Hair Pulling During Sex Guide: Tips & Techniques

Learn how to properly pull someone's hair during sex to make it a pleasurable experience rather than a painful one.

Hair pulling is a seemingly simple and widely used activity in BDSM scenes and rough sex. It’s often considered as “entry-level” because it seems straightforward and requires little explanation. While yes, it only requires your hand and their hair, doing it correctly can be the difference between driving your partner wild with lust and really hurting them (and not in the fun sexy way).

Why do people enjoy hair pulling?

Hair pulling can be enjoyed by practically anyone (except our bald friends… I’m sorry.) The reasons you might enjoy hair pulling can be different for you but here are some common reasons.

Some common reasons include:

• Physical sensation: The scalp is full of nerve endings - two to twenty nerve endings per single hair follicle - which are stimulated by hair pulling. Pulling large amounts of hair can give a pleasurable sensation to the scalp, much like a scalp massage/
• Loss of control: Because the hair is connected to the head, a person that has their hair pulled has little choice but to follow in the direction of the hand that is pulling the hair, otherwise they will experience a lot of pain. This also means that their attention must be directed wherever the other person wants. The loss of control can be freeing.
• Primal: Having your hair pulled, particularly during rough sex, can have a very primal feeling. Almost like a lion biting the back of the head of a lioness. 
• Expression of Dominance and submission: Hair pulling may be included in power play and used for play or demonstrations of Dominance, allowing the Dom to have power over the submissive and further reinforcing the dynamic.

How to Pull Hair

Risks

Hair pulling is relatively simple, and while the risks are low in incorporating it into your play, it’s not to say there are none. 

Here are some risks you should be aware of:

• Breaking hair: If you don’t pull from the root of the hair near the scalp, you increase the likelihood of damaging or breaking the follicles.
• Pulling it out: If you grab too little, you’re likely to pull the hair out of the person’s head.
• Neck injury: Depending on the position you pull the hair from and the amount of rattling you do in that position (ahem… doggystyle) you can strain or injure the muscles in the neck.

Where to Hair Pull

The easiest and safest way to grab someone’s hair is from the back of your partner’s head near the base of the skull. This spot is the pivot point where the skull sits on top of the spine, giving you the most control of their head. 

Techniques

I’m going to run you through a variety of techniques and positions you can incorporate hairpulling in your play. This is a far from exhaustive list, but are the ones to come up most often.

Basic Hair Pulling

The basic hair pulling technique is done facing your partner and reaching your hand around to the back of their head.

Basic hair pulling:

• Place your palm against the back of your partner’s neck, below their hair.
• Slowly slide your hand up the back of their head, along their scalp with your fingers apart. Their hair will be running through your fingers.
• When you reach the middle part of the back of their head, near the base of the skull and generally level with their eyes,  gently curl your fingers into a gentle fist holding a large amount of your partner’s hair.

Despite the name, you don’t actually have to pull their hair all that much. In fact, their scalp is already being stimulated quite a bit in this position. From here, you can slowly increase the intensity of the sensation by lightly tugging away from the scalp. I promise it will not take much to get them moving in the direction you want.

Pony tail

The basic method also works if your partner has a loose bun or ponytail. You can simply keep your fingers and hand between their scalp and hair tie. 

However, you can also wrap their pony tail around your hand and grab near the head where the hair tie is. You won’t really be pulling in this position, because you’re not grabbing the hair at the root, but you can control and pivot their head around lightly this way.

Pig tails

Similar to the techniques of a pony tail, you can grab pigtails as well. However, you want to be more careful and use less force than a ponytail for two reasons: 

• You’re now grabbing near the top and sides of the head, which are going to be more sensitive and prone to hurting more.
• You’re grabbing less hair than you’d have in a ponytail.

From the side

It’s not advisable to grab from the side of the head for the previously mentioned reasons; however, if you do, grab and loop a bunch of hair in your hand and don’t pull in order to protect the person from too much pain.

From behind

As I mentioned before, it’s not really great to pull your partner's hair during doggy style as it’s going to kink the back of the neck while putting a lot of strain on the front of the neck. If you combine that with vigorous thrusting, you could strain the neck and cause a lot of pain. 

Instead, I tend to grab a fist full of hair and lightly pull upwards, parallel to the back of my partner’s head, as opposed to pulling towards you and perpendicular to their head. This pulls their head in line with their spin as opposed to against it. Similar sensation but much safer.

I’ll also grab a fist full of hair and push their head (usually into the bed) rather than pulling. Still plenty of sensation, but again, their neck is not put under distress. 

For a kiss

A personal favorite of mine, I like to do the basic hair pulling technique but use it to control my partner’s head by making them look at me and giving a kiss. While kissing, I’ll lightly pull on their hair. I’ll sometimes give a light tug sideways in order to reveal their neck to kiss and nibble.

I tend to use this a lot when receiving a blowjob as well, pulling her hair lightly from behind to pull her mouth off my cock, sometimes rewarding her with a kiss.

Facefucking

Grabbing a fist full of hair, as opposed to just placing the hand on the back of the head, makes it easier for facefucking. You have more control of the speed and intensity this way. Depending on how vigorous the facefucking is, you can use two hands, still grabbing from behind, to maximize the stability as you thrust. 

Dragging them by their hair

It’s not recommended to do this often, or ever at all, because it’s going to hurt no matter how it’s done, but for some intense scenes that may be exactly what you want. In that case, grab a lot of hair, as much as possible, from the base. This will help minimize the damage. If you’re dragging them by their hair, it’s more likely they’ll be supporting the movement in some way with their hands or feet because it’s going to be very painful to have the force of all their weight against the hair.

Putting it into practice

Remember your goal

Before you start engaging in hair pulling, remember what your goal is for the scene and what intention you have behind hair pulling. Is it for creating an intense moment full of pressure and showing who is in control? It is to have a sensual moment, turning on all the nerve endings in your partner’s head to bring them into greater pleasure? Just because hair pulling is simple doesn’t mean it can’t be a power tool to create an unforgettable moment.

Sensual vs Rough

Hair pulling does not have to be rough. In fact, it can be used as part of a more sensual experience. You can still grab your partner’s hair from the back of the head, but instead of pulling hard, just lightly run your fingers through your partner's hair, running your finger tips on their scalp, and occasionally giving a light tug.

Personally, I don’t like having my hair pulled. However, I love to have my partner massage the back of my head and run their fingers over my scalp.

Tips for the submissive whose hair is being pulled

Being a good submissive takes skills too and there are things she can do to make the experience more enjoyable.

Tips for the submissive:

• Move in the same direction: When your Dom has your hair in this position, you’re pretty much at the mercy of his control unless you want to really hurt yourself. So don’t fight it and just move in whatever direction he pulls you. 
• Bun vs a pony: Of course we would always love to play with an experienced partner, but sometimes that’s not always the case. Putting your hair in a pony tail during sex can make it more likely for an inexperienced partner to grab it and use it like horse reins in the heat of the moment. Instead, consider putting it into a bun which is going to force your partner to grab it with a fist if they want to pull your hair in the heat of the moment. The best option is to teach your partner how to properly pull hair, but I know that’s not always the easiest, so a bun keeps you safer.

Happy Hair Pulling

Now that you know how to pull hair properly, combine it with other activities like spanking, choking, or manhandling. Learn to place hair pulling in a well constructed scene in order to increase pressure and create perfect moments of dominance. Or just enjoy it on it’s own for a nice stimulation of all those nerve endings on your partner’s head. The choice is yours.