Tag Archives: advice
Someone else’s story: closing the door on an open relationship
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.
Someone else’s story: Playing kinky – an intro to kink
There are times when even the most opinionated of us need to step back, take a deep breath, and shut the fuck up. Never do I get this feeling more than when it comes to discussing BDSM. People have raged to me before about my views on safewords, and various boundaries that I skip unthinkingly across. I do this because I am a hedonist, and often because I’m an idiot: sometimes I enjoy doing the kinds of play that experienced kinksters will warn against. In short, if you want an intro to kink I’m not the right person to come to.
Luckily I know someone who is – this week’s guest blog is from Charlie, who has written an excellent book that introduces people to BDSM in a safe, intelligent, and genuinely entertaining way. This guide is there to teach people many of the things that I’m too stupid and horny to say properly. I’ve read it, and it’s ace. It’s also free to download as a pdf – so have at it.
So, with an intro to ‘Playing Around’, I’m delighted to welcome Charlie…
Playing Around (with punctuation): An insight into a kinky author’s suffering
Thwack!
“That should be a semicolon, Charlie,” my editor/partner [editor note: yes, I slept with them for their writing] muttered sternly, pointing their riding crop at the offending comma. “And you don’t spell ‘negotiation’ like that.”
It’s a tough life for an author, especially for those writing a book about BDSM whose editor is all-too-willing to take advice from it (not that advice is particularly needed). Yet despite this hardship, I recently released my free introduction to kink-e-book: Playing Around: A Short Introduction to Kink for the Curious.
Kink has come somewhat more into the public eye since the release of Fifty Shades of Are-You-Fucking-Kidding-Me, but as a (relatively) experienced kinkster, I can think of nothing more horrifying than people learning about the activities and dynamics of BDSM as a result of it:
“Whilst there’s no one right way of being kinky, there are definitely wrong ways – and the ubiquitous Fifty Shades of Grey highlights many of these: it has an incredibly poor view of consent (a contract is most definitely not a good way of going about consent. And complaining about safewording?), portrays abuse as BDSM (and vice versa), and ultimately implies that kinkiness is a problem from which to be saved…”
That’s not to say that there aren’t kink guides and resources available, but these are frequently aimed at people with at least a modicum of experience. For the newbie, the jargon-rich culture can be a little off-putting, to say the least.
I aimed to write the kind of guide I would have liked when I was a fledgling pervert, experimenting with my equally naïve partner. We had numerous conversations in hushed tones about what we would do with a short length of ribbon we acquired, or the flimsy and severely unimpressive riding crop we bought from Amazon: conversations which were, for the most part, fruitless. We could really have done with some guidance.
We were lucky: others report bigger issues. From a rather dire experience in which a favourite silk scarf was sacrificed – though only after a somewhat lengthy hunt for scissors – to an unfortunate incident where “harder” and “no harder” were confused. When you know what you’re doing, kink is both safer and more fun.
Kink, consent and communication
It’s not just the safety and fun that concerned me about, though. Fifty Shades (and society at large) has a huge problem with consent and communication: there is a worrying notion that negotiation is simply tiresome and detracts from the sexual experience. It is a vital aspect of any interaction, particularly sexual interactions – and even more so if you’re going to be tying people up and hitting them for fun. For me, it was just as – if not more – important to provide a practical guide to negotiation and consent as it was to talk about how to actually do the things in the first place.
“However you intend to include BDSM in your relationship(s)- as an introduction to an existing vanilla relationship, further exploration in a relationship where you have done some experimentation, as an active member of the scene, or anything else for that matter – you will need to communicate your needs and desires (and listen to theirs) to any partners you play with. Be honest – proper communication can only happen when everyone involved isn’t overly embarrassed or scared of voicing their feelings […] It’s likely that your partner is going to be feeling the same fear and uncertainty – be supportive!”
Not only is consent and negotiation a vital aspect of safety – both physical and emotional – it can, despite what Fifty Shades and its ilk implies – be an enjoyable experience in itself. Due to our cities being inconveniently located, Xandra, my editor/partner, and I often do this sort of thing via the wonders of the internet: it builds anticipation and ensures that we’re both brimming in excitement when we get to see each other. And of course, this also helped us to make an effective system of punishments for grammatical errors, as well as bribery with topless pictures.
Yes, it’s a tough life for an author, but for the worthy goal of turning communication into incoherent screams and moans in bedrooms across the world, I’d like to think it was worth it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me – Xandra’s insisting that they edit this post too…
Whether you’re looking to try something hot and spanky for the first time, or – like me – you’re up to your knickers in filth but still making lots of mistakes, or if you just want to find out more, download Playing Kinky: A Short Introduction to Kink for the Curious as a free pdf (released under a Creative Commons license), or head to Amazon US or UK where you can get it as an ebook.
On Valentine’s Day, House of Cards, and my ideal relationship
As a sex blogger, I am legally obliged to provide some sort of fodder that hits the keyword “Valentine’s Day”, or Google will have me shot. But if you want a syrupy-sweet and romantic entry or a rant about twee, tedious predictability of the day itself, you’re better off looking at previous years’ entries. Because today I’m going to talk about House of Cards.
House of Cards on Valentine’s Day
No, this isn’t just an excuse to remind other fans that Season 2 of House of Cards will be released on February 14th, it’s simply because House of Cards presses so many of my ‘holy shit that’s so hot’ buttons that it is almost impossible to list them all.
I’ll give you my top ones, though.
1. Powerful, evil men
From Andrew Scott’s playfully terrifying Moriarty to the drawling, bass sarcasm of Professor Snape, there’s an entire book to be written about how deliciously sexy evil can be. I’m definitely not the only one who thinks this. Plenty of submissive-leaning people on Twitter replied to my achingly hot story about number 14 by telling me, in no uncertain terms, that they were off to rub themselves raw, and I’ve been in certain circles where one cannot mention Kevin Spacey’s name without causing at least three people to collapse in a puddle of their own lust.
Why is Kevin Spacey so sexy? I think it’s because in House of Cards he is a ruthless, vicious, scheming man. A bastard’s bastard. The créme de la créme of cunts. And with every new machination, each twisted smile or liberty taken, I want to hug myself with merciless joy and have him devour me like the wolfish Beelzebub he is.
2. Hate fucking
Not all the sex in House of Cards is hateful, but there’s certainly a hell of a lot more of it that is powered by rage, revenge, and politics than you’d get in your average drama series. Sometimes it’s nice to see the perfect couple getting together on screen. But at other times it’s fantastic to be reminded that sex can be had for many reasons: not all of them good.
An on-screen fuck is so much hotter when you know one or other of the characters has an ulterior motive.
3. Zoe Barnes (played by Kate Mara)
I very rarely fancy women, but I am happy to make an exception for Zoe Barnes. She’s indescribably stunning, as well as being sneaky and devious and cunning and all that good stuff too. She also has a quality that I am exceptionally jealous of – in anything she wears her tits look spectacular. I want to hug her so that our chests smoosh together, then pick her up and fuck her against a wall.
The perfect House of Cards relationship
Hauling this entry back from drooling celebrity lust and onto the crucial topic of Valentine’s Day (see, Google? I am playing your wicked game), the most insanely hot thing about House of Cards is the relationship between Frank Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey) and his wife Claire (played by Robin Wright). They’re both incredibly powerful people, but together they seem to be striving for a kind of give/take equality that I’ve rarely seen before.
Neither of them seems as concerned about fidelity as you’d expect from a high-profile married couple. They both make mistakes, sexually and personally, but what’s utterly fascinating is that they have this ongoing deal: I support you, then you support me. They know that it’s not always possible to excel simultaneously, so they take it in turns. Frank takes the limelight while Claire supports him from the wings, then they swap, and he dedicates his time to making sure that she gets the best exposure.
Every now and then they share a cigarette. The cigarette is, like all smoking on TV these days, a metaphor for their relationship. One of them will start it, then halfway through pass it to the other one. Breathing in, then out, then handing it over.
Love me like Frank Underwood
Don’t get me wrong, these characters are both pretty horrible people, so I wouldn’t recommend any of you turn into Frank Underwood any time soon (unless you are joining me in ‘filthy evil men’ sex games), but their relationship looks a lot like the sort of thing I want. A partnership of the most interesting kind, where you’ll step aside for your partner when they need to succeed, fight for their goals as passionately as you fight for yours, knowing with total certainty that they’ll do exactly the same thing for you a little way down the road.
And, of course, lust painfully after each other as you get dressed for a night out – because along with the support and the love, there’s always a little promise of fiery rage around the corner.
Addendum: If this entry wasn’t Valentine’s-y enough for you, here are some previous V-day entries ranked in order of how much I like them.
Love is like being tied to a rock that you also sort of want to have sex with
The most romantic thing I’ve ever written
On sex practice
So, here’s an odd statement, which the guy who emailed me was kind enough to allow me to publish:
I sometimes want to try things out – I have zero or little experience and I worry about that. Would be wrong to use a girl as just like to practise on and improve?
The word ‘practice’ bothers me, and not just because of its context-dependent spelling of ‘s’ or ‘c’. This gentleman was asking, after my article on virginity, whether it was OK to find someone to practise sexual things with (kissing, oral, and other delicious non-penis-focused activity) without having to have actual sex.
The answer to this question is a wholehearted ‘yes’, but also a wholehearted ‘no’, because of the way it was phrased.
Not having sex is totally fine
If you meet someone and want to do sexy things but without having what you’d class as ‘full sex’ (i.e. train goes in tunnel) then that is not only fine but, if the other person you’re with is a fan of kissing, oral, frotting, etc, utterly delightful. There’s a deep and gutwrenching joy in having things that aren’t ‘full sex’, and although I am personally a bit of a penetration fetishist (I find it hard to get off if I’m not being pounded, or at least under promise of being pounded in the very near future), there are hundreds of other things that are fun.
However, the word ‘practice’, makes me shudder with discomfort, because it implies some things that make me sceptical of how you actually feel about your partner.
There is no sex Olympics
The key question, really, is what are you practising for? Is there some sex competition that I didn’t know you could enter? Are there skills and techniques you need to know in order to pass a shagging exam? Is this hard work going to pay off ten years down the line when you meet someone who refuses to sleep with you unless she can see your Doctorate in lovemaking? No? Then what you’re doing isn’t practice.
It’s an uncomfortable word because usually we practise on something that isn’t the real thing. We learn to drive with supervision, in cars that have a spare set of pedals so our instructor can slam the brakes on when we almost power headlong into a roundabout (and Colin, if you’re reading this, I’m really bloody sorry). We practise exam questions on past test papers. Above all, the results of our ‘practice’ don’t really matter, because the marks aren’t real or final.
But in bed, the person you’re with is real. They have real nerve endings, real emotions and desires. To reduce them to a GCSE test paper, in which the marks (i.e. their feelings) don’t really matter sounds deeply disrespectful. This, coupled with the word ‘use’ was what gave me shudders in this guy’s email.
There’s nothing wrong with having consensual sex fun with someone that doesn’t involve penetration, but there is definitely something wrong with viewing any individual sexual partner as just a stepping stone towards the amazing sex that you’ll eventually have with someone else. Heavily implied there is ‘better’. You practice on the not-quite-real person, then have better sex with someone… well… better.
Eww.
Sex practice doesn’t make perfect
Most importantly, the idea of practice implies that if you do enough of it you’ll eventually become ‘good’. This is one of those bullshit beliefs we hold because so many advice columns, sex books, and articles about ‘Ten Ways To Blow Her Mind In Bed’ insist on peddling the myth that everyone likes the same thing. That you can be, objectively, a ‘good shag’. This – and I cannot stress this enough – is bollocks.
Sometimes you’ll have sex with someone for the first time, and loads of your trademark moves will genuinely blow their mind. They’ll sigh, and writhe, and moan in delight as you rub, lick, suck, and fuck them into a glorious and delicious climax. But this is rare. Most of the time you’ll do some things they like, some things they love, and many things that make them want to say ‘left a bit’, ‘a bit softer’, ‘no, wait, a bit harder’ until you do something exactly the way they like it.
I’ve slept with a fair few guys as well as a few girls. Each and every one of them was slightly different, with some of them doing things in ways I’d never have anticipated but turned out to love. Others did things that worked well for their previous partners but turned me right off. I’m sure the same is true of what they thought of me, and generally with those people I was with for longer, we got better at pleasing the other one and knowing what they wanted. No amount of practice can prepare you as well as the knowledge that everyone’s different. So practice doesn’t make perfect – it doesn’t even make ‘good’ – the best revision you can do is to talk to the person you’re with, and listen when they tell you what they like.
Don’t ‘use’ anyone
You don’t owe it to any hypothetical future partner to be the best you can be in bed. It’s not the case that you can pick people who don’t matter to help you perfect your techniques so that you can wow the love of your life at some point. Firstly because the love of your life may well want something completely different, secondly because whoever you’re practicing with may turn out to be the love of your life, and finally because it’s just a shitty thing to do. If I had wild and sticky sex with someone and subsequently found out that they were just ‘using’ me for ‘practice’, I’d kick them out of bed before you could say ‘I am not an unfeeling shag-robot.’
I don’t think this guy is deliberately being mean, or callous. After a few emails back and forth I think he’s just under the impression that he needs to be the best he can be. But you can be at your best not by learning techniques or practising your cunnilingus skills, but by being empathetic, caring and considerate of what your partner needs and wants. Not a hypothetical future partner – the one you’re with in exactly that moment.
Male sex toys are awesome, and Jezebel can fuck off
“Ever seen a blog post about a weird sex toy designed to simulate the feeling of a vagina and thought, what kind of a lonely fuck would use one of those?”
No, I haven’t. And yet the author of this Jezebel post clearly has. If you ask me that says acres more about the author than about the many hundreds of thousands of people who enjoy using male sex toys.
(more…)