A Few Months Ago, the Moment After Sex Completely Changed for Me. I Wish I Could Go Back.

How to Do It Is this my new normal? Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by QunicaStudio/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous! Dear How to Do It, I’m a woman who recently turned 30, and I am experiencing a big change in my orgasms. All my life, I’ve only ever been able to have one orgasm, and then basically anything related to sex after that was almost repulsive to me. I couldn’t do anything else unless I had some time, like half an hour, to recuperate and get back into it. Over the past few months, though, I’ve been having orgasms and then feeling almost unsatisfied or unfinished somehow. I can keep going for much more high-impact, shorter ones, either solo or with my boyfriend directly after. It’s weird! Is this just how my orgasms are destined to be now, and is it my new normal? Is there a way to make the second, third, or fourth orgasms a little stronger and more satisfying? I don’t know how to feel about this! —A Whole New World Dear a Whole New World, This might be your new normal, and might shift again after some time, but I’m vehemently opposed to declaring that to be the case without encouraging you to try to find out more. Bodies change, sometimes for no reason, sometimes for reasons we haven’t noticed, and sometimes for reasons that feel very counterintuitive. It absolutely is weird, and that weirdness is part of why I love having a body and trying to help other people understand their bodies. Your sexual response has changed drastically. This is an opportunity to explore what you like, and don’t like, all over again, with a practice called pleasure mapping. There are several ways to approach pleasure mapping. The method I teach is expansive, thorough, and as nerdy as the person can tolerate—think Barbara Carrellas’s Urban Tantra with spreadsheets. You can do this on your own, with your boyfriend if he’s interested, or once with yourself and once with him. As much as possible, see your body as a blank slate. Whether you liked a certain sensation or stimulation in a particular area previously doesn’t matter at this stage. (Your boundaries are still important, though. This is not an encouragement to force yourself into trying something you find inherently aversive.) Everywhere from the backs of your hands to the crooks of your knees and elbows is potentially sexually interesting, and any type of sensation that you’re up for is worth trying. The slower and more methodical you can be about this, the better. Divide your body into the classic, direct erogenous zones (genitals, breasts), the classic indirect zones (lips and mouth, abdomen, buttocks, under the breasts, back of the neck, behind the ears), and the whole rest of the expanse of your skin (as a dermatologist once announced to me with palpable glee, “The largest organ in the human body”). You’ll notice that these regions are in concentric circles. Consider categories of sensations like extremely light strokes (with a feather or fingertips), tapping, stronger strokes, squeezing, and anything on the spectrum of pain that might be interesting, like scratching or slapping. Start at the edges of the expanse that aren’t usually thought of as erotic, with the softest version of the lightest form of stimulation. Consider what that feels like. Try it a bit stronger, and a bit more, and then move on to a more intense form of stimulation at the lightest degree. Proceed through to the strongest version of the strongest sensation you might be interested in. Then move further up the limb in question and repeat the process on each area of your body. Repeat with the indirect but commonly erogenous zones, and then the direct zones. Make actual notes, whether that’s in a spreadsheet (put the body parts on one axis and the stimuli on the other) or a notebook. You can follow a similar process with fantasy, contexts, dynamics, and other more intangible aspects of sex as well. If you’re going through pleasure mapping with your boyfriend in addition to with yourself, be open to the fact that sometimes things feel very different (less pleasurable or more pleasurable) when we’re with any partner or a particular partner. Quite often, people find something partway through this process that inspires them to throw the mapping framework out the window, and that sometimes leads to a pretty spectacular orgasm. (Additionally, introducing tension, usually in the form of teasing or something akin to what people often call edging, tends to increase the strength of orgasms.) That’s fine—afterwards, consider what worked for you, and know that you can always come back to pleasure mapping if your response changes again or you want to see what other options your body might currently hold. Short of pushing your buttons in the way that used to be amazing and no longer is, and giving up, there is no failing at this task. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear How to Do It, Ten years ago, I was a surfer girl in Queensland and worked as a waitress at night in a restaurant. I met my future husband, “Brad.” He is American, a few years younger than me, handsome, fit, and successful. Our relationship was a poly/mono relationship whereby I am the poly half. The truth is simpler: I am selfish and insecure at the same time. I love the thrill of seduction, and I am too insecure to allow that pleasure to be extended to my husband. I also love to be spoiled and seem to attract the sort of man who loves to spoil women. Moving to New York was a revelation. My husband always made sure I had money, and worked 16-hour days. In the following years, I was out on dates four or five nights a week and often went on holidays with my lovers. Then “Luke” came along and took things to a new level. Nothing made him happier than cuckolding my husband and belittling him in the process. It had a profound impact on me in a bad way, in that I also lost respect for the one man who had done so much for me. I moved in with him and simply ghosted Brad. He still put a weekly allowance in my account for the three years I was gone. I realized a month ago that I wasn’t in love with Luke and really didn’t like him as a person, so I moved back, unannounced, to Brad’s apartment. It was like waking up from a bad dream. I am sleeping in the guest bedroom. I broke our marriage, and he has since developed a relationship with an older married woman who is beautiful but is his mother’s age. I can tell he is still in love with me but is deeply hurt. I am desperate to seduce him and bring my new sense of eroticism into our marriage. I don’t want to give up until we are whole again as a couple. I just need some advice on tactics. —Still a Surfer Dear Still a Surfer, Nope. Manipulation assistance request denied. You took immense advantage of Brad’s generosity and love for you, and show absolutely zero inclination toward taking even an iota of responsibility for your actions. If you have any love left for him, do him a kindness and leave him alone. Share Your Story With How to Do It! Readers often have great suggestions for our letter writers, occasionally disagree with a point our How to Do It writers make, or simply want to provide some additional advice. Each month, Jessica and Rich will be replying to some of these comments and suggestions from readers. Write to us! Dear How to Do It, I’m in my late 30s with 16 years of marriage apparently coming to an end. While I don’t regret my choices, the only man I’ve ever slept with is my husband. My main focus in the coming years will be my young children, but in the event that I ever find someone who wants to sleep with me, how on Earth do I even begin to proceed? —Old and Inexperienced Dear Old and Inexperienced, There will be people who want to sleep with you. Whether these people will have the courage to let you know, directly enough for you to understand what they’re expressing, that they want to sleep with you is a question. Whether you’ll be in a place to take their sexual interest as what it is, rather than dismissing it, is another question. And the most important question—whether these people will be people you also want to sleep with—is another unknown. What I’m certain of is that divorce is usually rough, divorce after a long marriage is that much harder, and navigating the end of a marriage while taking care of young children adds more layers of stress and logistics. It’s quite likely that your emotions about yourself and your attractiveness will settle into a less self-denigrating stance with some distance from what you’re going through right now. When you do find yourself in a situation where you and the other person both want to have sex with each other, consider whether they exhibit patience as they move through the world. If you feel comfortable pointing out the facts that you’ve only had sex with your ex-husband and that it’s been quite some time, do that, and see whether they respond with more of that patience. Try to remember that the ways that bodies differ mean that aside from basic knowledge of anatomy and general trends in preferences, even the most experienced person has to start from a blank slate when they begin a sexual interaction with a new partner. As you’re building your life as a divorced parent, you’ll want to lean on your social network and likely expand it. If anyone in your existing group, or new friends, have the sort of earthy personality that lends itself to talking about sexuality, they’re probably someone you can go to for a pep talk and for processing flirtations and sexual antics as those come up. You do have to weigh privacy and social propriety when deciding who to talk to and how much to say, but having a friend in your corner who you can simply chat with about this stuff is invaluable. And if you’re into reading, I have a few recommendations for you: Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan’s Let’s Talk About It (written for teenagers, but Erika’s illustrations are truly superb when it comes to anatomy and sexual acts), Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens’ The Explorer’s Guide to Planet Orgasm (written for adults, with an absolutely exquisite joy in pleasure, encouragement to embrace our bodies, and to approach sexuality with an expansive and grateful energy), and Nina Hartley’s Guide to Total Sex (an absolute classic by a former registered nurse, legendary porn performer, and pioneer in the field of explicit sexual education). —Jessica More Advice From Slate I used to have a hard time climaxing even on my own and still have a hard time climaxing with my partners. Before I got together with my current lover two years ago, I hadn’t had sex in five years (I think I’m demisexual). My lover and (we don’t live together, and they have other partners) now have sex maybe three times a month… Advice Sex