The Benefits of Debriefing After Sex
The day after my first sexual experience with my current partner was a bit weird for me, because he asked me questions I had never been asked before, “how was that for you?” “what worked? what didn’t? what could I have done different?” huh? And I am embarrassed to admit, that my immediate reaction to this was irritation and annoyance at the insecurity in my new lover.
Thank goodness for his perseverance because I would soon learn that these questions had nothing to do with insecurity. It was rather a need to continue to improve his skills, so that he could continue to improve the sexual interaction between us and keep improving the experience for me. Although I didn’t have a name for this at the time, it became a regular conversation that we would have.
When we entered the BDSM lifestyle, we became exposed to “debriefing” after a play, where a few days later you discuss the play; what worked, what didn’t, with a view to constant learning and improvement.
After 16 years together we still debrief at least once a week, we have this little ritual, we run a big bath (we have a bathroom with a very big jet bath in it) we bath together and this is where we have most of our deep, intense conversations – I think we have almost created this safe place for difficult discussions, and these discussions always include the sex or plays of the week gone by, what we enjoyed, what worked, what didn’t and maybe a little about what we would like to try, like to experience. I do believe that is why after 16 years we still love sex with each other and still look forward to it, whereas within a few years in my previous long-term relationship I was already finding excuses for not having sex.
Full disclosure: the BDSM aspect certainly helps as I do not like non kink sex, also something that has been discussed on many an occasion in that bath, nor does this mean that we haven’t had bad patches and times when our sexual desires have not been aligned.
I advise everyone, kink or not, to learn the skill of debriefing sexual encounters, without judgement and accusation. If you can do this, you open your sexual world to so much more and it helps in addressing those bad patches and misaligned times.
