Controversial sex take: Practice is overrated

Welcome to Sex and the State, a newsletter about human connection. To support my life’s work, upgrade to a paid subscription, buy one of my guides, follow me on OnlyFans, follow me on Twitter, support me on Patreon, or just share this post 🙏

~~~~~

In American men don't want American women anymore I suggested that men who can’t be breadwinners consider getting good at sex (among other things). A friend replied that many men are in a catch-22. They can’t get good at sex without practice, but it’s hard to get laid if you’re not making money.

Now, online dating is terrible for most men. (Here’s an interesting thread on the topic.) And it’s nearly always going to be much harder for het men than for het women. But I don’t think it’s actually as difficult for even low-income men to have sex as many make it out to be.

Either way, I want to harp on the idea that practice is super important to being good at sex.

I’m certainly not here to put down having sex with lots of people. If that’s appealing to you, go forth and prosper. I’ve had an, ahem, higher-than-average number of partners and I think it was the right thing for me at the time.

I’m writing all this to reassure people who don’t have a lot of, (or any) real-world sexual experience that they too can be great lovers if and when the time comes.

(I wrote a whole guide to being good at sex. Check that out if you haven’t.)

Here’s my thesis: I think most people can absolutely learn to be amazing lovers without ever having sex. 

The vast majority of being “good at sex,” imho, boils down to communication (not a super controversial take). 99% of being good at sex boils down to (in rough order of importance):

• The ability to effectively negotiate consent

• Being genuinely into your partner and what you’re doing with them and communicating that desire and enthusiasm

• Making it emotionally safe for your partner/s to communicate their desires

• Actively listening to what your partner/s say they want and don’t want

• Communicating, verbally and non-verbally, what you like and dislike

• Accurately interpreting non-verbal communication

• Conveying enthusiasm about doing what they like

• Being physically able to do what they like

Notice: Not one of these skills is exclusive to sex.

You need the ability to effectively negotiate consent to do anything you might want to do with someone whose level of interest in the activity is unknown to you. Just like harassing someone into bed with you is a consent violation, it’s rude to harass someone into going rock climbing. If it’s not their thing, keep it moving. Similarly, the physical ability to climb rocks (or at least spot) usually makes you a better rock climbing partner.

If you can do all of the above outside of bed, you can absolutely transfer those skills.

To get further into the weeds, sex advice impresario Dan Savage sums up being a quality lay with the three G’s: Good, giving, and game. 

Most people who are giving (generous) and game (down for a variety of acts) outside of bed can pretty easily transfer those skills. 

The big difference is the shame and stigma we’re taught around sex. But practice alone doesn’t necessarily help anyone overcome their programming. Cognitive dissonance is real. Meditation, therapy, and psychedelics work better, in my experience, than just having a bunch of sex.

The hardest part to work on outside of bed is becoming “good” (skilled).

For example, there’s an art to spanking. There are wrong ways to do it. Most people don’t want you to just wail on them. And you can actually injure someone that way. 

But with most bedroom activities, spanking included, there are myriad ways to do it right.

If you’ve pleased one person in bed, you’ve pleased one person in bed. Everyone really is different. 

That’s not to say there isn’t significant overlap. Most women seem to prefer a steady rhythm as they get closer to orgasm, for example. But some don’t! 

In my opinion, the way having sex with a bunch of people could make you a better lover is that it gives you practice learning someone. But it doesn’t necessarily. I’ve had sex with many different people, mostly men, and I’ve seen very little correlation between the number of partners my partner has had and their bedroom skills. The one exception to this rule is partners I met through my Bay Area sex-positive community. They were leagues above partners I met elsewhere, on average. And while these people tended to have had a lot of partners, I think other factors had a much bigger impact on their skill levels. They were also consent trained and tended to be sex geeks, taking a certain pride in their work. These people were much more solicitous of feedback, for example, compared with partners I met elsewhere. This meant that they were more likely to actually be practicing communication and sex skills with each new partner and encounter.

What’s vastly underrated, imo, when it comes to being good at sex is masturbation. You can’t communicate to a partner what you like and don’t like if you don’t know. Masturbation is where you find out a lot about what you enjoy. Porn is also helpful here, not as instruction but in that it can give you some ideas about what you might like in terms of activities and kinks.

So that’s my take. What do you think?

Header images come from me putting the headline or some body copy when the headline violates the TOS into OpenAI’s DALL-E. Today’s prompt was “practice in the style of degas.”

This is an ad! ⬇️ Click on it to support me!

700,000+ Guys read ELEVATOR every damn day

The best eye and brain candy curated from all corners of the web

No news. No politics. No BS.

Just the good stuff

100% Free