When I was in college, I dated a guy who went to school 30 minutes away. It was during this time that I first experimented with long distance sex, and I have to say it wasn’t all that pretty in 1999. This was before cell phones and laptops, or at least before I had either device, so long distance sex required some creativity and patience. Roommates on both sides made phone sex hard, so we started writing dirty emails back and forth.

Crafting the perfect erotic email was delicious fun for me, an English major reading Nabakov for the first time. I daydreamed in class about all the scenarios I could write about, and then rushed to the computer lab to write my email. It was exhilarating and a little forbidden to compose dirty messages amidst all the other students writing term papers and doing research. Just as the excitement and redness in my cheeks peeked, I would hit send and then … wait. I had to wait for a reply, maybe for a few hours, maybe even a day. This tortured form of long distance sex made for intense meet-ups on the weekend, but was frustrating in the moment.

Image by Pacfolly used under Creative Commons license.

Now there are so many ways to have long distance sex, all with more instant gratification than was available to me 10 years ago. You can have phone sex, send nude pics, and write dirty text messages from your cell phone. You can email, IM, and video chat from your laptop, or you can even meet up in a virtual world like Second Life to live out your fantasies from afar. You can invest in teledildonics, or sex toys that can be controlled remotely. The convenience and immediacy of the technology available makes it much easier on long-distance relationships, traveling lovers, and lonely souls looking to connect or get off. It makes it easier for me, when my partner and I are apart and want that sexual connection.

But there was something exquisite about those old emails. All the fantasizing, planning, writing, and waiting left much more to the imagination than the pixilated images of video chat sex.

Try: write an erotic letter or email to a lover and experience the thrill that fantasizing and waiting can provide.

There’s yet another glass ceiling for women to shatter – hopefully with screaming ecstatic orgasms. That’s because there is a substantial gender gap when it comes to orgasms between men and women. Research shows that in all contexts, from casual hookups to long-term relationships, women orgasm significantly less often than men. This sexual inequity cannot stand, especially since it’s fairly easy to improve with some efforts from both genders.

Image by PhantomX used under Creative Commons.

Ladies, if you want to close the orgasm gap, and you should, there are three things you can try that will improve your sexual experiences, and help close the gap:

• Masturbate. Climaxing is hard if you don’t know what you like and what your body responds to. Masturbation teaches you what gets you off. Contrary to what you might have been told, your body is not icky, gross, or sinful. It is perfectly healthy and normal to masturbate, if you are so inclined.

• Communicate. If he’s not touching you in a way that will make you come, then tell him. Simple instructions like “harder,” “slower,” or “more gentle” are not disruptive, and in fact can be erotic. More complicated instructions, such as explaining where your clit is, don’t have to be scary, either. Just take his hand and say, “I like when you touch me here.”

• Take Control. If lying there while he humps away on top of you isn’t working, then you’re going to have to take on a more assertive role during intercourse. Woman on top is a good position to control the depth and speed of penetration, which will help bring you closer to orgasm. Experiment with different positions, and speak up when one isn’t working for you.

Guys, you have a stake in narrowing the orgasm gap, too. Let’s face it - it’s sexier and more fun when she orgasms. Here’s how you can help out:

• Give a shit. Seriously, if you don’t think that sex should be a mutually beneficial experience, then you deserve to have your dick cut off. That isn’t to say that she’ll always orgasm because you care, but you should have enough respect for anyone you’re having sex with the try to share the good times.

• Make her come first. A good practice, especially if endurance during intercourse is a concern, is to make her come first. You can do it digitally or orally, but doing so takes the pressure off of you during intercourse when there’s less clit stimulation for her.

• Ask for directions. If you’re feeling lost when it comes to her pleasure, and she won’t speak up, just ask her what she likes. You can ask for feedback, like “does that feel good?” or you can ask for more direction, like “show me where you like to be touched.”

Do your part to close the orgasm gap, and all the benefits of good service will be lavished upon you.

Over the past few days, two of our articles were posted over at Ask Dan and Jennifer - below are the links to check them out, and the other great content on their site.

The first article is about the differences between real sex vs. porn sex and includes tips for women on how to teach men the differences. Here’s an excerpt:

It seems to be an epidemic that young men who grow up watching porn (cough, all of them), think that what they see is what sex is like. And, yes, perhaps women are guilty of believing in certain kinds of movie sex, maybe those that involve scenes with Brad Pitt or Richard Gere, but those misconceptions never end with semen on someone’s face.

The second article is about the consequences of being too goal-oriented during sex, aka - too focused on orgasm to really enjoy the sexual experience. Here’s a quote:

Goal-oriented sex minimally causes you to miss out on more sensual and intimate sexual experiences. At its worst, being too focused on orgasm could actually be preventing you or your partner from enjoying sex. Think about it – has your focus on your orgasm or your partner’s ever created pressure and interference? Of course it has. That’s because you are focused on the wrong thing.

Thanks for reading.

Image by Angelo used under Creative Commons.

I read a great post at BitchBuzz about the importance of sharing sex stories. In it, author Michelle Tilley points out that sharing sex stories is valuable because it’s fun to relive and relish in exciting sex stories, and even more important to learn from and normalize embarrassing ones.

While I think the sentiment of the article is true, I also think that people are less forthcoming about their sex lives than the article would have you believe. Sex may be a less taboo subject than it was in prior decades, but we aren’t any less vulnerable when it comes to sex. So while sharing a good or funny dirty story might be good dinner party fodder, sharing the more intimate and embarrassing ones inevitably makes one more vulnerable. I find that as I get older, fewer people are willing to open up and risk looking silly, ignorant, or unsatisfied, so the sex story sharing happens less often, even when there is much to gain from it.

As a couple, we definitely have our dinner party sex stories, like the time Jason went to separate our humping dogs and ended up with dog semen on his face (because even if it doesn’t involve human sex, everyone loves a good cum on face story). But we haven’t really collected any of the classic humiliating stories, like getting drunk and hitting on your boss, since we’ve been together. I am happy to share and laugh at the time I threw up on him during an overzealous blowjob, but I’m not sure I’d open up about any of the real sexual topics that we wrestle with.

There’s this perception that being an adult means appearing like you have things together, which manifests in ways like pretending to be interested in mortgage rates when you’d rather be playing video games to fronting like your sex life is great when you’d rather be banging your secretary. It’s harder to open up honestly around friends under this pressure. I rarely have the girl talks that I used to, when we would open up the chasms of insecurities and fears that often revolved around relationships and sex.

I recently had a weekend away with one of my oldest and dearest friends during which, while we gorged on chocolate and wine, we realized that we hadn’t hung out sans partners in 3 years. It was so fun and refreshing to talk about how annoying it is to pick up after someone and how tempting it is to get frisky with the personal trainer at the gym. That kind of talk had always been commonplace for me before, but somehow is absent today. It wasn’t weird in high school to draw diagrams of penises or explain how to give a blowjob at sleepovers, nor was it unusual in college to spend the morning after partying with roommates trying to piece together who hooked up with who the night before, and what it all meant. Now that most of my friends are coupled off, personal sexual anecdotes seem scary. No one talks about what isn’t working until it really isn’t, and the first time you ever hear that so-and-so hadn’t had sex in a year is when they’re getting divorced.

I wonder if it really is all that scary, or if it would be as liberating as it used to be to open up and share more sex stories. Like most of our friends know that we try to have an open relationship, but most people don’t know the agonizing, never-ending conversations that we endure to make it work. Can we talk about that candidly? Can we be that vulnerable? Or are we attached too attached to some idea of ourselves as a couple? I’m not sure. But I do agree with Tilley’s closing point: “… Even though we talk about sex more these days, we still don’t talk about it enough. The solution is to keep talking about it. With our friends, in books, in blogs, in magazines, in newspapers.” Let’s keep the dialogue going.

Have you ever:

• Thought about covering your lover in chocolate sauce and whipped cream and licking it up for dessert, only to decide to eat Oreos instead?

• Wanted to film yourselves having sex, but then decided to watch re-runs of CSI: Miami?

• Fantasized about having hot sex when you got home from work, only to fall asleep on the couch?

Then you, my friend, are in a bit of a “dull spell.” Not a dry spell, no, just dull. If you have a lot of fantasies and desires that you’re not acting out, or you simply are in the rut of formulaic sex, then your sex life probably seems lacking. It’s time to stop settling for a quick orgasm during Letterman commercials and start getting crazy creative in the bedroom.

Image by flickr user margolove used under Creative Commons license.

Dullness is like a disease that slowly spreads and kills everything in its path. Whether it started with your sex life, or your lovemaking just fell prey to pervasive dullness, don’t let the infection keep spreading. Break the dull spell.  Here are three tips:

• Take turns taking the lead. Take turns with your partner creating a unique or creative sexual experience. It takes the burden off of both of you to be inspired, and gives one of you the chance to set up a fantasy scenario to spice things up.

• Make a game of it. On slips of paper, write 5 things that you want to do to your partner, or have the other person do to you. Take turns pulling the slips out of a hat. Perform for one minute, then switch. It could be a striptease, a blowjob, a spanking, anything you can think of. This game breaks up the monotonous foreplay ritual many of us get stuck in.

• Dress up for each other. It’s hard to imagine yourself as a sex god or goddess when you’re hanging out in your gym clothes after a long day, so it’s then easier to settle for less-than-amazing sex. Instead, make time to get into your sexiest persona by dressing the part, whether you get dressed up to stay in or to go out.

Once you go from dull to dazzling sex, you won’t want to go back.