Despite these obstacles, it is important to continue to pursue personal development around sex as we mature and age. One thing that everyone needs to stay up-to-date on is how physical aging and life experiences, from childbirth to illness, can impact sexual response and comfort.
What worked for us as young people may suddenly seem to taper off or stop working altogether. In the reverse new positions, toys, and fantasies that never did anything for us before may suddenly become our biggest turn on.
How Sex Toys Can Help Us Learn
Sex toys are amazing resources that many us may not have had available to us in our youth. Using toys to explore erogenous zones, such as the G-spot (urethral sponge) or prostate can be something we feel more enjoyable and attuned to as we age. Many of us many not even achieve orgasm until later in our life, once we've had time to properly explore and understand our body.
As we grow, sex toys can help us discover new types of stimulation and new kinds of pleasure! For example, maybe trying an air pulsing clitoral stimulator can help you reach a clitoral orgasm that you never thought possible.
Sex toys can also help us discover new kinds of orgasms. Maybe a dual stimulating rabbit vibrator will help find your G-spot or lead you down the path to a squirting orgasm.
The important thing to remember (and something we don't always realize when we're younger) is that sex isn't just about reaching orgasms. It doesn't matter if you find your G-spot or P-spot, or learn how to have a squirting orgasm or blended orgasm.
By not looking at exploration and sexual exploration as a problem to solve, but as a pleasure to joyfully explore and learn about we can discover new sexual frontiers with each passing decade of life.
Read: The Surprising Things That Happen When You Stop Going for the Orgasm
A Lifelong Education
With an accumulation of experiences and exposure, we additionally gain fresh insight into who we are. Many people may go along with what they were told was alluring or sexually acceptable in their early years, but over time decide to push outside of those societal bounds.
Vanilla sex or monogamous relationship may reveal themselves as no longer a good fit and kink and polyamory become more comfortable. Coming out as a different gender than we were assigned at birth or realizing our sexual attraction is broader or more nuanced than we had previously thought, are all reasons to keep exploring and learning about our sexual selves.
No matter our age, experiences, or position in society sex education should be an ongoing journey throughout our lifespan. The first step is to begin by looking within and being radically honest with ourselves. Without stigma, assumption, or shame what would we truly desire? Where do our interests lead us and what more can we discover by following them, at least mentally, to see what they tell us about ourselves.
I encourage my students to start by journaling about their feelings around their sexual questions. Asking things like, “If I identify as X what does that make me feel?” “What experiences have I desired to explore but held back from, and why?” “What are my fears about new experiences and what is that roots of the anxieties I’m holding onto?”
By unearthing these quandaries, we can come to new understandings about ourselves and find resources to fill in any gaps in information. Sex education is an ongoing process, something that reveals new chapters for us to uncover within ourselves and the world around us.
By letting go of fear and embracing new information we can find benefits in new experiences that continue for the rest of our lives.