Smart Sexploration: Understanding Safe Intimacy

Let me give it to you straight: what people do in porn is not real life. Don't let a partner convince you 'everyone is doing it' because they've watched it on screen. They're not. And yes, I am talking directly to women on this one.

Most porn is based around a male fantasy of how they would like sex to be. It is not in any way representative of sex the average couple have – it’s pretty much the opposite of what most women want.

If you’re under 30, I suspect a guy suggesting choking is almost as usual as them initiating oral sex.

Porn increasingly depicts aggressive and rough sex acts, including choking, face-slapping, spitting and gagging. Women’s forums and websites have also legitimised it as a form of sex play.

While some women do enjoy choking (usually light), most go along with largely to pleasure their partners. Which, let’s face it, is alarming.

Worse, while choking has been mainstreamed, seeking enthusiastic and ongoing consent hasn’t. Of seventy-one percent of men who’d choked, gagged or spat on a partner during sex, one third hadn’t asked her if she’d like it done.

Scariest of all: most women think it’s safe.

Light choking – your partner placing one or two hands over your throat and simply holding them there or applying light pressure, is reasonably safe. This is more about symbolism and fantasy. Having a man’s hands around your throat plays into fantasies about submission and ‘ravishment’.

‘Breath play’ is different. That involves restricting oxygen to the brain by cutting off air supply, albeit temporarily. Take a good look at your partner when they are in the throes of orgasm. Most men (and women) disappear into an inner world: unaware of what’s happening in the outside world, conscious only of the pleasure they are experiencing. Press on the larynx too hard and you and kill someone in under a minute.  Let me repeat that: under one minute.

How easy is it to lose control for one minute when sexually aroused? Now imagine either of you are drunk or high on top of that (which most young people are).

Choking and breath play can cause heart attacks, brain damage, a damaged larynx, aspiration (vomiting which can cause long-term breathing problems) and death.

Explorative, adventurous sex is key to having satisfying sex long-term – but let’s inject a big dollop of common sense to anything you try.

Whether it’s relatively mild adventures (role-play, blindfolds, light bondage, spanking and experimenting with sex toys) or more intense activities (like trying anal sex for the first time, rough sex, extreme BDSM), the idea has to appeal to both of you.

We’re all individual, with tastes and preferences that sometimes match the partner we’re with and sometimes don’t. This is what sexual compatibility is all about: finding someone who likes the stuff you do.