We Can’t Understand Sex Without Experiencing Sex
Think back. Remember the very first time you realized that the area between your legs felt different from the rest of your body. Maybe you were in a bath with soap. Maybe you were in bed. But suddenly you realized that there was something down there that was very special in a good way.
That experience may be considered your first conscious experience of sex. In that moment, your brain finally made the connection to your genitals. That’s the first experience of the pure, primal feel-goodness of sex — before the shame, the confusion, and before the fantasies about what it would be like if someone else touched them. It was your body doing what every human body does: beginning to forge the bond between your conscious mind and your primal sexual instincts. It’s a natural stage of development.
What ruins this connection? Shame. The stricter your environment, the more likely your mind absorbs teachings that enjoying the God-given feel-good buttons on your body is evil, depraved, and shameful.
It’s so confusing that by the time we are adolescents, most of us are conflicted about the overpowering urges to touch ourselves and to seek out images or written words that make the place between our thighs throb and tingle.
We Learn How to Enjoy Sexual Pleasure in Two Phases
The first stage of conscious sexual pleasure is masturbation. This is when we explore our bodies and figure out if there are other feel-good buttons we can push. Some of us discover that our nipples are sensitive. Some of us discover that things in our butts feel good. If we’re differently wired, we may discover joy through specific rituals, sensations, fabrics, or objects.
The second stage is when we begin having sexual experiences with partners. Now we’ve gone from figuring out what gives us pleasure to figuring out how someone else experiences pleasure and how we can enjoy pleasure with them.
We Learn Our Preferences by Experimenting With Others
Sex with another person can set our future patterns, both good and bad. If we are guilty and furtive in the beginning, we could stay that way, even if we get married. If we form a negative adult pattern of intimacy, that pattern may last for the rest of our lives. If we have a lot of sex that doesn’t fully satisfy but we are too (fill in the blank — anxious, under pressure to marry, ashamed of our real needs), we lower the bar and don’t expect to be satisfied. Soon, being unsatisfied is our norm.
However, all experiences can help us. If we learn from and avoid repeating unsatisfying experiences. If you remember the things that worked and repeat them, then good sex can become your norm. There’s an old saying, “The secret to happiness is very simple – what makes you unhappy, do less, what makes you happy, do more”.
Experience Is The Path to Great Sex
The best sex, the most fully engaged sex anyone can have in life, comes when you have enough experience to know what turns you on and what turns you off.
Experience can take you there. Make your experience work for you. Let it up your game. Learn to focus on what has made you happiest and do more of that! Most of all, have fun.
How to Learn from Sexual Experience
- Explore your own body without inhibition
- Experiment with eager partners
- Value your mediocre experiences. They teach you what not to do
- Celebrate good experiences. They teach you – do more of that!
