I think Sinead O'Connor and I have a super lot in common. Apart from the fact that she’s an iconic, world-famous singer and likes a lot of anal, we really seem to be on the same page these days. In fact, we’re practically BFFs.
Why, recently I was blogging about how much I’m missing lovely sex with someone lovely I’m really into (who is really into me also) when I came across a blog post she wrote just the other day, poetically entitled ‘Is Sinead about to hump her truck?’ (Of course, her post has made world news ... but, you know, I like to let her have the spotlight.)
It seems we’re both sitting through that awful dry spell, when great sex is as unlikely as a condom in a Catholic Church; where you start contemplating dating sites for intimacy and looking at trucks (that’s Sinead; I do pillows, personally) for affection and some cosy.
She wants sweet and filthy ‘lurve’ from sweet and filthy men; so do I. She wants ‘stubbly men sniffing me’; so do I. She wants to be ‘kissed so much that I have to go around the whole next day with fat lips on me, giggling like an idiot, mad from being rogered so hard all night and me voice ruined from screaming’; so do I.
So what’s the problem?
You’d think we’d be in a position to get ourselves laid, Sinead and I. What with her being a muso and me being a sex writer, we should totes be able to pull a guy or three?
But I guess it’s not just about pulling a lay. That’s easy. Getting sexed up in a way that fills your body with glow from your toes to the top of your head and makes you rub your belly and purr is a whole different world of yum. After all, that’s what we’re both looking for, my BFF and I, and that’s not so easy to come by.
In my experience, good sex gets better the longer I’m with someone. Pleasing and experiencing and exploring the person you’re sleeping with takes time, and the more time you have the more you’re able to communicate your desire and trust your body to relax into the experience and the more uninhibited you’re able to become.
Random humping with people you’re not willing to open up to doesn’t really make space for this (unless you’re super lucky and hit the jackpot with JUST the right person, but the odds are pretty slim).
And don’t kid yourself – random, unfulfilling humping can happen in and out of a relationship. In fact, I have more people writing me about their unfulfilling sex lives with their partners than I have people worrying about meeting a partner in the first place. All it proves to me is that if sex was nothing but the orgasm, people in unsatisfying long-term relationships wouldn’t concern themselves with wanting more.
But what is that ‘more’?
What is really great sex and how do you get it?
I think a lot of the misconception lies in the fact that there’s this notion that great sex is only chemistry in the bedroom. And that sex only happens for the 10 or 20 minutes you spend in said bedroom. But great sex often has very little to do with actually fucking. Great sex starts outside the bedroom; it starts with how you relate to yourself sexually; how affectionate you are with your partner; how you talk to them; how you touch them; whether you can trust them and, often, respect them ... and vice versa, of course.
Great sex, in whatever form it takes, is honest, curious and unashamed. Mostly, it’s not scared of feeling something. So, it’s pretty tricky ground if you’re used to thinking of sex as a one-dimensional pornothon.
Sinead originally called for some humping and then had to clarify this, because humping doesn’t include all the great sex stuff like snuggling and kissing and affection and slow, grinding 'lurving'. That’s the kinda great sex I’m into also and why ‘getting laid’ is a lot more tricky than people expect to be for me. And for my BFF Sinead.
Maybe I should put a call out like she has. Get the Sunday Times to publish it (without the references to anal) and hope for the best. If not random humping, maybe some random dating will deliver someone I want to get really naked with.
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What do you think makes great sex?