Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with sex and lesbian

Who's my lover?

Anonymous — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 07:09:35 -0800

So, women-who-have-sex-with-women, what do you consider having had sex? I know that there is a school of thought that defines any significant sexual acts as having had sex. I also know that I wouldn't count just oral or manual sex with men in my list of men with whom I'd "had sex." Sexual activity? Yes, absolutely. Sexual activity that requires attention to STD details? Yes. But did I fuck X? No, I didn't fuck him, just a handjob. (If you have a huge problem with this definition, you may not need to answer this question.)

As a bisexual woman, I've drawn the line between messed around/foreplay/sexual activity/made out-with and "had sex with" in wholly subjective ways. Seems that we (me and other woman with whom i did...something) pretty much agree on the line, generally.

In heterosexual sex, one can quibble about the definition of "had sex" all one likes, but once penis is in vagina, no-one is disputing that this means that you've been lovers. In gay relationships, it seems to be a fuzzier line.

Sure, there's stuff between women that it is acknowledged that you'd only do with a more serious lover within the context of a relationship (i.e. we not usually fisting on the first date), but queer girls, where do you draw the line between making out and fucking?

Where can I have a threesome in LA?

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:51:59 -0800

How can I safely experiment sexually, like in a club or other group setting? I'm an attractive female in my twenties. I've never experimented sexually beyond regular male/female sex. I'm very interested in being with another woman, having a threesome, being watched, watching, etc.

I live in Los Angeles, so I feel like there must be a lot of opportunity around me, but I'm very cautious and don't want to end up being killed by some wacko I met on craigslist.

Are there settings, like bars or clubs, where people are partying in a more sexual manner? I once saw an episode of Nip/Tuck where Christian went to a party where people were having sex out in the open, and others would just join in. Does this exist?

If you have an experience similar, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks!

How do married same-sex couples hold title?

Graygorey — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:42:24 -0800

How do married same-sex couples hold title? Any recommendations or resources for California same-sex unions wanting to change title to their property? Today, at the counter at a California county recorder's office, a woman asked me how she could add her wife to the title of her property. While same-sex marriage was legal in California (don't get me started on prop. 8), what was the common language for married couples?

Yar! Bare yer booty, wench!

Anonymous — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:59:46 -0800

Sexyfilter: Lesbian role-play ideas, bonus points for kinky. Yes, really. I'm in a long-term lesbian relationship with a lagging sex life. I know, I know, you've all heard this before. We have both recently realized we are slightly kinky (meaning: soft bondage, spanking, light whipping, hair pulling, scratching - so far) but can't seem to work that into sex. We think that role-playing might be fun, but don't really know where to start. Most suggestions online are pretty dependent either on heterosexual naughty bits, or at the least on male/female power dynamics. Most are also so cliche (headmistress/student) that we would just feel silly doing them. We have a strap-on, so gender play is a possibility, I'd need ideas/tips though.

So, a few questions then:
What are some tips for role-play beginners?
What are some tips for D/s or s/m beginners? Any websites to recommend that will teach us how to tie each other up?
What are some fun scenarios, which may or may not incorporate kink, that don't necessarily rely on full sets of male and female bits?

lesbianroleplay@gmail.com

I think I'm straight. Now what?

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:33:23 -0800

After a long time in a lesbian relationship, I'm coming to the realization that I think I'm straight. I don't want to leave my wife (I really love her), but I can't stop thinking about men. Please help me figure this out. Sexually explicit details inside. NSFW When I met the woman who I ended up marrying, I had never thought about sexuality. I had had a very few relationships with men, but was very young. When she told me she was interested in me I thought I could give it a try, fell in love with her, and started identifying as bisexual.

At first the sex was awful (we were both inexperienced and had no idea how to have sex, never mind lesbian sex), but it got better. Over time, though, I found that I had the best orgasms when I fantasized about men during sex. It took a long time for me to tell her this, but I did, and she was fine with it. Eventually it came to be that I could only orgasm when I fantasize about men. She knows this too, and it doesn't bother or worry her at all.

It bothers and worries me. I feel like I'm not having sex with her, rather, I'm masturbating with a hands-free vibrator. I've tried not fantasizing, I've tried keeping my eyes open so that I can see her, and all it does is keep me from coming, make me frustrated, and tire out her arm.

Thinking about this, I've realized several things: I have never really checked out other women in a sexual way. I see a sexy woman and I think "I'd like to look like her" rather than "I'm sexually attracted to her." I look at men, though. The only times I've ever fantasized about women are in fantasies where men are watching me have sex with a woman, and still, the fun only starts when the man/men join in. All of my porn is straight porn, or else it pictures just one woman, and I always identify with the woman and not with the person off-scene who is playing with her.

Recently, my wife and I have pretty much stopped having sex. I know this is partly just a function of being in a ltr, but I feel more and more like we are best friends who happen to share a bed, rather than romantic partners. We've bought toys, we've watched porn, we've tried a bit of kink, but nothing seems to be bringing back the spark. I'm horny, but just don't want to have sex with her. She has said the same, but has said that I'm seeming colder and colder.

I love her so much. She is my world and my light and my heart. She takes care of me, makes me feel beautiful, makes me feel special, makes me want to be a good person. She's my best friend, my confidante, and I trust her implicitly.

Still, I fantasize about a stubbly chin nuzzling against my neck. I dream of being the shorter one in a hug. Of pressing my face against a flat chest, wrapping my arms around narrow hips. I think about sex with a man. A lot. Not any particular man, just a man.

Am I straight? How can I know if I'm straight as opposed to bisexual? Am I just stuck in a monogamy rut? Can I fix myself for this relationship or am I fucked? Am I going to come to a realization ten years down the road and leave my wife for a man, like so many of my older lesbian friends did in reverse? How can I prevent that from happening?

Help me figure out what to do about my relationship.

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:02:49 -0800

Help me sort out my feelings about the relationship I’m in because I just can’t seem to figure it out. (long and complicated - sorry!) (I apologize in advance for the length and thank anyone who can actually read the whole thing and offer some insight.)

My girlfriend and I have been together for three years. I’m 25 and she’s 28. We are the somewhat stereotypical lesbian relationship: we met while we were in (unsatisfying) relationships with other people, left our respective partners to be together, became attached at the hip early on (once we started officially seeing each other we did not spend one night apart…. hardly ever), moved across the country together after only dating for six months, and now we live in a big city in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with a dog. We don’t have a lot of friends outside the relationship (a problem we’ve always recognized but never truly tried to fix) and we’re both homebodies for the most part. We even have lunch together almost every day during the week since our offices are close by. Most of the time, this is all okay and even great. I love spending time with her and never get sick of just “hanging out” with her.

When we first met, the sparks and chemistry and intensity was incredible. I have never felt that before in my life. In my heart, I truly felt that this is the person I want to spend my life with; this is the person that I want to grow old with. We connect in ways that I never connected with anyone – intellectually and otherwise.

After about six months to a year (shortly after moving in together), our sex life started to fizzle (think lesbian bed death syndrome). Then she told me that she has memories of being abused as a child, both physically and sexually, mostly the former. Her father was the source of her physical abuse, possibly the sexual abuse as well. In addition, her mother is completely in denial about any of the abuse taking place and has been the cause of my girlfriend having multiple emotional breakdowns since she has started to come to grips with her past abuse. She is in therapy and taking steps to heal and move past the abuse, but I believe it will be a long arduous process. I have done some reading about surviving abuse and the effects on intimate relationships and I won’t lie – I’m scared sh*tless. I’m worried that I am in a relationship that will never ever have satisfying sex again, that my girlfriend will always be the victim when we have arguments and use her past abuse as an excuse for her behavior, and I’m worried that I’ve gotten myself into something I don’t know how to handle.

Our sexual pattern goes something like this: I will initiate sex, usually in a nonverbal way like kissing her, and she will make it apparent that she isn’t interested. I feel disappointed, back down, and then later (either 10 minutes later or two days later, it doesn’t matter), SHE will initiate sex, usually verbally by asking me if I am interested. I generally accept the invitation, we have sex, and then we don’t have sex again for a while (this varies, lately the time between sex has been about two to four weeks). Tonight I told her that this pattern wasn’t working for me anymore, that I don’t like always being rejected only to be invited to have sex later on. Of course this is a control issue. She told me that she needs me to verbally ask her permission before doing anything physical with her – that she doesn’t like it when I start to kiss her, take her belt off, whatever it might be. I obliged to this request, but I feel like it is insane. I don’t know if I can have a sexual relationship with someone who needs me to spell out exactly what I want to do before I do it… like I need to get her to sign an imaginary permission slip before I’m allowed to make love to her. Besides making me feel like a pawn, it completely takes the spontaneity out of sex and kind of makes me not want to do it in the end.

Sometimes I really don’t even want to have sex with her because it is so predictable, so vanilla… I want her to take charge once and a while and do something crazy or different. But she’s only interested in nice, calm, Sarah McLachlan-y sex. Anything else freaks her out (including toys, different positions, etc.). She’s always worried that things will “trigger” her, which I respect and understand… it’s just incredibly disappointing.

Here’s the part where I make my big confession… I have been a less than stellar girlfriend in the faithfulness department. In the past year and a half I have cheated on her with three different people… two of those three people were ongoing affairs that lasted several months. They didn’t mean anything to me past the sex they provided… I was just so incredibly frustrated by the lack of sex in my relationship and so eager to find out what I was missing. They were fun, but that was it – I wasn’t in love with any of them, nor was I interested in prolonging the affairs past their prime. I ended things with the two ongoing people early this year and don’t intend to have any repeat performances. Yes, I got tested and everything was negative re STDs. My guilt was enough to make me realize that it was a mistake. I don’t know why I did it, really… but I think maybe I was just sabotaging this relationship because I’m so worried about the issues she has and the issues we have together. And I thought “oh, I’m young, I shouldn’t be sexless,” etc. etc. Stupid, yes. But it’s over and done with. And she doesn’t know what happened – I decided it would be a horrible idea to tell her because she’s already dealing with enough.

One of the reasons I don’t have a lot of platonic friends outside my relationship with my girlfriend is that I think I tend to sexualize friendships. That’s a different issue for a different post, but I felt I needed to say it here. Maybe one of the reasons I do it is because I feel very sexually repressed and I am subconsciously looking for an outlet in everyone that I meet. Generally, if I’m not sexually attracted to someone I don’t make much effort to have a friendship with them and we lose touch. Weird, yes.

Sometimes, crazy as it may seem, we have this seemingly perfect life together… we’re thinking about the future together and where we might be living in the next year (we might be moving out of the area so she can pursue grad school), and I’m always imagining the house we’ll live in and the life we can build together. But are my hopes for our future overshadowing the problems in our relationship, and is going along with whatever she wants when she wants it just going to dig me in deeper to issues that I am not prepared to deal with?

We went to couples therapy once last year and it was absolutely not helpful for me. Partly because our therapist had this “I don’t keep secrets” policy, so I could never tell her about my infidelities if I wanted her to keep them confidential. But also because I have a hard time talking about serious stuff face to face with a total stranger. Hence the AskMe post.

I feel as though there is a lot more to mention here that I am neglecting to include… mostly I just worry about being the constantly supportive girl in the relationship while my needs are being pushed aside because hers are more important… something like that.

Help?

What am I?

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 09:32:22 -0800

I am confused about my sexuality. I'm 21, female, very little sexual experience (all with men--I've never even kissed a woman). While I identify as "straight" to society at large, I'm confused if that's what I actually am. I've always been a bit of a tomboy and always had "girl crushes," on celebrities and on people I know, though they're never really "sexual" in nature. I want to kiss girls and be affectionate with them, but I don't want to have sex with them. On the other hand, I want to have sex with men, but don't ever feel myself compelled to kiss them or hold hands or be affectionate with them. My sexual fantasies pretty much all involve men; my "romantic" fantasies all women. If I could sum up my problem, it would be this: I am sexually attracted to men, but emotionally attracted to women. How can I reconcile these conflicting ideas? As it stands, I'm not getting any--no sex, no affection--because I've yet to find someone (of either gender) who makes me fire on both cylinders, so to speak. To further complicate things, I think other people read me as "asexual" (probably because of my own confusion) and so I have little real-world experience to experiment with being with either men or women in either a sexual or romantic capacity.

I'm looking for any insight or advice that could help me further understand and figure out my sexuality. Email can be sent to sexconfused@gmail.com. Thanks in advance.

If blowjobs bug me, should I avoid dating men? I'm female.

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 07:37:32 -0800

If blowjobs bug me, should I avoid dating men? I'm female. [NSFW] I was surprised to see so many people respond to this question saying that not all gay men like anuses and that it's perfectly fine for men to date men while avoiding the anus. I'm (honestly, innocently) wondering if you'd all say the same about women not giving blowjobs. It doesn't seem like people feel that way about men avoiding cunnilingus--the pervading attitude seems to be that if you're willing to stick your penis into it, you should be willing to put your mouth on it.

I'm female. I like women. I've been attracted to men before, but the idea of performing oral sex on a man grosses me out. This happens even when I think about giving blowjobs to specific men I seem attracted to. Like the other poster, I'm a virgin, but I've seen lots of [porn and non-porn] pictures of penises and vulvas. The thought of having penis-in-vagina (or butt) sex doesn't bug me at all, and the thought of performing oral sex on a person with a vulva doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Mostly, I've assumed that if I don't like penises enough to want to put one in my mouth, I shouldn't date people who have them. (Oral sex with a pre-op MtF transsexual would bug me too--it's a sex thing, not a gender thing.) Obviously, each person with a penis will have their own feelings about having a partner who will never give them a blowjob, but what is the general wisdom about this? Generally avoid dating men, or not?

Since I'm also attracted to women, I don't feel the need to learn to love giving blowjobs in the way the previous poster felt he should learn to love assholes. I suspect people would tell me I should chill the fuck out and go with the flow/date whoever I'm attracted to, but I'm curious about the general attitude towards this.

Why don't I feel like fucking my hot girlfriend anymore?

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:55:35 -0800

Lesbian Bed Death... what gives? I'm 27, she's 21, we've been dating for almost two years, just moved in together about two months ago, and both of us want to want to have sex, but we don't actually really feel like it anymore. She's an incredibly talented dancer and an outstanding athlete, very comfortable using her body. She's in the best shape of her life but reports that sensations don't feel the same anymore, specifically her breasts have gotten smaller and give her way less pleasure. I want to have sex with her parts but don't really want anything going on with my parts anymore. I get performance anxiety because I don't always get off.

Why is this going on? We used to have tons of sex all the time, and it was really, really good. I know that LBD is common and some dykes talk about it like its inevitable in any lesbian relationship but... we're so hot and young and in love and our sex has been so great in the past -- Why god why?!

Help me get out of this closet before the house burns down!

Anonymous — Wed, 31 May 2006 17:27:21 -0800

I've never dated a girl before. Where do I start? Oh, and I am one, too... I've suspected myself of being a lesbian for a long time and am definitely attracted to women, but I wouldn't feel comfortable coming out without any actual experience to validate this. In the meantime, it seems incredibly awkward, and even selfish, to initiate anything with someone who is more experienced and certain of themselves - as though it were her responsibity to wait for me to figure everything out and get off my training wheels (I can imagine I probably wouldn't want to waste my time with someone who was just experimenting, either). I feel this anxiety equally when thinking about the possibility of a casual sexual encounter or a relationship. I've also noticed the term "curiosity" used with a distinctly negative connotation on many gay websites, etc. which makes me feel less than welcome, in addition to being ashamed of my general ignorance and ineptitude concerning, um, everything involved. I also have the (wrong?) impression that most people realize they're gay in the context of an attraction to a specific person, and things follow naturally from there; it seems less clear how to go about it the other way round.

More background info: A couple people have asked whether or simply assumed I was gay previously, but I've only recently started to acknowledge it myself. I'm generally a shy and introverted person, so I already have some difficulty meeting people and entering into new social situations, especially point-blank, and I don't have anyone else who's openly gay in my social circle at the moment (which is actually quite small, because I've moved recently). I've gone to a couple lesbian events (monthly "parties" at local bars) but freaked out and ran away before I could start relaxing and meeting people. There's really no one I'd feel comfortable bringing along to future events like this for moral support, either. I also don't live in an area with any gay coffee shops or more casual meeting places. Oh yeah, and I have pretty long hair.

So, my questions are, roughly, the following:

1) Is "curiosity" generally tolerated as little as I fear, and if so, how should I go about resolving it?

2) How can I get a date without taking advantage of someone (or at least feeling like I am) by inflicting my n00b-ness on them?

3) How does dating work in general for lesbians? What should I be doing to send out the right signals, and what should I be watching for? And what happens next?

This question is meant to be as broad as possible. I feel like this is going to be adolescence all over again - or like that "40-year-old virgin" movie. Not pleasant. I'll be grateful for any information and advice that might make it easier.

Help me cure lesbian bed-death!

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:53:02 -0800

Help me cure lesbian bed-death. Lesbians and non-lesbians alike are welcome to reply. It's a not-so-funny joke in the gay community that a few months into a serious relationship. lesbians stop having sex. My partner and I have been together for six years now, and, although we talk about sex (especially how much we miss it!) we don't have sex. Maybe once a month, possibly less often than that. We are young (20's) and although we have both struggled with weight and body issues we are currently getting fit and feeling awesome about our bodies. We used to think that it was that we felt fat and not at all sexy, but with the fat part disappearing, we still don't feel sexy.

Last year we had a threesome, with a man. For my partner it confirmed that she was definitely a lesbian. For me it was like having a hands-free dildo. Neither of us got our rocks off that night, but for a couple of weeks afterward we had the best sex of our lives. This, however, is not a solution to the problem. I don't want to have to bring another person into the relationship periodically just so that the two of us can have good sex later.

Other than that experience, we are each other's only sexual partner. We were each other's first. We are open and experimentative, we talk about everything, and we are open to trying just about anything - that is, if we haven't already. When we do have sex it is very enjoyable, but for the most part (and we have discussed this) we would both rather, ahem, take care of it ourselves.

So my question is: how can we get interested in sex again? How can we get interested in each other? We cuddle, we chat, we do all those love-dovey things every single day (what can I say, we are affectionate), we just don't have sex. And yes, it is a problem, because we both miss it very much.