Dear Dirtytalk,

Men are confusing. Maybe you can help me.

I hear that in intimate situations, playing a little rough can be kinda hot. Personally I enjoy it, so when I’m in the mood I may bite a little. After I really started to get into it, the last guy I was fooling around with totally lost the mood! Do guys like the bitey? What should I do?

— Girl Needing Advice With Relationships

Well my dangerously dental friend, it’s too much to ask for a blanket statement concerning men and whether or not they fancy being masticated. I don’t think you should assume that the next guy you try to take a bite out of won’t like it. This particular gentleman, who lost the mood after you bit him a few times, obviously wasn’t as into it as you were. Biting, like most bedroom practices, should be a shared passion by both partners.

As for why he lost the mood, the first thing that comes to my mind is that you may have caused him enough pain that he lost his erection. Lawrence urologist Dr. Doug Klingler gives a scientific explanation for what might have happened.

“All erections use a sympathetic outflow, which keeps you from having erections all the time and it basically keeps the arteries kind of constricted down so there’s not as much blood flow,” Dr. Klingler said. “Now sympathetics are also the type of thing you get when you’re frightened, when you’re scared. Kind of a fight or flight response, you get an outpouring of sympathetics. So if this guy’s scared, painful stimulation, you know, and he’s not expecting it or if it’s not pleasurable...it’s basically neurotransmitters going in there, cutting out the blood flow, constricting the arteries and, you know, it’s a physiological process and it dies down. Now if he’s some guy who’s into it, you know, it’s a pleasurable thing. Obviously he’s not going to give the same response.”

Based off of what Dr.Klingler said, I think the easiest answer to this problem is to find a guy who thinks of your kink as sexy stimulation rather than an oral offense. This would take away the guess work and, chances are, he would give you exactly what you are looking for.

The last guy you were with may have just been shy. He also may not have had much experience with biting. If that’s the case and you want to continue relations with him, it may be your duty to open this young lad’s mind to the world of naughty nibbling. There are a few options for how you can do this.

Keep the locations of your bites in mind. The lower lip and neck are great places for a little gentle biting and sucking. The penis, on the other hand, should never experience rough teething. I don’t know where you were biting your last man, but you will find very few men who want a vampire fanging their main vain.

I took a random, informal campus survey and found that two-thirds of the men I asked don’t enjoy biting in the bedroom. This same 30-person survey also found that there was an even split between women who did and didn’t like to bite.

No matter if your next encounter is a one night stand or the beginnings of a relationship, communication is key. Not all of the responsibility is on you to make sure your partner is comfortable, but you could try to bring it up in conversation.

If this isn’t the type of topic you feel all right talking about openly, that’s OK. A 1971 study conducted by Albert Mehrabian at UCLA found that more than half of all face to face communication is nonverbal. Make it easy on yourself and look at his body language. If you are biting him and he isn’t responding in a way that says, “Ooo, that’s kind of naughty and I like it,” then you may want to back off a little.

Depending on what you’re looking for there are two ways this could go. If you want to continue things with someone who isn’t into biting, you will just have to work with them to find a happy medium. If biting is really important to you, find a guy who likes biting to begin with, because if you start biting a partner who really isn’t into it he will be too out of the moment to get into you.

Peter is a Shawnee sophomore in journalism.