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How To Communicate With Your Partner About Sex

Even if you’ve found the best sex of your life, there’s still a chance that your partner does something wrong in bed sometimes. While it may not be wrong for everyone they’ve ever slept with, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s wrong for you. People have different ideas of what makes for great sex, so when you meet someone and you don’t instantly mesh sexually, it doesn’t mean you should throw the towel in on the relationship right away; you just need to try to find a happy medium where you’re both satisfied.

But in finding that happy medium means you need to communicate. A lot. You can’t just wing it and hope that they’ll figure it out from either your lack of moans or the grimaces you make every time that “wrong” thing happens. If anything, you’re just making it worse and making them feel bad and confused. Confusion creates insecurities, and that's the last thing you want to do to your partner, especially when it comes to sex.

What you need to do, as much as it may seem painful at first, is be honest and tell your partner. You need to sit them down, open your mouth, and spill it. Here’s how to do just that.

1. Have The Discussion Outside The Bedroom

The bedroom isn’t a neutral zone. It’s a place where you and your partner are intimate, dirty, kinky, or straight up vanilla with a cherry on top. In having a discussion in that space, you’re sort of tainting it, not irrevocably, but enough that it can leave you both feeling a little awkward in the following days after the chat. Instead, have the discussion in another part of the house or over dinner.

2. Start With A Compliment

You don’t want to jump into a whole tirade about what your partner is doing wrong, while totally ignoring what they’re doing right. For starters not everyone has the same idea of what’s “right” and “wrong” in bed, and what you may think is “wrong,” your partner might consider it their signature move. So, start the conversation with compliments about all the great things they do in bed ― it will lesson the impending blow.

3. Critique Don’t Criticize

Once you’ve established that your partner isn’t bad in bed, per se, but they need a little bit of tweaking in some areas, critique those areas that are lacking. If you critique as opposed to criticize, you’re keeping things positive. From here you can make suggestions, like “I like it when you do [insert sex act here], but I think it would be even better, if we do something a little different instead.”

4. Keep All Negative Words Out Of the Conversation

Whatever you do, don’t use words like “bad,” or “sucks,” or “hate,” or even “wrong.” These words have no place in this conversation. No matter how “bad” you think your partner is at something, those words are unnecessary and hurtful. You can’t expect someone to change or get it right, if they’ve been berated with negativity. It just leads to giving them a complex and turning them off from even the idea of wanting to fix the issue.

5. Tell Them You’re Willing To Work With Them

Don’t let them feel like they’re alone in this situation. Tell them that this is a group effort, between the two of you, and something that you’ll work on together. Also reassure them that whatever may be broken, can easily be fixed through communication and them being open to direction.

6. Give Them The Floor

Once you’ve spoken your peace on the matter, you need to give the floor to your partner. You don’t get to tell them what they’re doing wrong in bed, then end the conversation as if you’re some amazingly great lay (which you just might be!) It’s at this point that you should ask them what it is that they feel you might be doing wrong in bed, and welcome what they say with an open mind. A conversation takes two people; not just you expressing your side, then moving on to what you should watch for a movie.

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