Sex Advice I’d Love To Share With 23-Year-Old Me

It’s time to stop spraying perfume down your pants.

At 23, I had just returned from an adventurous year abroad in West Africa. I was young and bold, my dark hair streaked with gold from repeated exposure to the Senegalese sun.

I had no job to speak of yet, so I often spent weeks at a time crashing on friends’ couches in Manhattan and walking home barefoot at 3 AM.

Occasionally, after surprise evenings spent with men in far-off exotic locations like Bed-Stuy, my friends would shake their heads in amusement when I arrived at brunch an hour late with my sweater on backward.

I was truly living the postgraduate dream.

But it would take me another decade and a half to understand that I was missing something important.

I was having terrible sex.

By this time in my life, I had been with several serious boyfriends and a few flings. My “number” was pretty tame, but it still included a fun mix of fellas that ranged from an all-American high school boyfriend to a French deep-sea spear fisherman who was stuck living in Senegal because of the country’s child custody laws.

I thought I had a pretty good sex life. I was attractive and young, and men seemed to want to have sex with me. But like many women my age, my understanding of sex was limited. I didn’t even realize that I was missing out.

It wasn’t until exactly 14 years later, after having two children and living without sex completely for several years, that I discovered what I had been doing all wrong.

I’ve written elsewhere about my experience with an open marriage, and how it made me feel more alive in and out of the bedroom. Dating other men while married led to my sexual awakening at age 37, and one man, in particular, taught me the potential for sex to be a truly transformative experience.

My open marriage experience didn’t have a tidy ending, and it didn’t lead to transformative sex within my marriage. That I am still figuring out.

But knowing what I know now, I can’t help but think back to that 23-year-old girl and wish I could whisper in her ear all of the things she should have been doing to give herself the sex she deserved.

Stop spraying perfume down your pants.

At 23, I spent a lot of time attempting to mask my beautiful body.

I shaved and trimmed rogue hairs, and I misted all smells away. I worried about useless things like the shape of my nipples or the width of my calves.

Before I left the house to go on dates, I actually sprayed perfume straight down my pants because I thought it would be more alluring than my natural scent.

It wasn’t until my later-adult life that I realized my foolish error. Most men loved a woman’s natural scent. I have heard zero men comment on the allure of smelling Ralph Lauren eau de toilette on their bedsheets, but I have heard them extol the lingering natural smell of a woman after she has left their bed.

It took me 14 years, 10 more pounds, and a c-section scar to gain real sexual confidence in my body. I would love to tell that girl spraying perfume down her pants to put that bottle down once and for all.

I would love to tell her to prance around in that gorgeous young body instead of hiding beneath the sheets.

Take all the time you need.

Oh, 23-year-old me. I wish there was a way to monetize and invest those useless minutes she spent worrying about her partner waiting so long for her to finish.

For much of my life, orgasms eluded me. I didn’t understand how they happened, and I assumed I was just a defective model. I figured there were two categories of women: those who had orgasms, and those who didn’t. I had simply missed my luck on this one.

So instead of investing time with my partners to discover my pleasure, I gave up on orgasms.

Every once in a while they would happen, with intensive effort, and I sometimes felt obligated to put on a show to prove to my partner that I was not a defect.

It wasn’t until I was 37 and with a partner who focused almost entirely on my needs in bed that I freed myself from those worries.

It took me that long to understand that my pleasure was not something they were giving me, but also something I was giving them.

Start speaking up.

Understandably, vocalizing my needs during sex was a little easier when I wasn’t sleeping with spear fishermen who spoke no English (though my confusion over his enthusiastic “Je veux m’introduire dans tes fesses” is still the single best moment of sexual translation I have experienced).

Even with English-speaking partners, though, 23-year-old me remained quiet during sex. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, and I sure as hell didn’t have the language to ask for what that was.

I somehow thought that a quiet woman in bed was more feminine, more contained, than one who voiced her needs.

I know now how wrong I was. Verbalizing my desires was of course an essential part of sharing myself with a partner.

The confidence that comes from knowing what you want and asking for it is one of the most powerful pieces of sexual wisdom many of us learn too late. And I surely did not own this wisdom yet as a 23-year-old who emitted only soft moans to act the part.

There is no start and end to good sex.

I used to think sex was linear. There was a moment you started, followed by several key moves, and then it was over. Each act was leading up to the next until you reached a finale almost always determined by the male partner.

It took me many years to experience the kind of sexual exchange that wasn’t linear. Instead, it was a give and take, a dance of sorts, that brought me closer to another human being. There were sexual acts involved, but there was also affection, laughter, and moments of quiet shared between us.

This new understanding of sex also changed how I felt about making my partners “wait” for me to finish because there was no finishing. Sex was a constant exchange between two people that didn’t need a finale.

I felt very alive at age 23. But I only realize now that the way I experienced sex at that age was as if I was watching myself from across the room. I never felt truly embodied. Of course, I have no regrets about the life I led running through the streets of Manhattan barefoot at age 23.

That girl still made her way to me.

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