Q: “I don’t have a partner. How can I have a great sex life alone?”

I’m going to start by talking about masturbation and the different types of masturbation that I personally like to differentiate them as. I have the quick and dirty, which is just when you’re feeling horny, you can wanna rub one out real quick just to get that sexual frustration out. I equate this as a very quick little one night stand or a quickie with your partner. It can be intimate, but intimacy isn’t necessarily the focus. The focus is that release of sexual energy. Then I have what I like to call mindful masturbation. So mindful masturbation is when you’re setting intention about what you’re going to be doing when you’re negotiating with yourself. I want to use these toys; I want to look at this material; I want to stimulate myself this way. And you’re going into a lot of pleasure focuses, and so it can be very easy and a little addicting as well to just continue the pleasure focuses and maybe you need to take a break and have some hydration and have some. Then finally, somatic masturbation. You’re probably gonna be interested in this if you are someone who has a mind body disconnect. If you’re looking for ways to diversify and expand your masturbation styles, and if you’re unsure about how to find out what it is that you actually like. It really helped me reconnect with myself. The focus wasn’t sexual release. The focus was relearning what it felt like to touch myself and learning about what it felt like to receive that touch. So both giving and receiving that touch. This was difficult for me. I personally have a history of eating disorders. Had a very severe disconnection from my intellectual self and my body self, and it was so healing to go through a practice, maybe like once a week for a couple of months of just touching my arms and seeing what it felt like as I touched my arms, seeing how my fingertips felt warmer in specific areas, felt colder, and then just moving throughout my body and receiving and really keying in to those sensations. The focus is just a curiosity of the self, the ways that you wanna touch yourself and it can really empower the aspects of “this is what I want and this is how I want you to do this.”