How do you touch yourself?
Do you treat yourself the way you treat your lover?
Do you bring the same kind of enthusiasm and exploration to your self-touch as you do to touching your partner?
Most of us do not. Masturbation is often a utilitarian act, a release valve for excess sexual pressure. Most of us masturbate in the same way every time, repeating the same strokes and playing out the same fantasies that bring us to climax quickly and reliably. This can be useful – again, knowing how to get off is not a bad thing – but masturbation can also serve as a powerful laboratory to try new things and learn more about your body, arousal patterns and erotic potential. As you learn what kinds of touch your body responds to, or what fantasies really turn you on, you can bring this knowledge to your partnered sex life and have more variety to play with, more self-knowledge to guide your partner.
Most of us love a confident, self-aware lover who can give us guidance towards pleasuring and satisfying them. So why not also cultivate this self-awareness in ourselves, so we can be the kind of lover we want to have?