How to Enjoy Sex in 1,406 Easy Steps
From porn addiction, to erectile dysfunction, to success: a complete guide for the slow learner.
Step 1. Discover sex
It’s tough to enjoy sex if you don’t even know what it is, so the first step is to find out.
As a kid, you’ll notice how adults try really hard to keep you in the dark. To preserve your innocence. They will divert your questions and switch channels in the blink of an eye at the sight of half a boob, sending you to your room when the clock hits eleven and things on TV start to get exciting. Discovering sex under these circumstances will take some planning.
First, get your hands on an unattended VHS tape. Second, wait for your parents to fall asleep. Third, get up and sneak into the living room, bringing the tape with you. Fourth, start the recorder on a local channel known among kids and adults for its late-night programming. Fifth, go back to bed without getting caught. Sixth, get up early in the morning and remove the tape before someone finds it.
Execute the plan and, next time you are home alone, collect the rewards. That hardcore scene framed by personal ads and adult toy infomercials will introduce you to sex. That designer vagina will reveal what Victoria’s secret was all along: a meaty weird mussel-like entryway into a bottomless hole. And that intimidating penis — already too big by adult standards, but absolutely ginormous by a kid’s — will make you seriously question whether you two even belong to the same species.
If first impressions are good at leaving a mark, then following this step is the perfect way to begin your soul-crushing, yet mesmerizing relationship with porn.
We’re off to a good start.
Steps 2–42. Rediscover sex
If you thought that tape was impressive, wait until you hear about this new thing called the Internet.
Internet porn opens the door to a fascinating world of hedonism, fulfilled fantasies, fetishes, disinhibition. Enter and find the answer to every question you ever had about sex — and many more you never even conceived. Figure out what it all looks like, how things are done, what you are into and what you’re not (at least not yet). Let porn be your teacher and, one video at a time, hold your hand as you learn, have fun, and experiment.
Complete these steps and sex will hold no more secrets for you.
Steps 43–543. Re-re-re…discover sex
Continue watching porn until that stream of videos becomes the solution to much more than just your ignorance about sex.
Find in it the perfect coping mechanism. Your response to questions of loneliness, stress, and boredom. Video after video after video, allow porn to become a habit. Your favorite way to evade. A place of safety and comfort.
By the time you finish these steps, you’ll have a full-blown addiction to porn.
Steps 544–1314. Avoid sex
Exercise your porn addiction. Make sure that your binges deplete your energy, until you have none left to pursue healthier ways to explore your sexuality.
During these steps, growing intimate with porn is as important as staying away from actual intimacy. Only by keeping your distance from the opposite sex will you be able to truly assimilate the many wrong lessons that years of pornography have to teach you.
Stepmom (bonus step)
Watch so many stepmom videos that you start wishing for your dad to divorce your mom and find true love in a new pair of silicone boobs.
Step 1315. Fail at sex
It’s time for the real deal. Don’t worry if you feel you’re not ready yet. That’s exactly what you want, because your goal in this step is to fail miserably at sex.
You must have successfully completed all the previous steps to be able to ace this one. All those years spent self-isolating and cultivating a crippling porn addiction were not for nothing. Break out of your shell enough to have a shot at sex and watch it all pay off. The panicking thoughts rushing through your head, your limp and unresponsive penis looking back at you not knowing what to do, a veiled hint of disappointment painted on your partner’s face, and a much more obvious one etched on your own.
Savor it all, for these are the fruits of your hard labor.
Steps 1316–1336. Keep failing at sex
Erectile dysfunction is a gift that keeps on giving. Every frustrated attempt at sex hits a mental wall of previous failures and adds one more brick to it. After a while, that wall stands seemingly insurmountable.
Go ahead and dive into this negative spiral. Feel the burden of virginity on your shoulders as you fail to shrug it off time and time again. Watch your sexual partners drop one by one as they see through your lies and into an issue that’s anything but temporary.
Realize that real sex is much harder than you ever imagined. That, perhaps, it’s just not meant for you. When these thoughts weigh too heavily on you, seek refuge in porn — performing there is always easy.
Steps 1337–1390. Hate sex
Find a partner who forces you to face your problems with sex on a regular basis. Make them the cornerstone of an unsatisfactory and conflict-ridden relationship.
Let your ongoing struggles with erectile dysfunction be ammunition for your partner’s insecurities and a reason for you to avoid sex. When your avoidance makes them feel rejected, give in to sex, but only begrudgingly and without interest, thus perpetuating the negative associations around it.
Enough repetitions of this dynamic will make you realize just how much you hate sex.
Step 1391. Stop watching sex
Quit porn.
Quit it for real.
If you were to follow only one step out of this guide, let it be this one. Pull out all the stops. Identify the core issues that keep bringing you back to porn, then address them. Find your triggers and avoid your substitutes. Learn healthier ways to cope. Exercise. Meditate. Do the work.
Then persevere, until you start to feel the grip of porn loosening on you.
Step 1392. Distance from sex
Strike a deal with your partner: from now on, you are granted absolute initiative. You and only you can initiate sex in the relationship. Your partner, it goes without saying, doesn’t always have to comply — what’s important is that they’re not the one taking the lead.
This rule is a drastic approach to getting rid of the pressure and expectations that confront you with sex. Relieved of this pressure, every sexual encounter will come only when you are willing and ready. This will turn sex into an opportunity to enjoy together and make progress, as opposed to a chore.
Bear in mind that your partner needs to be fully committed and aware of what they’re signing up for: a temporary surrender of their sex drive to yours. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but you don’t want the cure to be worse than the disease. Be mindful of the hefty load they’re carrying for the relationship, and pay them back in every way you can. If you don’t — and, perhaps, even if you do — the damage caused to both them and the relationship could be too deep to heal.
You’ve been warned.
Steps 1393–1405. Relearn sex
Putting some distance between you and sex gives you an opportunity to start over, at your own pace. A chance to leave behind the baggage accumulated from the previous steps and gradually redefine what sex means to you.
Find the fun in sex again. Slow things down. Relish foreplay. Understand that there is no script in sex — it’s up to you and your partner what to do and what not to do, how to do it, and when to stop. Coming doesn’t have to be the ultimate goal, nor is penetration always necessary. Follow your instinct and express your wants. Listen to your partner’s body as much as your own. Experiment.
And, for fuck’s sake, relax. You’re in this for a good time.
Work on this as if your relationship, your sex life, and your happiness depend on it — because they do.
Step 1406. Enjoy sex
It’s a gloomy and rainy Saturday outside, so my girlfriend and I can stay in bed all evening without the guilt of feeling lazy or the fear of missing out. Nothing is expected of us today. Her roommates being gone for the weekend means we have both time and space, all at our disposal.
She has moved to this apartment recently, and it’s only my second time staying over. The mattress is spacious, a bit worn-out, but a look out the window is enough to bring me back to comfort. What’s more important, it feels fresh. This bed, as opposed to mine, has not yet witnessed any of the many battles of frustration behind me. I feel like we’re laying on an empty canvas.
After a few minutes of chit-chat and cuddles we both start to get in the mood, but there’s no hurry to escalate things and, instead, she kindly offers me a massage. Lying there with my eyes closed, I can feel my anxiety and self-doubt escaping my body. When her hands draw near my groin, my penis responds without a second thought.
What follows is the culmination of a life of struggle. A deep, deep sigh of relief. Broken away from my mental barriers, suddenly sex feels amazing. Everything flows naturally. There’s no need to plan, no doubts, and no self-imposed demands. For the first time, I’m able to focus on the sensations, and I realize how much I had been missing while tied up in my head.
Years after our first encounter, sex reemerges as a feast for the senses, a relaxing place and, at last, an experience to enjoy.
Most people would agree that sex is a wonderful thing.
And yet for many of us, sex has been a source of problems more than a fountain of pleasures. Over a third of Americans in a relationship are reportedly not satisfied with their sex lives — and this statistic doesn’t even include single people, whose sex lives I doubt are much better.
This leaves plenty of room for a myriad of books, blogs, coaches and the like, to sell you their thoroughly researched and success-guaranteed methods to achieve your true potential in bed. Their paths toward a perfect sex life are simple, actionable, practical.
Not this one.
This one is the path of a porn addict. My path. It’s been anything but easy, and I would be out of my mind to recommend it to anyone. But if you find yourself lost already in one of these steps, I hope that this guide becomes your North Star.
What’s in your math folder?
Do you enjoy a satisfactory sex life?
If you don’t, what are the steps that will get you there, and how can you start taking them now?
There is no reason why you shouldn’t be enjoying one of life’s greatest pleasures. No matter where you at now, there’s always a way to make things better and a path that ends with you enjoying sex.
If you are struggling with your porn use, that path will irrevocably pass through quitting. Only then (and only after you’ve been free of porn long enough) will you be able to let go of your mental blocks and rediscover sex as a pleasurable experience.
Share your insights in the comments below, on social media, or in your favorite porn addiction community, and if you know others that are struggling with porn, help them by sharing a link to this story.
Let’s start a conversation!
Hi, this is James! Thank you for reading!
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