What does good sex look like?

Understanding what influences our thoughts about sex can help us improve our sex lives and move through relationships more positively.

When Mumbai-based Nishita sat her husband of eight years down on a balmy Sunday afternoon in March to discuss how they could improve their sex life, she didn't expect him to revolt against the idea. He got up, stormed out of the house, and didn't return until after 10 pm. Having had the time to process his angry reaction, he apologised for his behaviour and gave in to finding a way to spice things up in the bedroom. "I'd been feeling sexually unsatisfied for a while but didn't know how to tell my husband that his skills in the bedroom needed an upgrade. I have tried to show him various sex positions he could try out, but that only angered him. His favourite position is missionary, and he won't budge," says Nishita. 

Did things change after that late-night conversation? Nishita tells The Established that while her husband still hasn't migrated from the missionary position, he did, for the first time, give her cunnilingus. "That's a start. I've also asked him to see a counsellor, but he's refused. He believes we shouldn't involve an outside party in our relationship," she says. 

A deeper rot

In India, most people have always been averse to discussing sex or any related subject. There's a feeling of discomfort and internalised shame attached to it, and has persisted for centuries. This is due to various reasons; the socio-cultural reasons are the most to blame. Indian society is relatively more conservative than the West, where children can have conversations relating to sex/sexuality with greater ease and comfort. The conservative nature of Indian families forbids discussions relating to adolescence and sexuality from taking place healthily.

Children in their youth rarely have information about the changes their bodies will experience. This is also the period when most of them discover their sexual identities and must be acquainted with safe and reliable sources of knowledge. Considering the household structure and behaviour of Indians when discussing sexuality and related subjects, such questions must be addressed in a different environment, if not at home. Concerning educational and knowledge-providing organisations could do this through special programmes undertaken in schools. Sex education aims to give young minds safe and genuine information about sexuality and sexual health and help them identify and discover their own. Many individuals and non-profit organisations strive to make things better and provide a better and healthy overview of sex education and all that it entails. According to the World Association of Sexual Health (WAS), sexuality education is a basic human right that falls under an individual's "reproductive rights" Sex education does not cover just sex; it is a complete overview of a person's mental, emotional, physical, and social well-being.

Currently, every one in five people is an adolescent, which makes up about 18 percent or 1.2 billion people, most of whom stay in developing countries (Adolescent Sex Education in India: Current Perspectives, 2015). India has the largest adolescent population in the world, signifying the urgency for action. Since there's a very evident lack of open and honest discussion, people resort to the Internet to ask questions about the changes they experience during this tumultuous time.

The important conversations

Yana Tallon-Hicks, a United States-based couples and relationships therapist and a consent, sex, and sexuality writer and educator, believes that despite popular opinion, good sex has little to do with knowing the "right positions" or "the smoothest moves" and has far more to do with relational skills such as communication, active listening, and creating a safe space between partners to be able to have these conversations and speak up about what they do and don't want out of sex. This means that good sex is a relational skill between partners and an individual skill (do you know what you want and how to ask for it?).

Maitreyi Roy, who lives in New Delhi and currently shares an apartment with her fiance, says the key to good sex is to remove barriers of shame that we are taught at a young age. "My partner and I make it a point to spend time together butt-naked once a week at home. This usually happens when we return home after work. We shower and choose not to wear clothes. Initially, when he proposed the idea, my body tightened up. I told him I wasn't comfortable, and then he gently explained why I shouldn't feel ashamed," says Roy, adding: "'He put it succinctly: If we can make love to each other naked why then can't be just enjoy each other's bodies when we're not engaging in sex?'" 

So when Roy and her partner go about their lives naked once a week, they open themselves up to discovering each other's bodies without it even leading to sex. "But if it does lead to sex, it's explosive because seeing each other nude is deeply erotic—the ultimate foreplay," she says.

"Sex always has to come from an emotionally vulnerable place, but the ability to be emotionally available and in tune with yourself and the person you're sleeping with can help you communicate more honestly about what you want out of sex, It can help partners feel like they are on the same team around creating a pleasurable experience that they both really enjoy. We are told a lot of lore about what sex should and shouldn't be like, who should/shouldn't have certain types of sex, and what we should/shouldn't desire based on a lot of mostly arbitrary markers such as gender, sexuality, race, religious affiliation, and even geographical location. The reality is that humans are complex and interesting, and what turns our unique erotic crank is highly individual and can't be neatly categorised by identity or assumptions," says Tallon-Hicks. 

Exploring needs

For New Delhi-based Avinash and Ankur, who requested anonymity, adding a third person to the mix has strengthened their sex life. "While we have always been in tune with each other's bodies, we consensually agreed to add a stranger to the mix to see if it improved how we approached sex individually. We have a threesome twice a month and engage with the stranger more than we do with each other. We pick up what we like sexually and bring that to the bedroom when we have sex. This isn't necessarily an open relationship but an honest one, where we engage with another person sexually in the presence of each other," says Ankur. 

As with Avinash and Ankur's equation, trust is built through a consistent experience over time. This means that to build trust in your own relationship with your sexuality and your own experiences with sex, you must explore and take care of your sexual health in an ongoing, continuous way and not just once. This can look like consistently getting tested for STIs, regularly talking about your sex life in therapy, having frequent check-ins with your partners about how sex is going, and even journalling about your sexuality solo or doing a Yes, No, Maybe List about your sexual desires and limits. 

"Being sex-positive means that you're not about shaming yourself or others about sex and sexuality or their expressions of both—it's about 'not yucking someone's yum'. Sex positivity doesn't mean that you're willing to or want to do everything sexual that's ever existed or even that you're allosexual in the first place. It's more of an intellectual-emotional stance than anything else," says Tallon-Hicks.

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