How to Initiate Sex for Lesbians
Let’s talk about a topic that’s as fun as it is important: initiating sex in lesbian relationships! Whether you’re in a new relationship or have been together for years, knowing how to bring up intimacy in a playful way can add a spark to your connection.
Does this sound like you? You want to be having sex, but you just don't know how to get the ball rolling. You’re nervous, awkward, afraid of making your partner feel pressured, or triggering their partner's trauma.
Let’s end the initiation stale mate. But first, I have to tell you why basic ‘creative ways to initiate’ aren’t going to work.
Addressing Misconceptions
You may think that you just need a new way to initiate, right?
You've tried things like buying some lingerie and surprising your partner. You've texted them some flirtatious stuff, maybe some suggestive emojis. Maybe you have looked across the room and tried to give them like the look and either they don't pick up on it or they ignore it.
Maybe you've straight up been like, hey, do you wanna have sex? Because you're going for that direct communication (that’s what the experts say to do!) and it falls flat.
And you end up feeling rejected and bad about yourself and wondering if it's you, but you don't know how to fix this problem and you feel frustrated and stuck with the situation.
There's this baseline of understanding how your partner likes sex to be initiated and how you like sex to be initiated.
So maybe one of you likes a fast, direct initiation or a slower initiation with some build up.
Maybe one of you likes to initiate by offering to do something for your partner. Like, “hey, I'd love to go down on you right now.”
Maybe one of you likes to initiate by asking to receive: “hey, I really want you to fuck me.”
There are a lot of different options and flavors of initiation. That's the very surface layer of considering different initiation tips. I want you to know your initiation preferences, but I also want to go a layer deeper.
Going Beyond Intitiation “Tips”
The problem isn't that you need to learn more initiation techniques. I believe a lot of the hesitation and awkwardness really stems from initiating without self trust, which gives off this. uncertain, like, lukewarm energy.
So, I love a good illustration, so let's think about it like this. When a dog comes up to you with its tail between its legs, it doesn't really know whether to trust you, it's trepidatious, it wants to meet, to go toward you, but it's also kind of holding back, and you're, what's your first reaction to this dog?
It's to take care of it, right? To show concern, like, “Oh, are you okay?” or offering comfort. Because you're an empathetic person.
So approaching your girlfriend or partner with this ‘tail between your legs’ energy when it comes to sex elicits caretaking. Which is great in some contexts, but it certainly isn't sexy.
And honestly, this isn't your fault. You're not doing this on purpose.
There are past experiences that most of us have had that can create this nervous, uncertain, scared association with expressing desire.
And some random, like, flirty text message that you can send your partner that you saw on Google to ‘spice it up’ isn't going to fix that.
Why Initiating Sex Feels Intimidating
What are some of these experiences that can create this fear and hesitation around initiation?
No practice. I used to be married to a man. And men are socialized to lean into their desire to express themselves sexually, to ‘go after what they want.’ So oftentimes, they're always initiating, making the first move, making overt asks or flirtation, and I was just used to receiving that and going along with it. I never had any literal practice initiating, stepping into my desire and finding a way that feels good for me to express it.
2. Negative Experiences. Most women that I talk to, myself included, have had an experience where we're out, minding our own business, and a man hits on us, and it's very clear that we're not into it.
Our body language is saying we're not into it, maybe we're looking away, maybe we've literally said, hey, no thank you. There are circumstances where they just keep going.
They keep pushing, pushing, pushing and you feel this sense of violation.
This person is not respecting your boundary and that feels fucking gross. It makes you want to crawl out of your skin and then bury yourself in a hole and die. And when you've had those experiences, understandably, you're scared of then making a partner feel that way. The last thing you want, is your partner to feel gross and violated and turned off by you.
The Key Nobody Talks About
Often, we just end up not initiating at all. Or when we try to initiate, it’s a half-initiation that makes your partner just feel more anxious.
It’s wishy-washy instead of saying flirtatiously, “This is how I'm feeling. This is what I want. Are you into that?”
When you have self trust, this enables you to confidently feel, own and express your sexual desires.
And without this self trust, you feel scared to bring up sex, so it just kind of never gets brought up, or, again, you initiate and it's kind of like a shoulder shrug, lukewarm initiation, which is confusing.
The Biggest Hurdle to Initiation For Lesbians
Women have been socialized to take a back seat, to be the receiver, to not connect with our desires because it makes us a slut, to not express what we want or we been see as ‘too into sex’ and that makes us dumb or a bimbo.
So we have all these messages that have taught us to disconnect, not only from our desires, but from vocalizing and sharing our desires with someone.
Asking for what you want is already a struggle in itself for most people.
Then add the complicated, emotionally charged landscape of sex, and asking for sex can feel especially vulnerable
So I want to acknowledge that this can be hard and scary, but it doesn't have to be as awkward or as sheepish as you may have felt so far, right?
If you're not happy with something in your sex life, you can change it.
5 Steps to Initiating With Confidence
So chances are the volume of your self trust has just been turned down by those past experiences, by the socialization of culture.
So you just need to figure out how to turn the dial up on that self trust so you can hear it, tune into it, and then express it.
I call this the body trust process. You trust that your desires are inherently pure and not predatory. You have that trust that you are lovable and desirable apart from your partner's reaction to your initiation. And that you have the ability to handle quote unquote rejection and not let it affect your self worth.
And you trust that you have the skills to apologize or repair if your initiation is not received as you had hoped or if you misread something. You trust yourself to handle all of the possible outcomes and get to the other side of the initiation intact, no matter what happened.
Your goal with initiation should be to clearly express your desire without expectation, without pressure, without a sense of entitlement to your partner or their body.
This is what I help my clients do with my Intimacy Foundations Framework.
I’ll break down the exact steps for you.
Connect to your body. This allows you to feel more present and relaxed about initiation instead of wondering in your head what's going to happen, how are they feeling, oh I saw their eye twitch, are they Are they hating this right now? We can get stuck in the mental loop.
Being present with the body is a way to combat that and really be in the moment and read the energy with your partner.
2. Rewire stress responses. Past rejections or past negative experiences around desire and initiation cause a stress response in the nervous system. And sometimes, the body gets stuck in the stress response, like a skipping record. When you help your body complete the stress responses, you’ll be able to still feel desirable when your partner says no. And that no doesn't make you want to crawl in a hole and die.
3. Replace sex negative beliefs. Beliefs about your desire being predatory, wrong, gross, objectifying that got passed down from religion and/or culture are misogynist. We toss those out and replace them with empowering ideas of pleasure.
4. Discover your turn ons. Outside of the ‘shoulds’ — what you should want, what you're supposed to want- you get comfortable with your desires and drop the performing and shame. This makes initiation even easier because it fosters a deep confidence that you and your desires are acceptable and right and not weird.
Initiating sex in lesbian relationships can be both nerve wracking and a playful, rewarding experience when approached with intention and self trust.
If you want to learn how to initiate intimacy with confidence, book your connection call today!
