Buck up, champ: Feeling a little anxious about your sexual history (or lack thereof) is totally normal. Here are 10 ways to improve your sexual performance without having to have sex first.
by Vanessa Marin
[E]veryone has anxiety about being great in bed, but when you don’t have much sexual experience that anxiety can feel sky high. For some guys, that concern about experience turns into a horrible cycle: You don’t feel confident about your sexual experience, so you end up not having sex, and your experience level remains the same.
Here’s the good news: Experience is a good teacher, but you can still learn how to be great in bed without it. Here’s how.
1. Put it in context
As a sex therapist, I can tell you that just about everyone has self-confidence issues when it comes to sex—even people with a lot of experience. The insecurities are different from person to person, but they’re insecurities nonetheless. And keep in mind that many of the women you’re intimate with may be inexperienced or insecure as well. You’re certainly not alone.
2. Do your research
You can school yourself on how to have great sex without having any experience whatsoever. I also recommend Guide To Getting It On: Unzipped by Paul Joannides or The Big Bang by Nerve for general sex education topics like STIs and pregnancy prevention, anatomy, communication, and consent. She Comes First by Ian Kerner is a fantastic guide to the art of pleasuring a woman, and I recommend it to almost every man in my sex therapy practice. Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski is a great book about female sexuality in general.
One caveat: Don’t get your sex education from porn! Porn is meant to be entertainment, not education. Porn sex has very little resemblance to real sex. It’s all about angles, lighting, and editing. Most of the moves you see in porn simply won’t go over well in the real world.
3. Take care of your body
One of the best things you can do to improve your confidence is to take great care of your body. Sex is a physical act. Not only do you need endurance, but you also have to feel comfortable and confident in your own skin. You already know what you should be doing—eat right, get enough sleep, and exercise regularly. Exercise, in particular, can also have added sexual benefits, like increasing your sex drive and improving your erections and your orgasms.
Grooming is important too. Wear clothes that flatter your body and make you feel good. Get your hair cut and your beard trimmed. The better you feel about yourself and your body, the more confident you’ll feel in bed.
4. Masturbate
Yes, masturbation can improve your partnered sex life! Most men masturbate pretty thoughtlessly, zoning out to porn while they try to get the job done as quickly as possible. This actually serves to disconnect you from your body, and decreases your control over your erection and orgasm.
Instead, you can use masturbation to help increase your stamina. First, think of how long you’d like to last with a partner. That becomes your new masturbation session length. During that time, really pay attention to your body. Notice what it feels like when you start getting close to orgasm, and train yourself to back off when you’re on the edge.
You can also practice purposefully losing your erection, then getting it back again. This will help decrease anxiety about losing your erection with a partner.
5. Go slow
When you’re feeling anxious about sex, you’re more likely to rush. Lots of inexperienced men have the tendency to jump right to intercourse, but it’s so much more fun to take your time and go slow. Spend plenty of time on kissing, touching, and performing oral sex, and even slow down your physical movements. A slower pace will help dramatically decrease your anxiety levels.
Plus, keep in mind that most women feel more physical pleasure from oral sex and fingering than from intercourse, and a lot of women love being teased. She’ll appreciate your pace, too.
6. Focus on her pleasure
Being fantastic in bed means genuinely caring about your partner’s pleasure. It’s arguably the most important quality in a great lover. If you spend time specifically focusing on her body—taking your time with her, kissing her all over, fingering her, going down on her—you’re going to impress her way more than the guy who has a ton of experience but is selfish in bed. Plus, seeing the pleasure that you bring her will naturally help you feel more confident.
7. Treat her like an individual
I’m all about sharing sex tips and techniques, but the reality is that every woman likes different things. No one technique is going to work for every woman. This is great news for you because it shows that experience only goes so far. We’re all beginners when we have sex with someone brand new. Try to explore her body with openness and curiosity. Pay attention to how she responds to your touch. Does she moan? Does she start breathing more heavily? Does she arch her body toward you? Don’t be afraid to ask her what she wants or likes! One super-simple way to ask for feedback is to try two different things on her, and ask her, “Do you like it better when I do this or this?”
8. Keep it simple
So many men overly complicate sex, especially when they’re feeling anxious. Technique is important, but you don’t need to go crazy trying out a million different things on her. The key to female orgasm is actually consistency, not complicated tongue maneuvers or finger gymnastics. Switching things up usually throws her off and distracts her. Find something simple that seems to be working for her, and stick with it. Increase your pace and pressure gradually, but stick to the same basic technique.
9. Don’t think of it as a performance
One of the biggest mistakes that sexual newbies make is thinking of sex as a performance. They get overly fixated on the idea of maintaining a perfect erection, having the utmost control over their orgasms, and mastering their technique. But the truth is that no one likes feeling like they’re having sex with a robot. She doesn’t need you to perform for her like a circus animal. She wants to feel connected to you, and she wants to have fun. You can do that, even without any prior sexual experience.
10. Have a sense of humor
Sex is never perfect, no matter how much experience you have. Sex can be awkward, weird, and sometimes downright hilarious. You’re bound to try out a position that doesn’t work, bump foreheads, or get a cramp in your leg. Having a sense of humor is so important in those moments. If you can laugh it off, you’ll get back to the fun much faster.
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1. Sexual play doesn’t have to end in orgasm to be satisfying. Yes, we like climaxing. And we expect to get there most of the time. But we don’t experience what guys refer to as “blue balls”—we don’t have nuts that can be brought to the brink of busting and then abruptly deprived of fulfilling their orgasmic destiny—so there’s no reason to feel bad or subhuman or inadequate if you get off before we do. Don’t expect us to beg you to finish us off like you might want to be in the same situation. We’re just fine curling up and falling asleep, or getting on with our day.
2. If you whine too much about your inability to make us orgasm once in a while even after we explain that sex can be pleasurable regardless, we are bound to start faking orgasms regularly. Faking an orgasm is called for on occasion, but we like to think of it as a last resort since it’s counterproductive to achieving future gratification by way of rewarding ineffective tactics. We don’t want to fake it more than we absolutely have to (for your good, and ours), so don’t make us.
3. We respect and appreciate your willingness to service us 99.9% of the time we want to get busy, but you can’t expect the same from us. We’re biologically programmed and societally conditioned to be more cautious about sex in general because we bear 100% of the physiological burden of getting pregnant and we’re the ones dealing with all the slut shaming. Please do not cite your “accommodating nature” as the reason why you should be able to select from a menu of on-demand sexual services at any time. If you avoid making this argument, we’re far more likely to have sex with you even when we don’t want to.
4. You might think we’re in the mood a lot less often than you are, but the fact is that we function differently. For a lot of women, desire doesn’t necessarily precede arousal. We need to be touched, caressed, and loved in order to crave sex. So instead of whining about how horny you are and how unlikely it seems that you’ll get laid that night because we’re a bit mopey or whatever, sneak up behind us and start rubbing our shoulders and work your way down to our waist, or go in for a boob grab. The key is physical contact, so touch us!
4. Foreplay doesn’t start twenty minutes before penetration. It is an all-day, every day phenomenon. If you want to increase the chances that we’ll mount you on any given night, tell us we’re sexy in the morning as we’re getting ready for work, or send us a text midday just to say you’re thinking about the way our ass looks when we shake it for you.
5. Tell us we’re beautiful without exaggerating. We know we don’t look like Gisele naked, so don’t make outrageous claims about how hot we are. Ridiculous compliments come across as insincere, so they’re ineffectual. We’d rather be appreciated for the way we look, flaws and all. Tell us what turns you on about us specifically, whether it’s something we’ve done or something we’re wearing, and avoid comparing us to other women at all costs. Start with “I love the way your…” or “I love it when you…”
6. We want to get weird with you. Don’t assume you’re special for having so many depraved thoughts. We can get there too, so clue us in to your innermost desires. The more comfortable you are with your sexual aspirations and the more you communicate them openly and honestly, the more likely we are to accompany you on your dirty journey.
7. We won’t necessarily think you’re a misogynistic prick if you want to objectify us in bed. Some of us actually want to be overpowered and/or objectified—as long as the bedroom objectification doesn’t seep into other aspects of our lives together. One of the staunchest feminists I know loves shouting, “I’m a cock hungry slut!” during sex. We’re totally capable of separating what happens during sex from the rest of our waking lives, so give us some credit and tell us what you want before dismissing the possibilities out there.
8. We want you to worship our vaginas just as much as you ache for us to build penis shrines. When you act like you’re eager to go down on us it means a lot, and your visible enthusiasm makes us a lot more psyched to reciprocate the favor. While you’re down there, tell us you love the way our vagina looks, smells, and tastes.
10. We’re aware that the reptilian part of your brain leads you to picture most of the hot young women you encounter naked. Keep this to yourself, no matter how much we claim to trust that you won’t act on those urges, or how often we assure you that we can handle hearing about them. We don’t need to be reminded that your natural instinct is to try to impregnate every hot breathing biped of the opposite sex. It does not make us feel great, plain and simple.
11. At a certain point, every woman realizes that there’s a serious downside to sleeping with hot guys, so stop feeling intimidated by them. The men who’ve gotten laid all their lives without putting much effort into luring a lady into bed pale in comparison to those who’ve had to work for it over the years. We would much rather have sex with a man who knows what he’s doing than an inexperienced Lothario who thinks a clitoris and a g-spot are synonymous.
12. Good-looking guys are nice to look at, but good looks won’t hold our interest for more than a few minutes, anyway. Your face and body are side dishes. The main course is how well you’re able to engage us—to make us feel like we’re the center of your universe, if only for a short stint—which requires self-awareness and self-confidence. We’ll swoon over how you hold yourself, walk, and talk—not how closely you resemble Brad Pitt.
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