Ten Things To Improve Your Sexuality

Found this niftly little article, on Scarleteen, a sex ed site for teenagers.

Excerpt:

Choose yourself as your first partner
We hear a whole lot about who should be our first partner. Most of the time, we’re told it should be someone we love and who loves us back, someone committed to us long-term, perhaps even someone we plan to spend the rest of our lives with. I agree completely, because you , all by yourself, have all of those qualities, more than any other person ever can.

It’s not abstinence propaganda to say that no one is ever going to know your body like you are, and that no one else is ever going to be able to GET to know your body well unless you do to begin with. Really claiming and recognizing yourself as your first and foremost sex partner is a powerful thing. It equips you with tools you’ll need for a healthy sexuality and balanced relationships for the rest of your life: the ability to determine when it’s the right time for you to have solo sex (like when you’re just plain horny) and when it’s right to take a partner (like when you’re wanting deeper intimacy, or able to account for another person’s feelings and desires). Getting to know your own body and sexual identity through self-evaluation, through masturbation, enables you to find out what you like and dislike physically, to see and feel what your genitals and the rest of your body are like in a healthy state, to discover how your individual sexual response works, explore your orientation and gender identity, and to gauge your sexual expectations realistically.

Flick the switch in your head that says masturbation or self-love is only something we do when we don’t have a partner available. Even when you have a partner in your life, you’ll discover that there are things you’ll do, and responses you’ll have, only when you’re your own lover. Treat your time alone as special time, the same way you’d rev yourself up for a date with someone else. Sounds hokey, but the truth is that some of the best sex you’ll ever have is sex with yourself, and when you do have a partner, sex with them will be all the better for that.

All too often, young men and women — more often young women — rush into sexual partnership simply because they think a partner can give them something on a sheerly physical sexual level that they can’t give themselves because they haven’t become their own first sex partner. And many times, that results in hurt feelings, overly high expectations, and careless treatment of sexual partners, especially when a person just isn’t ready for all that sexual partnership requires. All too often, “hormones” are said to be why a teen feels the drive to partner with someone else, but the truth is, your “hormones” and your physical body do NOT know the difference between your fingers and someone else’s. Your mind and your heart might, but your clitoris or penis do not. Spending dedicated time being your own lover first helps you be able to know the difference.

And hey: masturbation is the safest sex there is!

Read The Whole Article: 10 of the Best Things You Can Do for Your Sexual Self (at any age)

We’ve come a long way….