It might not sound particularly sexy, but without safety you don’t get sexy, at least, not quality sexy.
Safety is needed to be able to trust, be vulnerable, open up and let go, and that is what’s required for good sex.
Safety comes first.
It’s often overlooked in sex though. We want to jump straight to the good stuff, the behaviours, rather than making sure the conditions are safe. It would be like going skydiving without checking the parachute is packed properly. It’s dangerous! And not pleasurable. And in fact, like with skydiving, the more ‘dangerous’ you want your sexual encounter to be, the more you have to focus on safety.
You’ll actually find that those who engage in the kinkier sexual activities have very thoroughly well-packed “parachutes”. You’re safer in a BDSM dungeon than in the average bedroom, because there you don’t engage without a thorough understanding of what each is wanting and setting your boundaries very clearly. In contrast, I’ve had clients who have been together for decades, who have never discussed their sex life.
If your partner doesn’t know what you’re feeling and wanting and fearing and hoping, it’s not safe, and it’s not going to be good. Either you’ll exceed your boundaries and get hurt or you’ll play it safe and limit your experience so it’s not as pleasurable as it could be. The latter is obviously better than the former, but it is limiting.
I’m talking about both physical and emotional safety here. Physically, you need to make sure you’ve got contraception and preventing STDs covered; and you need to make sure sex doesn’t hurt. If it does, stop and/or change what you’re doing. Sex must never hurt.
The emotional side of things is just as important. To make sex emotionally safe you need to know what is going on for the other person. That requires communication, the type of communication that allows you to be heard without judgement, so you can share your desires and fears. Though this discussion you create safety and allow for authentic expression and exploration.
Interestingly, the discussion itself can ignite an erotic charge. So it’s not that you create safety first and then you can be erotic, the creating of the safety though discussion can in itself be erotic!
I see this all the time in the couples I work with, the ones who are best at creating safety through open supportive communication are the ones who have the best, most profound sex lives.
As one female partner said to me: “Our bed is the safest place in the world”.
Followed not long after by her male partner saying “I keep thinking our sex can’t get any better, but it just does.”
