Straight Sex Doesn’t Always Need Penetration

The cultural script isn’t doing me any favors

I can put most of my sexual experiences with men in two categories.

There were the guys who engaged in foreplay and then wanted to fuck. And then there were the guys who just wanted to fuck.

It’s not like we really discussed or negotiated what we would do. We just kind of went with the flow. But things always seemed to flow in one direction.

Across different guys, there was always an assumption that PiV (penis-in-vagina), or PiA (use your imagination) for one or two lucky ones, was the main event. All the teasing, playing, manual stimulation, and oral sex we engaged in were all just preambles to penetration. And once the penetration was over, the show was over.

And it’s not just the guys who were hung up over this, I sort of was, too. It’s not that I always wanted penetrative sex, or that I was fully satisfied once it was over, but I had a lot of assumptions about what straight sex looked like.

I got those assumptions from countless media depictions of sex as over-the-shoulder camera shots of the missionary position.

I got them from the years-long gap between hearing about guys wanting to stick their dicks into women and then learning that there was such a thing as cunnilingus.

I got them from all the times I heard people debate whether lesbians could ever lose their virginity because no matter how far they go, there’s no dick involved.

With all that combined, I had internalized a script and the final scene was always penetration.

My Self-Imposed Wife Guilt Kept Us from Having More Sex

I carried this script into my marriage, and I had a hard time deviating from it.

I knew my husband enjoyed a wide range of sexual acts. He loved getting handjobs and blowjobs and seemed to genuinely enjoy giving me manual and oral stimulation, too.

Plus, he has phimosis, which has caused some serious delayed ejaculation. He’s never been able to climax from intercourse.

Despite all that, I still felt a sense of obligation to give my husband “real sex.” It’s an obligation I imposed on myself, but I still felt guilty if I didn’t make penetration a central part of every sexual encounter we had.

But the thing is, I don’t always want penetrative sex.

I can have orgasms from penetration, but I really get off on clitoral stimulation. I love sex, but I’m not always in the mood for it even if I’m horny. On some days, I would really prefer being rubbed or eaten out instead.

And then there’s my cervix. Having my cervix pounded by the head of a cock is not my idea of a good time at all. It’s uncomfortable and painful. I need some anticipation, foreplay, and sometimes even a couple of orgasms before my cervix moves up and out of the way.

But whether it does or not depends on my cycle. At some points in my cycle, the cervix stays too low no matter how many nasty things are whispered in my ear or how many minutes my husband spends between my legs. In those cases, it makes it harder for me to enjoy penetrative sex, and if I do it’s only by making sure my husband is quite careful and doesn’t go too deep.

I felt guilty denying my husband the “main event,” so when I wasn’t in the mood for it or my cervix wouldn’t cooperate, I just turned down sex, no matter how much I wanted to get off.

Things were at their lowest point when I suffered from vaginismus. For two years, penetration was unbearably painful. No matter how slow we went, how much foreplay we had, or how much lube we used, I still couldn’t bear it.

I eventually managed to cure it. But I basically put a stop to my sex life instead of adjusting to it. I could have adapted. We could have enjoyed lots of tongue play and handjobs. If we needed to spice things up, we could have done some tit fucking or some other stuff we see in porn.

But we didn’t. Instead, we let bed death creep in and neither of us were all that happy about it.

Once again, we both missed out on a lot of fun and pleasure just because I had this narrow view of what counted as good heterosexual sex.

Editing the Script

My husband recently asked me about my preference for clitoral orgasms. He wanted to know if there were times that I’d prefer not to have penetrative sex, and it started a conversation that led to a few breakthroughs.

I told him that sometimes, I would prefer just sticking to manual and oral sex.

I told him that it would be nice, too, if we sometimes had penetrative sex but then switched back to the other stuff instead of always ending on a bang (ha! I couldn’t resist).

I told him that it would sometimes be nice if we just took penetration off the table completely before we even started.

And he agreed wholeheartedly. He was excited by all of this, not only because it sounded fun to him but also because it opened us up to having more sex.

We didn’t throw out the script completely, but we did edit it. Penetration is still a big part of our sex life. I still enjoy finishing things off by getting prone boned while using my vibrator. But now the script doesn’t always end the same way.

Sometimes, penetration exits stage left and we finish with oral. Other times it’s not even on the cast list. And once in a while it’s waiting in the wings but never gets the signal to come on stage.

And it’s been awesome. Making penetration optional means we’re having sex whenever we feel like it — cervix be damned!

Writing Our Own Script Makes for Better Sex

Taking the focus off penetration doesn’t just mean we’re having more sex — we’re having better sex, too.

One of the things we get to do is focus on the pleasure of whatever act we’re doing, instead of trying to make sure we get the biggest pay-off from penetration.

We’re rediscovering the pleasures of the acts that sometimes get sidelined as foreplay. Mr. Austin reports that he has been finding handjobs far more enjoyable now he can just enjoy them for their own sake instead of looking at it as a preamble to sex.

But as much as he’s been enjoying himself, I think I have the lion’s share of the benefits because it’s allowed to have better orgasms.

Like I said above, I really get off on clitoral stimulation. But when sex is the main event, I often felt like I had to hold back on coming too hard. I had to keep myself from having strong orgasms during foreplay so I wouldn’t feel spent before we could move on to having sex. Often, that meant giving up on those strong orgasms altogether because intercourse left me too physically sensitive to have them.

While I was holding back on orgasms, I’d often also rush through manual and oral sex. Instead of just enjoying the feeling of my husband’s fingers and tongue, I’d put a stop to it early to make sure I still had the energy for intercourse.

But now I get to just feel and enjoy everything. I’m not holding back — I’m letting loose. If I feel a strong orgasm coming, I ride that wave of pleasure right up to its peak. I let myself convulse and twitch and (if I’m really lucky) laugh uncontrollably, even if it means no one gets to go balls deep that night.

And most importantly, we get to be more honest and transparent with each other. Since having that conversation where we edited the script together, we’ve been much more open about what we want.

I don’t have to feel guilty telling my husband that I’m just not in the mood for penetrative sex but I would love to do other stuff with him.

And Mr. Austin now tells me if he’d rather switch things up, instead of worrying that I would be disappointed not to end with sex.

Open ourselves up and baring our desires that way has made sex feel more intimate. And learning so much about what we enjoy and prefer has brought us even closer together.

Better communication, deeper intimacy, and stronger orgasms — who could ask for more?

Straight Doesn’t Have to Mean Narrow

One of the things I love so much about sex is how much variety there is. There’s a whole range of things I can do and explore, and an even wider range I can read about even if I would rather never get into it myself.

It’s one of the few things in life that is infinitely interesting.

But instead of enjoying that variety, I fell into the trap of thinking that straight sex meant narrow sex. That maybe you could try out a few different positions if you wanted to, but the point was to get to the fucking and to end on the fucking.

I’m glad I got rid of that baggage. It’s so much more exciting to keep switching things up and to keep things interesting instead of falling into a routine.

I recommend looking at your own sex script and seeing if it could use a few edits. Who knows, you might just be one or two rewrites away from having the best sex of your life.

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