According to a 2012 study by Indiana University, more people are having anal sex. While the 1990s only saw roughly one-quarter to one-third of men and women having tried anal, by 2009 that percentage had jumped to 40 to 45 percent. But while that may the case, anal sex is still, as Salon reported in 2012 “Science’s Last Taboo.” We know that some people are having it, but it’s not very likely that people are willing to talk about it. Somewhere between the poop rumors and the embarrassment of liking butt stuff, people go mum.

But, as is the case with sex in general, anal shouldn’t be a source of shame. Ever. If you like anal sex, you’re not the first or the last one to do so. Both men and women the world over enjoy anal play because it can be very pleasurable when done correctly. Although that’s a fact and I can find you easily a dozen women in the next 10 minutes who agree, anal sex has yet to really be embraced by the sexual mainstream. It’s on its way there, but it’s still inching along very slowly.

The article then goes on to list six benefits of anal sex and why you should be doing it if you aren’t already.

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If you’ve followed us for a while, you’re probably familiar with our Guide to Anal Sex and the Anal Only Lifestyle, which has been a part of this website for the past year since moving off Tumblr.

It’s always going to be a freely available resource as part of this blog for those who want to learn more about anal sex and the anal only lifestyle, but I’m happy to announce that you can also purchase it in an ebook format through Amazon as well, if that’s how you prefer to do your reading!

It can be a good resource if you’re just getting started, and it can make a good gift for friends who might be interested in anal or going anal only. Either way, it helps support this blog and the greater anal only community.

And, if you’re looking for another way to support the anal only community, consider becoming a Patron!

So you want to try anal sex, but you’re freaked out by the probably inevitable reality of poop. That’s totally understandable, it’s something that can be present during anal sex, and it’s not exactly glamourous. But rest assured that it’s not usually that big of a deal. “A common source of trepidation about anal is that it’s dirty or messy due to the proximity of the anus to fecal matter, but this tends to be an overemphasized concern,” Dulcinea Pitagora, a sex therapist known as the Kink Doctor, previously told Refinery29. In Pitagora’s opinion, the repulsion factor of anal goes beyond the hygiene concerns and taps into our culture’s obsession with hiding body fluids and odors. So what if some ends up on the condom? Sex is messy. It might just be something you have to deal with if you’re interested in anal. But still, the presence of this unwelcome guest happens less often than you’d think.

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Much of the content on this blog is oriented to women, or those who receive anal sex. But just as important are those who are giving anal sex to their partners—if they aren’t interested in being anal only or feel they still need vaginal sex, it’s hard to make an anal only lifestyle work very well!

In fact, when asked why they haven’t gone anal only women yet, women interested in the lifestyle often answer that if it were up to them, they would, but that their partners still want to have vaginal sex some of the time. Seems surprising, right? The conventional wisdom is that men all want anal sex and that it’s women who don’t, but the reality often is that many women are more open to anal and even to going anal only, but their male partners are more sexually conservative or just think that they’ll miss something or be limited by excluding vaginal as an option.

The reality is that while everyone is different, most people find that after going anal only for a while, they don’t actually miss pussy much. Anal offers all the pleasure and more, combined with increased aesthetic appeal, stronger intimacy, plenty of opportunities for fun variety, and unique benefits like natural birth control. Unlike vaginal, anal is something that gets more fun the more you do it and done right, never gets boring. Anal only couples often talk about how before they went anal only, sex had gotten boring, but now even decades after going anal only, it still has a strong spark that excites them.

Other common concerns include hygiene and the need for preparation before sex. With some simple dietary adjustments and a basic cleaning routine, the former is fairly well mitigated, and preparation can be kept fairly minimal as well with a frequent anal play and sex routine as well as the use of butt plugs. Most such complaints result from having too little anal sex, not from having it more often.

Give it a try for yourself and find out: go anal only for a month or two and commit fully to the experience while you’re in it: you’ll see before long that giving up vaginal sex and going anal only is well worth the initial effort.

Max & Nata: So, my wife and I are both 32, we’ve been married for 4 years, and about a year ago we have arrived to an unspoken arrangement that I only fist her pussy and I only fuck her ass (don’t know if this counts as anal only lol, but we’re both happy with that). She loves being fisted and says it’s the best thing ever – she also loves anal, and we do about 50/50 between these two (we also do oral, spanking etc., but we almost always finish with either anal or fisting, or both).

I’ve lately been trying to talk to her about anal fisting, as it’s something that is interesting to try – but she only said “maybe later” and was pretty elusive about it in general. I think it’s obvious that she’s a bit scared. She also says she doesn’t love fingers up her ass as much as she loves my dick and toys in there, because fingers don’t go as deep as she wants. She has some toys to use up her ass, and she uses buttplugs when I fist her — we recently bought another one that’s bigger than my penis in width.

The question is – should I be persistent with trying anal fisting, or maybe leave it as it is? Obviously I don’t want to do anything that she doesn’t want, but maybe there are some arguments I’m missing that can help convince her to try? Or maybe it’s I who’s missing something and should be happy with what I have?

Also, other thing with that is that she’s worried about is that if we do a lot of anal fisting, her ass can become stretched out and not as tight as it is now (her pussy being loose was one of the reasons we switched to anal only). To be completely honest, this concerns me a bit as well.

So, if you have any tips or comments, or experience to share about anal fisting, we’d be happy and grateful to hear it (she knows about this post and she will read the answer too). Maybe there’s a way we can work towards it without using fingers too much?

Thanks a lot for your blog and for the answer. Sorry if my English is a bit weird, not my primary language.

First of all, “anal only” means a variety of different things for a lot of different people, but the fundamental element is that you don’t have vaginal intercourse and have fully replaced it with anal. There are those who still use toys or other forms of vaginal penetration but who identify as anal only, so I think if being anal only is something that appeals to you, you can consider your arrangement to fit within that definition. I think there can be some additional benefits to going fully anal only for some people, and generally encourage at least trying that too, but everyone is different and different things work for different people.

As for wanting to try anal fisting, it sounds like she’s expressed some of her concerns already. Are those her only hesitations, or does she have others as well?

Not liking fingering as much as sex is not uncommon, but fisting is different from fingering and provides much more of a stretch and can go deeper as well, so I would encourage her to think of them as different things and not to write off anal fisting just because she doesn’t like fingers on their own as much. It’s an entirely different experience.

Fear of stretching and becoming loose is a common concern that isn’t that rooted in reality. Injury can cause muscles to become weaker, but “stretching” anal muscles is actually exercising them and frequent use can help them become stronger. What people equate with being loose is actually an increased elasticity that allows them to expand larger, but they still stay tight and closed when not in use. There may be short term looseness after for a few hours, but things tend to return to normal quickly. And even the increased elasticity is not something that happens overnight, so it’s something that you can start to explore and see how it progresses for the both of you. Chances are you’ll both find that it does not negatively affect your enjoyment of sex at all. Exercises like kegels can also help to further strengthen and “tighten” anal muscles.

But if she’s also just afraid of trying it, why not sit down and talk about it together and discuss her fears and concerns and whether she’s interested despite being afraid and what you can do to help relieve some of those fears. Remind her of how rewarding vaginal fisting ended up being for her and with the pleasure and intensity of anal how great it could end up being as well.

Good luck to the both of you!

So you want to try anal sex. That’s great! Anal play can be lots of fun — if you’re ready for it. Unlike other types of sex, which most people can fumble their way through when they don’t have much experience, anal sex takes some research. (And, to be clear, it’s always better to think and talk through any new sexual experience before you try it with a partner).

But you can’t just slide into anal sex (unless you’re using plenty of lube…but more on that later). If you don’t know what you’re doing and you aren’t careful, you could hurt yourself or your partner because the anus is sensitive. “Contrary to what many believe, anal sex does not have to be painful (unless people engaging in it want it to be),” says Dulcinea Pitagora, a sex therapist known as the Kink Doctor. So before you give anal a try, read our tips about how to prep, both physically and mentally.

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An unfortunately still rather common trope among those inexperienced with anal pleasures is that while it can look sexy and be fun to watch in porn, it isn’t something that women really enjoy and that those who do it in porn are just active and pretending because it’s what guys want to see, and in turn, women mimic that to please guys but don’t really enjoy it for themselves.

This is simply untrue. Sure, there may be some who do this, but the reality is that many women, both in real life and in porn, love anal and can’t get enough of it. Even among those who aren’t anal only, enjoyment of frequent anal is very common and growing.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a self-perpetuating issue, because people insist loudly that it’s all an act for porn, resulting in those who do enjoy it for themselves often feeling marginalized and ashamed or afraid to speak up for their own enjoyment, and then as a result, they never correct the myth and it spreads further to other people.

How can we prevent this falsehood from spreading even further? Counter such claims with your own experiences and perspectives! Don’t be afraid to open up and tell people how much you enjoy or even prefer anal, and why. Some people may be dismissive or disbelieving, but most will recognize that you have a valid counter opinion or perspective, and some will be interested in learning more and may even reveal their own curiosity about anal and want tips from you on how to better enjoy it. People, especially women, who open up to their friends, have found a great deal of positive results as their friends end up wanting to try anal for themselves too, and if those friends already enjoy anal, they often end up trying to go anal only on their own as well if the idea is shared with them in a positive manner.

An argument that often comes up when introducing the idea of the anal only lifestyle to someone who has not yet experienced it for themselves is that by excluding vaginal sex, you are in some way limiting yourself sexually and that it’s more open-minded to still include vaginal sex in one’s sexual routine rather than to focus purely on anal and oral.

While on the surface, this may appear to make sense to those who have not yet tried anal only, the reality is quite different. In practice, eliminating vaginal sex in favor of anal only is more of an enhancement to one’s sex life than a restriction, the result of focusing on that which gives the most pleasure, intimacy and excitement and mastering the best acts rather than feeling obligated to do everything.

There’s something magical that happens when going anal only for the long term, which is hard to comprehend until you’ve tried it and experienced it for itself, but which is different than simply having a lot of anal sex. The total exclusion of vaginal sex and the state of mind involved with the conscious decision to fully replace vaginal with anal ends up making sex and pleasure so much more intense and arousing.

Additionally, unlike vaginal sex, anal doesn’t generally get boring or tedious in the same way. Couples who got tired of vaginal quickly found that even a decade into being anal only, they still find it exciting and thrilling. There is so much fun and variety you can do with anal alone and vaginal doesn’t have much special to offer that anal can’t do better.

So if the idea of going anal only interests you but you’re worried it will end up limiting your options, don’t worry. Give it a try for yourself—No Pussy November is coming up and is a great time to experiment with the anal only lifestyle—and you’ll soon see the benefits!

As the anal only community has grown and more people have talked about their experiences, more people—especially men, but also a number of women—have spoken up about the fact that they had a natural attraction to and preference for anal sex over vaginal. In many cases, when growing up, they’ve found themselves attracted to asses and anuses, rather than vaginas and vaginal sex, and in turn have found that this preference carried over to sex as well.

Among those who are still in the depths of ignorance and stigma surrounding anal sex, the idea of men having an aversion to vaginal sex and preferring anal is commonly derided as a sign that he is gay and doesn’t like women, but this is far from the truth—whether heterosexual or bisexual, a preference for anal is just that, and has nothing to do with liking or being attracted to women in general. On top of that, more women are speaking up about having such a preference to anal as well—many discovering that later, but some themselves figuring it out early on in their lives.

All this is a fairly clear sign of the increasingly obvious fact that for some, being anal only comes completely naturally and that anal sexuality and centrism is a normal and natural sexual preference on the level of a sexual orientation. For many others, it’s something discovered later in life, but fits their needs so perfectly once they do try it out.

I am just curious if others prefer anal over vaginal sex..I was diagnosed with having uterine fibroids which cause me to have bad cramps and pain everyday plus I am going through menopause so I have vaginal dryness..When we start foreplay I am fine but not long after I dry up so I much prefer anal cause it seems to feel better plus I can orgasm…I thought about using creams for the dryness but kinds concerned of the affects from the creams…Anyone else experience the same problem and prefer anal?

melvinshelley2019, WeddingBee forums

A majority of the responses from other women are negative towards anal, with some even bringing up the same old myths of health risks from anal, but several women express their own enjoyment of anal or share that they similarly enjoy anal most and find vaginal uncomfortable or painful, or started out anal only.

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