Getting Older Gave Me the Confidence to Enjoy Receiving Oral Sex

I wish I could announce loudly and proudly that the greatest things about growing older are:

A powerful new confidence in my creative abilities
Apologizing less
Being slightly more patient and less prone to desperate frustration when I don't get what I want and don't understand why I didn't get it
Not melting down so easily when someone rejects or criticizes me
All those happy developments contribute to why I decided to embrace aging into the 40s. But the truth is, by far the best benefit of growing older is the oral sex.



Specifically: I can finally let a guy go down on me without feeling self-conscious and without worrying about him and all the time and effort he's putting into it. I've realized that if he follows my directions, it takes minimal time and effort. I'm now pretty effective at giving directions.

This new power — to give direction and feel good and obliterate guilt — didn't happen overnight. Back in my juicy but blurry 20s and early 30s, my typical response to a gentleman's attempt at performing oral sex was: loosen up briefly, engage in wishful thinking, go numb, and then request intercourse. Penetrative sex has enough bells and whistles to get me going, even if it means exposing myself emotionally to the wrong guy. Enough of those relationships — jumping directly to sex when oral proved difficult — and inevitably I came to the conclusion that I need to be in love to have pleasurable sex.


And that's why being young was my biggest problem in bed. I couldn't separate love from sex, friend from romance, horniness from loneliness, or infatuation from love. It was all a tangle: I'd pull one thread and the whole thing unraveled. I was an undersexed, solitary, confused, insecure girl with a cute body that went grossly underused.

When I think of how many opportunities for good sex I missed because I wanted the guy to love me first, I get as frustrated as when I think of how many good guys I turned down because I thought they had no overt sexual prowess, when really I couldn't give directions or feel pleasure without guilt.

Now that I'm older, things separate out more easily, and I know that oral sex isn't love. Or passion. Or friendship. It's oral sex. It benefits both of you if you can own up to your needs and, if need be, hold their hand and guide them along.

The guy I recently directed in bed — X, Y, Z, please — was a good guy. I think he liked me a lot, and in some ways we were compatible. But not enough. I let him go in five and a half dates, and I hope he had a good time when he was with me. I did the best I could.