One piece of advice I would give anyone asking is to go easy on yourself, and always start easy with a partner.

Death grip is a thing. Once you get used to it, it can be a major job to readapt. Since transitioning from self play to sex with others can be impacted by excessive force, speed, and/or aggressive technique, it’s a really good idea to start one’s self love journey as gently as possible.

This goes for men and women, despite the term death grip originating with male masturbation, and it being more common with men.

See, between the difficulties circumcision and learning how to reach orgasm for men when they’re younger, a lot of guys in particular end up squeezing hard and going very fast. Young women usually lack the extra difficulty that circumcision brings (though the horrors of female circumcision are exactly that: horrors. They just tend to be more than difficulties), but there’s still a learning curve, and the brain/body connection during masturbation tends to make those early orgasms harder to achieve.

That leads to the death grip. A lot of people struggle to achieve orgasms early on, and by having to go hard, end up not only believing they have to, but become adapted to it, and then have difficulty when engaging in sex with a partner. No vagina, mouth, or anus will ever squeeze as hard as a fist, which makes male death grip harder to overcome (imo, and pun intended). It also contributes to bad sex when someone is going harder to chase their own orgasm than what their partners need/want/can handle.

So, that’s why anyone that asks, or anyone that brings up difficulties (I used to be a nurse’s assistant, so I catch a lot of questions other folks don’t lol), I make sure to at least mention death grip and how to avoid it (and how to correct it if that’s useful)

Which brings me back to the start: be as gentle with your junk as you can, no matter what configuration your junk has