For more information about butt plugs and other anal sex toys, see our guide to Butt Plugs & Dildos for Anal Masturbation.

The use of butt plugs among those who regularly practice anal sex is almost ubiquitous, because of the great benefits they offer. Not only are they useful for warming up and relaxing before having sex, they have long term training benefits, feel great, and are just sexy.

You don’t have to just wear them for short periods of time, however! More frequent and longer-term usage of a butt plug can be a great way to advance your anal skills and pairs well with the adoption of the anal only lifestyle.

Frequent Butt Plug Wear Helps to Always Be Ready For Sex

Just as anal masturbation and butt plug wear right before having sex helps to open you up and relax your ass for sex, making the initial penetration easier, wearing a plug more frequently even when not immediately planning on having sex shortly after will help keep you prepared for more spontaneous anal sex. The increase of frequency and duration of anal penetration results in your anal muscles staying warmed up and relaxed in between sessions, and anal sex becomes much easier to do regularly as a result. Additionally, the subtle and often involuntary muscle movements throughout the day as you retain the plug in your ass while moving around helps to not only strengthen your anal muscles, but to also develop more conscious control to be able to relax at will in the future.

Many people have commented on the fact that butt plugs are what made anal sex and the anal only lifestyle possible for them. Struggling at first with the increased frequency of anal is not uncommon when first transitioning to anal only, but wearing even a relatively small butt plug on days between having sex can really help with soreness and continued relaxation so that you don’t lose your training and return to being excessively tight in between having sex.

Staying Plugged During Everyday Life Keeps Your Focus on Anal Pleasure

For someone in the process of going anal only, vaginal or clitoral urges can still linger and try to dominate, and it can be hard to resist giving in to old habits. Wearing a butt plug throughout the day can help with those urges by keeping your attention on your ass and how good it makes you feel and how much you enjoy and prefer being anal only. It reminds you that vaginal and clitoral stimulation aren’t what’s important to you, that only anal is important. It helps you center yourself on your ass and the feeling of being filled anally.

Knowing Your Ass Is Plugged is Your Sexy Little Secret

Wearing a butt plug doesn’t just feel good, it can also make you feel really sexy and slutty, and walking around in public with a plug up your ass is a great way to enjoy your own sexy secret, either on your own or with your partner. Anal only women often comment on how much they enjoy feeling sexy and slutty for their partner, knowing they only take it up the ass and how that makes them special and different from most women. Wearing a butt plug in public has similar effects, and can really turn on and boost the confidence and morale of someone.

For those who are into exhibition, combining a butt plug with a short skirt and a lack of underwear can be an excellent way to show off one’s secret to others, too.

There’s a lot that can be improved in sex-ed in general, especially in the United States, but one improvement in particular would be with a greater focus on and inclusion of anal sex.

The reality is that not only is anal a completely legitimate sexual activity on the same level as vaginal and oral, it is and always will be the preference of many people, and of interest to many to try. Without proper education, a majority of people aren’t going to know how to try it properly, and will end up getting turned off by pain or discomfort because they didn’t do things right, and may never want to try it again. If they had been introduced to it properly, chances are they’d recognize it for the enjoyable and even superior sexual activity that it really is and at the very least make it a regular part of their sex life, if not make it their priority going forward.

Going further than just the normalization and equalization of anal sex alongside vaginal, a future goal would be to focus on anal as the new default, teaching its benefits and advantages over vaginal sex and encouraging its adoption as the primary form of non-reproductive sex practiced. This would have great societal benefits, from the near-perfect natural birth control reducing unplanned pregnancies to almost zero, to the fact that sex would become much more satisfying, intimate and mutually enjoyable for everyone.

Claire: I want to rosebud for my bf for his birthday in a few days (March 16th) but I tried to do it by myself using a dildo and can’t. It’s been 5 months that we are AO, before that we were “1 anal a month” for 4 months. Do you have any tips taking into account my very short time for training?

It takes a combination of strong pelvic floor muscles and relaxed anal muscles. So you need to work on your kegel exercises while also being able to gape. While your anal muscles are relaxed so you can gape and you spread your ass open, you push out with your pelvic floor muscles.

Conceptually, it’s simple, but it can take practice to really be able to do it. Give it a try in the coming week, but know that the time you have may not be enough to get there yet.

Perhaps an alternative birthday gift could be a commitment to going anal only permanently, or a sort of “rosebud IOU” where you work on it together as a goal. Either way, he sounds like a very lucky guy!

For more information on this topic, see our guide to the Benefits of Avoiding Clitoral Stimulation During Anal Sex.

In our vagina- and clit-centric world, the idea of excluding clitoral stimulation in order to enjoy greater pleasure seems counterintuitive, but it’s in fact the reality for most women that focusing on pure anal stimulation will lead to more intense pleasure and orgasms in the long term—or, if you’re lucky, even in the short term.

The reason for this is that while the clitoris is an easy path to orgasm for most women, it’s a much more short-term and less-rewarding sort of orgasm compared one from pure anal. And clitoral stimulation often overpowers and gets in the way of the more subtle and nuanced anal stimulation needed to orgasm that way, preventing that more intense pleasure from forming.

It’s not just that anal pleasure is better, it’s that clitoral and vaginal pleasure can interfere with that better pleasure. Excluding clitoral and vaginal stimulation entirely boosts arousal, allows the focus to be entirely on anal, and amplifies everything.

If you’re just starting out with anal play or anal sex, you may want to include clitoral stimulation to help with relaxation and developing the association between anal penetration and pleasure through the use of existing pleasure sources, but once you’re able to reliably enjoy anal sex, it’s worthwhile to start exploring anal stimulation entirely on its own without the influence of clitoral stimulation, and see what pure anal pleasure can bring you.

If you’re looking to introduce your partner to the pleasures of receptive anal sex for the first time, there’s no better way to start than through rimming. It’s a gentle, non-invasive way for someone to discover just how much pleasure their ass can really give them, teaches them to relax their anal muscles for additional play down the road, and leaves them wanting more.

For some, an exploratory lick during other forms of oral sex can be a way to nonverbally test a partner’s openness to trying it, and if they react in a pleasurable manner, continue with more licking around and across their anus. Some people, however, have concerns about hygiene and may be embarrassed by this approach, so it can be best to bathe together first and talk about it to make sure everyone is on board and feels comfortably clean before trying.

As for the act itself, it’s really quite straightforward. As with cunnilingus, different sorts of tongue play can result in different sensations. You can lick across, around, and gently penetrate the anus itself with your tongue. Try it all, see what your partner enjoys best.

If your partner finds that it tickles or feels slightly uncomfortable in some manner, try combining it with supplemental stimulation—clitoral, nipple, etc.—which can increase the pleasure and make it feel more sexual.

Most people end up finding rimming to be particularly pleasurable, in many cases even more so than cunnilingus, so start making it a regular part of your routine with your partner if you both enjoy it. As you do it more and more, they will most likely want to start exploring other forms of anal stimulation as well, including penetration with fingers and toys, before ultimately moving on to full anal sex.

Dr. Hilda Hutcherson, author of Pleasure: A Women’s Guide to Getting the Sex You Want, Need, and Deserve, loves sex toys, believes the world is much too porno-phobic, and thinks more women should give anal sex a try.

In other words, she’s the gynecologist every guy wants his girlfriend to meet.

Among the many sexually taboo topics, anal sex is probably one of the most well known.

All guys seem to want it, while all girls seem to hate it.

But Dr. Hutcherson believes that more women might actually find out that they like it if they give it a try. Women who don’t enjoy anal sex, she says, are probably doing it wrong.

Continue reading on Your Tango

Many people’s first introduction to the idea of anal sex is through pornography. While there are certainly those who simply choose to try it on their own, either through curiosity and experimentation with their own body, or with a partner, many see it in porn and are drawn to how sexy and appealing and pleasurable it looks there. And it’s true—it is sex, appealing and pleasurable.

But porn is entertainment, not real life, and while it can provide positive exposure to anal and show people its ideal form and how appealing it can be, it doesn’t show the full picture.

Anal Porn Doesn’t Represent Proper Training and Warmup Techniques

Anal sex requires anal training and warmup of the anal muscles beforehand for most people in order to be safely enjoyed without pain, discomfort or injury. This involves gradually stretching and warming up the muscles with smaller toys or objects, working up in size until anal sex itself can be enjoyed.

Most people need to go through an extended period of anal training for days or weeks or potentially even longer, depending on their own personal needs, before they’re ready to even try anal sex. Even once that initial training has been done, foreplay is needed to relax in the moment and prepare for sex, whether through rimming, fingering, butt plug wear before sex, or the use of a smaller dildo.

Porn often doesn’t show these steps. Some porn producers have gotten better about this and include it as part of the start of a scene, with an actor starting the scene wearing a butt plug, removing it, enjoying some rimming and fingering, and then moving on to sex. But there is still a lot where the warmup was done off-camera and they’re ready to go when the scene starts. For entertainment purposes, there’s a lot to be said for doing it this way, it just needs to be understood by anyone looking to try it themselves that they will most likely need more than what is shown on-camera.

Anal Porn Often Doesn’t Show Proper Lubrication Techniques

Anal sex requires supplemental lubrication of some sort, whether artificial lube, vaginal juices, or saliva. Aside from the lucky few who produce an increased amount of anal mucous and can enjoy anal sex without adding any other lube, the anus is not self-lubricating.

Watching porn, however, you often wouldn’t know that. Most anal scenes start with the actors simply sliding into the women’s anuses with no preparation, or with just a little bit of spit. Again, this is generally because they’re already warmed up and pre-lubricated internally, and the addition of saliva is just enough to get inside and access the other lube.

There are certainly those who have anal sex regularly enough that they don’t need much more than saliva and their natural anal mucous to enjoy sex, but that’s an advanced technique that doesn’t apply to most people, and usually should not be attempted by beginners unless they’re confident that it works for them.

Anal Porn Doesn’t Show Hygiene Techniques

A big issue some people have when reconciling their anal experiences with those shown in porn is the cleanliness factor. By the very nature of having sex in the anus and rectum, you’re interacting with a place that also holds and transports feces, so cleanliness is a common concern for many people. In porn, anal sex is always spotless, and this can set a false expectation of anal sex for people whose only experience is through porn.

In reality, porn actors often fast in advance of anal scenes, do enemas, and in the event any mess happens during the shoot, cut, clean up, and edit that out. We’re all humans, we all poop, and inevitably there will be some messiness as a result of anal sex if you do it enough.

If you’re mature about it and understand that sometimes it might just get messy and it’s not a big deal to just clean up if that happens, you can have a sustainable and usually quite clean experience with a healthy, balanced high-fiber diet and supplemental use of a small anal douche/enema bulb.

Pornography is a Visual Medium

Because porn is a visual form of entertainment, many compromises are made to add to the aesthetic nature of the scene, which in practice is often not ideal for actual sex.

Positions are optimized for visual access and being able to see penetration, rather than for pleasure or intimacy. Positions that people may prefer in real life are often ignored in favor of ones that look good on camera even if they aren’t as pleasurable.

Ejaculation is often done externally rather than internally, or even if it is internal, it’s done in a shallow manner so it can be pushed out afterwards for the camera. In real life, deeper ejaculation is usually preferred, both for mutual pleasure and to keep the ejaculate deep inside where it can be absorbed or plugged inside to stay throughout the day.

Anal Porn Actors Are Professionals With a Lot of Experience

Porn often shows quite deep, fast, aggressive anal, as well as advanced techniques such as the use of large toys, double and triple anal penetration, fisting, etc. These are all things that can be safely enjoyed by ordinary people as well, if that’s something that interests you, but you need to start small and slow and work your way up to that gradually, listening to your body along the way.

The majority of people probably won’t be personally interested in those things, and that’s fine too, but even with just a single partner, it’s good to know your limits and recognize that what you see in porn and may want to mimic is being done by experienced professionals, and you may not be able to just dive right in to that same level immediately. Enjoy and be entertained and inspired by porn, but don’t use it as an informative education. Do a lot of additional research. Read our Guide to Anal Sex and the Anal Only Lifestyle. Ask questions. Experiment and explore, on your own and with a partner.

For a lot of people, anal sex is simply more work than vaginal sex. You need anal training when you’re getting started. You need to maintain a healthy diet or use douching or enemas to ensure clean anal sex. You need to follow a regular schedule of anal sex to stay in shape so it remains easy, or frequently wear butt plugs and masturbate with anal dildos. You need to ignore any vaginal cravings you might have and work to shift your arousal and focus to your ass. And if you’re going for a strict interpretation of anal only, you need to do the same with your clit and only stimulate yourself anally.

But though that can seem daunting to someone just starting out, or feel like it could get in the way of the ease, simplicity and spontaneity of sex some might be accustomed to with vaginal, it’s nowhere near as bad as it could seem. In fact, some of the greatest benefits of the anal only lifestyle come in part from the fact that it’s more effort.

Going Anal Only Can Increase Intimacy and Trust With Your Partner

By working together with a trusted partner to prepare for anal sex and go anal only together, you end up growing your mutual trust further. By its nature, anal sex is a physical connection in the most private and intimate part of the body, and if done wrong it can cause a lot of pain, so trust is a huge part of anal. By going anal only, you’re not just doing it on occasion, you’re making it your primary sexual activity and often enjoying it an average of 3 to 5 times a week, if not more often, so the positive effects on trust and intimacy are huge if executed properly. Couples who go anal only very regularly report how it brought them closer together as a couple and helped boost their intimacy and trust, and cite that as a major reason for going anal only.

The Exclusivity of Anal Only Makes You Stand Out From the Crowd

Even though the anal only lifestyle has been growing in popularity over the past decade, it’s still a relatively niche choice that many people haven’t even heard of, let alone tried for themselves. Over time, that will no doubt change, and this blog continues to advocate for everyone out there to try it for themselves, but as it is it remains relatively uncommon relative to the global population.

Because of this, and because of the effort involved to get to the point where you can have anal sex multiple times a week, if not daily, without ever doing vaginal, it sets anal only people aside as something different and special.

Most any girl can have vaginal sex easily, but it still takes a special woman to do anal every time instead, and that can be something to be proud of and something that makes you stand out as extraordinary. It can always be a great way to attract guys, who may prefer anal to vaginal and be interested in a partner who also prefers or exclusively does anal.

Anal Pleasure is, Quite Simply, Better than Vaginal

With the initial investment of anal training and getting to know the ropes of how to warm up for anal and any hygiene practices you need for your full enjoyment of anal, there has to be a worthwhile payoff. And boy, is there ever.

It’s almost universally stated between women who have tried anal more than a few times and know how to do it without pain that the pleasure from anal is far more intense than vaginal, and that anal orgasms are similarly more intense and pleasurable. Once someone goes anal only for a while and is able to get past any initial challenges, it’s extremely common to simply not go back to vaginal, because anal is just that much better.

Buttlyn: Brazilian girl, 20, dysfunctional pussy. Hello again. Did you remember the advices you gave to me the last time I got in touch? I want to thank you ’cause for saving my sex life. Anal only is becoming my main fetish (something I did not even think about is now reality) and my husband is so fucking happy! I still vanilla but now I’m extremely more eager to have anal sex. We bought a 6.5 and a 3.2 inches dildos (both with suction cups), a butterfly vibrator and some soft BDSM stuff. Now I can finally masturbate myself anally using my only functional hand. I also realized that I like to simulate ménages with my dildos, so… it’s a bonus! I’m feeling myself so free, so delighted! I’ll even try to wear my buttplug – I always hated it but now I’m excited enough to make it happen. Let’s see how far I can go. I don’t know why but… having more than one “dick” to fuck my butt makes me feel slutty and jumpy! I just hope that it doesn’t screw up my relationship.

Thank you for everything! I’ll keep you updated. You don’t need to answer this message in your blog if you don’t want to. Just cross your fingers and send me good vibes, okay?

Congratulations, and thank you for the update. I’m so glad to hear that the information was helpful and you are able to better enjoy sex and masturbation now! With any luck, it will just keep getting better for the two of you!

In a followup to the previous post, where a man on reddit described the experience of having anal sex with his pregnant wife for the first time after she lost interest in and no longer enjoyed anal sex, he describes how they have continued having anal sex regularly after that and have since been effectively in an anal only relationship.

So since then it appears we are in an almost anal only relationship which was unexpected but I’m not complaining. It has become routine for me to give her an oily full body massage that ends in anal sex.

While not universally the true for everyone, it seems to be a fairly common thing for women to lose interest in vaginal during and after pregnancy, or to find it painful or uncomfortable. Some of this is just due to the effects of pregnancy on the body, but it also makes sense as a sort of regulating factor to reduce interest in reproduction, at least for a time, when that goal has already been achieved. So it makes perfect sense that a primary interest in anal can take over during this time and continue to provide opportunities for pleasure, release and intimacy. It can also provide a great opportunity to introduce people to the anal only lifestyle, as they discover during that time that the pleasure and intimacy are better through anal sex and often will decide to remain anal only, or at least keep it their primary and default form of sex, after the period of being anal only that pregnancy provides.

But I’ve come across one of those ‘first world problems’ that isn’t really a problem. Turns out my wife really likes my cock in her ass, to the point that she cums very quickly when I’m in there. Which is great except that after she cums she tenses up and stays all tensed up for ages making anal starts to hurt, meaning I don’t get to finish, well I do but usually with a handjob.

As I said it’s a silly problem ‘oh no my wife likes anal too much, oh woe is me!’

One of the times we didn’t even get to the sex before she came from a toy in her ass and a touch of her clit. That was the one time we had regular sex but not before attempting anal for a bit and deciding I could not even get in.

This, along with some additional information he provides, suggests that while she’s very much enjoying the anal, she still hasn’t fully trained for it and isn’t yet at the point where she can easily relax her anal muscles for sex. It’s something that will just keep improving with time and practice, however, as well as more anal play, rimming, and other warmup before having sex. In a comment, he mentions that they’re working on more training and delaying her clit stimulation so that she can last longer before orgasm.

After a session where they tried to do anal and he couldn’t get more than a short distance into her ass:

With the head of my cock still inside her we agreed to have a shower and just try vaginal with a condom, but then I leaned forward over her to kiss her, and that’s when it happened. Something shifted and I felt my cock slide all the way inside her in one go until my balls were touching her pussy. She let out a sound somewhere between a shock and a moan and I probably did the same. I stayed as still as I could and asked her if she was ok. She said yes but to give her a second, after which she told me to start slow. So I started fucking me wife balls deep in the ass while I bent over her. She was able to turn her head so we could make out which just made the whole thing so much more sensual.

It was deep fucking where you stay mostly inside your partner, with thrusts pushing deep inside instead of sliding all the way out and in. She was really enjoying it but hearing her get closer to cumming threw me over the edge as it tends to do, and I quickly got past the point of no return. She felt that as I swelled inside her and almost cried out as I became to big for her, but she powered through it as I shot my load deep inside her for what felt like ages. As I slowly pulled out I could tell she hadn’t cum but she said she enjoyed it, just has to get used to having me all the way inside her ass.

Here’s hoping that they stick with anal long-term, she learns how to fully adjust to it, and that they see no reason to go back to vaginal unless trying to have another child.

Continue reading on reddit