Inexperienced and feeling bad, need help!

[InFlorida]

To give context I am a 21 male who has been dating a 22 female for about two months. I am pretty inexperienced sexually, just a few casual hookups before I met her where the general process was:
-Making out
-Some groping
-Fingering
-I pound away in various positions for a bit

I know it sounds bad, I really should have been asking for more feedback, I think i was being selfish. I always kind of assumed whatever I was doing was good for them as well

My girlfriend is significantly more experienced than I, with lots of partners and some 5+ month long relationships with guys 30+ years old.
I noticed the amount of sex we have been having has been declining, so i asked her to sit down and tell me what was going on. She admitted to me the sex is not good, and that she didn't want to tell me because she was worried it would hurt my feelings. Some quotes that were said were:

"The foreplay is bad"
"Your inexperience shows and its awkward"
"Your dick keeps hitting my cervix and it hurts"

Its pretty hard to hear these things, but I really do want to get better! I really need help on these three points! I want the next time I have sex with her to be a good experience, so I have been reading up as much as I can but i don't understand it all that well. Does anyone have some good video tutorials on foreplay? Also how do I avoid hitting her cervix? Please leave any tips or anything in the comments.
I really like this girl and I don't want my bad sex to be the reason for a breakup...

[Heather]

It's for sure not easy to hear that kind of critique, and I'm sorry you had to. My hope is she said those things more sensitively than you're quoting them here. If not, sounds like she has some of her own work to do when it comes to sexual communication with a partner! This is a good example of how just because someone has had more sexual experience than someone else doesn't necessarily mean they know more or are better at all or even any ways of being sexual with partners. In fact, sometimes more sexual experience can just mean more experience with learned habits or patterns that aren't actually good ones.

"Foreplay" is just a term that straight people often use (the rest of us don't usually use it or use it the same way because for people who aren't straight, all kinds of sex are just sex, rather than one kind being seen as The Sex and every other kinds there is as not-sex or "foreplay") to mean any possible kind of sex besides intercourse that people can do before intercourse.

What someone in particular does or doesn't like with all those other kinds of sex isn't something a book or video can show you unless those videos or books were made by your particular partner about what they like. Instead, what you'll want to do is ask your partner what she likes, and what she feels has made all those other kinds of sex "bad." Then you'll just experiment together, communicating as you go. I'd suggest you ask your partner to be less vague than "good" or "bad" with how she communicates about this, because broad terms like that just don't give you any real information.

In terms of hitting her cervix, there are often a few players with that. One of the biggies is having intercourse before your partner is super-duper turned on, so again, you'll want to ask her what she thinks can get there there, and wait for intercourse until she is very excited and aroused. Too, experimenting with positions for intercourse may help, too, if that still happens when she is very turned on. As you experiment, ask her to tell you if you ARE hitting her cervix so that you can know when and how it's happening, then make adjustments at the time, like changing positions, going back to other activities to get her more turned on (or doing something else at the same time she really likes during intercourse, like manual stimulation of her external clitoris), or both.

It also sounds to me like you two should have a bigger talk about her issues with your differences in sexual experience. If she can't be patient with new partners -- and honestly, even someone with hundreds of partners is still a newbie with someone they haven't been with before or for very long: there's always a learning curve, even for those of us who have had 20, 50 or even 100 partners -- that's actually more on her than on you, and for her to figure out if she can be more patient. Personally, if these are direct quotes, like I said, I'm not a fan of how she's communicating with you: it strikes me as pretty insensitive and not conducive to really learning sex with any new partner together.

[InFlorida]

Thanks for responding!

The quotes are pretty much direct and were painful to hear, but I did ask her to just flat out say what the problems are. Thanks for the advice, ill ask her what she likes and to give me feedback. It just feels shitty haha, I have a lot less confidence now which I know is an important thing to have in sex.

[Heather]

Well, and perhaps, again, have that conversation about how you both can be honest without saying things in ways that will pretty undoubtedly make either of you feel shitty. After all, that's not going to help either one of you out here, and will for sure be a barrier to you developing more confidence.

Sex is very sensitive stuff for people, so we really all need to talk about it with sensitivity if we want the good stuff and want to feel good about it. Talking about it like car repairs or how well (or poorly) someone is playing a video game just isn't the way to go.

[Sunshine]

Hey there!

I just wanted to second what Heather said about learning from videos, books, etc. I do not think "good" sex is something you can learn from a general, theoretical source. Sure, you can learn how intercourse and other ways of being sexual work on an anatomical / physiological level (the "what goes where" part), and you can learn how to keep yourself and your partner safe. But in my opinion, that's about it. Because "good sex" means something different to everyone. I think the only way to find out what will make sex with your partner better is, like Heather said, to experiment and communicate with that partner. A lot. And I wanted to stress how that process can be really, really fun! I've been in a relationship for a pretty long time, and in the beginning, we both had zero practical experience. Yes, things were awkward. Yes, we've had "bad" sex and we (especially I...) have made communication mistakes. But once we got those out of the way, it has been a really amazing journey and I can honestly say I would not trade our experimental fumbling for any other kind of encounter. It's fun, and yes, I think it's also sexy to explore and try out and ask and answer. In fact, the ongoing feedback (not all of which has to be verbal) during sex creates a wonderful closeness and intimacy. It's not a chore, it is sexy. And if things don't work out, it's usually no big deal. Often it's funny and we collapse in a giggly heap, but that's not a bad thing.

Do you think your girlfriend would be open to talking more about her wants / needs / desires with you and to experimenting a bit until the two of you figure out what works best for you?

Oh, and about confidence: I know everyone (well, it seems like everyone) says this is super important, but I think it's okay to be a bit insecure. I think you can be insecure and still be sexy, and also still be a good sexual partner, yes, even if you are a guy.

[Heather]

(You always have such great things to say, Sunshine! Thanks for being you and part of our community. )