As the great Peggy Kleinpatz once said,"Great lovers aren't born. They're made."
Recently I gave a talk at Enlightenment in the Bedroom and it was just so much fun. I was given free reign to discuss whatever I felt called to talk about, and even in that process of reflecting on the kind of message I wanted to share with the world and what I felt was important for folks to know in the realm of sex and relationships, I learnt a lot about myself in this super rich opportunity. It affirmed my holy mission in this work, and that is the importance of learning how to be better romantic and sexual partners which is an art, a science and a practice all at once.
In savouring this wonderful night of shame-free sex-positivity and queer community as well as this professional milestone for myself, I thought I'd share some of the goodness and the key take-aways from my talk. Enjoy.
In a lot of our cultural conversations and narratives, there's a lot of unspoken pressure on having good sex all the time because everyone else is supposedly having this mysterious hot, passionate and juicy sex. Yet we are so poorly equipped or prepared for it, so many of us end up having sex long before we're able to have any meaningful conversations about it. To make up for our poor sex ed, we focus on these surface and circular How-To questions: How to last longer? How to orgasm so my partner doesn't feel bad? How to politely turn someone down? How to initiate sex? They're all valid questions, but they perpetuate this idea that if you collect all the right tips and tricks, you and/or your partner will orgasm and you will be "good at sex". Being good at sex is then about doing, it's about performing perfectly and achieving these KPIs. Some of us can get so caught up in being good at sex and pleasing our partners that we actually don't even ask them what it is they want - we just assume that our role is to provide orgasms. The reality is that there is so much more that we can offer each other, other than our just genitals or mouths.
What I offer instead as a reframe is this slight pivot and recentring of being a good sexual partner. Being a good sexual partner is about being rather than doing, and being present in the space that you co-create together that says "I accept you", "your desires and needs are welcome", or "let's just figure this out together". It's in how you communicate about sex, how you handle when your partner says no or how you give and receive feedback, how you respond when bodies don’t work as you’d like them to work, and in how you give each other permission to let go and to play and to connect.
Being a good sexual partner all starts with attention. In a world where our attention is being pulled ten different directions at any given time, our attention is the most generous thing you can give to a partner (or anyone). This applies in and outside of the bedroom. What this can look like is by asking them a curious and thoughtful question. This is especially important in long-term relationships where you get to a point where you assume you know everything there is to know about your partner so you eventually stop asking.
I build on this idea from Pleasure Mechanics and it's this idea that when we challenge ourselves to ask different questions, it requires us to come out of autopilot mode, to be present and to witness the other person. A good question makes us feel seen and it holds up a mirror to who we are if we're willing to dig deep, be brave and share it. It’s a shame that the skill and the art of asking curious questions about sex and pleasure is so rare. For some (straight) people, their entire repertoire of questions is: Wanna have sex? Is this okay? How about this? Did you cum? We can do better than this.
It's about time that we dig deeper and get to know our erotic selves by inviting them to the table, pulling up a chair and asking them better questions. Questions like What do you want to experience? What are you craving right now? What does sex mean to you? What pushes you towards it and what pulls you from it? Many of us have never really given much thought to learning about our eroticism or our fantasies or how to describe what we like or why we like it. In this open exploration and excavation, we get the opportunity to surprise ourselves and each other again if we’re brave enough to share it because asking better questions also goes hand-in-hand with giving better answers by being more specific and granular with our requests. It’s an opportunity to discover and create a new experience together whether it’s your partner of 10 years or your partner for the next hour.
It’s also not only just questions that you ask with your words and with your brains, but there’s also questions that you ask in bed with your bodies about what touch or pressure or stroke feels pleasurable and their body will give you an answer if you listen closely enough to their breath, their sounds or the slightest body movements.
The Hot 10 Tips for Giving Head from your favourite magazine is fun, it's juicy and there will always be a place for it in sex ed but it's also about recognising that they are quick fixes. They perpetuate this endless of list of should’s in our minds and this idea that there is a “right” way to have sex and this is measured by orgasm or quantity over quality. It asks us to sacrifice or ignore what we want on the altar of doing what we "should" do. As a result, many of us are so disconnected to what we want even in the most basic forms of touch. because we can’t see past all this noise and these internalised assumptions about how sex “should” go, and there’s nothing sexy about assumptions. When we ask different questions, we’re invited into a different perspective and because of that, a different world.
When we re-centre the focus instead on being better sexual partners by being intentional and asking better questions, it simply asks: in this playground of pleasure, what can I learn about your pleasure today, or what can I learn about my own? That’s such a beautiful gift to offer each other. That maybe tonight I want to know my body more intimately, maybe tomorrow I want to know yours, maybe next week I want to play a different role than I’m used to. Having curiosity as our baseline means that what we want can change in that moment, next week or 5 years from now. It also means that what I want won't always line up with what you want, and that difference should be honoured and celebrated. Once you’ve got the whole curiosity and attention part down, the good sex comes quite naturally because to be good in bed is to be continually learning and experiencing each other.
It just starts with attention and the simple question: What do you want to experience?
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