Fun fact: I dated my now-husband, Jack, for two years before his penis entered my vagina.
This was not for a lack of desire. We fell in love at first kiss, but we were also scared intercourse-less about accidental pregnancy (justifiably, as it turned out) as well as eternal damnation (Catholic guilt is tough to shake). So, one night, standing in the cool quiet of my garage, Jack and I held hands, gazed into each other’s eyes, and vowed that we wouldn’t have sexual intercourse until we were married.
Instead, we proceeded to perform pretty much every other sex act two teenagers in the AOL age could conceive of. Most of my teenage stories are eye-roll inducing, but I give us credit here. We were creative. We became experts at getting each other off with our hands, mouths, toys, and yes, even assholes. Really, it’s laughable that we considered ourselves virgins for those two years before the vow was broken.
Things brings into play the question…what is sex, really? Jack and I have come to define sex as any activity in which we intend to get at least one of us to the point of orgasm, but that’s just us. Is it sex when my female friend goes down on me, but I don’t go down on her? Is it sex when I orgasm from repeatedly grinding against my guy friend in the hot tub, both of us still wearing our swim suits? Or is it only sex once said guy friend and I get naked an hour later upstairs, him first fingering me and then cumming on my tits as I caress his balls? What’s sex, what’s sexual activity, and who really cares as long as everyone is consenting and experiencing the pleasure they desire?
Many of the acts I list below may sound like foreplay to you. Indeed, Jack and I often do a number of these things before we have actual intercourse, but other times they are the entirety of what we do in a session. We are frequent flyers on the coitus connection, typically engaging in sexual activity several times a week. When you have that much sex, variety is important to keep things interesting as well as to accommodate special needs that arise.
For example, when I’m on my period, I’m often horny, loving, and craving an orgasm to provide me with relief from cramping. But period sex is messy, so we’ll often find other ways for me to cum that don’t involve removing my tampon or menstrual disc. Other days we skip the fucking because of a bangover that rendered my vagina sore or his penis slightly chaffed, sometimes both (yes, there’s such a thing as too much sex). Having four babies meant a total of twenty four weeks altogether where we didn’t have intercourse but still wanted to share physical affection in order to satiate our desires.
Jack and I have found that sexual pleasure comes in many forms. When we keep the definition loose and the options plentiful, we can have fun no matter how it’s done. Without further adieu, please consider these non-intercourse options for fun, pleasure, and connection with your partner(s).
Tease the Clit
My clit is the MVP of my sexual repertoire. Her endurance and energy is key to my arousal — but this doesn’t mean that I let my partner just jump right on top of my sweet little bump. After my mind is in the game, I’ll often notice that warming sensation between my legs, that longing from my clit. This is when I let my partner drift downwards, with either fingers (gently at first, then firmer) or a mouth. From there, a multitude of possibilities are presented.
Play around with the various ways that you (and/or your partner) can stimulate your clitoris. Try rubbing or pressing the sides of your clit, along your labia, without touching the bean. Try gentle slaps on top, then graduate to harder slaps. Try pressing your clit with a finger or two at the pressure you prefer, or experiment with a circular, methodic rubbing using fingers or a tongue. Get on top of your partner and use your hips to rub yourself against the other’s legs, groin, abs, etc. When something feels good, experiment more in that realm. Keep going, or go harder, or go softer, until you can finally really let go.
Fingering
Notice I put this second, after the clit. That’s not a coincidence. I have found that I don’t get nearly as far with G-spot penetration if my clit is not properly aroused and stimulated first. I don’t need to have a full-out clitoral orgasm, but the switch definitely needs to be turned on.
The trick for us is this: after he warms up my clit, Jack puts his first index and middle fingers inside me in a “come here” motion, massaging the front wall of my vagina while thrusting in and out. If my clit is being stimulated at the same time by him, me, or a toy — even better. If he takes another hand and places it horizontally against the upper part of my mons pubis in a karate chop sort of pose, everything is intensified tenfold, often to the point of female ejaculation.
Once in a while, I also enjoy when Jack presses on the back part of my vaginal wall, towards my butt, stimulating my “A-spot.” We’ve noticed that I most enjoy this the week after my periods. Experiment with what works for you on different days.
My orgasms from fingering tend to be long, subsequent waves of pleasure, frequently ten to fifteen minutes of deep pleasure, writhing, and making a mess of our sex towels. And, yes, Jack’s forearms are huge.
Fisting
Fingers not a good substitute for a penis? Perhaps the feeling of fullness and pressure that fisting provides is more your cup of tea.
Admittedly, I have limited experience as a fistee, but I was honored and aroused to be taught the basics by an experienced fistee and her husband. Using my own body parts to penetrate her so fully felt more intimate than using a big sex toy. I loved the sensation of feeling her muscles contracting around my hand — warm, pulsing, and wet. With my body positioned over hers so that our faces were relatively close together, I was able to delight in her erotic expressions.
Blowjobs
And now a little love for our penis-endowed partners. I don’t think it’s a secret that most men love blow jobs…but how many women truly enjoy giving them? If you’re not having fun, neither is he; the phrase “happy wife, happy life” applies here.
While Jack sometimes enjoys mounting my face and thrusting into my mouth, I often find this a bit confining and uncomfortable for me. Different strokes for different folks, amiright? Some nights I embrace the submissive pose on my knees in front of him, but my favorite technique puts Jack in a rare pose of relaxation and me in the driver’s seat.
I love to take a toke, put on sensual music, and perform a striptease for Jack before I mount his body and cover it with kisses all over. I watch his face and notice his body language to make sure that I’m on the right track. Eye contact puts him over the edge. Sucking on his balls makes his eyes roll back into his head. I vary my moves. I kiss, lick, deep throat, gag myself, make noises. He loves it when it gets noisy. If I wiggle my butt or toes to the music, he moans. I forget about how I look and just enjoy myself, enjoying his cock. I rarely get any complaints.
Spits or swallows? My personal preference is that, if it’s already in my mouth, I swallow. But other nights we get creative…
Hand jobs
…and that brings me to hand jobs. Just like my clit/G-spot combo, blow jobs and hand jobs go together more often than not. I find that I like to vary my instruments of pleasure from hand to mouth and back again during our penis-pleasuring sessions.
Despite the fact that the first time I ever made Jack orgasm was from a hand job at age seventeen, we now find that I can’t make Jack orgasm from hand jobs on the regular . My small hands just don’t grip Jack’s cock as tightly as his strong hands do, and my forearms simply don’t allow for the same intensity of thrusting. Enter…creativity and experimentation!
Our tried-and-true hand job orgasms tend to happen when my male partner jerks himself off with my assistance. Sometimes I kneel or recline in front of the guy so he can ejaculate onto my breasts, stomach, or mons. Other times I kiss, massage, or suck on his balls, perhaps also massaging his taint or asshole, and then he cums onto his own stomach. On special occasions, I might let him cum on my face. Voila!
Butt play
Apparently the taboo surrounding anal sex did not outweigh our teenage hormones eager for some sort of penetration below the waist. Back in the day, though, we rushed into my back door and I suffered the painful consequences. It would be years before we reintroduced anal play into our repetoire, but thankfully we’ve now done our research and we practice what I’m about to preach:
Go slow and use lube!
After that, let your curiosity guide your experimentation. When Jack puts a finger on top of my asshole, it intensifies any other activity happening in my nether regions. Over time, this led us to experiment with inserting fingers and butt plugs, too, for both of us. One special path that I’ve discovered to a surreal, sultry orgasm is to stimulate my clit while laying on my stomach, plug in my butt. Sometimes Jack will stand by and watch me make a spectacle of myself, throbbing cock in hand. Other days, Jack holds a vibrator up to my butt plug….yup, that’s ecstasy for Eliza.
Toys
This is a post unto itself, but I think we’ve naturally come to the place where I have to put in my plug for toys (pun intended). Toys are not cheating. They’re fun, they’re tools, they’re a tease, they’re a means to an end. They are powerful and they give Jack’s arms a much-needed break.
My favorite toy is a Peak cordless wand, which I typically use against my clit. Sometimes we also penetrate my vagina with it, while other times it’s the tool to hold up against the aforementioned butt plug. When I want a more sleepy, relaxing orgasm sans penetration, I use an air-pulsing clitoral stimulator.
If BDSM equipment counts as a “toy,” then sign me up. I do not exaggerate when I say that being tied up, gagged, and/or blindfolded by Jack gets me dripping wet within minutes. Mind over matter, young Jedi.
Mutual Masturbation
It’s such fun to watch Jack get himself off from time to time. I watch those arm muscles work that giant muscle between his legs. I watch the veins and the tensing, the facial expressions, the moves he puts on himself. I let him watch me stroke myself, pet myself, pat myself, penetrate myself, play with myself.
We tease ourselves all while keeping our eyes on the other. We learn from each other. We pretend it’s live porn. See if you can go start to finish. Do it at the same time, or take turns. Maybe whip out a camera and record each other.
Looking back on those two years that we didn’t engage in intercourse, I see that we laid the groundwork for what is now, over twenty years later, a fantastic sex life filled with foreplay, communication, creativity, playfulness, love, connection, exploration, and endless pleasure. There are many roads to orgasm.
How do you get to your destination when intercourse isn’t an option?
