Or you could take a cue from another source of our creativity: porn. You'll likely wind up with new material to fuel your sex life for months. Try something like "Wasn't that fun last night? Here's what I'd like to try next." and give her a chance to respond. Then follow up the next day, Herbenick says. Spontaneity and unpredictability are thrilling, and the residual excitement will leave her wanting more. If you normally have sex at night, see if she's game first thing in the morning, or head to the basement and christen the pool table. When you have that talk, start with simple requests, Herbenick says.
"It can make some men feel vulnerable to admit that they could learn anything new about how to please their partner."
Straight couples also often struggle to be blunt about what they want from sex, says therapist Rik Isensee, a counselor based in San Francisco and the author of Love Between Men. Gay porn also eroticizes behaviors like mutual masturbation, which you don't see much of in straight porn. But gender roles, Herbenick says, can be more flexible among gay men, so there's less stigma attached to things like the use of sex toys. Gay men often have a larger menu of things to choose from." Which seems counterintuitive, since men have matching parts. "It's the variety of sex-kissing, touching, breast stimulation, toys, and oral sex-that adds a much-needed dimension to a couple's sex life. "Sometimes straight men undervalue sex play other than intercourse," says Men's Health sex and relationships advisor Debby Herbenick, Ph.D. Where do they go wrong? A more narrow-minded approach to sex could be partly to blame. Of the four groups studied-straight men, straight women, gay men, and lesbians-straight men actually scored the lowest sexual satisfaction from those same things. People in same-sex relationships tend to be more satisfied with things like deep kissing, touching, and undressing their partners than people in heterosexual relationships are, according to a study in the Journal of Sex Research. That's partly because we access a greater number of sensual tools in order to enjoy sex to the fullest. In the Developmental Psychology study, gay couples were also shown to have higher levels of affection and intimacy. A study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that gay men do, in fact, tend to have more active sex lives-at least in terms of having more partners.īut here's where things get interesting. So put two (or more) men together who find each other attractive, and you can take a wild guess what happens. It wouldn't shock many people to learn that men have their minds on sex in a way most women do not. Here's what gay couples are getting right. After all, we date guys like you-we are guys like you. As a gay man, I know we defy the expectations of typical relationships.Īnd while one study doesn't mean we have all the answers, it does mean we could have something to teach you.
The landmark 2008 study, published in the journal Developmental Psychology, followed gay couples for three years and found that by nearly every metric, they reported higher-quality relationships and felt more satisfied than straight married couples did. And then researchers checked it out and found that it seemed to be working better than the other one. A funny thing happened when gay couples were told by judges that they couldn't tie the knot: They invented a whole new kind of relationship blueprint.