There are very few incidents in my sexual past that I’d really want to do differently, and I’d hope the same could be said for most people. We all make mistakes, we do silly things, and eventually when we’ve finished cringing in a heap in the corner, we realise we’ve got a cracking anecdote with which to amuse our friends in the pub.

But sex is quite a powerful thing. In a society that struggles to talk about sex, and with centuries of sex shame behind us, we’re often a bit intolerant of our own personal mistakes. Add that to the fact that sex is often an intensely personal experience, and it can be easy to slip into regret.

How often do you hear the phrase: ‘I wish I hadn’t…’?

What would you erase from your past?

Personally, there are a few choice moments I’d be tempted to erase from my life, if I had a time machine that would let me. The impulsive, delightful, and vigorous blow job that I gave a guy in an alleyway, but which ended with my handbag covered in dog shit. That would be quite high on the list.

Then there was the time I had sex with two partners, and accidentally smashed my head on the bedside table. Hard. So hard I gave myself a black eye, and when people asked how I got it I had to say ‘door’ rather than ‘energetic threesome.’

Perhaps the horrible, gut-wrenching memory of a tryst with a guy on holiday. The fumbling oral sex he gave me was delightful, but what wasn’t so delightful was the knowledge I gained in the sober light of day: we’d been doing it not far from a crowded bar. And everyone could see us.

[clickToTweet tweet=”there was the time I had sex with two partners, and accidentally smashed my head on the bedside table” quote=”there was the time I had sex with two partners, and accidentally smashed my head on the bedside table”]

What would you do differently?

I spoke to two other awesome people about their own experiences, and posed the question: if you could change anything about your sexual past, what would it be?

Jon Hamblin has one of the funniest blogs I’ve ever read – Things I’ve Done To Impress Women. As you can gather from the title, he is quite keen on impressing the women he fancies, and he isn’t shy about the myriad hilarious and often painful ways in which he’s failed. So, Jon - if you could go back in time, would you do differently if anything?

"There are a few obvious incidents it'd be nice to change, like going back to wrest a pair of scissors out of my hand to avoid a nasty manscaping accident back in '05, but largely I think you should try to live with your scars. If I could tell myself something though, I'd tell myself to learn to love myself before attempting to love others - as that's caused way more accidents than my general clumsiness ever has."

I like that idea. And maybe my own time travel should focus a bit more on advising my past self rather than erasing her cock-ups. I’d quite like to tell teenage me to stop mooning over a particular guy, or let early-twenties me know that there are some awesome kink clubs just round the corner.

HornyGeekGirl – another excellent blogger and all-round brilliant person – highlighted that changing things from the past wouldn’t necessarily mean erasing mistakes, it could be far more fun than that!

"I'm not sure there's anything about my sex life I'd really change. Except maybe to have more! I've not had any really obvious mistakes, but there are a few really good things I wouldn't mind reliving!"

Now THAT is a fun possibility. In fact, as soon as I start thinking about the things I’d like to relive, the whole exercise becomes even more fun. The very first time I got beaten with a suede flogger – the spanking (pun intended) new sensation, so much more intense than the hand-smacks I’d had before, which opened my eyes to a whole new world of fun. The first time I used a sex toy. The scariest and most exciting moments in fetish clubs, which I’d relive with a new-found confidence.

That threesome which ended in a black eye? Instead of sneaking into the flat to move that pesky bedside table, I could instead pop in halfway through and see if my past self and her lovers would mind if I joined them. The holiday romance could be relived over and over by a girl who knew full well with hindsight that there’d be no awful consequences.

The alleyway blow job which ended in poo? OK, I think I’d still change that. There’s only so much humiliation a girl can take.

Sexual mistakes – should we change them?

Without wanting to sound too cheesy about it, the more you think about your sexual mistakes, the more you realise that erasing them would probably make you quite a different person. It’s easy to list off the more embarrassing moments now that I’ve got a bit of distance from them, and with that distance comes the understanding that if I stripped them from my life I’d have far fewer stories.

[clickToTweet tweet=”the more you realise that erasing them would probably make you quite a different person” quote=”the more you realise that erasing them would probably make you quite a different person”]

What’s more, the awful things – the ones I rarely talk about because they involve hurting other people – those things are all part and parcel of who I am too. If I could go back in time, it’s possible that I’d try to erase mean thoughts, or avoid upsetting ex-partners, because now that I’m older and wiser I realise those things were wrong. But without doing those things in the first place, without making those human mistakes, I wouldn’t have had a chance to grow older and wiser in the first place. I’d be stuck forever as a naïve eighteen-year-old girl, getting head in full view of a bar of onlookers and callously stamping on other people’s feelings.

What would you change, if you had the chance to live your sex life all over again? Would you relive the best bits and erase the worst bits? Or would you prefer to live with the history that’s shaped you into who you are?

I’m going to stick with the latter, I think – use my time machine to kill Hitler or visit the dinosaurs instead. Maybe have a genteel adventure with Jane Austen or get drunk with the Marquis de Sade. Because my past might be messy and flawed, but it’s also special in a way that no altered past could be: it’s wholly and utterly mine.

Still going to cringe about that poo thing though.

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