AFTER YOU? NO, AFTER YOU...

A quirk of my sexual persona is that a good part of my approach to sex is to ensure that my partner(s) have a great time and, if possible, have an orgasm or two. My own pleasure is secondary to that.

I discovered this early in my sexual life while I was fucking a girl I knew and she came, rather

hard. I discovered that this moment, in which she commented that she'd just had a great orgasm, made me much more excited and I actually felt my cock harden even further at her comment. The happier she was, the harder I became.

Since that time - well, until my current involuntarily celibate condition - it has always been my intent to please the other person as the first order of business. It enhances my own pleasure knowing they got off, and lets me off the hook to enjoy my own pleasure after theirs. A lot of lovers aren't like that, and tend to focus more on their own sensations than on the other person's.

My best friend and I have discussed this a few times and he's largely in agreement that he prefers to focus on - in his case - his wife's pleasure rather than his own. This became quite the issue when she became rather cold not too long after the birth of their second child. For him this was devastating, since much of his own sexual self-worth was giving her pleasure. I've discussed it elsewhere, but they went through some difficult periods in which she just didn't want to be touched and only had sex as part of what she described (to him, not to me) as her "wifely duty".

(Aside: The concept of "wifely" duty is a deeply offensive one for me. Not only does it degrade the wife, essentially giving her the role of her husband's whore, but also herself as a sexual being. As if she's shutting off the potential for fun and pleasure before sex even gets started. I'm on the record as believing sex has to be mutually fun and fulfilling, otherwise it's just for procreation and ought to be done only a few times in your lifetime.)

When having sex with men it's rather easy to recognize when they're done - the cumshot tends to give it away. And men often will give overt signs of their pleasure, making it easier to get them off. With guys it's a focus on the orgasm, not the path to it. We're genetically oriented to cum as soon as possible and then move on...

With women it's more subtle, and - if a female partner doesn't approach it with the same mindset I do - somewhat problematic. My wife had to learn that telling me she wasn't going to orgasm was okay, as long as she enjoyed the run up to it. I was perfectly willing to go as long as needed, but at some point she had to recognize that she wasn't orgasmic (at that moment) and didn't need to pretend to be. As long as she experienced pleasure and was able to have fun, I was okay. It reduced the pressure on her, and me, and allowed us to just have a good time. Women don't always achieve an orgasm, and that's okay if they are okay with it - and they're having fun in the meantime.

For sex to be fun there has to be a recognition that the contact and giving of pleasure if the goal, not just the orgasm at the end of a process. Men are more oriented to the cumshot...and it is the most pleasurable part of sexual contact for us...but for me it has also been the pre- and post-orgasmic touching and intimacy which means the most. Giving pleasure to the other person is my goal, not just giving them an orgasm. (And I love post-sexual casual conversation while both of us are still naked and relaxed,)

I think that's one of the reasons I tend to like oral sex so much: it's about giving the partner pleasure without having to focus on my cock's  sensations. And yes, of course I enjoy the touching, licking, nibbling and sucking. Being the giver in well-done oral sex can be a sort of Zen thing. The sensations of the tongue and mouth while pleasuring someone else are something I can deeply fall into and just enjoy. The sensations of the other person's pleasure are in and of themselves a very cool thing to enjoy.

The same goes for masturbating the other person - I don't mean mutual, I mean one of us at a time. So that we can focus our energies on giving the other person pleasure and watching, for ourselves, how they enjoy it. If I'm occupied trying to achieve my own cum I won't be giving my partner my undivided attention - you can see that sort of thing in some of the amateur porn in the internet, where one partner in a 69 or mutual masturbation scenario becomes so involved in their own body that they stop doing anything other than laying back and letting the other person do the work (the same end result of only one person at a time).

The same applied to group sex when, once upon a time, I did that sort of thing. A rule I set was that we focused on only one person, and that every person had a chance to be the focus of everyone else.

To me it's just more fun, eliminates some of the pressure, and lets everyone let go if they know they're not going to be burning energy trying to get someone else off at the same time they're trying to orgasm themselves.

So, one at a time, and you get to go first.