Would you like your partner to be a little rougher, aggressive, more physical during sex? Is your partner afraid of hurting you, and treating you like you’re glass?
Hear what relationship expert Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com have to say about how to communicate with your partner, so he understands that it would be pleasurable for you, and he’s not going to hurt you.
Cathy: Someone wrote in and said, “I’d like my boyfriend to be a little rougher, when we have sex.” He’s afraid of …
Reid: Like unshaven?
Cathy: No, more aggressive, more physical during sex. He’s afraid of hurting her, he’s treating her like she’s glass. She wants to know a better way to communicate with him, so he understands that it would be pleasurable for her, and he’s not going to hurt her.
Reid: Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com
Cathy: Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com.
Reid: Yes, great question.
Cathy: Yeah it is.
Reid: I remember the first lover I had who really like rougher sex, and I’m a big guy, and I thought I was going to hurt her. It took her getting really angry at me, and I’m like … I was like okay and really what she did was she walked me through going really slow at first with spanking. I’m like … “Is that okay?” She’s like, “That was okay, try it again, like a little harder.” I’m like … She’s like, “That was good.”
It was gentle kind of like encouraging, and I was like … She was like “Whoa, okay a little too hard.” I was like, “Okay good, that’s good to know.” Like halfway but then like full wind up not so good. That was also me getting to realized that she liked it, because I got to see the reaction from her, from certain things. I was like, “Okay.” Then me also realizing the range she was talking about, and then I just started to get better at that.
I still, I am still afraid of hurting anybody.
Cathy: Yeah. I think that people cared about each other, don’t want to hurt each other. We are interested generally producing pleasure in the bedroom. First of all, you can find out if … You can decide what’s right for you. I don’t like hurting people. There’s not like …
Reid: Yeah, can I just say like when we say hurting, we understand that there are people for whom pain at certain levels of arousal is erotic to them. Either the sensation that is pain, occurs to them as pleasure or the scenario of being tied up or whatever that is, that I’m experiencing pain is erotic for them. For a lot of us who don’t want to hurt people, usually what it is, is pain is not erotic for us.
We have to look at, that’s a whole thing for you, and then when I thought of pain as intense stimulation…
Cathy: It was easier for you.
Reid: That was super easier for me, and then there’s different kinds of intense stimulation.
Cathy: Maybe a yes for you, and some may not be?
Reid: Yeah.
Cathy: One thing that I found is using the traffic light colors. Green means go ahead with that, or even accelerate a little bit. Yellow means worried about where you are, be cautious.
Reid: Proceed with caution.
Cathy: Red means stop, and I also found with one partner I like, if I feel very safe, I like my hands held, like my wrist held during certain parts of intercourse. I showed that person like how hard I wanted to be held, like on their body. That made a difference, they felt confident, that they knew and we checked in, and we go on slowly, but it did make them feel like, “This isn’t so bad. You’re not hurting me, therefor I’m not hurting you or anything.”
Reid: The other thing to understand too about people’s body is at certain level of arousal when people are super aroused the pain receptors that would normally be registering stimulation as painful. For some people they kind of chemically flipped over and you start registering intense stimulation as pleasure. For some people who are super aroused, all of the sudden like really intense thing start to feel really good.
That just also useful to know because for some of us, who think that doesn’t … It’s not going to feel good, it could also not feel good for you, because you’ve never been in a scenario where you got aroused enough to start feeling something more rough, or stingy, or thudy to occurred to you like, “That feels kind of good.” Again this is the … In the kinkiness world, they talk about this stuff all the time.
You may want to look for resources in those areas or leave us questions and we’ll point you in some good directions. Understand that for you pain might not be fun, and for somebody else, more roughness, more pain, more stingy, more thudy, like “I’m going to hurt you.” They’re like, “That’s exciting.”
Cathy: Yeah, if you can be specific about what you mean by rougher, it my help them too, to move forward because he may have like…rough can mean a lot of different things, and you may be lost. If you can give examples, or be very specific that might help them feel comfortable.
Reid: Leave your questions, maybe even answer this one. How do you feel about rough sex, do you like it, do you not like it, when do you like it, and don’t you like it. Bye.