Scarleteen

I tried fingering myself today, and It felt like nothing. It was like a wet, squishy cave, and I could barely feel my fingers moving from the outside. What the heck??? All this hype about fingering online just for it to feel like squishing expired jello while wearing 5 gloves. I'm genuinely heartbroken. I have always seen myself as somebody who would enjoy penetrative sex, and it feels like being blind and trying to watch Matilda.

Hi there lanadelneigh, welcome to Scarleteen! I'm sorry to hear that you are feeling disappointed about your first experience of exploring masturbation via fingering. Whilst it might not assist with the inital feeling of disappointment, I can reassure you that many people have this experience at first, however this doesn't mean that manual sex (eg. using your hands on your or a partner's genitals for the purpose of creating a pleasurable physical sensation) isn't something you many enjoy in the future.

Despite a lot of depictions in media or the way people talk about sex acts in general, touching certain parts of your body aren't like pressing a button that will then lead to a pleasurable feeling. We all have unique bodies and with that comes finding different kinds of pleasure more or less pleasurable than another person (which can also be one of the exciting parts of exploring what you find pleasurable), and importantly alongside that, is that our brain is a really really important part of our sexual response cycle - our brains need to be engaged in a way that we can feel aroused, without arousal, straightforwardly touching a part of our body will not lead to pleasure on its own. We have some great explainers on this on our website which I'll list here for you to read:

• With Pleasure: A View of Whole Sexual Anatomy for Every Body
• Sexual Response & Orgasm: A Users Guide
• Going Solo: The Basics of Masturbation
• How Do You Masturbate?

If you have any questions or curiosities after reading these, please don't hesitate to ask us here if you feel comfortable doing so!

Thank you for replying. This did give me some mental clarity on my situation, and I'm glad to hear that fingering could work in the future

Glad to hear that the reply helped! I would recommend reading the articles if you are yet to already, they explore further the ideas that one kind of sex isn't better than the other, and that for most humans, we need multiple forms of stimulation to feel pleasure.

Also if you're referring to 'fingering' from the perspective of being someone with a vulva and vagina, the articles explains why for most people with those body parts, the sensation of having something (be it a penis or a finger or something else) in the vaginal canal on its own is generally not the most pleasurable thing, if at all, because of how the anatomy is actually set up. The articles then go into some of the other kinds of touch that folks with those body parts can explore.

If the articles bring up any questions or curiosities you'd like to ask, please feel free to ask us here on this thread or in our other direct services