The vast majority of being “good at sex,” imho, boils down to communication (not a super controversial take). 99% of being good at sex boils down to (in rough order of importance):
The ability to effectively negotiate consent
Being genuinely into your partner and what you’re doing with them and communicating that desire and enthusiasm
Making it emotionally safe for your partner/s to communicate their desires
Actively listening to what your partner/s say they want and don’t want
Communicating, verbally and non-verbally, what you like and dislike
Accurately interpreting non-verbal communication
Conveying enthusiasm about doing what they like
Being physically able to do what they like
Notice: Not one of these skills is exclusive to sex.
You need the ability to effectively negotiate consent to do anything you might want to do with someone whose level of interest in the activity is unknown to you. Just like harassing someone into bed with you is a consent violation, it’s rude to harass someone into going rock climbing. If it’s not their thing, keep it moving. Similarly, the physical ability to climb rocks (or at least spot) usually makes you a better rock climbing partner.
If you can do all of the above outside of bed, you can absolutely transfer those skills.
To get further into the weeds, sex advice impresario Dan Savage sums up being a quality lay with the three G’s: Good, giving, and game.
Most people who are giving (generous) and game (down for a variety of acts) outside of bed can pretty easily transfer those skills.
The big difference is the shame and stigma we’re taught around sex. But practice alone doesn’t necessarily help anyone overcome their programming. Cognitive dissonance is real. Meditation, therapy, and psychedelics work better, in my experience, than just having a bunch of sex.
The hardest part to work on outside of bed is becoming “good” (skilled).
For example, there’s an art to spanking. There are wrong ways to do it. Most people don’t want you to just wail on them. And you can actually injure someone that way.
But with most bedroom activities, spanking included, there are myriad ways to do it right.
If you’ve pleased one person in bed, you’ve pleased one person in bed. Everyone really is different.
That’s not to say there isn’t significant overlap. Most women seem to prefer a steady rhythm as they get closer to orgasm, for example. But some don’t!
In my opinion, the way having sex with a bunch of people could make you a better lover is that it gives you practice learning someone. But it doesn’t necessarily. I’ve had sex with many different people, mostly men, and I’ve seen very little correlation between the number of partners my partner has had and their bedroom skills. The one exception to this rule is partners I met through my Bay Area sex-positive community. They were leagues above partners I met elsewhere, on average. And while these people tended to have had a lot of partners, I think other factors had a much bigger impact on their skill levels. They were also consent trained and tended to be sex geeks, taking a certain pride in their work. These people were much more solicitous of feedback, for example, compared with partners I met elsewhere. This meant that they were more likely to actually be practicing communication and sex skills with each new partner and encounter.
What’s vastly underrated, imo, when it comes to being good at sex is masturbation. You can’t communicate to a partner what you like and don’t like if you don’t know. Masturbation is where you find out a lot about what you enjoy. Porn is also helpful here, not as instruction but in that it can give you some ideas about what you might like in terms of activities and kinks.
So that’s my take. What do you think?