The way you masturbate is the way you train yourself for sex with partners. When you repeat the same routine as a way to get a quick release, you are making it more difficult to have pleasure in other ways.
From release to exploration
There is a difference between masturbation as release and self-pleasure as exploration. Masturbation as release starts from an itch, a bit of excess arousal, and moves toward ejaculation or a quick orgasm to clear it. Self-pleasure as exploration asks something different: how can my body be stimulated, engaged with, and responded to in different ways, so that pleasure can take on much more amplitude?
The idea is to move from releasing an itch to genuinely exploring what is available. The way we think of sexuality as the genitals, and think that if it is related to the genitals it is sexual, is a limitation. Most masturbation is about the genitals because of this programming. But the entire body is sexual. The entire being is sexual. That is not a concept to believe, it is a capacity to develop.
"Why not use your masturbation practice as a way to train yourself for the kind of sex you want to have? Instead of constantly doing the same routine as a way to get a quick release, use it as an opportunity to explore in different directions."
The body learns what you repeat
If stimulation has always been fast, always the same pressure, always the same path, the body encodes that as the expected route. It is doing exactly what it has been trained to do. The way you masturbate determines the way you have sex.
When you vary pace, pressure, location, and breath, you are asking the nervous system to pay attention in a new way. The areas you bring conscious attention to become more alive. This is resensitisation, waking the body back up by returning attention to areas that have been overlooked. The changes happen slowly, and then all at once.
Try this
As many of these practices require privacy, which might not be immediately available, I invite you to simply imagine the practice. Visualise, sensualise, how you would do this practice, and what it would feel like.
One area, full attention
Choose one part of the body you never touch with intention. The inner thigh is a good place to begin. The nerves that connect to your genitals run through there.
Place your fingers there and move very slowly. Not to get anywhere. To notice what is present. Temperature. Texture. Where sensation is stronger and where it fades. Stay for two minutes. That is the practice.
Science check
In a controlled study, sexual arousal was conditioned in both women and men through repeated pairing of neutral stimuli with sexual cues. Sexual response is shaped by what it has been repeatedly paired with.
Sexual conditioning , Hoffmann, H., Janssen, E., & Turner, S.L. (2004). Classical conditioning of sexual arousal in women and men: effects of varying awareness and biological relevance of the conditioned stimulus. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 33(1), 43–53.