Is Sex Best with Established Partners?
So I recently shared an essay I’d written on why I often have sex on the first date. Am I contradicting myself? Wouldn’t be the first time.
One of the problems with sexytimes between new partners, besides the fact that two people added together often produce way more than four elbows, is a lack of intimate knowledge for how to please and negotiate with one another.
Take the unhappy encounter between Aziz Ansari and Grace, told in lurid detail in an article on babe. Regardless of your opinion on what went down there, which we can discuss at another time, what IS crystal clear is that both partners had very different hopes, expectations and desires for that evening.
Things could’ve been soooo much better for both of them, if they’d had the kind of safer sex conversation, as advocated by Sex Positive World, which includes talking about “what it would mean if we were to have sex — and what does sex mean to you?” It’s okay to want a one night stand, and it’s okay to want a long term relationship, but if the two people having sex have assumptions about “what sex means” that are so wildly different, somebody’s going to be bitterly unhappy in the morning, especially if the sex is… okay.
For many people, we’ve sometimes had what I call “V8 sex” either in a one night stand, or early on in a relationship. It isn’t horrible, but it’s far from memorable or magical. It’s like that old juice commercial they used to run, where people consumed a thing, and afterward, they’d bonk themselves on the head and say, “I could’ve had a V8!”
If after sex, you’re feeling like you could’ve had a vegetable juice instead and felt more satisfied, Congratulations — you’ve had V8 sex.
It’s hard to tell how much of the different approaches hetero men and women take for sex is cultural, and how much is biological. Men seem inclined to be aroused by variety — sample every flower!

Before y’all come crashing in, yes, that’s a generalization. I know (and love!) men who are not aroused until they know their partner well. Demisexuality is a thing, for men, women, and nonbinary peeps.
However, I also have a fair amount of friends who are trans, and friends who work in the field of health for trans people. And I’ve heard a lot of stories, though I am not sure there is yet a large body of research on the subject. Anecdotally, many men who were AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) talk about increased libido and difference in how they approach sexual relationships, now that they are on hormonal augmentation, and likewise, many women who were AMAB say they prefer a slower approach to sexytimes, that sex lacks the urgency and requires more work to reach orgasm than it used to. Biology may not rule our behavior, but it probably gives each of us a hearty shove in certain directions.
Contrary to pop culture expectations built from porn, most women don’t orgasm from penetration alone. In Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are, she talks about how orgasm in clitoris-having people is all about the clitoris — if it’s X distance from the vagina, the tugging of the labial lips provides enough stimulation for orgasm. If it’s Y distance, it won’t, and it has nothing to do with being frigid or hung up or dick too small or large or any other thing. Mother Nature often wants you to give the clit a hand — or a vibe, not just thrusting into eternity.
Too many women think there is something wrong with us, if we don’t orgasm the way women in porn (seem to) do it. And we may also feel too shy to ask a new lover to “Touch me this way. I need you to use my vibrator on me. I need you to please me with your mouth first.” With time and more shared experiences, we may feel freer to ask a lover for what we need. Or to tell a lover, without fear of crushing his spirit, that his signature move, “The Claw” or some other technique that he thinks is all that, isn’t doing it for us. So while there are women who enjoy one night stands, for most of us, we want more. Maybe we don’t need a dude to try to put a ring on it, early on — that would be creepy — but some kind of commitment to future dates, if all goes well. There’s simply not as big a ROI, Return On Investment, for many women, for first sexytimes.
Whereas it seems that for many men, if they “last long enough” and get to orgasm and get their partner to orgasm (real or faked), hey, it’s good sex. On to the next new shiny. We can understand and have sympathy with that outlook, while at the same time decide that approach doesn’t work for us, personally.
The ability to “read” tone and body language of a partner, the comfort level of being able to express, “Slower, easier, a little higher, oooh!” is something that generally builds over time and repeated sexual encounters.
Nagoski also talks about sexual arousal having both a gas pedal and a brake pedal. If the brakes are on, no amount of stepping on the gas is going to result in forward motion. “Brakes” are different for everyone, but can be things like noise, kids in the next room, howling dog, bad breath, physical injury, the wrong kind of music playing, the TV on, especially if it’s set to a news channel.
For me, one of the biggest components of great sex is feeling safe. If I don’t feel completely confident that my partner will stop if I ask them to, whether because something isn’t working for me, or shift to adjust positions if I get a leg cramp, or need something else, I don’t feel safe or sexy. I need to be able to trust them. I also need to feel that my environment is safe, and to be relatively comfortable. Getting fucked on a pile of broken masonry might look hot for a photo shoot, but I’ll pass in real life.
If I don’t feel safe, there is no mechanical skill or trick that can make me come.
I have to wonder if that isn’t a piece of the problem with “frigid” women. They are having sex — not necessarily coerced sex, although that could be a factor — with men who have not shown enough attention and responsiveness to their bodies’ signals, as well as the verbal signals and noises.
Whereas with long established partners, yes, there isn’t always the high sexual tension there is with a new partner, but there is often so much more. It’s possible to get into sexual ruts, to have V8 sex here and there, but my experience has been, the longer I’ve been enjoying sexytimes with a partner, the more I enjoy the sexytimes. I trust them — and they trust me.
There’s also an excellent ROI for men in longer term relationships, too. There’s a lot of cultural pressure on men to “perform,” to “make it last,” to “stick to the basics” in short term relationships. When you have trust in your partner, the bodily non-concordance that occurs in both men and women — Nagoski talks about that in her book, too — can be accepted and discussed. Penis-bearing people don’t always have erections or ejaculations when they want them, even if they are extremely aroused, and vagina-bearing people don’t always have lubrication, despite romance novel tropes that would suggest otherwise. It becomes simply, meh, sometimes that happens, here’s some lube, or, let’s play another way. It sets us free to explore kink — role playing, costumes, rope, paddles, blindfolds— if we so choose. It frees us from the myth that “real sex” involves a penis going into an orifice, and all else is foreplay.
I don’t believe in “foreplay.” I believe that any activity can be both wonderful and sexual. One of my favorite activities is simply, kissing. Lovely, lovely kissing.

When sex isn’t limited to certain goal-oriented activities, and the people involved trust each other, it just gets better and better.
