(hell, yeah) Scarleteen

I’ve been with my boyfriend for around 7 months now, and I love him to bits! We get on so well, but when it comes to sex, I’m really let down. I lost my virginity to him when we first started going out. Being new to it, I was learning and exploring, but after months of the same thing I’m really dismayed. He always comes really soon - not prematurely - but soon enough its over before I’ve realised its begun! He only can go for a while if he moves slow, which is boring. Also, like most girls I can’t orgasm through actual penetration easily, so I’d have to rely on oral sex for stimulation, but he never makes the effort… I always go down on him and hope he returns the favour but he never does. He does care and tries to make sex good, but when I tell him I can “come in other ways” he never takes the hint and never goes down on me. I don’t like to ask him directly as I’m self conscious of the situation, and I don’t want to offend. I love him so much but please help! It’s really putting me off sex :(

Robin Mandell replies:

I’m sorry to hear that sex has been a disappointment. Let’s see if I can help shed some light on this for you.

A partner cannot be a mind-reader. No one can, but being someone’s sexual partner doesn’t magically imbue them with that skill. There’s just no way your boyfriend can know what you’ve been thinking about, what you think would feel good, what you’d like to try with him, unless you tell him.

I know it may not feel like it, but it’s really as simple as that. It’s also the only way our partners can truly find out what we want and we like.

When you say you feel self-conscious, I’m not really clear on what you feel self-conscious about. Since I can’t ask you, I can only guess.

One guess is that you’re embarrassed by the idea of asking for something aimed at giving you pleasure. Many of us have been taught not to ask for the things we want, things we know will make us feel good.

It’s strange, since there’s a lot of focus on encouraging us to speak up for what we don’t want—from (rightly) voicing our objection to unwanted physical contact to sending the soup back in a restaurant if it’s not hot enough. Yet, I feel we don’t get encouraged to speak up for the things we do want. I’d even say we get messaging telling us that it’s wrong, selfish, or greedy for us to ask for what we want, but then we often find ourselves in the position, as you’re finding now, of wondering why someone else doesn’t just know what we are thinking.

While I wish this still weren’t so, I think gender can also play a part in how we see our right to pleasure. For starters, when it comes to sex and women, that tends to be something a lot of women grow up getting a lot of messages around, messages that say women shouldn’t ask for what they want sexually, or shouldn’t “have” to ask. That’s a real lose-lose for both women and their partners, because women’s partners, whatever their gender, again, can’t read minds, and then women also wind up in the kind of spot you’re in, where you are dissatisfied with sex because you’re not asking for what you want and viewing asking as something scary, rude or a drag.

I also don’t know if you feel this way, but sometimes I hear young women conveying that they don’t want to divert attention from their male partner’s pleasure, or inconvenience or distract him from his pleasure. Here are the facts: it’s not unusual for men, particularly young men, to reach orgasm quickly. But it’s also not necessary for sexual interaction to be entirely focused around his orgasm, and to finish when he’s had one, and I think that most guys don’t want it to be about that either. There are lots of reasons, including the potential for pleasure why it’s ideal, for both of you, for the focus to be on both of you. For all you know, your boyfriend doesn’t want it that way, but again, if you aren’t saying anything’s wrong, he can’t know.
 
There’s also a piece of this where, in a sexual relationship, the pleasure isn’t just one-sided for the person receiving. The idea that in some sexual situations one person is doing while the other is done to ignores the existence of emotional pleasure, enjoyment of a partner’s physical pleasure, happy feelings from making someone feel good, physical pleasure that isn’t specifically sexual. Reciprocity in sexual interactions (or most other things, for that matter) isn’t just about people doing the same, or comparable, things to each other. In fact, I’d actually say that a sexual relationship is a lot more about doing things with each other rather than to each other.

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