Dirty Talk: Why It Feels Awkward and How to Start

Let me be direct about something. Dirty talk turns me on. There is something raw and sensual about letting your inner desires move from your head into actual words, spoken out loud, to the person you are in bed with. It adds fuel. It opens things up. It is, in my experience, one of the easiest first steps toward a deeper erotic life.

For a long time, my wife and I did not do any of it.

What we had instead was the couples version of polite. Nicknames for body parts. Cutesy language. The kind of intimate talk that is sweet and not particularly igniting. Early on, before we were married, when my wife asked me why I was attracted to her, I told her it was because she had big boobs and drove a Lexus. It was delivered with sarcasm and hid my true feelings about how deeply attracted to her I actually was. That was the extent of our dirty talk for longer than I care to admit.

It was not bad. It was just not much.

Why It Matters

There is a quote from the Sex With Emily podcast that has stuck with me: “Communication is lubrication.” It sounds simple and it is, but most couples in long marriages are operating in relative silence during sex. We narrate almost nothing. We ask for almost nothing. We describe almost nothing. And then we wonder why things feel a little flat.

Dirty talk is not a performance. It is not about saying things that sound like a screenplay. It is about letting what is actually happening in your head come out of your mouth. What you want. What you are noticing. What is turning you on in that moment. Said out loud, to your partner, those things do something. They create heat. They signal desire. And being desired, really specifically desired, is one of the most powerful things one person can offer another.

I get that some people find this language off-putting. Words that feel common or uncouth, too explicit, too far from the way they normally talk. If that is genuinely not your thing, that is fine. But if you are on the fence, or curious, or just haven't tried it yet, it is worth knowing that the discomfort is almost always in the starting, not in the doing.

How We Started

One day I asked my wife if it would be okay if I used more descriptive language. Just that. A simple ask before anything happened, with enough context that she understood it was not about anything being wrong, it was about something I was genuinely curious to try.

She agreed. The first attempts were awkward. Words that felt natural in my head felt strange coming out of my mouth. Words I had used freely when I was young, the kind of language that lived comfortably in locker room talk, felt impolite when directed at the woman I loved. That is a real tension and I don't think I am the only man who has felt it. It is a different way of using your voice with someone you have been with for years inside the careful habits of a long marriage.

My wife had her own version of the discomfort. There was a specific word she could not get past. “Vulva” bothered her, had a connotation she couldn't quite shake. It rubbed up against the good girls don’t issues we had worked through in other parts of our relationship. What is funny about that is it's a clinical term, not really a word we use in dirty talk, but it bugged her nonetheless.

We didn’t push through it by talking about it, what actually helped was listening to the Sex With Emily podcast together. Hearing the language used in a matter-of-fact, non-pornographic context, by someone who talks about sex the way a thoughtful person actually thinks about it, made it feel ordinary in a way that no amount of direct conversation between us had managed.

Over time the words got easier. I would ask her to repeat something during sex, a word, a phrase, something she wanted. She would. And eventually she stopped waiting for me to ask.

What It Sounds Like Now

My wife will now say things she would never have said five years ago. Things like “I want you to eat my pussy” or “I want you to pleasure my tight little asshole.” Her words, her timing, her choosing to name what she wants without my prompting.

That is the thing that turns me on most. Not the words themselves, though the words matter. It is her owning her pleasure. Asking for what she wants. Saying it out loud. There is something about a woman knowing what she wants and being willing to say so that is as erotic as anything else in our intimate life. The words brought that out. Or maybe they created the space for it to come out. I am not entirely sure which, but I know the connection between the two.

Where to Start

If you have never tried this and want to, the conversation before is the most important step. Not during, not in the moment, but beforehand. Let your partner know it is something you are curious about and why. The why matters. If they understand it is about desire and not about something they are failing to provide, it lands differently.

Start with something low stakes. A word you use to describe what you want. A sentence about what you are noticing. You do not have to go from polite to explicit in one evening. The vocabulary builds, and the comfort builds with it.

And if a word feels wrong, or lands awkwardly, let it go and try a different one. The goal is not perfect execution. It is opening a door that has probably been closed for a while, and seeing what is on the other side of it.

Why It’s Worth It

The fact of the matter is, the person we share our life with, the person we share our bed with, should understand the real depths of our desire for them. Raw descriptive language shared between lovers communicates that level of desire in a way that no degree of politeness ever will. I believe that both men and women, at a deep core level, long to be desired. And coarse language, used between two people who trust each other, has the ability to communicate that desire in ways that nothing else quite can.

If this resonated and you want a place to start, we put together a free dirty talk guide for couples, taken directly from our Closer Together Roleplay Guide. Real language, real context, and a few phrases to get you started. Download it free below.