Cosmo’s sex advice will tell you to eat a donut off your man’s boner or some other ridiculous thing. That’s because Cosmo’s approach to good sex seems to be more about avoiding boring sex than having good sex.
The realities of being good at sex are less fun and exciting than anything flashy enough for a Cosmo article, but they’re also way more important and way more fun.
Here’s some advice on how to be good at sex:
The best piece of advice I can give is that you need to want to please your partner. It’s that simple; that’s the secret ingredient. I think that’s why everyone seems to agree that sex is much better with someone you love.
That said, you don’t need to be in love to want to give your partner a good time, so if you’re hooking up, don’t fret! Just try to spoil your partner, and chances are they’ll start to feel spoiled.
This advice goes hand-in-hand with the idea that you should want to please your partner: pay attention to them. Keep your eyes on the prize, where the prize is seeing them melt as you make them very, very happy.
Take cues, listen to the sounds they make, watch the expressions on their face.
Also, pay attention to subtler things. If they look relaxed, is it a comfortable relaxed or a bored relaxed? If they look tense, is it an “Oh my goodness, don’t stop” tenseness, or is it a “This is my first pelvic exam” tenseness?
More subtly, are their movements exaggerating what you’re doing to them or protecting them from what you’re doing? If they don’t seem pleased, try something else, focus on a different part of their body and give them a chance to reset.
But if they are enjoying themselves, put whatever you’re doing into your stock of “moves,” and keep doing it until their response fades.
Even at times when the focus is primarily on you, always try to be giving something. Take this advice with an open mind.
This doesn’t mean that if you’re receiving head you can’t just relax and enjoy it. In that situation, maybe the thing you should be giving is feedback.
For them to keep having fun, they’ll want to know that they’re affecting you; tell them that you like it, make noise, pet their hair, move your hips–anything to say, “Yup, I feel that.”
This principle goes for when your partner is on top, too. It’s easy to feel pinned down or immobile, but you’re not.
Use your hips: they don’t have to do anything crazy, but you can use them to complement what your partner is doing. Also, you are not a fish; you have limbs. Don’t forget those. You can wrap yourself around your partner and hold them tight; you can squeeze them, pull at them and massage them.
The whole point is to show your partner that you’re still present and still having fun, or even better, that you can’t get enough of them.
The last thing I’ll say is that you don’t need to get fancy.
Adventurous positions and kinks aren’t what make good sex, and if you’re not into any of that stuff, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you can’t be great at sex.
I think exploring what you can do with your sexuality can help you really get in tune with your body and your partner, but exploration doesn’t have to take you out of your comfort zone.
It’s much better to do something “vanilla” with enthusiasm than something kinky with discomfort.
The secret to good sex isn’t a crazy position or a thoroughly-developed technique, and it’s definitely not anything you can learn from porn.
Any person can be good at sex; you don’t have to be particularly smart, skilled, flexible or strong. You just need to try to have fun with it, and you will.
Armstrong is a member of the class of 2016.
