Let's Talk About Sex (So We Can Enjoy It)

Communicating about and during sex is imperative if you don’t want to get hurt (or get an STD), but it’s also directly (and unsurprisingly) linked to sexual satisfaction, according to new research/something I’m pretty sure Miranda once experienced on Sex and the City.

Study researcher Elizabeth Babin, an expert on health communication at Cleveland State University in Ohio, questioned over 200 people on topics such as how they talked (and moaned) to each other during sex, how confident they were in their sexual prowess, and how anxious it made them feel to talk about doing it. She found that apprehensive people were less likely to have positive sexual experiences and that chillness and self-confidence were associated with more communication during sex, which was, in turn, associated with more sexual satisfaction.

Anxiety “might be kind of taking [anxious people] out of the moment and therefore reducing the overall satisfaction they experience during their encounters,” Babin told LiveScience. Sexual communication “is a skill,” she added. “And we’re not all well-trained in that skill.”

Although writing about the correlation between sex and communication makes me feel a little like Carrie in a more obvious SATC plot (“I couldn’t help but wonder…were we all talk and no action?”), openly discussing your sexual wants and needs is, of course, more easily said than done. But there’s good news for shy people: nonverbal communication was more closely linked to satisfaction than verbal communication.

“It could be perceived as being less threatening, so it might be easier to moan or to move in a certain way to communicate that I’m enjoying the sexual encounter than to say, ‘Hey, this feels really good, I like that,'” Babin said. “That might seem too direct for some people.”

Hey, as long as you get your point across — treat me right/do me the right way/wear a condom/etc. — whatever works.