Pleasure & Sexual Response

Your partner has no way of knowing for sure that you’ve had an orgasm if you’re a person with a vagina. None, save you telling them so. Sometimes, if your partners have their hands, mouths or genitals inside ours or right on them, they can feel some uterine and vaginal muscle contractions when we…

Just so you know, while certainly, it’s more common to begin some sexual activity before your age (which you had), there still are plenty of people who have not had sexual intercourse at your age. And given that the age of first marriage has been increasing, in terms of folks waiting for all sex or…

Absolutely! Understand that orgasm isn’t really a genital event: rather, it’s a whole body event, one that takes place primarily in your nervous system and cardiovascular system, but which we feel effects of in our genitals as well, and which genital sex often causes. So, your heart rate goes up…

That’s pretty normal as partners get more comfortable having sex together, so you should let him know that doesn’t mean anything is wrong. But if he’s not satisfied with that, the trick generally is just to mix it up: to mix in way more activities than intercourse, and to focus on his whole body…

Plenty! Without more information than that, it’s hard for me to know what’s been part of your sexual activity. For instance, if by sexually active, you just mean with partners – for any activity – then I’d suggest going back to your own drawing board, with your own two hands, and finding out about…

I’m going to suggest you look at reciprocity in sex – the idea that one person gives something, so the other should get something of equal value back – in a different way than you might be used to. (Excerpted and adapted from S.E.X., the Scarleteen book.)

You’re forgiven if you think that even a little difficulty in this department means that you should start stocking up on Viagra. There are a number of falsehoods about ED floating around from schoolyards to saloons.

There are certain physical, hormonal and psychological mechanics that come into play when it comes to human sexual response, and understanding those is essential to lay the foundation for understanding how sex works for ourselves and for our partners. Once we understand how our bodies work when it comes to sexual response, we’ve won half the battle of learning how to enjoy that and incorporate it as a healthy part of our lives, both alone and with others.