Masturbation and pleasure with my boyfriend

[sonatine6728]

Alright! so I've commented on here a couple of times and I'm still concerned that the way I masturbate is wrong, and that I will never orgasm with my boyfriend. The way I masturbate is unconventional and part of my worry is that he can't replicate it when we have manual sex. I usually press/hump against things like the edge of a bathtub or the foot of the bed, but only for a short amount of time, maybe 10 seconds until I have to stop. Sometimes my whole body weight pressing down is too much pressure. I worry that this method is too rough and is bad for the nerve endings down there. How can I train myself to find pleasure in other more normal ways? I want my boyfriend to be able to make me feel good, and he wants this too. I think the reason we have trouble is because perhaps my brain is so used to it being one way that when we try manual sex it just won't work on me and I hate it. We are teenagers so access to lube isn't easy. By the way I have read most of the articles on masturbation and at this point, I am angry and worried about this and it is putting a strain on our relationship. When we makeout and we have time for something more, I just give him a handjob because at least that way someone has a good time. When he tries to finger me it feels like nothing, and he has touched my clit once and it didn't really feel like anything either. I am really frustrated and I think the way I masturbate has something to do with this and I think there is something wrong with me. I can't even tell if the way I masturbate leads to orgasm or not.

[Heather]

Going to toss a few things at you to think about:

1) If you can do it alone, you can do it with a partner. In other words, there's nothing wrong with the way you masturbate (for one: there's no right or wrong way, or normal or abnormal ways, just what feels good to each of us, which can be super-unique), and you can do it with your boyfriend if you want.

2) It sounds like you just aren't into manual sex, at least not the ways you have been trying to do it together (pro-tip, few people like fingers-inside-the-vagina only or find it feels like much of anything good without other kinds of stimulus to more sensitive parts of the body before or during). That's okay! People don't usually like every sexual activity, or like every way of doing them. Often enough, there are just some activities, even common ones -- like intercourse, as another example -- plenty of people just don't like, or aren't into with a specific partner for any number of reasons.

3) The way you masturbate isn't dangerous or a hazard and I doubt it has anything to do with any of this. For instance, it sounds like if your boyfriend did apply a similar kind of pressure and pressing with, just as one option, the base of his palm, he'd probably be able to replicate what you're feeling, but...

4) I also am curious how turned on you feel with him. If when he touches you, you don't feel any kind of excitement, it's possible that's because you're just not excited, period. And if that's not there, it won't often matter what someone does, because desire tends to need to precede arousal if much is to come of it. When you're making out, do you feel very turned on? Do you have strong sexual desire for and with this person? How about when you're doing manual sex to his genitals: do you feel turned on then?

[sonatine6728]

I have sort of tried to replicate the action with him, but I feel so weird about enjoying it. I ask him if he's ok with it, and he says he is, and it feels good for him too, but I feel self conscious about getting pleasure that way. It seems strange and I don't want him to think back on our relationship and think what we used to do was weird and have him regret it and feel grossed out by that.

I am turned on when I'm with my boyfriend and I honestly feel more please from making out with him than I do from manual sex so when he wants to do something to pleasure me, I usually choose to keep making out because its just better than fingering. I really really want for him to make me feel good and give me pleasure and he says he does too, at least when we have talked about it. I do feel turned on when I give him a handjob and it again is more fun for me than manual sex performed on myself. I enjoy getting him to finish, but it is starting to get a little frustrating not really getting anything back, and that's not his fault, I don't blame him. I also just don't give him any chances to try new things because I'm so convinced it won't work.

[Mo]

Do you have a sense of why you feel weird and self-conscious about having your boyfriend touch you in the same sort of way that you masturbate? Or why you think that other things your boyfriend might like to explore with you "won't work" or be enjoyable?

As Heather said above, there isn't anything wrong with how you masturbate or enjoying that kind of pressure. It sounds like your boyfriend's ok with it, and isn't thinking it's strange (and again: there's no reason for him to think that!), so it seems unlikely that it would be something he'd regret or feel grossed out by later if he's fine with it now.

[sonatine6728]

I’m not sure why I feel weird about it. The way that we’ve tried is I straddle him sideways and the pressure of his side/hip bone feels really good. I really don’t know why I feel weird about it but I will talk to him and hopefully we can try different ways. It’s just unconventional to me I’m not sure why I feel weird. I worry that if he thinks it’s weird he won’t say anything.

[Heather]

Okay, so maybe that's a talk you can have with him, about that last bit?

But only if you want. You know, sometimes our partners (or we, about our partners) might think something is unusual, but we don't say anything about it because just because we think it's unusual doesn't mean we have an issue with it, that we don't like it, or that we don't want to do it. So, he probably isn't saying anything because he doesn't think it's weird, but even if he did, does that really matter? It might help to think about how you might feel or react to something he liked doing with you that got him off that you thought was uncommon, but were also totally cool with: what's to say, you know?

Of course, you're aren't required to feel comfortable doing everything with this or any partner, or doing it with them at a certain pace. Maybe you need a little more time to get more comfortable: that would be okay: it may be you'll be more open to experimenting more when you have more time to build trust and comfort in being sexual with someone else, period. And maybe you also mostly just want to make out a lot and do things that are more about his body than ours right now, because those are the things that get you the most excited and give you the most pleasure: that's of course okay, too!

[sonatine6728]

I think it might be the last reason you said, I really like making him feel good and I feel a little too self conscious to enjoy anything happening to myself. Thank you so much!!!

[Heather]

It might, then, also be helpful to know that there's a common cultural idea that what turns everyone on most, and what everyone likes most, are sexual activities centered in their own genital pleasure. But that's just not true. All of sexuality is on a whole bunch of different continuums, and that includes these things.

Some people get way more excited, and experience more pleasure -- emotionally, intellectually, but also even physically -- when sexual activities center more on their partner's genitals or bodies or desires overall. Some people also like making out more than say, manual sex, or enjoy the sensations of their mouths (which have around the same number of sensory nerve endings as genitals, so no surprise there) more than their genitals.

And, like you mentioned, for some, self-consciousness can be part of all of this: some folks -- overall, or just with certain partners or at a certain time in a relationship, et cetera -- just don't feel confident or comfortable enough in their bodies at a given time to enjoy certain things that focus on their bodies, and feel more sexually free and open when things are more about their partners.

All of these variations are just that: variations. And there's nothing wrong with any of them.

[sonatine6728]

So I realize this must be pretty annoying for you guys but I am just so anxious that the way I find pleasure won't mesh easily with a normal sex life and I won't ever have an orgasm from someone else that it is bringing me to tears. Is there any way I can transition from this pressure orgasm to a normal clitoral orgasm? Is the way I masturbate actually normal and healthy and ok? and if it really is, how can it be incorporated into a joint activity???

[Heather]

I'm not annoyed. But:

There is no "normal sex life." Truly.

The different ways people are sexual and the sexual lives of human beings is so diverse and so vast in how different we all are it can truly make your head spin. As the sex researcher Kinsey famously said, what's normal in human sexuality is diversity.

There also is no "normal clitoral orgasm." (Or "pressure orgasm.") For one, orgasm happens in the brain and central nervous system, not the genitals, though genital sexual activity can be a thing that gets us there. And for those who get there through clitoral stimulus, the way they do that is also really varied.

Yes, the way you masturbate is healthy and is one common way people do it. How can you do it jointly? Any number of ways, the easiest of which likely being you or a partner just using a hand to exert pressure in a similar way as you have with objects and other surfaces.

I also wonder if you think fingering is what is "normal," because it sounds like what your boyfriend keeps doing. But 1) he doesn't even have this anatomy, I don't think, to know what feels good in the first place (and like I said before, straight-up internal fingering with nothing else isn't most folks' cup of tea, but new-to-sex people with penises often assume it is) and 2) he doesn't have YOUR body to know what feels good. So, what he wants to do isn't some kind of default normal or right way, in case you were thinking it must be, okay?

In the event you want to try and experiment with other ways of getting off, by all means, no one is stopping you! I'd just suggest you lead with finding out what feels good to you rather than with the desire to conform to some kind of norm that doesn't even exist. That way lies....well, probably a whole lot of annoying and frustrating nothing-much.