Your best sex partner is actually yourself

When I was 12, I read a line in one of my mother’s adult books (Nancy Friday, maybe?) about a girl who said she rubbed herself on the carpet until the “good feeling” came. Another year would pass until I found out for myself that chocolate had nothing on the other good feelings my body could produce.

But at that moment, while sneaking peeks at my mother’s old book at night in my bedroom, I learned something crucial: There was a good possibility that sex wasn’t going to be torture.

And that was a relief.

No one ever told me sex would hurt, that it was a sin, or even that sex was something boys were going to try and take away from you. As you can tell, I grew up in a fairly liberal home, at least where conversations about sex were concerned. But when girls, at such a young age, analyze the nuts of bolts (no pun intended) of our bodies, we’re sometimes left with images of a “sharpened” penis and a vagina that, at age 12, might as well be a giant question mark with a hole somewhere in there where everything happens.

For many women, that first orgasm is also the first opportunity to see the possibility of connecting with someone in a way that will actually bring us pleasure. Unfortunately, not every girl easily experiences an orgasm. Some, like the subject in my mom’s book, accidentally rubbed the right way and continued rubbing for years until she had the opportunity to teach the man or woman in her life to do the rubbing for her.

Others never learn how to masturbate or are taught that it’s dirty and don’t try. They then meet a man and expect he’ll unlock the key to their sexual happiness, as if every single woman is exactly the same and we’re all turned on by identical motions and fantasies.

If that’s how we approach sex and our partners, we’re setting them up for failure.

The same way a toddler has to be selfish before she learns how to share, we have to focus on our own bodies, all by our lonesome, before we’re able to share and teach someone else how to love us.

The good news is, if you somehow skipped that stage and don’t know where to begin, you certainly don’t have to be 14 and sneaking around in your bedroom in order to find out what turns you on.

Pick a weekend. Clear your schedule. Then do any or all of the following: Visit a sex shop (with a friend if you’re too embarrassed to go solo) and buy at least two toys (make sure a vibrator is one of them). Download a few movies that are, um, of interest to you. Not into visuals? No problem. Do your research ahead of time and find a hot book. Read about how to orgasm. Try different things with your fingers — try everything you read about. Think. Keep thinking. Allow insanely sexy thoughts to flood your brain. Nothing’s happening? Then stop thinking for a second and let them come to you — they will.

You will find your thing if you give yourself that freedom and time alone and then have patience with yourself and be open to exploring you. You deserve to feel just as excited about sex and just as ravenous as your partner. And they deserve an opportunity to give you the kind of mind-blowing feelings you read about in books. It’s a win-win.

More about sex

7 Reasons you should be masturbating
Self-lovin’ sex positions
Woman-in-charge sex positions