ColumnExercising healthy communication skills can be quite a challenge when it comes to your sex life – both in established relationships and casual flings. Even your one-night-stands can stand a bit of straight talk. How do you say what you mean and get what you want every time?
We don’t like to talk about sex because we’re taught that love is magic, and why would you want to ruin a perfectly good fairy tale by dissecting it? Even when your sex doesn’t come with a heaping side order of romance, talking about it is still confusing and laden with emotional triggers.
Love and sex — separate entities — are so tied together in our consciousness that it can feel impossible to parse what belongs where. Our self-esteem is inextricably linked to the idea of being “wanted” – not being up-voted in bed can leave you feeling like a failure. But if you talk about it – before, during and after the act – you can change almost everything about your sex life.
We’re supposed to instantly understand our lover’s quirks, their body’s secret needs, their unspoken fantasies. Women are taught that we’re meant to just show up and perform – especially because most of us are playing out the Madonna-Whore complex in all our waking moments. In bed we are in the role of the whore – who is always a sexual genius.
Women are culturally conditioned not to speak up at all. Especially in heterosexual partnerships, many of our relationship conflicts are born out of a tendency to only use non-verbal signals to express our anger. We hope/expect our male partners to just get it, and when they don’t read our minds, we get even angrier. I suspect that it’s because we’re afraid of being labeled as nags that we begin to keep our complaints to ourselves – in and out of bed.
Have you ever suffered through painful sex (not the good kind) just because you didn’t want to tell your partner to shift positions? Or let someone go down on you in a way that was just so very wrong – but you didn’t want to hurt their feelings? Have you endured weeks or months or years of boring or just plain bad sex because there was something about the relationship – comfort, even financial security – that kept you there? You deserve better – but you have to be willing to ask for it.
I believe all women should have one-night-stands at least five to ten times (or more) in their lives. The reason is simple – in a one-night-stand you have nothing to lose emotionally. You can say, “Shift to the right.” “I like it when you x, y, z.” “I want to stop now, please.” “This is how I get off.” “Use this toy.” “Thanks for the orgasm! Now you can leave.”
We’ve been hearing so much about hookup culture on campus in recent years, and from what everyone’s saying, it seems like women’s pleasure isn’t much of a priority. But in one-night-stands, you can learn to improve communication skills and speak up about what you want and what you don’t want without having to worry about what it means for the rest of your days. Consider it the Rosetta Stone for your future love/sex life. This is you practicing before your trip to Italy, so you can flawlessly order yourself a gorgeous meal of pasta and vino when you arrive. Practice is vital — whether you visit for two weeks or fall madly in love and stay forever.
But say you’re in a long-term relationship – one of those unicorn situations in which you and your partner had perfect chemistry and nothing needed to be explained. Now you’re two or five-years in and the passion seems gone, for good. Because you once had the magic, it might be even harder to discuss why it’s not instantly available anymore. In situations like this, each partner tends to back away into their own quiet, sullen corner. The only way to break the silence is to get brave and broach it.
Sure, you’re probably afraid that your partner isn’t attracted to you anymore – but guess what? He/she may be thinking the exact same thing. And another thing – it’s normal for attraction to wane over the course of years – even more so for women than for men. We’ve been taught the opposite – that men will always get bored first, and thus stray first. It’s a load of bunk, like so many other sexual myths we’ve been fed.
If you’re addressing a problem – telling your partner that something they do doesn’t feel right – it’s normal to feel a hint of concern. But what goes unspoken is almost always worse than the words themselves. Talk it out, get feedback, and listen without being reactive.
Talking is not unsexy. A frank conversation about sex doesn’t have to feel as awkward as your nerdy teacher putting a condom on a banana in health class. Even if you’re not usually verbal while in the act, talking about sex out of bed can encourage you to speak up while naked – which can make sex a whole lot hotter.
Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie@ecosalon.com and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.
Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality
Related on EcoSalon
How To Start Your Own Personal Sexual Revolution
The Real Reason Female Sexuality Has Been Repressed For Millennia
Image: Faith K Lefever