How I got over my fear of vanilla sex

Vanilla sex is the best flavour and we should all be kinder to it.

Laura Roscioli is a sex writer based in Melbourne. She feels passionately about making sex (and the conversations around it) more accessible, approachable and open. She also believes that the best learnings come from lived experience, and she’s here to share hers with you each fortnight on FJ alongside other musings, experiences and questions. You can follow Laura on Instagram at @lauraroscioli.

Am I having vanilla sex? I found myself thinking, lying underneath my boyfriend the other day, having missionary sex. I was really enjoying it – as I always do, tbh – and so I pushed the intrusive thought out of my mind and got back in the moment. 

I’ve been in a relationship now for just over a year, and we’ve been having great sex ever since from day one. It’s like our bodies just get each other. It’s not difficult to communicate, to have an orgasm, to get intoxicated by the smell of his skin and the shape of his body on mine. It just works.

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I’ve never questioned our sex life, but it’s almost like the societal relationship timeline is encouraging me to think about something that isn’t happening. It’s saying “You’ve been together for over a year, time to check in and see if your sex life has gotten boring”. The thought struck me as odd because it’s completely the opposite of how I feel. 

My definition of boring sex is sex that’s disconnected. When you drift off mid-way through. When you don’t take the time to engage in foreplay, so once you get to penetration it falls a little flat. When you don’t feel comfortable to communicate what you want. When you can tell the other person is on autopilot. When there’s no eye contact. When you feel powerless. 

But I don’t think that’s society’s definition of vanilla/boring sex. Even though we don’t talk about it, there’s this silent implication that vanilla sex is only staying in one position the entire time, and it’s a routine that happens over and over again, like Groundhog Day. Sex that you could almost script, with no room for nuance, hormones, or an off day.

“I think vanilla sex does get a bad wrap,” says sex and relationships therapist, Aleks Trkulja. “And I always question why. Vanilla is one of the best flavours! I speak to hundreds of people about their sex lives, and the vast majority will confide in the safety of confidential sessions that vanilla sex is enjoyable.”

The people most often accused of having vanilla sex are couples in long-term, monogamous relationships. It’s almost assumed that if you’ve been having sex with the same person for over a year, it’s entered its vanilla era. The sexual honeymoon period is over and it’s starfish o’clock. No one really says it straight out, but somehow it feels like a silent truth that circulates those of us who engage in monogamy. 

You mostly have missionary sex? Thought so. The same things make you orgasm every time? Yep. You fall into your pattern of things like a choreographer’s dance routine? Uh-huh. Welcome to Relationship Land. 

Let me clarify: this is Western culture’s internal monologue around sex in monogamous relationships, not my own. But clearly, I’m not immune to its grip on my subconscious thoughts, and the other night it got through to me mid-sex. And I’m mad about it. 

The pressure to have ‘interesting sex’

When I first started having sex I felt a huge amount of pressure to always be open to having ‘interesting’ sex. I think that all of us – and especially women – feel that pressure, and therefore we engage in things we don’t know if we even like, with people who don’t really know what they’re doing.

It’s like we live inside this myth that everyone is having exciting sex all of the time, and that means we’ve got to, too. And, like it. We’ve got to be constantly changing positions, into power play, spanking, lots of tongue, getting it on in public… that’s, supposedly, exciting sex.

Truthfully, I actually relished this pressure in my early twenties. It worked for me at the time because I was enjoying the learning process and finding out what I liked and disliked. Plus, I became the single friend with the juicy stories at every social event. All it would take was a simple “I had sex with a couple last night” and everyone would lean in with their glasses of wine, beady-eyed and hungry for the steamy tidbits.

I was doing it just as much for me as I was for them; I wanted to demystify my sexuality for myself and being a captivating storyteller was the cherry on top. It was a journey of discovery finding out what actually turns me on, despite the things I’d heard and the porn I’d watched. 

But it was also exhausting. I wasn’t being emotionally vulnerable, I was playing different characters. I was pushing my own boundaries all the time and I was tired. Although I had some great sexual experiences that have led to great stories and an openness that I can bring to my relationship and life today, I knew deep down that missionary love-making was the most satisfying sex of all. 

Vanilla sex can be incredibly intimate

I’m not saying that missionary is the only way to have sex. I’m not advocating for a life devoid of experimentation, or a passionate doggy-style ass-spanking moment. But when I really dig deep and ask myself what kind of sex I want to have over and over again, multiple times a week, all of the time, it’s the simplest sex of all. And it’s in the details.

Truly, I don’t care what position we’re in, I just want to feel close. I have a few favourites that I always gravitate towards, but that doesn’t mean they’re boring. I do them all the time because I like them. It’s about feeling intimate, safe and physically comfortable. There’s literally nothing worse than getting upper-thigh cramps because you’re trying to be athletic and do reverse cowgirl for too long.

It’s about curating an environment that allows us both to switch off to the external elements, and simply focus on each other and all of the pleasure that’s wrapped up in our little steam bubble. And you know what? We’ve found things that work. I won’t recount our sexiest moments because I think it makes them more special when they feel like a secret language that we only speak with each other. We go back to them over and over again because they feel good.

But we also do something else. We talk about sex a lot. We talk about the sex we’re having and the sex we want to have. We compare specific moments we liked, things we could do differently, and even scenarios we’ve not yet tried that we might feel turned on by. It’s really fun to talk about sex with the person you’re having sex with. Not only is it a huge turn-on, but it also means that the sex is never boring because we’re always learning about each other. 

“People truly fear their sex lives becoming monotonous and boring, but I think what they’re actually afraid of, is that they’ll lose interest in their relationships. It’s so common for us to project that fear onto the quality of the sexual relationship. However, relationships in general don’t get boring, because people put effort into keeping them interesting,” says Aleks. 

You should apply the same approach to your sex life. Stay curious about one another and prioritise having fun together, and things will likely stay ‘exciting’. As Aleks shares, “In my vocabulary, ‘exciting’ means ‘staying curious’.” Some people might argue that you can only stay curious for so long. Like, what about when you know the person from the inside out? 

I’d say that no matter how well you know someone, there are always new things to discover. I know that as an individual, I’m constantly changing. What I read, watch and talk about with my therapist, not to mention huge life events like losing friends, moving house and changing jobs all change us. I don’t think we ever stop evolving, which means that our sex life won’t either.

We just need to reframe how we define ‘vanilla’. “It amazes me that we’ve taken vanilla sex – the most mainstream form of sex – and shamed it,” says Aleks. “We’ve already shamed the more nuanced expressions of sexual behaviour (like kinks and BDSM), so essentially, nowhere is safe.”

She suggests reframing any conditioning around sex, including the fear and shame of having mostly vanilla-flavoured sex, and instead asking yourself this question: “What attitude makes me feel safe, happy and relaxed in my sexuality and sexual expression?”. There’s nothing vanilla, boring or unsustainable about that.

So grab your lover tonight and wrap your legs around them hard, missionary style. Get nuzzled into the crevice of their neck. Clutch onto their shoulder blades. Feel yourself writhe under their body like the sexy serpent that you are and enjoy it in all its simplicity.

Or give yourself a moment to enjoy the routine sex you’re having with your partner. There’s nothing wrong with it being similar to the sex you mostly have, it just means you’ve found a safe, sexy space to call your own. And isn’t that what we all want?