Dating : How to Make Her Feel Safe When She’s Going Down on You

There are things that you need to know about a woman’s experience of giving a man oral sex.

First of all, it’s important to recognize that any time a person allows someone else to literally enter their body (in any manner), it’s an incredibly vulnerable experience.

Even more importantly, you need to remember the unique vulnerability of having a huge, hard cylinder of flesh in your mouth, poking around an area that allows you to breathe and controls your gag reflex. Physically speaking, it can be an intimidating experience.

Then there’s the emotional element. Blow jobs, whether you realize it or not, involve a lot of power dynamics. Women who have experienced trauma (and there are more of us than you might think) can be so easily triggered during oral sex.

If you want to make this experience as safe and enjoyable as possible for her — which will in turn increase your likelihood of receiving her attention in this way — then it’s important to keep a few things in mind…

Having a man ejaculate in your mouth is a big deal. It’s nothing like giving a woman head until she climaxes. There’s no ramming wall of flesh in your mouth at that moment, no hot gush of liquid spilling across your tongue and into the back of your throat.

Women have a wide spectrum of feelings about this climactic moment, depending on their sexual experience, preferences, and personal history. Even if they enjoy it, the anticipation of this moment — especially with a new partner — can lead to anxiety for some women.

What’s it like when he comes during oral sex? Is he going to be aggressive? Is he going to want me to keep sucking him while he comes or should I let go? Is he going to want me to swallow?

One of the easiest ways to make the experience as pleasurable for her as it will be for you is to ask her to tell you her preferences, rather than letting the experience unfold in a series of awkward expectations and assumptions, or telling her what you want before you’ve established that it’s safe for her to express her own needs and preferences.

Before her head descends over your lap, ask her what she would like:

Do you want me to come in your mouth or in your hand?

Guys, if the men I’ve gone down on asked me this ahead of time, it would have changed everything for me. It would have alleviated my anxiety about his expectations, and made me feel in control in an act that so often leaves me feeling dominated.

One of the most important parts of this question is that you have given her multiple choices. If you say, “Do you want me to come in your mouth?” it can come off as an expectation rather than a genuine question. Further, so many women, especially of my generation, are conditioned to answering yes when asked a yes or no question. By mentioning options, you take the pressure to people-please out of the equation.

If she says “In my mouth,” then there’s one more important question to ask:

“Do you want to spit or swallow?”

If blow jobs came with a recognized standard of etiquette, this would be one of the most important facets of that, in my opinion.

I think most women want their partner to feel accepted, and as such, many will swallow some or all of the time in order to achieve that objective. Yes, your feelings and sexual confidence matter to us.

But a woman should not feel obligated to swallow. This isn’t — and shouldn’t be — a requirement of a blow job, though many of us feel like it is.

I’ll thank porn culture for that, where actresses literally wag their jaw open in every climax scene, as if the greatest sexual pleasure they’ve ever received was ingesting their partner’s cum.

I don’t mean to burst your bubbles, but that’s honestly pretty low on our lists of what we most enjoy about sex. Though there is plenty of enjoyment to be had when interacting with your semen, we aren’t actually insatiably thirsty for it.

When you ask your partner if she wants to spit or swallow, you’ve shown her that you respect her preferences and care about her pleasure. You’ve let her know that you don’t have presumptions about how a blow job needs to unfold. That’s incredibly sexy, empowering, polite, and it helps her let go of anxiety about what your expectations might be.

If you want extra points, before you begin, bring her an empty cup if she says she wants to spit, or a glass of water or tea to set on the night table if she says she wants to swallow. You’ll be like the George Bailey of blow jobs. And believe me, that is fucking hot.

Here’s one of the scariest things about giving a blow job: You never know when or if a guy is going to grab your head and start increasing the speed with which you are moving over him.

Please don’t do this.

It’s not only incredibly intimidating when you have a big dick in your mouth and strong hands overpowering you, but there’s no way for the owner of the penis to know how those movements are affecting the giver’s experience. From where you sit (lie, hover, whatever), the mouth you’re in is just another hole. But for us, that’s our portal of respiration and the instigator of our gag reflex.

I’ve had a guy grab my head once and push himself further into me — his dick went straight to the back of my throat, choking me. It was incredibly scary, and I couldn’t stop gagging for a few minutes, which made me feel humiliated, embarrassed, unsexy, and like a total failure (even though that was his fault for being so aggressive).

But maybe you really want to touch her head. Maybe you want to move her hair back so you can watch her, or just maintain a connection by having your fingers on her.

Ask her, first.

If you haven’t touched her yet, and she’s already begun, ask her to pause for a moment — asking during the act is only going to elicit an obligatory nod, because she’s going to want to keep pleasing you — ask her to look at you, and ask her if you can put your hands on her head.

Tell her why you want to: To get a better view of her, to feel her hair, to connect with her, etc. And assuming she says yes (she probably will), do not let her resume until you assure her that you will not move her head — that any change in speed you want, you will ask for with words, and not actions.

Again, let me reiterate that blow jobs inherently involve submissive and dominant roles in ways that just don’t quite compare to the power dynamics of a man going down on a woman. Some women can be uncomfortable with this, or even downright triggered, so it’s important to find a position in which she feels like she has some control.

For instance, I have never been able to allow a man to kneel above my head while I’m lying down and dip himself into my mouth. That is terrifying for me. Yet, I have a friend who enjoys this position because her husband shows such restraint in it that it makes her feel loved and respected.

I also don’t enjoy being on my knees in front of a standing partner. I remember a lover asking me to do this for him once, and I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I had a feeling it would not be comfortable for me, but of course, I wanted to please him, so I gave it a try.

Sure enough, as soon as I was on my knees, his dick in my face, I began feeling panicky. I took it in my mouth, he immediately grabbed the back of my head, and that was that — I scrambled to my feet and had to take a minute to compose myself.

I hated feeling the way that position made me feel. (Though again, some women love it.)

When you’re just beginning to explore oral sex with a new partner, let her pick the positions. Either ask her, or wait for her to take the lead. Encourage positions in which she is on top or nearly level with you, to help re-balance the power dynamics.

I liked bending over my partner while he was lying down, and especially enjoyed kneeling between his legs when he was sitting on the edge of the couch or bed. In that position, I felt much safer, having him slightly bent over me, as if he was going to embrace me, and I liked the way he would wrap his hand around my hair, gently pulling it up, off my neck, softly tugging at it.

A lot of women are insecure about whether or not they please their man in bed — especially when it comes to oral sex.

I know I can get a guy off with my hand without even breaking a sweat. I’m also confident that my vagina is a skilled, tight little vixen.

When it comes to oral sex, though, I have serious doubts about my prowess. I always worried I wasn’t doing a good enough job, and it didn’t help that my partners were the silent types, making me wonder if their lack of response was indicative of a failure on my part.

Now you know I would never suggest that you make noises or perform in a way that doesn’t feel authentic to you during sex. But…just giving her a quick bit of feedback — whether a solitary groan, or a whispered, “That feels so fucking good” — will do wonders to boost her confidence and make this a more pleasant experience for her.

If she’s going down on you, all she wants in that moment is to give you pleasure. Let her know that she is succeeding.

What if she didn’t like to have you in her mouth for long sessions of oral sex?

What if, instead, she liked to put you in her mouth for a few minutes, then use her hands, then use her mouth again, then her hands, and so on?

What if she liked to lick all the salty fluid off the tip of your penis, then run her hand up and down it while you kissed her neck and stroked her breasts?

What if she liked to kiss up and down it, lick it, caress it with her lips, without actually taking it fully into her mouth?

I’ve found that the men I’ve been with who had definitive expectations about how I should handle their penis were the experiences that were the most unfulfilling for me. I felt pressured to perform in a certain way, I felt like a failure when I couldn’t perform the way they wanted, and overall, it led me to avoid intimacy with their nether region.

My last partner, though he made it clear he would’ve loved a good porn-style blow job, was pretty happy with any touch I gave to his penis. As such, I felt much more comfortable exploring in my own way if I wasn’t in the mood to give a traditional blow job. I loved licking and nibbling at the head of his penis, and giving him wet, sucking kisses all along the shaft.

If he had asked me to put it in his mouth every time I bent over his lap, I think I would’ve felt so much pressure that I would’ve started to avoid touching him like that, at all.

The greatest joy of giving a blow job is that we get to please you in the act of following our own inquisitive desire. We’re Alice and your dick is our white rabbit. Give us the opportunity to express our curiosity in the way that our passion dictates. If you take that away by placing rigid expectations on the act, it takes the fun and freedom out of it for us.

I could say this a thousand times — when it comes to blow jobs, never use your hands to indicate what you want. Ask, instead.

Don’t ever, ever pause a makeout session to push her head down toward your lap. That’s just bad manners. Please go read Emma Austin’s article on this subject.

And, really… Just don’t do it.