Dear Erica,
I was very intrigued by something you said in your column on female pleasure. At the very end, you wrote “Seek out other erogenous zones and ways to stimulate all five senses” as an important way of satisfying a woman. I thought that this was an interesting idea and was wondering if you could talk about it further in another column sometime. Thanks for any ideas.
—Bedroom Novice
For those readers who missed it, that statement was made in the context of incorporating more than the genitals into sexual activity. Even if the nether regions take a leading role in a particular kind of play, a solid supporting cast really heightens the climax of the show.
Sight:
Flip the light switch on. If it’s always on, then flip it off. Light a candle or put a colored lightbulb in the lamp on the nightstand.
Play with how much you show your partner. Come to bed naked. Come to bed in sexy underwear. If you normally have sex under a blanket, throw it on the floor. Spend a little more time shirtless post-shower than you have to.
Take the mirror off the wall and prop it up next to the bed. Find a position that allows you to watch your favorite part of your partner’s body. Watch porn together. Ask your partner if they want to wear a blindfold. Make lots of eye contact during sex. Tell your partner how stunning they look.
Sound:
Tell your partner how stunning they look, and how hot/wet/hard/horny it makes you. Whisper in their ear what you’d like to do to them. Ask them if they’d like it if you did that to them. Lean in close so they can hear (and feel) your breathing better.
Let your partner know how much you like what they’re doing. No need to fake it, but if it feels good, then tell them so. Even if you don’t want to talk dirty per se, try throwing in a few words in addition to ooh and ahh. “I love it when you do that” or “Your [blank] feels so good on my [blank]” can go a long way.
If you do want to talk dirty, then practice. Dirty talk has a lot more to do with the “talk” than the “dirty,” i.e. it’s not what you say, but how you say it. Brainstorm a few words and phrases you feel comfortable saying and hearing yourself say. Practice saying them out loud in a smooth, sexy, self-assured way. Once you’ve built some confidence in your delivery, it will be easier (and sexier) to go impromptu.
Smell and taste:
Light a candle. Or, the hell with the candle—let the smell of sex hang in the air. Put a bouquet on the nightstand. Bring some fragrant, flavorful finger foods to bed with you, like fresh berries or chocolate. Put on an extra spritz of your partner’s favorite perfume or lotion or cologne. Go shopping together and choose a scented massage oil (not to be mixed with latex) or flavored lube. Shower together beforehand—or go to a spin class.
Touch:
The obvious one, perhaps, but we can provide substantial variation even with just the hands: quick strokes with the fingertips or long, broad strokes with the palm. We can use our knuckles to massage, or our fingernails to tease.
We can touch our partners with our lips, tongues, noses, nipples, toes or eyelashes. We can touch our partners with objects—silk ties, feather toys, fresh flowers, ice cubes, vibrating dildos, leather restraints or warm lube. We can touch our partners with multiple things at once. We can use the lightest brush of a fingertip, our full body weight and everything in between.
Seek out places you’ve never touched before, paying special attention to those secret locations that make your partner shudder a bit: at the temples, inside the wrists, along the jawline, in the crease of the groin or at the nape of the neck. Make it your goal to find the one place on your partner’s body that causes them to look at you afterwards, breathless, and say, “No one has ever touched me like that before.”
For more information on how to sexify the five senses, shoot Erica an e-mail at sex@dailycardinal.com and turn your novice status into expertise.
