We’ve reached the final entry in our current blog series “The 5 Senses of Sex”, which explores the ways that intentionally focusing on each of our senses can deepen intimacy, passion, and sensuality and heighten sexual pleasure. Hopefully, you’ve gotten a lot of great ideas for using your senses to experience your lover in new and exciting ways! Check out our entries for sightsmell, hearing, and touch if you missed them the first time around.

It’s fitting that we’re ending this particular blog series with the sense of taste, because in a way taste actually brings together all of the senses for an experience that’s both universal and intricately unique. Taste preferences are strong and personal for most of us, yet at the same time they’re the most fluid, changing from day to day and even hour to hour based on countless tiny changes in ourselves and the world around us.

Taste feels intimate, in much the same way that smell does; even though all sensory input has to be brought inside our bodies to be processed, we need to bring things into our personal space and put them in our mouths to truly use that sense. Its intimacy is like sexual intimacy, something experienced full-body and yet inextricably linked to oral connection, shaped by circumstances and memory and emotion. Is it any wonder that we talk about our lovers like they’re a feast or a treat—calling them “delicious” or “yummy”, referring to them as our sweeties, comparing them to wine or chocolate or coffee?

Consciously exploring taste during sex is a way to literally savor your lover, but if the thought makes you immediately self-conscious, you’re far from alone! It’s incredibly common for people to worry that their genitals will taste bad to their sex partners and to go to all kinds of lengths—dietary changes, excessive washing, special products—to try to taste better. The good news is, as long as you’re practicing basic good hygiene and you don’t have a bacterial infection, you probably taste a lot more neutral than you imagine, and your lover(s) probably like the uniqueness of your flavor. And if you still feel squeamish, keep reading—there are still plenty of ways to use taste to enhance sex that don’t depend on going down south.

How taste works…it’s more complex than you think

First of all, we have to be clear about what we’re talking about when discussing taste. For one thing, “taste” and “flavor” are not the same thing, even though we often use the words like they are. “Taste” specifically only refers to our ability to perceive something as sweet, sour, salty, bitter, or umami (savory). “Flavor” is sort of like the “color” that emerges when our taste perceptions join up with the smell of the thing we’ve tasted. (Fun fact: the smell part of flavor is actually perceived at the back of our noses and isn’t quite the same thing as the smell we get from inhaling a scent.)

Taste is also not limited to our tongues. We have taste receptors in our throats and intestines, for example, that trigger reactions to bitterness or sweetness. People also don’t always experience taste the same way—the most common example is the way that cilantro tastes delicious and herby to some people, and like soap to others, due to a slight genetic difference.

And as with every other sense, taste is much stronger for some people and very weak for others, and that’s totally normal. So-called “supertasters”—who are thought to have lots more taste buds than others—often have extremely sensitive palates, while others need a lot more sensory input to perceive taste. Taste perceptions are also much stronger in children and tend to mellow as we get older. So if it turns out that exploring taste isn’t doing much for you in the pursuit of sexual pleasure, that’s still normal and okay. You might have another sense that fuels your desire better.

Remember how I said that taste is really a combination of all of our senses? That’s not a metaphor. The pleasure we get from a flavor, the strength of how we perceive a taste and the way we interpret it (as “safe” or “not safe”, for example) is drastically affected by the color, texture, temperature, shape, and sound of the thing being tasted. Even the context in which it’s offered to us, our memories and associations, our emotional state, our current health, and our level of hunger can change taste and flavor in every experience. We’re even affected by the actual pain level of something we taste—like spicy-hot foods, where the “heat” isn’t a taste or flavor but a stimulation of pain receptors.

Get a taste for desire with your lover

There’s a good chance that you already associate taste with sex, on some level—whether it’s the way that an intimate dinner or breakfast in bed seems like such a natural prelude to sex, or the use of flavored condoms or lubes. But taking the time to really focus on it and explore it with intention can make your lovemaking, well, more delicious!

Hot, hot, so hot, sticky and sweet… Either in the leadup to sex, or when you’re getting naked, share something sweet that has a thick liquid texture, like honey, chocolate sauce, sweet cream, or syrup. Swirl your fingertips in it and let your lover lick it off your hand, or drip a little on their body and lick it off. Take your time and really enjoy the sweetness and the sensation of it trickling on your skin. (A word of caution: sugar and vulvas don’t mix well! Stick to flavored lubes that won’t risk triggering an infection.)

Go on a taste-testing date. Speaking of flavored lubes, if you’re planning to try one and haven’t used them before, make sure you taste them outside the bedroom first! Your best bet is to find a local adult shop that sells a good range of high-quality lubes. Make a date with your lover to go there together and sample the testers of any flavored lubes you’re considering. Let it be playful and fun to taste them and tell each other what you think (it might also feel daring or thrilling if you haven’t been to a sex shop before), and enjoy the anticipation it creates when you think about how you’re going to use the ones you choose!

Describe them, gourmet-style. You’ve probably seen chefs on cooking competition shows talk about the dishes they’ve just sampled. Take that idea into the bedroom and slowly “unwrap” your lover like the ultimate treat, kissing and licking each area you reveal. Focus on how their skin tastes in different places, and tell them what you’re experiencing—“Your neck is so warm, and just a little salty…I can still taste wine on your lips…” Get downright poetic with it, and it’ll be sexy and romantic. If it feels awkward, don’t be afraid to get over-the-top together and describe each other as if you were wine critics. “Your right wrist has a certain oaky air, a bouquet of earthiness with the memory of smoke…” Either way, it’s a very different perspective for you to experience each other’s bodies and share your feelings about them.

Enjoy the sweetest—or spiciest—kisses. Take turns blindfolding each other. The non-blindfolded partner should have different foods or drinks close by, and take their time slowly savoring a bite or sip of each of them. Then, deeply and lingeringly kiss your partner, allowing them to share the flavor as it blends with the natural taste of each of your mouths. You can simply enjoy the surprise of a sweet chocolate-flavored kiss followed by a hot cinnamon one, or you can make a sexy guessing game out of it.

Send them exploring. If you’re having a little trouble verbalizing where you like to be kissed or licked, you can let your lover discover those spots by putting a little flavored lube, honey dust, or some other body-safe flavored substance on them and letting them search your skin with their mouths.

Describe each other, oral sex edition. If you’re already comfortable with your lover going down on you or performing analingus, asking them to describe what you taste like while they’re doing it can bring a whole new level of heat. If you’re struggling with self-consciousness about it, hearing the lust in your lover’s voice when they talk about your natural flavor and how much they enjoy it can be the thing that finally lets you start to relax and feel great about it! Best part: because there are so many little factors, from what we recently ate to where our hormones are at, that affect the taste of our genitals, this is something you can do as often as you like and it won’t be the same thing each time.

The ultimate sexy massage. Relieve the stress of a busy week, and get in the mood for love at the same time, with an edible massage oil candle. These are usually made with soy, hemp, nut, or coconut oils and a little flavoring, and contained in a tin. They burn at a low temperature so that dripping the melted oil onto your skin feels soothing and seductive, and the oil can be either absorbed into your skin or licked off. It’s a true multi-sensory pleasure!

Taste yourself on them. This may feel like a huge step for anyone still getting comfortable with having a lover taste them at all, but many people are really turned on by tasting themselves on their partner’s mouth, fingers, genitals, or strap-ons. If you’ve been curious or insecure about what you taste like, this is an intimate and sexy way to find out.

 

We’ve reached the end of our journey through the senses—what did you think? We hope you’ve been inspired to dedicate some time to discovering and appreciating your partner(s) as lovers in some new and unexpected ways. Perhaps you even had the chance to find out that one or more of your senses are more responsive than you realized!  Drop us a comment if you have any questions or thoughts about this series.

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