Shower Sex Is Canceled. Go Take a Sex Bath

Shower sex is but an adolescent fantasy. Adults take sex baths.

At some point in our sex-having lives, we must all come to the inevitable, however disappointing, realization that shower sex sucks. Many of us reach this realization pretty early on, because the disillusionment typically sets in the first time we ever attempt the awkward dance of having sex with someone under a cascade of falling water in a tiny enclosure that was in no way designed to house that activity. Like road head or hot tub sex, shower sex is the kind of ill-advised sex act you do once to check it off the bucket list — probably in the shared bathroom of your college dorm when your high school girlfriend comes to visit you sometime in the first few weeks of freshman year before you inevitably break up — then never try again.

But have you tried taking a sex bath?

The sex bath is shower sex plus time and sexual wisdom — shower sex’s mature, sophisticated older cousin. If shower sex happens between sexually inexperienced adolescents in college dorms, sex baths take place between adults in fancy hotel rooms, or at least in a home or apartment that one of you shares with few enough roommates — zero, to be exact — that the tub feels sexy instead of gross.

Speaking of the tub being gross, I understand my praise of the sex bath will not go over well with a certain army of bath haters who often characterize the act of bathing as “just sitting in a tub of your own filth,” and would likely argue that the only thing more disgusting than sitting in a tub of your own filth is sitting in a tub of your own filth intermingling with someone else’s filth. Guess what? Sex is all about getting your filth in someone else’s filth. Also, performatively hating baths because it’s “like sitting in your own filth” is the hygiene version of hating the word “moist.” It’s a boring, tired take and we all know you don’t actually think it’s that gross. The sex bath isn’t for those people.

It’s important to note that a sex bath needn’t involve actual sexual intercourse. In fact, it shouldn’t, because as we’ve established, having actual sex in water is a scam. The sex bath, rather, is the simple, unadulterated act of taking a bath with a sex partner, and it’s delightful.

“Taking a bath together can thoroughly enhance sex and intimacy for a couple,” says Zachary Zane, a sex advice columnist and sex expert for Promescent. “The focus isn’t on penetration when you’re having an intimate bath together. It’s really more on feeling your partner.“

Indeed, while shower sex prioritizes often poorly lubricated thrusting, the sex bath reflects a mature evolution from a narrow, adolescent understanding of sex as intercourse exclusively. The sex bath acknowledges that sex isn’t all about putting genitals in orifices. As any mature, sex-having adult knows, sometimes the key to good sex is not sex — or not sex according to rigid, intercourse-centric definitions of the term, anyway. Bath sex is an embrace and acknowledgement of the value and appeal of non-penetrative sexual touch. “It’s a great form of foreplay because there’s a lot of making out and touching that can happen in a tub,” says Zane.

“I think it’s a great way to have more drawn-out foreplay,” echoes Tiana North, a polyamorous educator and activist and co-founder of The Sex Worker Survival Guide. A bath leaves room for “a lot of kissing, heavy petting, and fingering,” says North. “Then you can take it to the bedroom once you two are all warmed up and ready to go.”

That said, there’s no reason the sex bath has to be limited to a strictly pre-sex activity. “Baths after sex are a fun way to get clean and stay intimate,” adds North. While showering together after sex in a non-penetrative manner is often presented as a shower-sex upgrade for would-be shower-sex enthusiasts who find themselves disappointed by how much shower sex actually sucks, the sex bath once again reigns supreme when it comes to partnered post-sex hygiene. Why? Because a sex bath eliminates the worst part of showering together: the part where you can’t both fit under the shower head and you have to take turns freezing your asses off while the other person gets to bask in the hot water. In a post-sex sex bath, you both get to be immersed in as much water as you want the whole time like a couple of sexy steamed dumplings in a bowl of hot soup. (I’m aware that this particular visual is probably not helping me win any converts from Team Bath Hate. Again, this isn’t for them.)

North adds that taking a post-sex bath can also function as a form of aftercare. Not only does a bath help relax your muscles after any strain they may have endured under your amorous exertions, but taking a bath together also creates an intimate space for partners to reflect on their recent encounter, offering “the perfect moment to verbally check in about each others’ experiences,” says North.

A sex bath can be enjoyed before sex, after sex — hell, you could even take a sex bath instead of sex. You’re an adult; you can do whatever you want, like drink champagne in the tub, which is yet another thing you can’t do during shower sex. You could even fill the tub up with champagne and take a sex bath in that. Just kidding, don’t do that. I don’t know what would happen for sure, but it will probably involve a lot of infections. The point is, there’s no bad time to take a sex bath. There is, however, a bad time to have shower sex, and it’s all the time. When you’re ready to graduate from the adolescent fantasy of shower sex, the sex bath awaits.

It’s Time for Men to Start Reading More Erotica

Erotic literature offers a more mentally stimulating alternative to porn that just might be more stimulating overall

We tend to assume that men prefer to watch rather than read their porn. This is because we also tend to assume that men are id-driven neanderthals bound to a state of innate, perpetual horniness. Sure, ladies may enjoy their 50 Shades and smutty bodice-rippers, but men have no time for all that scene-setting and character development — they’d rather just get straight to the action.

Like most beliefs rooted in a binary conception of gender, however, this one is categorically untrue. Just as porn is not exclusively for and enjoyed by men, erotic literature is not exclusively for and enjoyed by women. Literary erotica is simply another medium of erotic entertainment that can titilate readers of all genders, and men are no exception.

“Plenty of men like to read fiction, and plenty of men are excited by sex — and there’s a healthy overlap,” says erotica author Max Sebastian. Naturally, the center of that Venn diagram is home to a sprawling library of erotic literature read and enjoyed by male readers.

In fact, according to Rose Caraway, host of the Kiss Me Quick podcast, erotica might be a particularly satisfying form of adult entertainment for men, specifically.

“Erotica is for anyone interested in exploring eroticism. Just like with porn, it’s designed to turn people on, but it does so very differently. I’m not sure than any other literary genre or visual media honestly appreciates male sexuality the way that erotica can,” says Caraway. “In erotica, I believe that men and women get to witness a level of nuance and introspection that porn could never really offer.”

While delving into a work of erotica may involve a deeper level of intellectual energy than browsing Pornhub, the additional mental simulation may result in a more sexually satisfying experience.

“Finding your thrills in erotic literature, rather than in video scenes, might take a little longer, but it means caring more about the characters involved, which brings more meaning to the sexual scenes,” says Sebastian. “Reading erotic literature, rather than watching porn, also stretches your imagination a little more, which can lead to a more fulfilling experience.”

What is erotica for men?

Like most needlessly gendered products — fragrance, furniture, face wash — erotic literature “for men” isn’t really any different than its female-branded counterparts.

“I think we’re getting much better these days about not restricting ourselves to what we’re ‘supposed’ to like,” says Sebastian. “In my experience, erotic literature is rarely written for men, or for women these days, although it might be marketed that way on occasion. Some for women erotic fiction claims to provide women with what they really want to read, but when you delve into those stories, there’s no real difference from any other erotic stories.”

Meanwhile, trying to gender erotica to suit what writers or publishers might assume men want to read has a tendency to strip erortica of the very qualities that might make it a more compelling alternative to porn for men who are looking for more engaging forms of stimulation.

“I have seen erotic fiction specifically marketed at men that makes assumptions that male readers have no attention span and prefer to avoid character development, and those stories just turn out to be boring trash,” says Sebastian.

“I can understand how one would expect that men’s erotica might only contain aggressive characters and taboo sex scenes, but men aren’t exclusively into wildly risky sex, or only the simple mechanics of it; context matters to them too,” says Caraway. “When men in particular are able to freely explore their desires, I’ve learned that what they want in an erotic story oftentimes closely matches what women want: sex and connection. Today, most erotica writers know that while the dynamics of a sex scene are important, those particulars are mostly background stuff. They know that men crave erotic intimacy, just as much women do.”

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The ethics of erotica

One of the biggest issues facing porn watchers of today is the increasingly complicated debate surrounding the ethics of porn consumption. While erotic literature isn’t entirely immune to ethical debates and shortcomings, it is a less complicated space to navigate for one simple reason: the only real people involved in erotic literature are the reader and the writer.

“With erotic literature, you don’t have to worry about how performers or production staff are treated,” says Sebastian. That said, there are still concerns about content and representation in erotica. “As with the rest of culture at the moment, erotica needs to improve its diversity and tackle issues like misogyny and prejudice,” says Sebastian, adding that “the treatment of women in stories featuring domination/submission aspects, or the depiction of race in stories featuring ‘interracial’ relationships” are often subjects of some controversy.

In erotica, as in porn, there are also debates about the acceptability of representing certain niches, kinks or other taboo sexual behaviors, especially those involving non-consent, incest or race. That said, erotic literature may be one of the safest spaces for people to explore their darker, most taboo fantasies.

“There definitely is debate in erotic lit regarding ethics. It’s a tricky space,” says Caraway. “But trying to apply ethics to people’s fantasies is a lot like judging their dreams — it’s simply illogical. We have to be able to separate fiction from reality. Sometimes fantasies come into our brains and we just don’t know why, nor do we have control over it.” Ultimately, according to Caraway, “We are entitled to our fantasies.”

What to read

As with porn, there’s a great big internet full of erotica out there, and much of it is available to read for free.

“It can be easiest to start with websites that offer thousands of free erotic stories, like Literotica or Lush Stories,” says Sebastian. “The quality might be hit or miss, but you might discover what kind of erotic stories you really like before spending money on books or ebooks.” Caraway also recommends checking out Remittance Girl and Monocle.

If you’d rather not risk getting lost down an online erotica rabbit hole, another good way to broaden your erotica horizons is to check out anthologies. “On average, most anthologies contain around 15 to 20 short stories each, which provides a decent variety of characters and sexual situations,” says Caraway, who is also the editor of the anthology For The Men And The Women Who Love Them.

“I’d recommend any short-story collection edited by Violet Blue, Maxim Jakubowski, Alison Tyler or Rachel Kramer Bussel — you’ll find some fantastic writers there,” says Sebastian. “If there’s a story you like particularly, you can seek more from that author.”

Of course, for those who want to start their erotica journey with the classics, there are a few canon staples of the genre, including Pauline Réage’s The Story of O, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus and J. G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash.

Wherever you choose to begin your foray into erotica, enjoying erotic literature is more about the journey than the end goal. “Erotic literature is about the exploration, how the characters are navigating their sexuality, and the intimacy that goes along with it,” says Caraway. “Good erotica delves fully into our human sexuality — it revels in this.”

BDSM and kink are terms that are often used interchangeably. While I’m not against this equivalence per se, I do find it helpful to explain the technical differences so that they’re easier to understand. “Kink” is a large umbrella term encompassing all sex acts that fall outside of “vanilla” sex. Vanilla sex is — and again, this definition is fluid — heterosexual P-in-the-V sex, between a cis man and a cis woman.

Everything else? That’s kink. By this definition of the term, oral sex, anal sex, hand sex etc. can all be considered kinky. How about that? Not so scary when you think about it this way, eh?

You might be a little kinky without even realizing it. What defines something as kink depends entirely on how you feel about that particular act. Oral sex? Might be kinky, might not. Spanking? Might be kinky, might not. Dripping hot wax on someone? Might be kinky, might not.

People are as diverse in their sexual preferences as they are in their taste in cuisine, and it’s all 100 percent normal as long as everyone is a consenting adult. “Normality is a societal concept. Those of us in society have decided as a group what is normal and not normal. Many of us follow the herd and just go with the flow. Others decide for themselves what is their normal, and for some that includes fetishes within BDSM,” says Taylor Sparks, an erotic educator and founder of Organic Loven.

BDSM is a subset of kink. It stands for Bondage, Dominance, Submission and Sadomasochism. It’s all about power dynamics, with the submissive partner willingly giving power over to the dominant. This can involve punishment, sensation play, bondage, and much more. When practiced with care and caution, by people who know what they’re doing, it is very hot.

The reason more people aren’t hip to BDSM is quite simple: sexual shame. Our sex negative culture is very afraid of anyone who chooses to live sexually out loud, copulating outside the lines of “normal sex.” It’s time to shrug off these puritanical shackles and embrace sexual expression of all kinds so we can all have more pleasure. Ditching these common misconceptions about BDSM is a good place to start.

1. BDSM is all about pain

BDSM can have a pain component to it, but that doesn’t mean it has to involve pain in order to be considered BDSM. While there are plenty of pain sluts in the community, BDSM is not limited to receiving and inflicting pain. Rather, BDSM is about the power exchange between a dom and sub. The experience is entirely co-created by the people involved. The play can involve rope tying (like Shibari), restraints, tickling, sensory play (using blindfolds or headphones to enhance your other senses) and many other acts that don’t involve pain.

“BDSM play creates a fantasy world, context, or roles to explore different relationship dynamics in a playful way, beyond just the physical manifestations of pleasure or pain. It’s more about the dynamics between partners than the actual implements and accessories,” says Lorrae Bradbury, a sex coach and founder of the sex-positive site, Slutty Girl Problems.

2. BDSM goes against consent culture

BDSM play cannot be engaged in ethically without consent from all parties involved. When you think of BDSM scenes in porn, (which are problematic on many levels, but that is an exploration for another day) you probably picture a dom (most likely a man), beating, spanking or otherwise “punishing” a sub (most likely a woman). What isn’t shown is the crucial boundary negotiation that the dom and sub would have engaged in if this were an IRL scene. While it may look like the dom is harming the sub, that is in no way the case. Each detail of what will and won’t happen has been ironed out.

“The foundation for a healthy kink dynamic is that both parties want each other to succeed and win. Even if the sub enjoys being bratty or provoking the dom, she ultimately still desires for her dom to succeed in being dominant — she wants him to find the strength to continue in his role,” explains Kenneth Play, an international educator and creator of the Sex Hacker Pro Series. “Even if the dom is pushing the sub to her limits, he still wants her to find the strength to remain in the submissive role.”

Honestly, when it comes to consent, vanilla folks could learn a lot from the BDSM community. Theirs is one built on a foundation of communication, trust, and boundaries.

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3. BDSM is not accessible to “normal” people

This is one of the main things that keeps people in the dark about BDSM: the idea that it’s only for super kinky people who live in 24/7 dom/sub relationships and go to seedy dungeons every single day to be tied to a St. Andrew’s cross and whipped within an inch of their lives. This is simply not how it works. Do some people who practice BDSM do this? Sure, probably, but this isn’t true of most people in the community.

BDSM is accessible to everyone, no matter who you are. In fact, recent research has shown that it’s more common to have a kink than it is to have no kinks at all. This doesn’t mean you necessarily love spanking, breath play, or tying someone up with a rope, but think about the things you like sexually: does something specific stand out as a preference? Maybe you like it when your partner takes charge, or vice-versa. Perhaps you enjoy when your partner surprises you with a new sex move or uses a sex toy on you. This can all be considered kinky, if that’s how you feel about it. Kink and BDSM don’t fit in a tiny box — they are a vast ocean of sexual experiences.

4. BDSM is misogynistic

This is completely untrue. In fact, in many dom/sub dynamics, women are the doms. Being a female dom (or domme, dominatrix etc.) is extremely empowering and allows us to flip the script on traditional gender norms. It puts women in control of their subs (whether male, female, or gender queer), giving them the reins over what our cultural script has determined to be “masculine” behaviors. This might include, but is not limited to, giving orders, being worshipped, degrading someone or having control over their partner’s bank accounts (in the case of financial Dominatrices).

Moreover, even when women are in the submissive role, there is still power in submission. “Although BDSM plays with power exchange, power exchange can run in any direction regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Even when the submissive partner happens to be female identifying, boundaries and limits and negotiated in advance,” explains Bradbury.

5. BDSM is unsafe

“Healthy BDSM cultivates a safe environment to explore taboos within a consensual framework and can help us unwrite or heal past trauma or societal conditioning, taking typically taboo topics and transforming them into fantasy role play,” says Bradbury. BDSM is not about causing harm; it’s about a power exchange that allows for exploration and healing. That said, just because you enjoy BDSM does not mean you were drawn to it because of past abuse. For people with a traumatic past, BDSM can be a conduit for healing, but research has shown that this is not absolute and, in fact, the majority of kinksters don’t have significant trauma in their past.

With these misconceptions cleared up, it’s important to note that BDSM should only be practiced by those who know what they’re doing. If you’re interested in trying BDSM play, don’t jump right in, tying your partner’s legs akimbo and stuffing a ball gag into their mouth. This play needs to be thoroughly negotiated, with each partner expressing their desires and boundaries.

Keep in mind this list only scratches the surface of our collective misunderstanding of “fringe” sexual practices. While correcting these misconceptions is foundational to understanding BDSM, there is still a lot to learn. Start by taking a few workshops (Dame and O.School have great options) and listening to kink-focused podcasts (Why Are People Into That, Loving BDSM) before trying it yourself.

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