I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend for just over a year now. He is a wonderful person and cares deeply about me. We have what I consider to be a very strong sexual bond (although I'm not suggesting our relationship is centered around sex).
This is a little embarassing, but I feel like my boyfriend doesn't know or doesn't understand where my clitoris is! He has been in one other serious relationship, which lasted several years, and has had multiple other female sexual partners. He is an attentive and generous lover, yet I'm a little surprised he doesn't know how to make women orgasm. I don't chastize him at all for this.
My boyfriend makes me feel great, internally, but I wish he would focus more attention on my clitoris. I've been pleasured there before, and it is blissful. The simple solution seems to be directing him to touch me in that certain spot, but I'm having more difficulty than that. For one, I don't want to embarass the guy. He's soooo willing to put effort into pleasing me, and does a great job getting creative and paying attention to my whole body, but seems to just miss my clitoris every time. I always try to guide him toward it, whether by touching myself there or arching my back, but his hands seem to drift lower. Once, due to a surgical procedure I underwent, I was directed to refrain from engaging in vaginal sex for several weeks. During this time, he started to explore my outer genital region more, but not as much as I would have liked.
I don't know the best way to "teach" my boyfriend about the clitoris. I've let him know how good it feels, but maybe I'm not being direct or aggressive enough. I'm a little embarassed not just because he may feel badly, but also because we've been together for a year and I haven't successfully communicated to him how to best pleasure me.
What else can I say/do to remedy this situation?
Suggestions greatly appreciated :-)
Thanks!
-------------------- "It's something unpredictable but in the end is right i hope you had the time of your life" Posts: 150 | From: !USA! | Registered: Aug 2002
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Arching your back really isn't going to be a very helpful way to communicate where your clitoris is.
Really? The best way to deal with this would be by being verbally direct. As in, "This feels awkward, and I don't want to embarass you, but my clitoris, and where it's most sensitive, just keeps getting missed, so I'd like to just show you where it is and where it feels best, okay?" Then, with the lights on, you do just that and show him.
You might also consider engaging in some mutual masturbation -- again, with the lights on, and him watching you attentively -- so he can very directly watch you to both know where it is, and the way you like it touched best. You could also show him with words and fingers where your clitoris is, and where you like it touched, as opposed to where your fourchette -- the reginion between the clitoris and vaginal opening -- and vaginal opening are. Just like when we're trying to find someone's house, sometimes landmarks can be more helpful than street names, so might be the case here.
Really, there's no reason for you or him to feel bad about this. After all, it sounds likely this really hasn't been made crystal-clear up until now, and that given, he can't really be expected to just know all by himself or with very indirect cues.
-------------------- Heather Corinna, Executive Director & Founder, Scarleteen About Me • Get our book! Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead Posts: 63668 | From: An island near Seattle | Registered: May 2000
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But its easily solved really. Like Heather said, you just have to be verbally direct. Even just saying something along the lines of "Try touching here...", so its more of a suggestion than simply telling.
Or just guide his hand to where you want it to be, just to start him off, then he should know to stay there. If he strays, just guide his hand back.
Im sure he'd be far happier to know that he was making it good for you than if he was just left unaware that it wasnt as good as it could be.
I've learnt myself that subtle hints (aka arching yur back or touching yourself there) just dont work with boys. In any situation really, lol.
Posts: 82 | From: at my desk | Registered: Aug 2006
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One other thing to bear in mind, too, is that while there are sensitive spots on the penis, to be sure, and the prostate is also a very specific sensitive spot, for the most part, most guys don't genitally masturbate by targeting very small, specific areas, but with more general or broad contact.
And it's typical enough to apply our own sexual habits to someone else, so sometimes men just need to be let in on the fact that for most women, it's more about pinpointing the specific than the general. In other words, his hand may also stray, or he may be sloppy about it simply because he doesn't understand that in that way, it's often a bit different with women than it is with men.
-------------------- Heather Corinna, Executive Director & Founder, Scarleteen About Me • Get our book! Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead Posts: 63668 | From: An island near Seattle | Registered: May 2000
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I am a guy and I have a suggestion for you close to Heather's. Next time you are both alone but not while you are being sexually active, bring up the idea of watching each other masturbate. Suggest you would like for him to show you how he likes to be touched and you show him how (and where) you like to be touched too. Make it a fun activity you plan first and then do later.
The reason for this is that I don't think it's a good idea to talk about this when you are in the act of being sexual because that is exactly when we guys are most vulnerable and sensitive to being criticized. Anything that might be taken as negative, will be. Even saying, no, my clitoris is up here, not down here, in the nicest possible tone and way, could easily be taken in a negative way. I know you would not mean it that way, but trust me as a guy, we are very sensitive about these things, especially if it's someone we really like. It would be even worse for me if I found out I was doing it all wrong for a long time and just found out.
It won't take too many lessons of you masturbating and then having him try it before he will get it right. When he does get it right, be sure to tell him so very clearly and with actual words. Always stick to only positive things while actually having sex.
I had a girlfriend and the most important thing was trying to get it right. I'm not sure I did the best, but I did try hard. I'm going to guess from the sounds of your letter he will want to get it right too.
Posts: 98 | From: Seattle | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:The reason for this is that I don't think it's a good idea to talk about this when you are in the act of being sexual because that is exactly when we guys are most vulnerable and sensitive to being criticized. Anything that might be taken as negative, will be. Even saying, no, my clitoris is up here, not down here, in the nicest possible tone and way, could easily be taken in a negative way. I know you would not mean it that way, but trust me as a guy, we are very sensitive about these things, especially if it's someone we really like. It would be even worse for me if I found out I was doing it all wrong for a long time and just found out.
It's a pretty strange notion to think or imply that somehow men as a group are sensitive about sex and talk about sex in some exclusive way.
I can tell you that as someone who has been sexually active with a myriad opf people of all genders for a very long time, and even more so, as someone who has talked to more people about sex for her job than anyone else you may ever meet that EVERYONE is sensitive -- often hypersensitive -- about sex, and no one group more than any other. This isn't something somehow miraculously exclusive to men: it's simply that on the whole, we're all told we need to worry more about for men than for women, but that's based in sexism and class privilege, not because it really does apply more to men than women.
Suggesting that we should then not talk about sex during sex in any way, or only be sure to talk about it in certain ways, based only one ONE partner (and likely, the one who is in the position of the least risk of being dissatisfied or more serious risks), is also a pretty counterproductive suggestion.
Really, there's nothing at all negative in "go a little faster," or "a little harder," or "here, do that over here," or "Mmmm, move a little to the right." NOTHING. Whether things like that are said during sex or afterwards, if someone can't handle that -- or that is somehow a downer, which is really pretty bizarre, when you think about it -- I gotta tell you, that someone isn't of an emotional maturity and self-possession where they're ready for sex with a partner, or they're approaching sex with a partner in a pretty unhealthy way.
Now and historicaly, it's almost ALWAYS women who are and have been told to keep their mouths shut during sex with men unless what they have to say is that eveything is great and perfect: men are rarely given the advice about women that you're giving a woman here about men. In fact, a lot of the reason why men aren't given the same advice about women is that it's often presented as normative in male-female sexuality for men to give any sort of direction they want, verbally or physically (even in ways which are violent, which flirt with being violent, or are simply really dismissive of the woman being another whole person present), because that's okay to do to women, and it's been going on so long that for many women, it's considered part and parcel of the sex they have with men.
Ultimately, I have to say that I strongly disagree with you, Flash, to the point that I feel like the advice you've given here not only won't net a good result in terms of mutually satisfying sex, but that it can also even present real dengers.
Normal people talk during sex, and normal people with mutually satisfying sex lives give partners verbal directions pretty frequently. For sure, it's often helpful when we can to try and make direction a linguistic positive -- as in, "Can you do thtis?" -- rather than a negative -- as in, "That feels TERRIBLE, do this instead," -- but it's pretty dangerous to give ANYONE advice that says they need to never speak a sexual negative or anything which could be even remotely construed as such by an insecure partner (which, with insecure people, nearly translates to never saying anything at all) because it may hurt someone's feelings or make them feel insecure. The responsibility for someone not secure enough in themselves for typical aspects of partnered sex -- like giving direction during sex -- lies with that person. If they're that insecure or seeing sex so much as about their performance rather than about a mutual interaction, then that person needs to exempt themselves for partnered sex: their partner isn't responsible for them in that way, they are.
There are plenty of sexual situations in which more than feelings are going to get hurt or wounded -- and hardly as temporarily as whatever small upset we may feel to just not be executing a sexual move perfectly -- if a partner doesn't feel it's 100% okay to start a sexual comment with a "no." And boy howdy, do women absorb and hear enough about how it's their job to make everything a yes when it comes to sex with men -- even when it's NOT a real yes -- everywhere else, that it really troubles me to have anyone be telling any women (or anyone) that here, of all places.
(Not to mention that what you're suggesting basically creates situations where you're going to have a woman in a given sex session be faking it, going through the motions, or lying there mute. Again: no one would expect men to do that during sex with women: to simply go through a sex session dissatisfied the whole time without saying something. And that's good, because that's a pretty awful thing to expect of any partner; but that shouldn't be expected of men OR women.)
So, I'd encourage users reading the advice you've just given to chuck it entire, and anything like that they've heard before (and there's a rare woman who hasn't). But obviously, I can't tell you what advice to give other people in your life. I'd just suggest that if you're going to give advice like this, you take a pretty big look at some of it's logical ends, as well as a gender imbalance that's often really pervasive with that advice. At the very least, you'd better be awfully sure it's applied unilaterally, though that's nigh unto impossible, because while many women are conditioned to do what you're saying in the first place (sadly), most men have not been and would very rarely follow the same advice.
I'm aware I went off a little bit here, so I apologize if this comes off more harshly than I intended it to, but I just REALLY do not want to see things like this here at Scarleteen, or have users be told things like this here. And from your post history here, I'm inclined to think this was more about not thinking things through on your part, or really considering the big picture for everyone involved, individually and as a class, so I wanted to be clear for your sake.
-------------------- Heather Corinna, Executive Director & Founder, Scarleteen About Me • Get our book! Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead Posts: 63668 | From: An island near Seattle | Registered: May 2000
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much simpler: just softly say "up a bit" when he's doing his thing. no matter how experienced a boy is, the clit can still be a tricky thing to find...
Posts: 25 | From: England | Registered: Apr 2007
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