Sex is a source of vast pleasure and spiritual joy, and of humiliation and defeat. The authors of this article have certainly experienced both, and we're here to express our ongoing enthusiasm, along with other fruits of our investigations.
Let's start with a banal observation: American culture doesn't promote a positive attitude toward sex. No matter what your sexual experience, you probably don't take as much pride in your sex life as you could.
Add in some axioms of human nature: You likely blame yourself for things that are not your fault. You probably justify to yourself sexual behavior you would like to change. You don't like to talk about your fears and anxieties. You may have destructive habits. You have behaved badly in certain situations.
Okay, we're all human. We all have things to work on. But have you ever considered how difficult sexuality is? That having sex of any kind actually takes a lot of courage? Oddly enough, one of the things our culture least acknowledges is the intrinsic element of fear in sexual experience. And yet, it's there right from the start -- for most children, even in the rare instances parents are positive and supportive, embarrassment is one of the first emotions associated with sexual arousal. Later, in our teens, aren't we all obsessed with being adequate? We somehow start by feeling inadequate until proven otherwise.
Then there's obsession. No matter how you struggle, you can't help being aroused by... that. Don't think about it. Don't masturbate over it. God, how horrible to masturbate over it; never do that again. At least, not today.
You must be a pervert not to be able to control yourself better, huh? Welcome to humanity.
It's not easy finding a way to make sexuality work in your life. Give yourself credit for how far you've come. The main thing to recognize is that nobody ever arrives. There's not a bunch of secret initiates out there who have the answers.
The landscape of sexuality is a magickal one. The mountain of sexual exploration has no top, and the path is always steep. Those who race for the heights may get no further than those in the meadows relaxing among the flowers. Those who fear to stir from the valleys often find themselves inexplicably dangling from the faces of terrible cliffs. Whether you like it or not, this is your landscape.
We have some encouragement for you, and some suggestions.
Being a Good Lover
Some sex guides concentrate on "technique" -- this position, that stroke, those toys -- but think back on your own favorite sexual experiences. What made them good for you? We're willing to bet the key element wasn't technique but passion and energy.
So, the first step is to form the kind of intimate relationship with another person that sparks and nourishes passion. We have faith in you here, but we're no help at all.
Once you're in bed with such a person, though (or with anyone, for that matter), we have some thoughts about what you can do to be good:
Exercising Pleasure
Consider your first lessons in sexual sensuality -- you were probably a teenager, learning to masturbate. Since that's not always an ideal context for full and open-minded self-expression, it's worth consciously re-examining your own sensuality from time to time, hopefully reducing your preconceptions and increasing self-acceptance.
There are a lot of different ways to do so, but make sure your body has a chance to be fully involved. For example, find some time in your home when you won't be disturbed. Set up your space in the most pleasurable and relaxing way you can. Dim the lights and light candles, if you wish. Put on your favorite music, and maybe burn some incense you enjoy. Create a place where you can sit in complete comfort. If you usually masturbate with a vibrator, plug it in and leave it accessible.
Take a hot bath or shower, perhaps with your bathroom lit by candles. Try to let your entire awareness consist of feeling the hot water against your skin. Feel your entire body and all your skin at once (this can be arousing in and of itself). After a while, towel off and make your way to the space you set up.
Try to see just how comfortable, sensual and relaxed you can feel. If you notice anything that intrudes on your comfort or pleasure, change it. Touch yourself to find out what feels good, whether sexually or not. Don't assume that you know what feels best already. Let your awareness rest solely on your body and how it responds. If you become conscious of fear, accept it and do what you can to comfort yourself. If you choose to masturbate to orgasm, be exquisitely aware of all stages of your arousal and remain present as far into your orgasm as you can.
It is much more common for women to be preorgasmic (not to have experienced an orgasm) than men. If you are a pre-orgasmic woman, a good thing to buy is a Hitachi (or similar) plug-in vibrator from a shop such as Good Vibrations (800-BUY-VIBE). Betty Dodson's books and videotapes (Sex for One or SelfLoving) and Carol Queen's new vibrator videotape (Carol Queen's Great Vibrations) are also full of good ideas. The key thing is to have fun without being too goal-oriented.
The whole point of re-examining your own sensuality is to practice accepting, nurturing and valuing your own pleasure. Masturbation is a perfect arena for this kind of exploration (it's sex, after all, just "sex for one"). Everything you learn makes you a better lover not only for yourself, but for others as well.
Unfortunately, in many the fear of sexual inadequacy expresses itself as dissatisfaction with our bodies, which gets in the way of our pleasing and enjoying ourselves, particularly in the company of a partner. "I may not be adequate" gets translated into "My body is unattractive," which is marginally easier to accept but still very self-destructive. "I'm too fat." "My breasts are too small." "My butt is too big." "My cock is too small." -- all are ways of saying "I don't feel sexually adequate."
We'd like to point out most bodies are attractive. If you haven't, try visiting a nude beach or swim or nudist camp to observe the range of bodies. Disgusting? Not at all. Most people are amazed how appealing and whole nearly everyone appears without clothes, regardless of whether their bodies conform to the current norm. Somehow, when body differences are out in the open, it's easier to see all the variations don't matter much. Listings of nude beaches and events can be found at http://www.aanr.com/
The important question is whether you are indeed sexually adequate. Recognize what kind of question this is: It's not about externals, it's about the very core of your being.
Here's our answer: At your very core, whether you realize it or not, you have called into yourself the god or the goddess of your choice, to inform your sexuality as you choose. Your personal, individual sexuality is more than adequate -- it's divine. You don't believe it? Look into your heart and see. The trick is to have the courage to let that personal sexuality out generously, gently, wisely and with abandon.
Consideration
Being a good lover means pleasing your partner. Your own enjoyment will be one vital component of that pleasing. A second vital component is your wholehearted acceptance that your partner, while similar to you, is different.
Gender differences, for example, while pretty obvious, need to be honored and taken into account when sharing sex. Women often take longer to become aroused than men but often stay aroused longer. Having intercourse before full arousal rarely feels good for women. As a result, the best approach for many male-female couples is to enjoy a lot of foreplay, followed by a lot of cunnilingus or similar stimulation, before intercourse.
Quite aside from gender differences, people's individual sexual responses and preferences vary incredibly, though we all share a common physiology. Understanding another person's sexual patterns takes time and attention, sometimes a lot. Try to step outside yourself and really feel what turns your partner on. It is rarely the same as what you would want, but your experience combined with real empathy will usually give you clues.
The goal is to key your arousal to the other person's, so the more turned on your partner gets, the more turned on you get.
Then there are practical touches. Making your space inviting is a good way to let someone know you appreciate them and value having sex with them. Sex is often nice by candlelight. Turning off the ringers on your phones or pagers is a good idea. The room temperature should be on the warm side. Some people like background music -- you can set a CD on repeat play. You might want to keep a towel, a bottle of water and maybe a warm, wet washcloth handy too. You can find more ideas of this sort in The Great Sex Weekend by Pepper Schwartz and Janet Lever.
Another thoughtful thing you can do is keep everything you need within easy reach, so you don't have to interrupt sex while you fumble for your lube, a soft mitten, a condom or whatever. Laying out the things you might use or keeping them all in a drawer by your bed (being sure you can identify everything by touch) goes a long way towards helping you and your partner feel better about the toys and safer sex precautions you use.
Speaking of lube, you should definitely keep a bottle of water-based personal lubricant handy during sex. Most everybody likes the added slipperiness. Anal penetration requires it, as the anus doesn't lubricate itself, and additional lube often makes vaginal penetration feel better too. Likewise, lube almost always improves genital massage. Using adequate lube is especially important when using latex gloves or condoms, to reduce the chance of the latex tearing. To keep things comfortably and safely slippery, reapply lube periodically.
For a while, health experts recommended water-based lubes containing Nonoxynol-9 against infection, but current evidence suggests Nonoxynol-9 is not nearly as effective as originally hoped. Additionally, for the many women allergic to Nonoxynol-9, it may (in some cases) actually increase the chance of infection due to irritating the vaginal membranes, while definitely decreasing the fun of sex. Plus, Nonoxynol-9 tastes horrid. For these reasons, we recommend avoiding products containing Nonoxynol-9. But of course, the choice is yours.
Popular brands of water-based lube include Wet, I-D, ForPlay, Probe and Astroglide. Recently, two new lubes based on silicone rather than water hit the market, Wet Platinum and I-D Millennium. A number of women report they haven't liked the feeling of these lubes when used vaginally. The main advantage they seem to have is they can be used underwater, making them effective in hot tubs, swimming pools, the ocean and so on.
Many men prefer oil-based lubes, such as vegetable oils, Vaseline, Crisco or lotions, for hand jobs. Be aware, however, that oil-based lubes break down latex in short order, so never use oil-based lubes with latex condoms.
Consideration in little things as well as big makes for a good lover: thinking about what the other person needs, communicating to your partner your love and appreciation. A person who spends two months' wages on a diamond but won't spend two minutes taking out the garbage is missing one key to romance: Love is in the details.
Communication
Embarrassment is still one of the most common sexual emotions, and probably always will be. Isn't it cute when your partner turns all pink? It's not so cute to turn pink yourself, though.
We need to take embarrassment seriously, because it can be a very constricting form of fear. Respect it; don't reinforce it. Acknowledge your own embarrassment, but don't let it govern you. Acknowledge your partner's embarrassment, but be gentle with it, as you would with any hurt (no matter how silly the cause might seem).
One serious consequence of embarrassment in sex is that it often prevents us from communicating. Without communicating, how can we learn enough to become good lovers? If you say "Oh, wow, that feels good, oh yeah, oh yeah," when you're thinking, "That would feel so much better if it were a bit to the right," or "God, I wish he'd kept doing that," your embarrassment is pushing you to the verge of outright dishonesty and is preventing your lover from giving you what you want.
Sound familiar? Just break through that barrier and say all those things you've been too embarrassed to say. You can't? It's too embarrassing to admit you've been embarrassed? And the things themselves are still embarrassing?
Conscious, explicit exercises might help. Trade off. Make a date with your partner for an encounter in which you focus exclusively on being a willing (eager!) pupil, and your partner focuses exclusively on teaching you how to do things exactly right. Then make a date where the roles are reversed. This may help get around some embarrassment, but you'll probably find it's hard to be a good teacher. Yet to be a good lover, you need both to have a good teacher and be a good teacher. And make the painful effort to be honest. And never stop learning... as with the rest of life. When trying to break through communication inhibitions, you will probably enjoy Carol Queen's wonderful book, Exhibitionism for the Shy.
Into the Wilderness
Remember the first time you had sex? The first time you bought condoms? The first time you rented a porno tape? The first time you went into a sex shop? The first time you went to a sex party? The first time you revealed your sexual orientation and dysfunctions in a Seattle Times article? The first time you went on national TV nude to demonstrate masturbatory technique?
The point is, all these moments (some of which may not have occurred yet) are essentially the same potentially embarrassing moment, in which you choose to step forward through your fear. Looking back at such watersheds in the past, you can mostly see that courage liberated you. You are now free to have sex when you feel like it. You are free to walk into any store and buy condoms. Barriers have come down as a result of your actions.
On the other hand, there are times you need to obey your fear. Unprotected sex, for example, can easily get you AIDS. Masturbating nude on national TV might get you thrown in jail. There are plenty of sexual expressions that result in harm to self or others: rape, for example, or self-mutilation, or predation of any kind, especially with children.
Like any other aspect of life, sex can be pursued constructively or destructively. Unfortunately, a good deal of sexual expression in our culture is interwoven destructively with expressions of self-hatred and rage. At the same time, as many people have observed, sex can be an incredibly healing experience.
The bottom line is to take responsibility for your sex life. You need to identify and avoid destructive behavior, without closing off for yourself constructive paths out of unfounded fears. How can you tell the difference? It isn't always easy. A simple guideline is to avoid sexual activity that is not consensual or that harms any party to it.
One commitment you can definitely make, to yourself and all your partners, regardless of anything else, is to practice safer sex. That one's a no-brainer, although it does take attention and commitment. Information on safer sex practices is widely available; the Safe is Desire videotape is good, and you can find more information at http://www.sexuality.org/.
Again, the best tools you have for finding constructive paths are the old-fashioned virtues: honesty, consideration of others, generosity, kindness, love. That said, there are a vast number of directions you can go in exploring sex; you'll never have to run out of embarrassing moments.
How can you collaborate with a long-term partner, though, who inevitably has a different experimental agenda?
The easy answer is to be generous to each other. Enjoy your partner's turn-on even if it isn't your own. There are actually a lot of things that are easy to collaborate on. A few are listed following, under "Experiment Together."
However, a lot of forms of experimentation tend to bring up fears of inadequacy, particularly if other people get involved. To collaborate on this kind of experimentation, you usually have to balance the needs of the relationship with the needs of the two partners within it. Everyone has to be careful to stay within the bounds of what they can handle. You have to talk a whole lot and back up when you make a mistake. It's complicated. We're not experts. We don't know any experts, just a lot of works-in-progress.
We list some of the less mainstream experiments that people have found satisfying, in "Experiment Carefully" below. While you probably already have an idea what nice, nasty directions you want to explore further, you may not have thought of some things someone you love finds appealing.
Experiment Together
Here are some things most couples can enjoy together if either party is interested. For more ideas along these lines, you might want to read The New Good Vibrations Guide to Sex by Cathy Winks and Anne Semans.
Redefine sex. It can be liberating to dump the goal-oriented approach. Spend the evening kissing passionately and running your hands over each other, and call it sex. Spend the evening giving each other erotic massage, and (whether or not anyone had an orgasm) call it sex. Spend the evening blindfolding your lover and running various tantalizing objects over her or his skin, and call it sex. Talk about outrageous sexual fantasies, and call it sex. Talk about how you feel about each other, and call it sex.
The fine art of erotic massage is definitely worth exploring in this context. If you're interested, start at the Web site http://www.sexuality.org/erotmass.html.
Share erotica. Seeing or reading what turns other people on can be a great turn-on for both of you and can break the ice on things you'd otherwise find hard to mention.
In general, though, pornographic films aren't high-budget productions -- they're typically made with little care for an undiscriminating market, and they don't attempt to portray adult sexuality in a realistic or imaginative way. It helps to use a good guidebook to pick the best (such as The Good Vibrations Guide: Adult Videos by Cathy Winks). Interestingly, some of the hottest sexually explicit films are modern sex education videos; at least the sex and bodies are realistic and the orgasms aren't faked. Also, there are several mainstream movies that portray adult sexuality in a refreshingly sex-positive manner (Bull Durham comes to mind).
On the other hand, the quantity and quality of literary pornography has soared in recent years. The annual collections Best American Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica and Best Gay Erotica are good places to start. For more good erotica, browse the Sexuality Library catalog from Good Vibrations.
G-spot or prostate play. Most sexually active people today are aware of the clitoris and its role in female pleasure, and likewise the penis and its role in male pleasure. Knowledge about the female G-spot and the male prostate gland is less common.
Many women, once they are fairly aroused and possibly have had a clitoral orgasm or two, find it feels good if someone puts their first two fingers an inch or two into their vagina (to just beyond the pubic bone) and presses towards their belly with a deep circular or "come to me" motion. G-spot pleasure can be very deep and intense for some people. See The Good Vibrations Guide: The G-Spot by Cathy Winks for more information.
An identical game can be played with men, except that you use one or two fingers inside the anus rather than the vagina. The structure one presses is the prostate gland, and some men find it feels especially good to have this structure stimulated while their penises are being stroked. If you're worried about hygiene, put on a latex glove before inserting your fingers (don't forget to use water-based lube for his comfort). On this and related subjects, try reading Anal Pleasure and Health by Jack Morin and The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women by Tristan Taormino.
Multiple orgasms. Sex feels nice, often nicer the longer it goes on. Many women and some men have found that they can, with greater or lesser amounts of effort, experience multiple orgasms that extend the experience.
For many women, no work is required, but this is seldom true for men. If you are a guy interested in multiple orgasms, one approach is to learn (through masturbation just to the point of ejaculatory inevitability) exactly how your body responds and feels just before you ejaculate. Then, while having sex, slow down or change the stimulation you are receiving so you don't go beyond this point. This can feel like a mini-orgasm, except that you don't ejaculate.
There are also a variety of "Taoist" techniques to achieve fuller orgasms without ejaculation, which include pubococcygeus (PC) muscle contraction and other approaches. Read The Multi-Orgasmic Man by Chia Mantak for details. Jack Johnston's "vocalization" technique takes a lot of practice and is noisy, but it promises full nonejaculatory orgasms without slowing down or backing off stimulation. Listen to Jack Johnston's Male Multiple Orgasm Step-by-Step audiotape for details.
Tantric sexuality. In the West, "Tantra" is used as a catch-all term for many different types of eroticism with spiritual components. These sexual practices typically involve ritual preparation and consecration of the space, energetic exercises designed to connect the participants and ritual sexuality combined with meditation, visualization or both. For men, ejaculation is typically de-emphasized in favor of nonejaculatory "energy" orgasms.
Tantra is a big topic, about which you can find a lot of information. Some resources we'd suggest are The Art of Sexual Ecstasy by Margo Anand, Jewel in the Lotus: The Sexual Path to Higher Consciousness by Bhodi Avinasha, Sexational Secrets by Susan Bakos, the videotape Sluts and Goddesses by Annie Sprinkle and the Web sites http://www.tantra.com/ and http://www.heck.com/annie. Also, the Body Electric School offers good courses on this and related topics all over the country -- call (510) 653-1594.
Several simple Tantric techniques will probably enhance your existing form of making love. Without a doubt, the single most powerful thing you can do while making love to increase your sense of spiritual connection with your partner is to initiate and maintain eye contact. To augment this, try breathing in unison deeply and rhythmically. The "bliss breath," a form of synchronized breathing in which you sip air through the mouth and immediately make a sharp vocal exhalation by mouth can also be quite powerful. Or try making love in a face-to-face position and form a heart connection. To do this, each of you places your right hand over the other's heart and places your left hand over the other's right hand.
Experiment Carefully
The following areas of sexual activity are compelling and very satisfying to many people, but it's probably wise not to enter them lightly. At the same time, it's fair to say all can be (and frequently are) incorporated into healthy, loving relationships. Maybe yours is one.
If you are venturing into one of these areas for the first time, here are a few basic suggestions. Do some research first; what may look incomprehensible from the outside is usually much easier to accept after you've got a better idea of what people do and how they feel about it.
Next, start slowly. Respect your boundaries and those of your partner. If something isn't working, stop. Give yourself time to process the problem before either going further or refusing to go further (hours, days, whatever it takes). Accept from the start that what you want is not in all cases going to be what your partner wants, and you're both going to have to work towards third options that meet your common needs. Finally -- be prepared to find yourself enjoying things you thought you'd never like.
Polyamory. Polyamory is the practice of being open to more than one romantic or sexual relationship at once, while ideally remaining honest, open and honorable with all of your partners. This lifestyle has the advantage of easing the kind of claustrophobia that many people experience in closed monogamous relationships. However, at the same time, it usually requires more effort, energy and conscious honesty than monogamy. Not many people feel that they can pull it off. On the other hand, not many people feel they can pull off a long-term monogamous relationship.
Polyamory comes in many forms. Many people have stable long-term primary relationships and less significant secondary ones ranging from the casual to the serious. Others enter into group marriage arrangements, in which all the bonds are presumed equal. We know of no rules that can tell you what might work for you, or for how long.
Our personal experience with polyamory has been wonderful, scary, exhausting and catalytic. Our advice on this subject boils down to this: If one partner is going to step out on the other in a relationship, try being explicitly polyamorous, rather than just cheating "monogamously." It's harder, but gives everybody more opportunity for growth.
Among many resources on polyamory are The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt, Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits by Deborah Anapol and Loving More magazine.
Casual and public sex. Many people find the thought of meeting other adults for casual sex and possible intimate friendships exciting, and most people have at least a voyeuristic curiosity about "orgies." A variety of venues for this kind of activity exist, many by invitation only.
Male-female couples can explore such interests by participating in swingers' clubs, which exist within driving distance of most areas of the country. In an "on-premises" club, sex is allowed at the facility; an "off-premises" club arranges events (typically dances) where you can make dates with other couples. For more information on swinging, read the Web page at http://www.sexuality.org/mgswing.html.
Men-only bathhouses and sex clubs can also be found in most medium or large cities. See the latest edition of Damron's Address Book for local listings.
You should be aware that you probably won't enjoy casual or public sex with any group of people you wouldn't enjoy hanging out with anyway. Also, many people assume casual or public sex has to be debauched, but very often it isn't in the least. This can be reassuring or disappointing, depending on what you're looking for.
A bold way to explore this kind of thing is to host a sex party yourself. For tips, read Real Live Nude Girl by Carol Queen and Sapphistry by Pat Califia.
BDSM. This abbreviation stands for bondage and discipline and sadomasochism, and this type of sex play can involve role playing (for example, one of you is at the command of the other during the course of the evening), bondage of some kind, sensation play (spanking, scratching, pinching, hair pulling, flogging, teasing and so on) or a combination of these.
A lot of people find one or another aspects of BDSM compelling. It has even attained a sort of chic in recent years, to the disgust of some earlier and more serious practitioners, but there is no question that it speaks to many of us.
At the same time, it's one of the hardest experimental areas for partners who are not drawn to it. A large amount of patience and trust is required on all sides. Some people find they don't mind letting a partner explore this aspect of sexuality outside of the relationship, particularly since it often plays out in ways far from conventional sexual interaction.
Again, do some research before you make up your mind. There are many helpful books available, among which we might mention Sensuous Magic by Pat Califia, The Bottoming Book by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt and Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns by Philip Miller and Molly Devon.
If you and your partner or partners do decide to experiment with any sort of play where one wants to pretend to resist or not to like what's happening, it's a good idea to use a "safe word." This is a special word or phrase that when used causes play to immediately cease until both participants are ready to continue. The phrase "safe word" itself is a good choice. Using a safe word prevents confusion between "No, please don't!" being an erotic thing to say and "No, please don't!" being a serious request to be taken literally in order for the "scene" to remain consensual. In general, good communication skills, such as the ability to negotiate how a scene will run with your partner ahead of time, are key elements in determining the quality of your experience with BDSM.
Public and semi-public BDSM play parties take place on a regular basis all over the country. Browse a copy of Alternate Sources by Trevor Jacques for local listings.
Fisting. Some women enjoy vaginal fisting (having all or most of a lover's hand in their vagina). This is definitely a case where the other partner needs to proceed only with the active and ongoing encouragement of the person being fisted, and within her comfort level.
If you want to try vaginal fisting, we'd recommend first reading Deborah Addington's book A Hand in the Bush: The Fine Art of Vaginal Fisting. However, the basic technique is as follows: With your hand palm up (and your lover on her back or on all fours) bring your fingers and thumb together to form something that looks like a duck bill. With massaging, and possibly gentle twisting motions, slowly tease your hand into her vagina. If your anatomies allows it, once you get past the third knuckles your fingers will start to gently and naturally curve back to form a fist. Be sure to use lots of water-based lube and reapply as necessary.
Anal fisting uses the same basic hand technique, but with different lube and more preparation. Read Trust: The Handballing Book by Bert Herrman if this is your area of interest.
Fisting takes time and plenty of trust, but the women and men who can take a whole hand vaginally or anally often say it leads them to transcendent, ecstatic altered states.
Sex and drugs. When it comes to drugs and sex, consider carefully whether you want to get high just to suppress your inhibitions. If so, try to talk about what you want to do with your partner while sober. Who knows -- maybe you won't need to get high.
Having said this, the most commonly recommended pleasure-enhancer among "sex and drugs" enthusiasts is marijuana. Psychedelic mushrooms (when properly identified and harvested by a knowledgeable mycologist) and LSD are also sometimes recommended, though they tend to be more hit-and-miss; you either have a great, transformative experience or an unsettling and unpleasant one.
You will probably have a better and safer time if you indulge in sex/drug combinations in cities where the drugs aren't illegal, such as Amsterdam. For more information on modern psychedelics (and often their relationship to sex), read TIHKAL and PIHKAL, both by Alexander and Ann Shulgin. Another resource is the Web site http://www.lycaeum.org.
Bisexuality. Sexual orientation is a complex and controversial subject. When you strip away all the social conditioning, you could argue that humans are pansexual -- we like sex, no matter who we do it with. In real life, though, most of us find ourselves more easily attracted by a particular gender, as well as by particular body types, personality types, social attributes and so on.
In his studies of human sexuality, Dr. Alfred Kinsey ranked his subjects on a continuum in which zero represented pure heterosexuality and six represented pure homosexuality. He found relatively few at the extremes of this continuum -- most are somewhere in the middle.
Many of us who feel attracted to people of both genders have only learned to express our feelings toward one gender. A lot of social pressure exists against crossing over; both straight and gay communities can be intolerant of anyone who doesn't toe this line.
Just in practical terms, though, doubling the number of potential sexual partners is appealing -- it's hard enough to find the right people without limiting yourself in ways you don't need to. So if your heart pulls you towards the forbidden gender, you might want to listen to your instincts, not your culture.
Sex, Sex, Sex!
There's a lot of pressure about sex, from your culture, friends, lovers and especially from yourself. Everybody gets discouraged sometimes about reconciling sexual desire with the practical world. A lot of people feel like they hit insurmountable obstacles in their sexual explorations.
We've tried to point out ways around some common obstacles, and some resources you may not have known about. We're not saying it's easy, though, so do take pride in every step you make. One thing you can be sure of: You can't use up the joy.
More Information
To find out more about all aspects of sex, including local Seattle, Portland and San Francisco resources, try the Society for Human Sexuality Web page at http://www.sexuality.org/.
[Home Page | Other Articles in This Issue | FAQ | Local Resources]