A common concern by those getting started with anal sex is that it’s going to hurt. Whether you’ve had a bad experience before, have heard from friends about bad experiences they had, or used to enjoy anal but are now having trouble with pain, this advice will help you enjoy the pure pleasure of anal that you deserve—without pain!

Anal Should Never Hurt

First, let’s get this point across: if anal hurts, that’s a good sign that something is wrong. You aren’t warmed up enough. You aren’t using enough lube. You’re going too fast, too deep, or too big too soon. You should stop and reassess things immediately to avoid injuring yourself.

Start Small and Slow

If you’re new to anal, you can’t just start having anal sex, you need to start small and work your way up over time to the size, depth and speed of anal sex. For more information on this process, see our guide to anal training.

But even if you’re more experienced with it, and you’ve had anal sex quite a lot, you might find it hurting if it’s been a little while when you go to put it in. If you don’t take the time to warm up first and jump right to a bigger toy or a penis, and it hurts, that can tell you that you need to slow down and do a little more preparation first. Do some rimming and fingering. Put in a small butt plug and play another way for a bit. Use a smaller dildo. Once you feel relaxed and comfortable and things are not hurting, try it again.

Even someone who is very experienced can benefit from doing this if it’s been a while and they’ve tightened back up. It will take less time to get back into things, but you may want to take a day or two to transition back up to the sizes you’re used to if you haven’t been playing for a few weeks. It can be easy to think that you’ve mastered everything and don’t need any small toys anymore, and when you try to go to put in your favorite toy after some time off, you can be surprised by a sudden sharp pain. Take the relatively small amount of time to do some gentle anal massage and warmup to relax and open up first and avoid that setback.

Take the Time to Heal

If you end up with a small tear, bleeding, or other injury in association with pain, make sure you take a few days to heal before trying again. Anal injuries can heal well, but if you continue to irritate them they can take much longer to heal or even become chronic. Larger injuries can develop into scar tissue that remains painful or tears more easily in the future, so it’s really important to be patient with your body and take the steps needed to not injure yourself.

Perform proper after care, use aloe vera or lotion around your anus to help it heal, and your ass will repay you with a lifetime of pleasure and wonderful anal sex.

Christy: What is your opinion on ‘painal?’ I am currently single, and because of social isolation orders and the virus I have been masturbating anal only for five weeks, to kick off my anal only journey. I have found the only way I can orgasm from anal is if I have a plug or toy in that is (probably) too big for me, if it leaves me sobbing from pain and burns the entire time I have it in/play with myself. Is this unsafe? I’m making sure to use plenty of lube and would stop if I thought I had injured myself.

Ultimately, you have to listen to your body and determine whether you think it’s causing harm or not. It’s a little bit of a gray area, but I believe there is a fine line you can ride where there is intentional pain but it’s not causing injury. This would be the same sort of stretching that might cause pain when doing yoga or warmup stretches before exercise—it can be painful, but isn’t harmful.

If there’s more of a sharp pain, or it leaves you particularly sore for days, or feeling raw afterwards, or if you encounter bleeding, then you’re probably going too far with it, but otherwise you’re probably fine. What you want to avoid are tears/fissures and muscle injuries.

For those who are anal receivers, all the time spent at home during the COVID-19 pandemic can be a great opportunity to train your ass and practice going anal only, even if on your own, or prepare yourself for a future anal only lifestyle by getting your ass ready for it through daily practice.

Set up a daily routine of anal fingering, masturbating with dildos, and butt plug wear, gradually going larger and for longer amounts of time as you get more experienced. If you need your clit to relax enough for it, use it, otherwise try going without it and seeing if you can learn to orgasm just from anal.

Be sure to check out our guide to anal sex and the anal only lifestyle for detailed advice on how to train for anal sex and adopt the anal only lifestyle.

And as always, share with us how your training goes, or any questions you might have!

Insuredtongue: Any issue with putting a latex condom on plug and leaving in overnight?

Not at all, so long as you aren’t sensitive to latex, the toy material doesn’t negatively interact with latex, and the lube you use doesn’t degrade latex.

Plenty of people commonly put condoms onto anal toys, either for hygiene/cleanup purposes, to protect themselves from the toy’s material, or in combination with a sock between the toy and condom to make it temporarily larger without buying a bigger toy.

Anonymous: Hello. I’ve been with my husband for about three years and a half now, we’ve been married for about two years. When we met, I had never done anal, but he gradually introduced me to it. At one point, we were doing it quite often (every time we had sex, in fact), and that’s when he confessed to me that he was anal only, and that he only did vaginal sex with me in hope it’d change and I’d agree to switch to anal only with him. I tried anal only for a few months, and I finally agreed to switch. He asked me for marriage very shortly after that (I was 28), obviously I agreed (he’s gorgeous, I’m very much in love, and I really enjoy anal). It was a bit strange to think I’d nearly have no vaginal sex for the rest of my life, but eventually it became normal to me.

My husband is a blue collar worker, and he’s usually very tired when he comes home from work, so we generally fuck about three to four times a week. With the virus outbreak, however, we’re both trapped home, and he’s fucking me every day – several times a day, actually, up to four times a day. It’s to the point I woke up in bed several times with his cock deep inside my ass, plowing me while I was asleep. I’m not used to this at all, but I don’t want to turn him down: sex is a very good way for him to get the stress out – so far, everything is going fine at home despite the situation, and I want it to stay that way. I tried getting him off with blowjobs, but he’s always going after my ass no matter what.

What could I do to avoid being sore, and to be able to take it all? Apparently, this crisis will last for quite some time, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to provide anal sex at that frequency for that long. So far, I don’t feel sore and I’m having pleasure, but I’m a bit worried. Are there creams I could use? Will I gape permanently? My husband marvels about the gape I have lately and he jokes about it, but I’m worried about my ass not being able to close properly in the long term. How could I increase my sex drive to get closer to his? I talked to him about it a bit, and he told me to stop touching myself (I still touch my clit during sex, even if it has always annoyed him) – would that change anything?

Thank you for your work and for your answer.

Thank you for sharing, and it sounds like you have a great anal only relationship. Well done to the both of you for being able to make it work.

Daily anal, even multiple times a day like you’re doing right now, can be entirely manageable and safe, so long as your body is ready and adjusted to it. If it doesn’t hurt and you aren’t sore, then there’s nothing really to worry about. Listen to your body. If you start getting sore, maybe try a little less for a couple days. But really, once you get to where you can have anal four times a day every day, or more, without pain or significant soreness, you should be able to keep doing that indefinitely. Yes, you will likely relax more as a result and have a bigger gape, because your ass is staying more warmed up, but that is not a bad thing and if you take a break from it, it will get tighter again. And remember, being warmed up and relaxed does not mean being loose. It just means that you’re more flexible and elastic and need less preparation. It sounds like your husband appreciates you being warmed up and gaping, so it’s not a bad thing at all! It won’t harm you, so long as you aren’t injuring yourself, and if it doesn’t hurt, you aren’t.

As for higher sex drive, definitely try going without clit play and focusing on pure anal pleasure. If you can orgasm just from anal, try doing only that going forward. If you can’t, try to learn by going without clit stimulation for a while. Or if you really need to cum, use your clit the last time you have sex at the end of the day only. You could also try edging with your clit but not using it to actually orgasm.

Good luck to the both of you, especially in this trying time. With any luck you’ll be able to use the time to get closer and further develop and improve your anal only lifestyle in ways that you’ll both be able to enjoy for the rest of your lives!

My current challenge:

Every time my pussy is wet, slip in a buttplug. So right now! I’m hoping to work up to a bigger size. I’m thinking of getting vixskin’s Tristan 2 for a constant stretch. I just don’t like how thick the base looks – it’ll be hard to hide. But I think my husband will like the outcum

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Are you the man or woman? What was the biggest challenge, and what worked?

Lots of different responses, a couple of which are featured below:

As a woman and maybe a rarity, I had to convince some of my boy and girlfriends to give me the anal attention I wanted. My husband, however, took very little convincing, of course. As to convincing other girls to allow anal play, a little alcohol never hurt as well as open communication and gradually easing into the physical aspect of it. It was introduced to me while a friend was going down on me. I was so into it that when she went lower, I almost didn’t realize she had her tongue in my ass. But again, we had spoken about it before she even tried. Oh, if and when you get into the full act, LUBE LUBE AND MORE LUBE.

I’ve had success in the past with girls who claimed not to want anal by slowly working ass fingering into your routine. Works especially well while eating pussy… start thumbing her asshole gently while going down on her and stop eating pussy if she objects… then do the same next time until she associates the two. Also start rimming her ass… start with kissing her all over (most girls love this) and get closer and closer to her ass then pay it more and more attention.

Several girls I’ve been with who started off not wanting to do anal at all ended up really liking it after doing stuff like this.

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little backstory: I’m happily married to my husband, who’s way more into anal than I am (unfortunately).

We both sort of fetishized anal since we started dating, and I gave it a few tries back then. I quickly found out that I liked the idea of anal more than anal itself, which was basically : that it hurt a bit, that it was uncomfortable, and that my husband loved it. (I know it might sound messed up to some, but I guess it’s a kink).
But I really enjoyed it back then, in those terms, and was able to orgasm sometimes (through clitoral stimulation only tho)

We slowly started opening up about our fantasies, then we got married and really started acting on them.
One of mine envolved fisting, I was really curious but my husband was afraid I’d get too loose (not that he refused to do it, we just share everything that’s on our minds basically) he also knew I didn’t quite enjoy anal but I’d do it anyway, because he loved it (and the idea of it turned me on, I guess).

I might’ve gone a “little” overboard with the fisting thing, because he eventually started to notice (and me too tbh) I was a bit (quite) loose after a year or so. But I didn’t want to give up on it, so we both agreed on doing more anal to compensate for the lack of tightness he complained about . Then it became doing anal almost everytime we had sex, or a fisting session.

^This really started to aggravate me. We had sex very often back then and I wasn’t able to keep up with all the times I had to do some preparation beforehand. This led to some accidents that embarrassed the shit out of me (LOL). It got to a point that I gave up on fisting and sex in general just so we wouldn’t do anal anymore. But I noticed my husband really missed it, so I ended up trying again. Anyway it took a toll on our sex lives.

Then, (5 years ago) I had a child (long story, surrogacy), and I don’t know if the fisting or the delivery but my vagina never really snapped back to normal. It got to a point that he claimed he had almost no feeling, basically he was doing PIV just to please me. We talked it out cause I didn’t want to seem selfish (I already was my sister’s surrogate against his will, I convinced him into trying fisting, I had that “abstinence” moment, I mean…) And that’s when he suggested we’d go AO.

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Anonymous: My bf got me into anal only last year and I like it but struggle with some things. It’s still harder for me to get to orgasm from anal but he doesn’t want me to keep using my clit anymore. I haven’t used it so far this year, because he wanted me to try 2020 without my pussy at all, but it’s hard to not cum every time. Do you have any advice? Is there anything I can do to cum from anal more often?

Congratulations on being anal only and starting out the year with a new challenge to commit even more fully to the anal only lifestyle!

It’s a good sign that you’re able to orgasm from anal at least some of the time! That suggests that by focusing purely on anal pleasure and excluding clitoral stimulation from your routine, you’ll start orgasming more easily from anal in time. Pay attention to what sort of positions and speeds you’re in when you orgasm more frequently and try to replicate that towards the end of an anal session in order to make it more likely that you will orgasm regularly from anal.

In the long term, moving past clitoral stimulation to pure anal will pay off immensely and there are many benefits to doing so, which you can read about in our Guide to Clitoral Denial. I wish you the best of luck!

It’s been two months since I haven’t used my dildo in my pussy. It’s now exclusively for anal play, and it’s been great. However, I haven’t had an orgasm just using it alone — I always have my nipple clamps on (an absolute must since I love the pain) and a vibrator on my clit, sometimes rubbing it with just my finger.

Do you have any tips to achieve orgasm with just solo anal play? I’m gonna try doing it tonight — firstly putting my nipple clamps on and then starting slowly with anal beads. After that I’ll go in with my dildo and try my best not to touch my clit. I can’t wait!

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