You’re not having the kind of sex you want with someone. So you talk. And you say “hey, I really like what we’re doing, but could I make a few requests? Suggestions?” And in all the happy stories and agony aunt columns we imagine a fictional partner who responds with enthusiasm and empathy and all that good stuff.

But real life isn’t always like that, more’s the pity. Here’s a guest blog from Brit Bitch Berlin about a gentleman she’s rather charmingly nicknamed Thor.

Re-Educating Thor: Sex without commitment

I had been sex-dating this guy for a few weeks, and was a bit unsure whether I was just so awed by his ripped body that I wanted to continue, or under some weird “gotta try everything once” kind of spell.

There was something about wrestling with his beautiful body, as well as perhaps enjoying the pleasure and power of wielding a butt-plug on a guy twice my size, and a decade younger, passive and bowed to my will.

However, I thought it was time to regroup, as our conversation had been limited. Very limited, till then. On the other hand, he had already enriched my vocabulary (and those of my friends, who are still reeling) by two words: butt-plug and cockslap. Did you know that you can buy butt-plugs that have diamonds inset in the heft?! And ones with a foxtail attached? Finally something for the girl who truly has everything.

Anyway, despite joyfully embracing new knowledge, I did also want to talk about boundaries and levels of intimacy. I was happy to try out new stuff with Thor and his hammer but I needed a level of intimacy that also included (for example) laughter, giggles and sensuality. I also needed to talk about contraception, because it is really tedious having to push a guy away repeatedly before he dons the plastic cape. I mean, c’mon, we are not in Kindergarten here. And unless he proposes (with a butt-plug-ring?) and swears undying fidelity, he will be wearing rubber. Ironic really that someone so into having foreign objects (made of rubber) inserted into orifices has such a problem with putting one teensy tiny flimsy layer of rubber over a small part of himself…

So having finally lured him to a public place where they served food and drink, after eyeing each other hungrily for a while, our conversation went a little bit like this:

Me: So, shall I just lay it on the line?

I would like to enjoy nights of passion with you, without being exclusive, but also with a certain level of intimacy. That means we sometimes do stuff outside the bedroom, like go out to eat, and get to know each other a little better. For me, good conversation and great food often equals good sex. Feed me well, and I will be a happy bunny between the sheets…are you getting that I am really into food?

And, I need you to use contraception always, without me having to push you into it.

Also, I don’t like it when you hit me in the face. With anything. Even if it is a soft part of your body. (OK, OK I made that bit up) Even though it doesn’t hurt. It’s not about that. It just doesn’t doesn’t turn me on. Also, when you spit on my back while you are fucking me? I don’t get it? OK your turn, what do you want?

Thor: Um well, I don’t really know…I haven’t really thought about it much. I guess I just want to relax and have a good time, without any pressure or commitment.

I felt like I was truly talking to Thor of Asgard, who had no concept of “our customs.” I guess he probably felt the same. I wish I could tell you we went back to mine and had hot sex. We didn’t. Suddenly his porn-bitch was talking back. And that was not part of the script. Oh and Asgard needed to be saved. Again.

Between you and me, I had planned to try and “make” my own personal sexual man-toy out of the raw materials at hand. It was either that, or head for Celibate-City. I failed. It’s ok. Maybe, just maybe, he will think twice before… or at least ask beforehand.

We all agree that sex is a lot of fun, and that anything consensual that makes it fun is fine. But what exactly is the POINT of a lot of these activities…? What does a man get out of, for example, cumming or spitting on a woman’s back? Isn’t it much more intense and pleasant to cum inside her whilst pleasuring her at the same time? When I was discovering my sexuality first time around, back in the 80s, men took pride in actually pleasuring you! It was about getting each other off. But now it seems like a lot of the time somehow I’m left out of all the fun. I felt like raising my hand and saying “Umm, hello, I am still here, can I have some stimulation too? Other than the visual eye candy of a man frantically wanking himself off, right in front of me??”

Call me an intellectual, but my brain needs feeding too. And not with reruns of “facefuck III”.

If you enjoyed that guest blog, you can see more of her writing at BritBitchBerlin or follow her on Twitter or Facebook. But in the meantime I’d be curious to know what you think of the above story. I think it’s a classic example of two people wanting very different things, but not realising just how different those things are until they have this conversation. I wonder if a lot of what we think is selfishness is often just a symptom of incompatible desires. If you’re a guy and you have time, I’d also love to know the answer to the question “what do you get out of cumming and/or spitting on a woman’s back?” – because, you know, I think I can guess but it would be lovely if you could explain it in a bit of detail for my personal research.*

*wanking

Wise people are discussing sex addiction at the moment. And by ‘wise people’ I mean mostly Brooke Magnanti, who’s written some interesting stuff about it in the Telegraph as well as her excellent book ‘The Sex Myth‘. I’m nervous about applying the label ‘addiction’, particularly to something I enjoy immensely and crave absolutely, but that also – despite my occasional fuck-ups – significantly improves my life. Brooke nails many of my concerns about the sex addiction industry, and rest assured that no matter what you think your problem with sex is, you can guarantee there’ll be someone happy to take your money for a ‘cure’.

However, the fact that there are dubious diagnoses of ‘porn addiction’ and much hand-wringing about ‘sex-addicted’ celebrities, that doesn’t negate the very real problems that some people have with sex – if something is negatively affecting your life, then making the decision to take control of it is probably a wise one. This week’s guest post, which I found hilarious as well as touching, comes from a guy who is as filthy as I am (and most likely even filthier) but for whom sex isn’t the magical wonderland he really wants. In his own excellent (and anonymous) words, I’ll let him explain…

Giving up on filthy sex

It’s funny how things turn out. One minute you’re married, living the Guardian colour supplement dream, and the next you’re listening to the fire alarm go off at 11am when you’re in the middle of your first all male threesome. While your febrile imagination runs through the many and varied ways in which your immediate future can best humiliate you, the voice in your head is simply saying, ‘what the fuck? How the hell did I end up living in a bachelor pad having two cocks in my mouth for elevenses?’ Then you remember that it’s Thursday, fire alarm test day. The looks of horror subside, and hungry mouths get to work once more …

That’s right, I am a man-whore, a slut; call me what you will. Over the past year, for example, I think I fucked as many women as I did in the twenty years following the greatly anticlimactic event that was the mislaying of my virginity. I’ve had sex with several men: both the sensual and louche kind and the on your knees from the moment the front door is shut to the moment they cum in your mouth kind. I’ve had threesomes, foursomes and fivesomes, been to orgies, parties and swinging-friendly amenities. I’ve licked my partner’s pussy while another guy squirted his cum down her throat, watched her get fucked by two men, fucked her while a guy wanked into my open mouth, letting the cum drip into hers, fucked a guy while he was fucking her … Sometimes I think back and almost shock myself, and yet it started with a kiss.

To be brutally honest, I love it. I love to see the naked greed in a girl’s eyes, to see the look in a guy’s as my partner takes his cock in her mouth, I love it all. Which makes it all the more strange that I’m giving it up.

Why give up on filthy sex?

Not long after the kiss, I found myself putting a collar on the actual girl next door in a B&BDSM in the sticks. The next week I was at a party. I was introduced to a Dr Jones, simply because we were the only two Drs there. After about ten minutes I said, simply, ‘shall we fuck?’ The only query was her place or mine. It was a while before I realised that I had been caught in a perfect sexual storm.

I was single, clever, charming, handsome, fit, with a disposable income and a newly acquired (non-transmittable) disease which had two neatly intersecting outcomes – a carpe diem mentality and a pharmaceutically-induced sexual compulsion. I was suddenly devastatingly successful, to the point that when I found a properly filthy girl, the kind who would make me fuck her before she went to work and would then spend the day sending me texts such as ‘In a meeting. Can feel you leaking out of my cunt. Hot’, I simply carried on. I cultivated a rolling harem of between four and eight girls on top (sometimes literally) of my partner. Now I’m living the dream, right?

Did I just say I was going straight? It amazes me, too. I’ve had two proper play partners, both sexy and both filthy. The first was a proper partner. I fucked that up because I couldn’t control my compulsion. The second was achingly sexy, fabulously filthy, but I just didn’t care, so while it was great fun, the whole game started to lose its appeal. We still had outrageously good sex, but came to need others. We’d arrange meets and people wouldn’t show. Fakers and dreamers, most of them. And then we’d have one of those meets when it seemed like everyone was climbing over me to get at her. Naturally, our open relationship was extremely one-sided – I got all the action.

The compulsion meant that when the hunger hit, it was like a drug, I simply had to get something, anything. Sport fucking is what I once heard it called. It became mechanical. I started counting.

This is what compulsion does to you. You acquire, you collect: you never connect.

In the middle of the craziness I connected with someone who couldn’t cope with the sharing. She tried, taking some guy home after a party I wasn’t at, but regretted it. Strangely, I found myself a little jealous. So I decided to try, to see whether the finest vanilla can trump the kid in a candy store draw of tutti frutti. To see whether the taste of perversion, once experienced, is craved forevermore.

Wish me luck.

If you enjoyed that post, check out some more guest contributions, and let the author know what you think in the comments!

Today’s guest blog began when CavaSupernova got in touch with a link to her story. I love a good story. And my favourite stories come with a mix of filth and emotion. This story was slightly different. Filthy, yes. Emotional, fuck yes. But also the sort of thing that makes me want to reach through the screen, seek out the villain of the piece, and shake him into a thousand tiny pieces.

There’s a world of difference between exploring your hot sex fantasies with people, and using sex as a way to hold power over someone. With wisdom and a far calmer tone than I could manage, CavaSupernova‘s story explores the latter. I don’t want to give too much away, but please be aware that this might be triggering.

Open relationships and threesomes

I love threesomes. I do. I love, love, love them.

I’ve made a few stops on the FFF to MMM spectrum, and for me, there’s no end to the fun. Try being in the middle of a girl sandwich; one’s teasing your nipples with her fingertips as she watches the other licking your cunt, and your back is arched to breaking point you’re so turned on.

Or a nice MMF spitroast, one horny guy doing you from behind, while you suck the other’s rock-hard cock. Or maybe you’re at an orgy and some guy’s just tied your hands behind your back and his wife’s asking you to sit on her face while her man does you from behind.

Mmm, hot. To the power of three.

Or not, as the case may be.

In early 2010, an anonymous letter landed on my doormat bearing a dynamite revelation: “Your husband is fucking men behind your back. In your bed.” Turns out my bloke had been cruising guys online for a couple of years and having threesomes with them.

A 16-year relationship, 11 of them married, down the pan. Within the week I bailed out, within the year, we were divorced.

I’ve already blogged the full story, but there’s one specific aspect under the microscope here because it screwed up my head big time during the dazed months that followed:

What right had I to get upset?

How can a chick who loves threesomes – who has had sex with other men in front of her husband – get her arse out when her spouse does the same thing?

A closed relationship

Me and my husband – let’s call him B – had a sort-of open relationship. It mainly expressed itself when, after a night out caning it, he’d invite some similarly wasted male acquaintance or other back to ours. We had never talked about or designated ourselves as non-monogamous. It just happened.

The threesomes were so knicker-wettingly intense I get hot even thinking about them now. B just had a knack for picking gorgeous, intelligent men, with great bodies, no inhibitions and an awesome line in dirty talk.

Back to 2010. I was devastated when that letter arrived, descended into gibbering, teeth-chattering shock. But as the news sunk in, I began to feel like a hypocrite and then I started to hate myself for feeling so bad. “You brought this on yourself, you stupid, stupid idiot.”

Open any glossy women’s magazine and there’s some ‘expert’ telling you how non-monogamy will nuke a marriage. Make it disintegrate in a mushroom cloud of jealousy and recrimination.

By their logic, I’d paid the price for smugly assuming the rules didn’t apply to me. I deserved everything I got.

Simple, right? Well, no.

B and I had a tatty, grim shambles of a pairing. It had gradually, imperceptibly, come to revolve around his drink problem and filthy temper, my endless dread of his next outburst, and the fear that I’d be next whenever he started smashing stuff up. It’d happened so slowly I didn’t even notice; got used to his shit without even realising it.

This abuse was tipping into violence. He tried to strangle me twice, enjoyed shoving me around and slamming doors in my face; laughed it all off as ‘just messing about’. After Doormat-gate, it took months to dawn on me that his ‘betrayal’ wasn’t about the sex. His ‘adultery’ was just another element in a campaign of emotional and verbal abuse. This abuse caused our split.

The high times, ironically, had kept us going. My ex had a cuckolding fetish, loved seeing me with other guys, really got off on it. He often asked me to go out and pick up men, so I could tell him all about it. I drew the line at that, but it was pretty hot just talking about it.

He also fancied the blokes, hence the Gaydar habit. If we’d had a happy relationship, I’d have been cool with him getting it on with men, though. A chance to watch a guy suck another guy’s cock? That’s my ultimate ‘makes me hotter than the sun’s internal core’ fantasy.

The problem was never openness

Without threesomes – one of the few ‘fun’ activities we shared – we’d have split earlier, not later. The agony aunts were wrong; anger and abuse destroyed us, not kink.

I also realised my ‘open’ marriage was anything but. We weren’t remotely open with each other. We didn’t talk. We didn’t establish parameters. So, if you’re attached, and want to experiment, do your due diligence and go into it with your eyes open. You could end up having the time of your life: I did.

Now I’m mended, the self-hatred’s finally evaporated and I love threesomes more than ever. Angry, manipulative men, though… I’ve given those up for good.

If you identify with any of the more shocking things in CS’s post, or if you’re in a relationship that scares you, you can find out more and get advice here. And if you like her writing, check out CavaSupernova’s excellent blog or follow her on Twitter.