[Moya] Sexual exploration and new partners
One of the things I very greatly appreciate about NL is that he's not at all offended or threatened if I pause in the middle of things to explain why X works for me, or Y doesn't, or to give him suggestions on things I know really get a reaction from me, or explain why I think there's a "grand unifying theory" on why I react the way I do. Hell, last night I gave him the anatomical patient-instructing educational tour of the skene's glands, complete with walking him through palpating them and a discussion of how I use notions of homologous structures in trying to better understand and empathize with my partners' reactions. This morning we had a really good short conversation about how one of the unifying traits of sensation I like is pressure. It's so common to so many different elements of what I crave that I basically assume that it's just part of how I'm wired neurologically.
I'd kind of like to expand on all of these, and also what having a broad range of sexual experience does and doesn't teach you.
I think I'll start with that last one. I don't think it's particularly surprising to anyone that I've had a pretty broad range of experiences and partners. Depending on how you count things, it's somewhere between the high thirties and mid fifties, numberwise. I don't have an iota of regret about this, nor do I intend to stop exploring and experimenting and connecting with new partners, so I expect by the time I'm sneaking around behind the nurses' backs in the nursing home, my numbers will be higher still. I don't place much stock in numbers. However, it is certainly the case that it's rare for me to end up partnering sexually with someone who's had a broader range of partners (I've certainly partnered with people who've had sexual experiences that I haven't, especially in terms of kink dynamics, so I don't think it's accurate to say I'm necessarily always "more experienced"). This has lead to me thinking about how a broad range of experience colors how I approach sexuality now.
Things I've learned from having multiple partners:
* How unique each person's sexuality is.
* How different sexualities draw out different elements of my own sexual psyche.
* New technical tricks and tips that may or may not work on other people.
* How to predict likelihood of compatibility for a sexual involvement.
* New ways of thinking about sexuality.
* How to go about learning a new partner's preferences and tastes, both in terms of physical exploration and in terms of how to have the conversations that facilitate this.
* How to be more confident in my own sexuality.
* How to communicate my tastes and desires to a new partner.
Things I have _not_ learned from having multiple partners:
* What my current partner will desire, or how they will react.
* Everything there is yet to discover about my own sexuality.
One of the most frustrating lovers I ever had was also one of the most experienced. He was so certain he already knew "what would work" that it seemed that my attempts to modify things to what _I_ liked were almost an insult to his skills. I'd never felt more like I was on a sexual assembly line, and it ended up feeling frustratingly impersonal and disconnected. My inability to break through that was a large part of why that involvement only lasted a few weeks, despite quite a bit of compatibility otherwise. I don't ever want to make a partner feel that way. I don't ever want to presume to know someone else's body and experiences better than they do. And I don't ever want to confuse "previous partner made me aware that some people like this and it's an area to explore" with "this worked with someone else, it'll work with you".
As a result, conversation and exploration are a pretty big part of the beginning on any involvement for me, and generally continue on some level as a regular element.
Also, I'd like to clarify that being a sex geek doesn't automatically make me an awesome lover anymore than being a librarian automatically makes one an awesome writer -- The background and context are helpful, but not at all sufficient. In fact, I'd say being a general science geek is more useful to me in a lot of ways; it means I tend to think in terms of experiments and hypotheses.
So, although previous lovers don't tell me anything about my current lover's preferences, they do broaden the range of areas I know to explore and test (one example: a previous lover had extraordinarily sensitive wrists -- since then I never fail to check with a bit of kissing/sucking to see if someone's sensitive there). And practice/experience has made that a somewhat more organized process, I think. I do mentally keep track of what I do know, and what I haven't tried yet or don't know yet.
I like taking long, meandering tours of my partner's body, testing out various types of touch (light fluttering fingertip touches, smooth strokes, deeper massaging sorts of touch, etc), kissing, sucking, licking, nibbling, looking for what draws interesting reactions from them. I often find spots that the person hirself never knew was an erogenous zone for hir (when that happens it's a major "yay!" moment for me). Testing appropriate intensity range is a whole other axis, too. I think that's one of the trickier ones for a lot of people, including me. When I'm testing the more intense side of things (nipping, biting, hair-tugging, etc), I try to do it when I can really read their reactions closely and back off if I get more intense than they like. And I ramp up intensity slowly, testing for that boundary. I try to avoid testing those sorts of things for the first time when either of us is too distracted to participate in good feedback.
This kind of "feeling things out" generally happens in concert with a lot of conversation. I find conversation about sexual turn-ons to be both hot and immensely useful, so it's a huge double-bonus for me. Some things I won't head into exploring without first determining verbally that the person has at least a basic interest in them (anal play, kink, some types of ball play, size play/fisting, etc), but combined with what I'd said in previous posts about the use of the phrase "May I?", it's generally not too hard to avoid over-stepping boundaries. Also, I actively ask my partners for feedback. How to have those conversations honestly without hurt feelings is a whole big topic of its own, too, and one I definitely want to write about as part of this (note to self: also find old post about erotic conversations and how to avoid making them problematically prescriptive when it comes to the actual reality of interaction).
However, I'm going to end this post here, take my belated break-time, then come back and tackle more of these topics in the next post.
Also, NL's unexpectedly staying another night! I'm now very excited for my workday to be over.
I'd kind of like to expand on all of these, and also what having a broad range of sexual experience does and doesn't teach you.
I think I'll start with that last one. I don't think it's particularly surprising to anyone that I've had a pretty broad range of experiences and partners. Depending on how you count things, it's somewhere between the high thirties and mid fifties, numberwise. I don't have an iota of regret about this, nor do I intend to stop exploring and experimenting and connecting with new partners, so I expect by the time I'm sneaking around behind the nurses' backs in the nursing home, my numbers will be higher still. I don't place much stock in numbers. However, it is certainly the case that it's rare for me to end up partnering sexually with someone who's had a broader range of partners (I've certainly partnered with people who've had sexual experiences that I haven't, especially in terms of kink dynamics, so I don't think it's accurate to say I'm necessarily always "more experienced"). This has lead to me thinking about how a broad range of experience colors how I approach sexuality now.
Things I've learned from having multiple partners:
* How unique each person's sexuality is.
* How different sexualities draw out different elements of my own sexual psyche.
* New technical tricks and tips that may or may not work on other people.
* How to predict likelihood of compatibility for a sexual involvement.
* New ways of thinking about sexuality.
* How to go about learning a new partner's preferences and tastes, both in terms of physical exploration and in terms of how to have the conversations that facilitate this.
* How to be more confident in my own sexuality.
* How to communicate my tastes and desires to a new partner.
Things I have _not_ learned from having multiple partners:
* What my current partner will desire, or how they will react.
* Everything there is yet to discover about my own sexuality.
One of the most frustrating lovers I ever had was also one of the most experienced. He was so certain he already knew "what would work" that it seemed that my attempts to modify things to what _I_ liked were almost an insult to his skills. I'd never felt more like I was on a sexual assembly line, and it ended up feeling frustratingly impersonal and disconnected. My inability to break through that was a large part of why that involvement only lasted a few weeks, despite quite a bit of compatibility otherwise. I don't ever want to make a partner feel that way. I don't ever want to presume to know someone else's body and experiences better than they do. And I don't ever want to confuse "previous partner made me aware that some people like this and it's an area to explore" with "this worked with someone else, it'll work with you".
As a result, conversation and exploration are a pretty big part of the beginning on any involvement for me, and generally continue on some level as a regular element.
Also, I'd like to clarify that being a sex geek doesn't automatically make me an awesome lover anymore than being a librarian automatically makes one an awesome writer -- The background and context are helpful, but not at all sufficient. In fact, I'd say being a general science geek is more useful to me in a lot of ways; it means I tend to think in terms of experiments and hypotheses.
So, although previous lovers don't tell me anything about my current lover's preferences, they do broaden the range of areas I know to explore and test (one example: a previous lover had extraordinarily sensitive wrists -- since then I never fail to check with a bit of kissing/sucking to see if someone's sensitive there). And practice/experience has made that a somewhat more organized process, I think. I do mentally keep track of what I do know, and what I haven't tried yet or don't know yet.
I like taking long, meandering tours of my partner's body, testing out various types of touch (light fluttering fingertip touches, smooth strokes, deeper massaging sorts of touch, etc), kissing, sucking, licking, nibbling, looking for what draws interesting reactions from them. I often find spots that the person hirself never knew was an erogenous zone for hir (when that happens it's a major "yay!" moment for me). Testing appropriate intensity range is a whole other axis, too. I think that's one of the trickier ones for a lot of people, including me. When I'm testing the more intense side of things (nipping, biting, hair-tugging, etc), I try to do it when I can really read their reactions closely and back off if I get more intense than they like. And I ramp up intensity slowly, testing for that boundary. I try to avoid testing those sorts of things for the first time when either of us is too distracted to participate in good feedback.
This kind of "feeling things out" generally happens in concert with a lot of conversation. I find conversation about sexual turn-ons to be both hot and immensely useful, so it's a huge double-bonus for me. Some things I won't head into exploring without first determining verbally that the person has at least a basic interest in them (anal play, kink, some types of ball play, size play/fisting, etc), but combined with what I'd said in previous posts about the use of the phrase "May I?", it's generally not too hard to avoid over-stepping boundaries. Also, I actively ask my partners for feedback. How to have those conversations honestly without hurt feelings is a whole big topic of its own, too, and one I definitely want to write about as part of this (note to self: also find old post about erotic conversations and how to avoid making them problematically prescriptive when it comes to the actual reality of interaction).
However, I'm going to end this post here, take my belated break-time, then come back and tackle more of these topics in the next post.
Also, NL's unexpectedly staying another night! I'm now very excited for my workday to be over.