The best orgasm of my life happened a few months ago. My husband and I were in a hotel room with a lovely city view. Late morning sunlight filled the room. I had already had several strong orgasms. But then . . . wow. It was the kind of orgasm that made me smile for days. I wanted to tell everyone I saw about this amazing orgasm. I wanted to review it with my husband over and over again. I wanted to announce it on Facebook and Twitter.
It was the orgasm against which all future orgasms will be measured. And I very nearly missed it.
How did this happen? Is my husband that good of a lover? (Yes, but that isn’t why.) Am I one of those women who can orgasm at the drop of a hat? (Sadly, no.) Were we in a position or engaged in an activity we had perfected over a period of years? (No. In fact, it was only the third time we had engaged in this particular activity.)
It was all because I stepped outside my comfort zone. If I hadn’t been willing to step outside my comfort zone to try a new sexual activity with my husband—and to keep trying it until I got more comfortable with it, I would have missed out on the best orgasm of my life. What a shame that would have been.
The Comfort Zone
A comfort zone is a mental state of being where we feel secure, comfortable, and in control. We act in a rhythm that is predictable and routine in order to reduce stress, anxiety, and feelings of risk. If something doesn’t fit within our preferred arrangement of life, it is outside our comfort zone. Stepping outside the comfort zone contains some risk and anxiety, so it is natural to want to stay inside the zone. Humans need routine and a sense of what to expect.
There is nothing wrong with having a routine that works, even in the marriage bed. It’s good to have a comfort zone. After all, there are times you need sex to provide you with comfort. No matter what new things we try, we have an old stand-by that is perfect for when we just need to reconnect in a basic way. The problem isn’t having a comfort zone; it is staying inside that comfort zone all the time that limits us.
So what’s the big deal?
Much of the literature I’ve seen about the comfort zone relates to business and productivity, including pieces from Forbes and Wall Street Journal and TIME. While we don’t typically think of our marriages in terms of productivity, shouldn’t we be striving for growth and success in our marriages?
Staying in your sexual comfort zone can affect your sex life—and your marriage.
- When you take few risks, you have few chances for growth.
- The longer you stay in your comfort zone, the harder it is to leave when it becomes necessary. Practice builds ability and confidence, after all.
- Sure, the same three-step sexual activity works, but it’s kind of boring to do time after time after time. The only difference between a rut and a grave is dimension.
- Boredom leads to avoidance leads to excuses—and these things can damage a marital relationship.
- Our greatest productivity and performance come when we have just a bit of anxiety from being outside our comfort zone. If you want the greatest sex life possible, you’re going to have to get brave and try new things sometimes.
- Sharing new adventures with your spouse builds intimacy.
Are you stuck?
Are you stuck in your sexual comfort zone? Do you find yourself responding to your husband’s suggestions for increased frequency or new positions or activities with any of the following? Do you dismiss your own desires and interests sometimes, never even bothering to mention them to your husband?
- Nope. I’m just not interested. I just wouldn’t be comfortable with that.
- I tried it once and didn’t like it. There’s nothing wrong with what we do now.
- He only wants it because he saw it in porn.
- I probably wouldn’t be any good at it.
- It looks too complicated.
For the next few Fridays, I’ll be writing about our sexual comfort zones. How do we get unstuck? And what happens when take a step outside? I took a step outside my sexual comfort zone as a way of being generous to my husband—and I had the best orgasm of my life. Stepping outside the comfort zone at my husband’s request turned out to be just as much of a blessing to me. And what we were doing is something I now request for my own sake. If I had stayed inside my comfort zone, I wouldn’t be having some of my best sexual experiences now.
I am also going to share some stories from women who have been blessed by the choice to go outside their comfort zones. Ladies, if you have a story to share, I would love to include it! It can be a brand new activity, a new position, a new lighting source, your first time being completely uninhibited in the bedroom, undressing in front of your husband for the first time in years, or using sexy lighting for the first time. It can be something that is outside the norm a bit or something that you think many women wouldn’t even think of as a change. Big or small steps, if you found courage to do something outside your sexual comfort zone, I would love to be able to let other women know how you were blessed.
If you’re willing to share your story of stepping outside your comfort zone, email me your stories at forgivenwife@gmail.com. (Please let me know what name or pseudonym you’d like me to use if I include your story.)
I ran across a definition of “comfort zone” that made me chuckle:
The temperature range . . . at which the naked human body is able to maintain a heat balance without shivering or sweating.
Sex is supposed to alter your heat balance. Amazing sex should leave you shivering and shaking. If you haven’t had much sex that involves your naked body shivering or sweating, you are definitely missing out. It’s about time you decided to step outside your comfort zone. And who knows? Maybe the best orgasm of your life is out there waiting for you.
Are you ready to take a step?
Other Posts in the Comfort Zone Series:
- The Macaroni and Cheese Lesson: Stepping Your Toes Outside Your Comfort Zone
- The Hokey Pokey: Throwing Your Whole Self Out of Your Comfort Zone
- Let There Be Light: Out of the Zone
- Are You Uncomfortable?
- Two Giant Steps Forward : Out of the Zone
Image credit | Engin_Akyurt at pixabay.com
I've moved! While you can peruse the archives here, I am no longer posting at The Forgiven Wife.
Please join me at Honeycomb & Spice.
Ladies, if you're interested in joining me for a study of Juli Slattery's new book God, Sex, and Your Marriage, time is running out! Our study begins with introductions on February 26, 2023, but the study will be open to join until March 5.
Great thoughts! Much of the best in life lies outside our current comfort zone, and sex is no different. Looking forward to your thoughts on this.
We’ve tried four new sexual things this year.Two are keepers that we’ve done a couple more times, one has become a regular feature of our marriage bed, and the other we keep forgetting to try again. Stepping outside the comfort zone is part of the fun of sex, isn’t it?
You had me at “The best orgasm”. You certainly know how to capture your reader’s attention.
Experiencing growth in your marriage and especially in your emotional and sexual connection is such a wonderful gift. I know you have written about stepping outside your comfort zone before. I think it was in a blog titled What Do You Want.
You said “When I asked my husband, “What do you want?” I didn’t know what I was going to hear. In asking the question, I wasn’t promising anything specific but I was making a general offer and expressing a willingness to try to take a step outside my comfort zone.”
In your new story, we see the rewards for stepping outside your comfort zone. I was wondering, can you share some thoughts on how a husband (or wife) can foster the emotional confidence and trust required for their spouse to be willing to step outside their comfort zone? You make it sound so easy.
By the way, I can’t wait for the “How To” version of this story…
Yes, I’ve written about it before in “What Do You Want?” That was to encourage women to think about how their husbands and marriages would benefit from this step. I’ve been hinting at it in a few other posts as well.
Where I’m headed for the next few weeks is encouraging women to consider the benefits to themselves when they take this step outside the comfort zone. What can they do within themselves to get comfortable and willing to be brave and then embrace their own pleasure? It isn’t easy to do, but it’s possible when we decide to do it. One of the things that encouraged me to keep trying in our sexual intimacy was reading stories from people who clearly enjoyed sex within their marriages. The way they described it, it sounded wonderful and fun. Even when I didn’t know how to get there, I knew I wanted what they had. It was the carrot that kept me stretching my neck.
And yeah, I wrote the first sentence that way on purpose. 😉
Thank you SO much for posting this! I’ve been locked in side the ‘normal’ every day routine that we do when we have sex and it’s making me desire it less bc I’m just bored. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I’m looking forward to the next article!
When we refer to the same old/same old, we never mean it as a good thing, do we? Recognizing your boredom makes it lots easier to take that first brave step.
Nailed it!
(PS – I’m bursting to know what activity it was…)
Everyone wants to know–but I’m not posting it! It shall remain a mystery–and what it was is beside the point (except to Big Guy and me, of course).
What an excellent post. I clicked over from a hyperlink on the Monogabliss post (Comfort Zone) today were she mentioned her experience and article about stepping out. I have been reading some of Shere HIte’s writings lately, specifically “The Shere Hite Reader” 2006. She may be derided as a feminist activist by some, but she is very insightful about sexuality and was way ahead of her time. And before I forget, I DO NOT think all feminism is bad, like all political and social movements there is both wheat and chaff. It’s kind of like right-wing conservative Christianity where the moral basis is sound but the teaching is occasionally skewed to serve the purpose of a pet political or social agenda. Don’t anyone come back at me for that last sentence. I am a conservative, evangelical Christian and should be allowed to throw rocks at the extreme edges of my religious world. Those who disagree can take comfort in believing I will burn in Hell for my position, though as Christians that thought and result should be anathema to them. It’s our duty to lead sinners to Christ in hope this is a fate that befalls no one, not wish it upon them.
Stepping outside the sexual comfort zone goes beyond the discomfort of something untried, uncertain and “pornographic”, whatever that is supposed to mean when applied to God’s gift of sexual pleasure. Sex has been socialized to perceived in most instances as what men do TO and WITH women and what women do TO or FOR men. “With” and “for”: The difference between the two is far from subtle. At its most extreme, sex is regarded as a male right and a female duty. I do it WITH you because you are a lusted for vessel necessary to fulfill my pleasure and you do it FOR me because that is the duty of a wife. When women regard sex as primarily what they do FOR or TO men, they deny themselves their right to potential pleasure within the experience. When men regard it as their right as something to do WITH or to a female vessel to achieve their own end, they deny themselves the experience of being the initiator and partner in a woman’s pleasure.
To step outside that comfort zone requires the woman to search out, develop, acknowledge and accept her God given sexual nature and the preferences that make up her sexuality. She has to own her sensual longings that she may be denying because she misinterprets them as sinful and judges them as somehow pornographic and inappropriate for a “good and respectful” woman to be entertaining let alone doing.
For a husband to step outside his comfort zone requires him to admit that he may have to be vulnerable and rely on another to have his needs met. He may have to expose his soft underbelly in making a request of his wife or entertaining one of hers he finds intriguing. As men, this is not what we are about. Whatever it is, we can handle it. In so doing, we deny God’s place in our life and get out of sync with submission. We can hardly expect our wives to be submissive when we are not. How can we expect them to consider our requests when we ignore the dictates of the God the two of us share and who directs our submission? We are to honor our wives and treat them with respect. When a wife asks something of us that is outside of our comfort zone, we husbands need to respectfully consider that request. There is a very different dynamic within biblical submission between husband and wife, but it is scripturally undeniable that our bodies are not only our own but our spouse’s also.
You’re a great writer and I look forward to future visits and going through the archives. It looks like you really hit the ground running in April with 61 posts. Was that when you first began blogging, or do you have others?
Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful comments. For some men, simply understanding and dealing with the realities of female sexual response can be a step outside their comfort zone. My husband, for instance, wants to know what will “work”–and accepting that this may change from day to day was a step outside his comfort zone.
Yes, I really pumped out a lot of writing in April. I had a reason for doing so (I mention this in “Three Months In,” I think). Many of those posts had already been drafted out to a certain extent in posts I’d made in an online marriage discussion board–so I didn’t create it all from scratch. I’ve had another blog for several years that I use for other purposes, read by people who know me in real life, although I hadn’t written much in it for a couple years.
I am doing much the same with many of my comments. Sometimes I begin in Word for advantage of spell and grammar check and other times as the comment grows I copy and paste it into word. I am building a folder of potential blog posts that way.
A big part of the problem for men when dealing with female sexual response is we view sexual response from a male paradigm. In many ways, we want our women to respond as we do to sex: think about it more often, want it when you think about it and do something about it when you think about it; especially that last one, We like to think you are somehow “defective” and with a little retooling we can fix you. I know. How male, but true.
We say we want to understand you when what we really want was so well expressed by Sir Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Just want sex as much as we do and do it like we want it done and everything will be okay. Simple enough?
Since that isn’t going to be happening anytime soon, we have to go with Plan B. Try to understand the women in our lives. Of course, part of the reason we will buy into this plan is if we understand you better, we can better figure out how to help fix you. Are we back here again already? There is a bit of a conundrum involved here in reality. Both of us need fixing and, back to Sir Rex Harrison again but this time as Dr. Dolittle in the movie of the same name, we are like the pushmi-/pullyu. We want to go in two directions at the same time and are never content because of the progress we aren’t making.
In truth, since we are talking primarily about women’s comfort zones, women do need some “fixing,” but it will not be accomplished solely by efforts external to them. They first need to acknowledge their own sexuality and then free themselves from the socially and sometimes self-imposed sexual slavery they exist under. I am not saying men don’t need some “fixing,” but we are talking about women at the moment. With that, I’ll stop hijacking your blog since much of what I would now say is part of an above post on Aug. 21 10:51PM.
Any way to put all your “comfort zones” posts together in a category? Maybe have them bunched together on the right side of your page like “Recent Posts” and “Top Posts”. I’d like to share them with someone not too “blog savvy”. Thanks for everything you’re doing. Be blessed.
I’ve been thinking about doing that anyway. I’ll set one up later today and will let you know.
I have a new category set up: http://forgivenwife.com/category/step-outside-your-comfort-zone/.
You can click on the Categories dropdown box on the right side of the screen below my eyes.
Thank you for the series on stepping out of one’s comfort zone. You have (once again LOL) changed the way I see things on this issue. I think my husband’s about to get a whole lot happier!! LOL
Thanks for reading and for having an open mind. I think maybe you’re about to get a whole lot happier as well. 🙂