This is just one part of our Anal Sex Advice & Guide to the Anal Only Lifestyle section. Be sure to read the rest as well to get answers to our most frequently asked questions! New! This guide is also now available as a Kindle ebook!

There are many different reasons for a person or a couple to go anal only, from purely personal preference to health and arousal benefits, greater intimacy, and more!

Anal sex can be more pleasurable than vaginal

Men and women both can benefit from increased pleasure with anal sex, and it’s very common that after trying both vaginal and anal, people simply prefer anal sex. The anus itself has far more nerve endings than the vagina, and so purely penetrative sex tends to be a lot more pleasurable from anal than from vaginal, and for some can be amplified even further with an anal + clitoral combination.

Most women are unable to orgasm from vaginal sex on its own without clitoral stimulation, and many women who can’t do that can do so from anal. Not everyone can easily do this without practice, but enough can that it’s well worth exploring.

Once you know how much you prefer anal to vaginal, it tends to not seem as worthwhile to continue with vaginal when you could be having anal instead, and those who continue with vaginal often do so only because they think that having anal “too often” could be harmful to them, which is a myth.

Anal sex is more intimate than vaginal

By nature of the fact that a person’s anus tends to be the most private place on their body, and that done improperly it can be a painful or otherwise unpleasant experience, and so one needs to trust their partner quite a lot in order to have anal sex, anal tends to be a far more intimate experience and brings a couple much closer together than vaginal sex does.

It can also be very fun to have a sexy secret that you share as a couple, and being anal only and knowing you only have anal sex together and that you both love it can bring quite a thrill to a relationship.

Anal sex is natural birth control

While the vagina is without question optimized for reproductive sex, the vast majority of sexual activity that humans partake in throughout their life is not intended for reproductive purposes, it’s for pleasure and intimacy with a partner, and so various artificial forms of birth control are needed in order to avoid unwanted pregnancy. For some, these are merely a hassle, but for others hormonal birth control can have many negative side effects and health problems.

Anal sex is a natural form of birth control, providing even better pleasure and intimacy than vaginal sex, without the pregnancy risk. While it’s not 100% impossible for semen to exit the rectum after sex and enter the vagina, and it has happened on rare occasion, it is extremely rare and unlikely and with a little bit of care to clean up after sex, it’s simply not going to be an issue for most people.

With the anal only lifestyle, you can reserve vaginal sex for procreation and engage in anal sex for recreation.

Anal sex boosts arousal and a stagnant sex life

The exclusion of vaginal sex from one’s sexual repertoire and fully replacing it with anal has the effect of causing a significant boost in arousal for many women. Anal sex has big arousal-boosting effects on its own, and focusing on it completely really makes those effects obvious.

In addition, anal orgasms have a similar benefit in that unlike clitoral orgasms, they don’t cause a loss of arousal afterwards for most people, and people who orgasm from anal will find themselves eager to go for another round more quickly, or even immediately after, as well as being up for sex more often, which can help to revive a slow or stagnant sex life in a relationship. Many couples who have struggled with differing arousal levels between partners and the resulting frustration that can result from one wanting sex more often than the other have found that going anal only can help.

Medical conditions can restrict vaginal sex or make it painful

There are a variety of scenarios out there where women can be unable to have vaginal sex, or are unable to enjoy it without discomfort or even pain. Vaginismus and similar conditions, where the vaginal muscles are excessively tight or spasm painfully, can cause vaginal penetration with even something as small as a finger to be quite painful. Mayer–Rokitansky–Küster–Hauser (MRKH) syndrome can result in a missing or underdeveloped vagina, making vaginal sex impossible.

Women post-pregnancy can often find vaginal sex to no longer be pleasurable, causing a significant issues with intimacy. Sometimes this gets better with time, but other times it never really does.

Post-menopause, women can also find vaginal sex becomes less enjoyable, or requires more effort to be so, and so it loses any advantages it may have over vaginal in terms of simplicity and ease.

In all of these situations, for many people anal sex is a viable alternative that can be enjoyed without pain or discomfort and allow an outlet for intimacy and their sexuality.

Being anal only can preserve vaginal virginity

There are a variety of reasons one may want to preserve their vaginal virginity. For a long time, this was done for social or religious reasons to technically stay a virgin until marriage, which is a rather antiquated concept not particularly endorsed by the anal only lifestyle and fortunately largely disappearing.

Within the anal only lifestyle, however, there are those who after exploring on their own, find that they are uninterested in vaginal, significantly prefer anal masturbation and pleasure, or just find it appealing to never have vaginal sex and only ever do anal.

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with wanting to try both either, and nobody should feel bad or “lesser” in any way about not being a vaginal virgin, many women who have committed fully to anal only and who started with anal, knew they loved it, and then got pushed into doing vaginal later, have expressed that they wish they hadn’t ever lost their vaginal virginity and had just committed to only doing anal from the start. A relatively minor regret in the grand scheme of things, but something to consider.

And men can be vaginal virgins as well! As more people go anal only and start having sex with anal without ever spending any time on vaginal, there are men who have had anal sex and never tried vaginal, committing to the anal only lifestyle before they ever get there.

Have a suggestion for an additional topic you’d like to see covered here, or a missing or incorrect detail that you’ve found or have concerns about in one of the guides? Please let us know and we’ll do our best to continue improving these guides over time!