you to check out during sex,” Ferlise says. Evidently, your partner will be much more turned on and notice the level of intimacy if you can truly unwind by letting go of these inhibitions.

Accessorize Your Sex Life

Adding tools into the mix can help build confidence in the bedroom. If you don’t feel completely comfortable being naked, try wearing sexy lingerie you feel great in. If you find yourself worried about lubrication and all that comes with it, try enlisting lube or organic coconut oil on your vulva to help ease your mind.

Get Moving

Movement is a helpful tool to be more present. “Move your body sensually in whatever way feels good,” says Ferlise. “Start to breathe into yourself deeply and focus your mind on your [vagina] and allow yourself to make some noise. As you exhale, you can moan and release sound. Your throat and your jaw are directly related to your pelvic bowl, and if they are tight and closed, so is your pelvic bowl.”

How To Embrace The Sex Life That Works For You

Women have an incredibly powerful sexual energy with great orgasmic potential. But this expands far beyond society’s picture of the “Big O.” Not only has culture suppressed the conversation and education around sex but it has put the female orgasm into a tiny box when it deserves so much more than a toe curl and high-pitched moan.

Everyone has the right to feel comfortable and unapologetic in their sexuality, whether that be via BDSM or missionary style twice a week. Closing the pleasure gap starts with experiencing and experimenting what works for you and letting go of the goal-oriented mindset. Don’t negate the importance of orgasms, but rather shift your mind to focus on how to achieve more overall pleasure. You deserve to feel safe and free in your body, as you are, at its highest potential.

Below are some products that help enhance sexual pleasure and health for people with vulvas. A happier healthier sex life should be on the top of everyone’s to-do list.

Complete Article HERE!

Why social distancing is making me horny

By Tracey Anne Duncan

I am social distancing. That means no bars, no clubs, no yoga classes, and three feet of distance outdoors. Most importantly, to me, it means that I have no place to flirt and no outlets for my sexual impulses. Sure, COVID is changing the way we date, but it’s not changing biology. Being self quarantined is not, in fact, straining my libido in the slightest. For me, the combination of isolation and anxiety is making me hornier than ever. I talked to my favorite sex therapist to find out why.

“Physiologically speaking, our bodies do a lot of things without our awareness,” says Dulcinea Pitagora, a New York City-based psychologist and sex researcher. “The brain wants oxytocin. This is always true, but when we are feeling vulnerable, we are more susceptible to what our body is craving. For some people that craving is expressed as horniness.”

Part of what’s happening, then, is that my body and brain are hungry for the feel good chemicals that are released during physical contact, and I am more aware of this hunger, or horniness, because I am feeling vulnerable and also because I am alone and am, generally, less distracted by external things and more focused on my internal experience.

Something else that may play into pandemic thirst is the cultural sense that maybe we shouldn’t be feeling sexy right now. Some people have the attitude that the world is on fire, how could anyone possibly want to have sex, but it’s exactly that attitude that makes some people feel horny. “Sexuality is natural and normal,” Pitagora says. “The more we try to push it down, the more it intensifies. When we see sex as a way of acting out, it doesn’t necessarily make us want it less.”

The sense that maybe we shouldn’t want sex right now combined with feelings of vulnerability is a great cocktail for creating horniness. “That’s not true for everyone,” Pitagora notes. But it might feel more intense for people who strongly identify with being sexual (it me). “When you add that identity component, that makes the experience feel more urgent because it feels like your identity is at stake,” Pitagora explains.

The sense of urgency that accompanies horniness, like so many other kinds of panic we are experiencing right now, is not that helpful. It’s also not reality-based. “Some part of our brains thinks that we’re never going to have sex again,” Pitagora tells me. “We need to slow our brains down and remember that this is temporary.” Having a horny sense of urgency may feel exciting, but Pitagora tells me it can be dangerous if we don’t second guess our impulses. “We can be very good at rationalizing risky behavior when we’re horny,” Pitagora says, and adds, “If you are a person that likes and cares about sex, you are probably going to have sex again.” Praise Beetlejuice.

So what should thirsty folks stuck home alone do? Porn and masturbation are not really cutting it. “I think it’s important to remind people that it’s okay to be horny and masturbate,” Pitagora says. “There are people out there who feel like they shouldn’t feel sexual at all right now.”

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but repressing your healthy sexual urges is not going to help us beat coronavirus. Please masturbate. Try video sex. It may not work for everyone, but if it doesn’t make you feel icky, Pitagora says, it might help.

Complete Article HERE!