People have different expectations, sensibilities and openness in terms of sexuality.
Some people enjoy creating their own sex menus and discovering new and different ways to explore their sexuality. This can happen in different ways at different times, depending on lifestyles, stressors, health and feeling empowered or not.
It can be helpful to have conversations with your partner in a gentle and light way which feels consensual and open. If you feel you are holding back on what you want, then talk with your partner to see if you both might be open to exploring different things.
What is the best way to broach the subject with your partner and what do you say?
It is always good to bring up subjects in a light and playful way. For example, “let’s try a massage” or “I have ordered some fun outfits or a whip, would you like to play with them?”
Or create a loving environment with candles, flowers and music. Start to tease and flirt with your partner by blindfolding them, for example, and play with fruit around their mouth. Or put sparkling water in your mouth and feed them mouth to mouth to titilate them.
Run them a bath with salt and bubbles and ask if you can wash their body or get in the bath with them. Or have a shower together and rub shower gel all over each other.
Build an atmosphere where you both feel good, whether it’s in the bath or on the sofa, relax together and talk about different things that you would like to try.
Buy some toys and textures to tempt them and ask them how they would like to be touched, kissed, felt, taken.
Or one of you could masturbate the other while talking through some fantasies (this could be, for example, group sex where you talk through all kinds of people doing all kinds of interesting and alluring things to your partner).
What are things you should be prepared for when you have this conversation?
Your partner might not be keen at first but it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road. Take time to really explore what they might like – you might be surprised!
You might need to build slowly – most people need to feel safe before they will try new things out. If you want to take your partner to a sex club, it might be better to try out some toys or outfits first at home.
It can be fun to explore your sexual values together. What is important to each of you? What do you want to experience internally and externally? What foods would you like to feed your partner and tease them with while blindfolded?
What can really help is to approach the conversation by being warm, skilful and flirtatious. This is about body language, tone and pace. What’s important is creating a warm and open setup where your partner feels welcomed to explore what they might like, but doesn’t feel forced into anything. No one wants to feel that they are forced or pushed into anything (unless that is what they want and have requested that).
The key is to create some delightful experiences to tempt your beloved. For example, creating a scrumptious ‘love room’ with low lighting, perhaps candles, music and incense (depending on what you both like) and arranging an area of cushions for doing massage and inviting your partner in. Suggest a bath then take them into the love room to do massage, for example. You might take them for a sea swim, a beach sauna, a midnight walk, an outdoors dance, or read poetry (get creative and check out what there is around you).
Sex therapist Barry McCarthy suggests that we can think of sexuality in terms of 7 gearsticks and that we build up experiences through the gearsticks.
- Affection – ideally there should be daily affection and cuddles to build bonding.
- Compliments, affirmations.
- Sensual touch – once there is safety in the affection then build more sensual touch and playfulness e.g. massage, bum pinching, caressing, kissing.
- Erotic play, flirting, sexting, dressing up, dating, role playing (dom/sub, top/bottom), licking, teasing.
- Naked play, touching bodies, hard and soft play, power play, touching erotic body parts, sex menus, genital play, BDSM.
- Oral play, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal mapping, rimming.
- Intercourse – vaginal, anal.
Barry suggests that people often feel like they are not having “sex” or adventurous sex but they need to explore many different parts of sensuality and sexuality before trying to get to certain “goals”. Once you have created warmer atmospheres in which maybe you say hello, cuddle your partner or sit on their lap (weight permitting and if they are OK with this) – then you might consider putting your hand on their genitals.
Good lovers build the atmosphere up over time. Some people create menus of what they would like – e.g. kissing my neck, light kisses on my face and a deep snog with tongues, strong strokes on my body and fingers in my anus. This can be helpful to make things playful, experimental and fun.
Sex can become stressful when you feel pressurised to get things right. Always slow the pace if one person is getting stressed.
The key is communication and playfulness! HOW MUCH fun are you having?
