How to Be Great at Sex

The secret to being a dynamo in the sack

When people find out I blog about sex, the most common response I get is: Got any tips for being better at it?

Well, actually, the most common response is men acting pervy, but that’s not what I want to talk about right now.

When people ask that question, I think they’re hoping for some secret tips. Like, some simple but very effective technique for eating pussy like a god. Or some wild sex position that will crank their sex life up to ten.

Or maybe they’re just hoping I tell them their girlfriend should try deepthroating.

And each and every time, I leave them feeling disappointed. Not just the guys hoping to feel their balls against their lady’s chin. Everyone.

The reason is that I don’t have any universally fun sex tips. I can’t recommend pretzely sex positions that are guaranteed to blow your mind.

And that’s because there aren’t any. There’s no surefire method or technique that guarantees great sex.

So, instead, I boil down all my advice to two words: be attentive.

See? Told you it’s disappointing.

Spelling Bee

I remember my peers talking about sex long before any of us had ever pulled our pants down for anyone.

And the vocabulary, the jokes, and the banter often boiled down to the idea that good sex was all about tricks and tips.

It didn’t help that Cosmo magazine kept promising to deliver 87 Ways to Blow His Mind and 14 Tricks to Keep Sex Spicy.

The message we got was clear. You could spread your legs and have some okay sex. Or you could get your hands on some insider information and have (and give your partner) some earth-shattering pleasure.

If only it were that simple.

My first experience with a sex tip was nothing to write home about.

It was the first time someone went down on me. It was his first time doing it, too, so he was inexperienced. But that didn’t stop him from being confident. He told me it wouldn’t be hard to do because “You just have to do the alphabet with your tongue, right?”

Wrong.

He spent a while between my legs awkwardly moving his tongue around in cryptic patterns. And I had about as much fun as you can when someone is trying to spell instead of trying to pleasure you.

He would have done a whole lot better if he had ditched the alphabet and gave me some good, steady tongue lapping instead.

And maybe it would’ve been better if he actually made it all the way to Z.

Blowing It

I’m glad that was the last time anyone tried to shape letters against my clit (seriously, who comes up with this stuff?) But it wasn’t my last foray into the world of sex tips.

And I’m sad to report that this time, it was yours truly attempting to spice things up with something she read in some questionable corner of the internet.

My boyfriend and future husband worked long night-shift hours at a factory, and I spent my evenings killing time and waiting for him. It was that dangerous combination of bored, lonely, and horny. The safest thing I could do was channel my frustrations into a steady stream of porn, Sex and the City reruns, and online articles about sex and relationships.

One of those articles convinced me that I could use some tricks to make blowjobs more exciting.

So, the next time I was getting intimate with my boyfriend, I decided to surprise him.

I blindfolded him and told him to lay on the bed and just enjoy himself.

Then, I got two cups of water and set them down by the bedside.

(Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this. So embarrassing!)

I took his cock out of his pants, got him hard with my hands, and asked him if he was ready. He was indeed, quite eager to find out what I had in store for him.

Then, as the article suggested, I took a drink of hot water to warm up my mouth before giving him head. A minute later, I took a drink of cold water and resumed blowing him. Then, back to the hot water. And so on, alternating every minute or so.

It was supposed to give him a fun and interesting sensory experience, with rapid temperature changes he could feel all over his cock. At best, it would feel like two different mouths were blowing him.

In reality?

He told me it felt kind of wet. And I’m not sure he meant it in a good way.

I blew it in more ways than one.

Sex tip fail.

Weird Tricks Aren’t What Makes Sex Great

I still read sex tips, but usually it’s for a laugh. I don’t take them seriously anymore.

I look at sex position guides the way I look at most recipes in a cookbook: looks great, but way too elaborate to actually try (and I’d probably just fuck it up).

So, if someone tells you that you’ll make your husband forget about all the other women he’s been with if you give him a handjob with a pearl necklace wrapped around his shaft, take it with a grain of salt.

And I hope guys still aren’t telling each other that they should do the alphabet while going down on women. That’s terrible advice anyway, because they’ll just rush through L-M-N-O-P. We all rush through L-M-N-O-P.

And my whole nonsense with the hot and cold water? I don’t even know what I was thinking. Why was I trying to improve on the sturdy classic that is the blowjob? Taking a cock in your mouth is exciting enough, there’s no need to switch things up. The only advice I should have paid attention to is: use your tongue around the head, don’t forget your hands, and careful with the teeth.

Eccentric sex positions are also pretty overrated. I’ve tried a lot of elaborate ones over the years, but in the end, I’m just a simple lady. Give me some missionary and spooning, prone bone me hard, and every once in a while switch it up with doggy style and cowgirl — that’s my whole repertoire and it’s more than enough for me.

Wild sex tips give us novelty, but novelty is rarely what makes for amazing sex. It’s something funny to laugh about with your partner afterward (to this day, I find it hard not to laugh if my husband sees me carrying two cups at once) or a fun story to share with your friends.

If you go down on women, though, you should give the Kivin method a try. At least once. That one’s pretty solid.

Account for Taste

The big reason sex tips don’t really work is that everyone is different. There’s no trick or method that works universally.

I like having sexy things whispered in my ear, but I know for some other women it’s just a lot of uncomfortable hot breath.

Nothing turns me off faster than someone touching my stomach, but I know from Mr. Austin’s reports that some of his partners found that to be a big turn-on.

I get off on being manhandled and spanked, but I know that plenty of women would find that kind of treatment way too rough.

I’m even willing to bet that there’s a couple out there who get off hard on the alphabetical cunnilingus and hot-and-cold blowjobs.

That’s a big part of the reason I don’t like giving blanket sex tips. I don’t know you or your partner — at least, not well enough to know what will turn your crank and what will turn you off. That’s something you have to discover yourselves.

And that discovery needs to be an ongoing process.

I’ve been with the same partner for 15 years. I grabbed his cock before we kissed, so we’ve also been fooling around and fucking for those 15 years.

But I’m still discovering new things he likes, new things that turn him on. And he’s learning new things about what gets me off.

Some of that is just that we are getting better at communicating. We’re better at vocalizing what we like, enjoy, and fantasize about without embarrassment or being worried that we’ll weird the other out.

But a big part of it is just that our tastes have changed.

Some things that didn’t appeal to me at all back when we first met now get me horny as fuck. And he’s discovering new things that turn him on, too.

So, there’s no point in giving one-size-fits-all sex advice when even the stuff that used to fit us doesn’t anymore.

All we can do is keep communicating. Keep experimenting. Keep exploring. That way, we keep up with each other’s desires and preferences as they evolve.

How to Be Great at Sex

I know a thing or two. I’ve tried a few dozen things and wrote about them, too. I can give decent advice on how to do a lot of things safely, painlessly, and more enjoyably.

If you want to know how to have pleasurable anal sex, I’ve got a tip or two. If you want to know how to incorporate toys in your sex play, I can tell you what works for me.

But all that’s going to do is help you do what you already want to do — it’s not going to help you figure out what works for you and your partner.

Like I said up front, to do that you need to be attentive.

In practice, that means communicating — a lot. Tell your partner about the things you like, the things you fantasize about and would like to try, and the things that just don’t work for you. Ask and listen. Find out what gets them hot and what brings them closer to a climax.

Talk about your comfort levels. You probably won’t be able to fulfill all of their fantasies. But what are you willing to try? What are you willing to do? What’s a hard line?

But talking isn’t enough. There are a lot of hang-ups when it comes to sex that makes it hard to communicate openly and transparently about it. And some of it is ineffable. How do you describe different kinds of orgasms? How do you explain to your partners the different feelings you get from their fingers and their tongue? And how do you tell them what you want when you’re not 100% sure yourself?

That’s where non-verbal cues come in. You need to pay attention to how your partner reacts to the things you’re doing.

When you move your fingers a certain way, does she breathe more heavily? What makes her moan more loudly than she meant to?

What’s the thing you do with your tongue that makes him grip the bedsheet? What are the things you do that make it so intense for him he can’t keep from groaning?

And that’s really all there is to it. Be attentive to your partner and you’ll figure out what they like, what they don’t, and what they can’t get enough of.

If you do that, you’ll have all the tools you need to be great at sex.

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