Howl

There’s No Such Thing as a Good Lover

Sex is about interaction and communication — not skill

In college, I can remember being at parties and listening to friends share their sexual adventures, until someone revealed a disastrous encounter and everyone laughed. Those conversations always closed with a comment like, “Obviously, his former girlfriends didn’t teach him anything about sex.” More laughter. And life would go on (with other sexual partners).

I heard this from my male friends, too, complaining about female partners who were terrible lovers. “They just have so little experience,” these conversations went, as if everyone was reading from the same script. “Their past boyfriends didn’t do shit to teach them how to be good in bed.”

After college, when I started having a different perspective on sex, I was surprised by how often I still heard conversations like this. I had assumed we would grow out of these lazy generalizations, but no. They are still alive and well and being kept alive by adults just like you and me.

So let’s get something straight, right off the bat: There’s no such thing as a “good lover.”

I know you are going to want to argue with me and tell about that time you had the most mind-blowing orgasms during a one-night stand, when barely a word was spoken and each of you knew exactly what the other wanted…

I’m not denying that that happens. Just like winning the lottery is possible, or flipping through the radio to find that your favorite song is playing on three stations at the same time.

To your perfect one-night stand, I’d say, “Congratulations!” You happened to hook up with just the right person as just the right time and your pheromones happened to click and you both happened to like each other’s moves. These glorious encounters are possible. But that doesn’t make either of you a good lover.

The toxic “good lover” myth

When we engage with a sexual partner with certain expectations about their history and whether or not they’ve been “taught well,” we are disrespecting them and the act of sex.

First of all, it reduces a lover down to their ability to please us. Yes, we should approach a sexual encounter with an expectation of pleasure (what’s the point without that?), but we shouldn’t look at our partners the way businesses look at potential employees — we shouldn’t be focusing on their level of skill, education, and experience. In that, we miss seeing and experiencing the human being with whom we are engaging.

This perspective also perpetuates the toxic notion that we should value having a high number of sexual partners. Though we’re still fighting as a culture to de-stigmatize sexual promiscuity, the pendulum now seems to be swinging in the other direction, in which those with a low “number” are shamed. In reality, someone who has been with lots of partners isn’t necessarily more likely to be good in bed than someone who has had a low number of sexual partners — or even none at all.

Finally, sex is supposed to be a physical, mental, perhaps emotional, and sometimes spiritual interaction. That means communication, engagement, and an exchange of energy, touch, and words. Too often, when we say someone was a bad lover, we’ve turned the act of sex into a service and not an interplay.

The not-particularly sexy truth about being a good lover

There’s really only one thing that makes a good lover. It’s got nothing to do with how hot you are. It’s not about your “moves” or your “skills.” (Though I’m not trying to discourage anyone from developing those skills or moves.)

So much of being a good lover is about communication. It’s true, movies, TV shows, and books show us sexual encounters in which those involved miraculously know exactly what to do, and no one utters a word, unless those words are sexy or romantic declarations. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in a hot and steamy love scene whisper, “That chafes. Could you slow down a bit?” or “A little to the left…”

If you’re with a new lover or in a new relationship, these conversations aren’t always sexy, but that’s what it takes to be a “good lover.”

If you’re more into casual encounters and the thought of having these conversations during sex makes you cringe, fine, go for it. Take your best guesses at what your partner might like, but be cool with the fact that you might be redirected. And if the situation sucks, you don’t get to blame the other person, or their lack of experience, or their past lovers who didn’t “teach them well.” If you didn’t want to ask or engage in a way that could’ve improved the experience for both of you, then you are at fault, too.

Okay, maybe it’s not all about communication

I’ll argue every time that communication in the bedroom is key to a satisfying sexual experience, but I have to admit, there are a few other things you can bring to an experience that are more important than how many people you’ve slept with or how much they “taught you.”

Curiosity

Being curious about each other’s bodies and the sexual experience, in general, is hot in a way that’s hard to describe. Most of my early partners had none of this. They wanted to stick their dicks into my vagina or mouth and come, end of story. (In all fairness, I had little curiosity, too, and was happy to quietly maneuver myself or them into orgasm and be done with it.)

Eventually, though, I encountered lovers who exhibited curiosity about me and my body and how our bodies fit together, and it changed everything. I loved having a lover lay between my legs for nearly an hour, examining and admiring my vulva, tracing it, touching it, and asking me what kinds of touch I liked. I loved having a lover who spent hours nibbling, sucking, and fondling my breasts, asking me to not speak during the entire activity so he could simply watch my face and listen to my breathing to determine what moves turned me on.

This isn’t about “teaching someone how to be a good lover.” This is about being curious to learn about the person who is right in front of you — someone who did different things with their last partner, and someone whose body is unlike your past partners’.

Generosity

There is nothing like having a lover who experiences pleasure by giving you pleasure. These are the people who do have conversations about sex in the bedroom, because they want to know exactly what you like — so they can give it to you over and over again.

And what luck if all parties experience pleasure in the act of pleasuring.

I’m not sure that my last boyfriend was particularly skilled as a lover (nor would I say that about myself), but I’ve always felt we had an incredible sex life. He insisted on making me come first, as often as possible, and loved to watch me in orgasm. In fact, my orgasms often toppled him into his own because it turned him on so much to see me experience that kind of pleasure.

And I felt the same way. One of my greatest turn-ons was watching him come while I gave him a hand job.

To me, this sense of generosity with pleasure makes for the best sex.

Patience

Like anything we do with other people, sex can be a challenge to get everyone working in sync. Sometimes it’s effortless, other times, not at all. This isn’t anyone’s fault, nor does it mean someone is doing a bad job.

We just need to remember to have patience and to enjoy what’s happening in the moment, even if it’s messier, slower, and more awkward than we had hoped.

Can we drop this phrase?

Sex, like everything in life, is a spectrum, not a binary. Technically, it isn’t “good” or “bad.” As humans, we are so tempted to labels things as such, but there’s so much more to the story than that.

Is it fair to judge our partners in this way when we are all flawed human beings?

Think of all the things that can influence a sexual encounter that we might later judge as bad:

• Stress
• Body image issues
• Hormonal changes
• Sexual shame
• Insecurity
• Problems at work
• Problems at home
• Tension in the relationship

This isn’t even an exhaustive list, nor is it gender-specific (these problems can affect us all), and yet we’re willing to judge someone’s performance as “bad” and write them off?

So what if we stopped using terms like “good lover” or “bad lover?” What if we strove, instead, to become “attentive” lovers? “Aware” lovers? “Engaged” lovers?

From that perspective, we can feel empowered and empower others. We can approach sex with more compassion, curiosity, and a willingness to communicate more.

We won’t have to ask, “Was that good for you?” when it’s over. We’ll already know, because we’ll have been communicating, paying attention, and being fully aware the entire time.

This article was written for Howl by Yael Wolfe, a weekly column. © Yael Wolfe 2020

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