Yes they can be.
I was sexually active from a fairly young age with someone who would be classed as a girl lover or pedophile, but to me he was just a friend and lover and someone I could trust and rely on. It wasn't just sex but a close friendship and bond. Yes we explored sexually together and that was something special we could share together, it was fun and even now I get a warm feeling when I look back at it.
Can sexual experiences be positive?
Re: Can sexual experiences be positive?
My experience with 'sexual numbness' (I'll call it sexual anhedonia) has really clarified for me that sex itself has no inherent value one way or the other. There are times when masturbating to fantasy/the prospect of 'real-life' sex (not sex I could actually have in a realistic, practical scenario but a virtual reality or dream experience or hypothetically possible scenario where it's not in my mind's eye but actual sensory experience and no suspension of disbelief is required in terms of assuming that I'm really sharing the experience with another mind. This is part of why lucid dreaming hasn't really interested me that much, because I'd rather believe that the characters in my dreams are as real as I am) is shockingly beautiful, euphoric and exciting; the most intensely pleasurable experience I could have in the absence of using some kind of drug and other times when it's completely boring and uninteresting but not because of body image problems, some other stressor I'm dealing with or an inability to emotionally connect with people. The former really helps to clarify why I think that happiness is the only intrinsic good (although sexual pleasure isn't the only thing that clarifies that). This is why I don't consider myself to be 'sex positive' or 'sex negative.' Imagine that aliens come to Earth and introduce us to some new currently unimaginable experience that would cause people as much or more pleasure than ideal real-life sex could (let's say in this scenario that a consequence of this experience is the loss of sexual desire and maybe even losing the memory of sexual pleasure so sexual frustration won't be an issue although the loss of sexual desire might be enough to prevent sexual frustration since the intensity of this new pleasurable experience would be so much greater), there would be no reason to prefer sexual pleasure per se, there'd be less of a reason to regret the loss of sexual opportunities (with someone one is attracted to), unrequited attraction, erectile dysfunction, etc. (although one thing sex has going for it is that the emotional intimacy it involves is conductive to 'empathy'/sympathy, affection in general is related to the psychology of valuing someone's happiness and during sex people, or at least men, are wired to be excited by their partner's expression of pleasure. Insofar as people seek out consensual sex they might have to consider their partner's pleasure but if this new experience is a completely asocial/solitary one they can just focus on themselves which isn't bad but there's value in priming people to care about everyone's happiness and social activities can do that well. Reading a novel is solitary but at least it puts you in other people's heads). It's the same thing with music and certain sensory experiences that I like (or am primed to like, e.g. grey skies, gentle breezes, the smell of burning wood, sunsets, the moon, ) they don't move me emotionally when I'm anhedonic (I'm never really very moved by non-musical sensory experiences anymore, music can be beautiful but I'm often numb to it), the sensory experiences themselves don't matter intrinsically.
I don't want to say, "it's just sex" if that seems like playing the fool about how people are or can be actually affected by it. Sex can be disgusting, it can be pleasurable, it can make the relationship between people awkward, they might regret being intimate with certain people for various reasons (e.g. because they normally dislike them) or feel shame for it, etc. but sex itself is just physical contact, it just doesn't matter intrinsically one way or the other. Elephants have sex, ants have sex, they don't seem to think it has much inherent 'meaning' nor do we view it as an inherently 'sacred' thing when they engage in it (it's interesting to note that bonobos use sex to make peace and settle conflicts, they'll do it with almost everyone in their group, juveniles included, although apparently mother-son sex hasn't yet been observed among them, if I'm not mistaken).
If this isn't too off-topic, one thing that has helped me to process many things (I have a tendency to coulda woulda shoulda or to ruminate over certain things that are 'shocking.' My mother's coughing throughout the day comes to mind, as trivial as that will sound to most people it has caused me a great deal of pain over the years) is considering that when you remove the emotional context of a thing (i.e. how it makes you feel) what's left is completely neutral (with my mother's coughing, as an example, it's just a sound by itself caused by a physical event, like a leaf falling off a tree. It happening 6 times or a dozen times in a minute for 25min., 40min., 1hr etc. without, say, a 5 minute break makes no difference; without considering the amount of stress it causes it can continue for 24 hours, a week, a month straight and it's just a series of inherently value-neutral physical events, I don't normally feel the need to process how much bigger the pacific ocean is than a raindrop because that doesn't impact me emotionally). I think that normally when we talk about processing emotionally charged events or issues we mean the value of those things (or outlining the value of those things). We don't really care about unexpected events when those things don't mean anything to us emotionally (even saying that something is 'shocking' is really just saying that it's 'surprising,' isn't it? That or extremely bad, or even pleasurable). When I analyze the distinction between a preferred outcome or reality that I assumed by default and what actually happened/how things actually are the difference, in value, is the difference between happiness and suffering. It used to help me to consider that all of my expectations about things going a certain way were never justified; nothing happens that wasn't already possible, but we realize that when it actually happens (at the very least that it was possible, if not that our expectations were never 'justified' which is my position as an epistemic solipsist), the fact that we expected something just sensitizes us to how deeply we would prefer it (it's harder to lose a million dollars than to never have a million dollars even though I'd prefer a million dollars in both scenarios). This might sound insane, it's hard to communicate what I mean, but it's helped me. Whenever I talk about 'happiness' and 'suffering' in the abstract I'm including every painful or pleasurable experience I can immediately recall; I'm grateful that I can at least make my pain a source of clarity, I don't know how else I could make sense of life.
I don't want to say, "it's just sex" if that seems like playing the fool about how people are or can be actually affected by it. Sex can be disgusting, it can be pleasurable, it can make the relationship between people awkward, they might regret being intimate with certain people for various reasons (e.g. because they normally dislike them) or feel shame for it, etc. but sex itself is just physical contact, it just doesn't matter intrinsically one way or the other. Elephants have sex, ants have sex, they don't seem to think it has much inherent 'meaning' nor do we view it as an inherently 'sacred' thing when they engage in it (it's interesting to note that bonobos use sex to make peace and settle conflicts, they'll do it with almost everyone in their group, juveniles included, although apparently mother-son sex hasn't yet been observed among them, if I'm not mistaken).
If this isn't too off-topic, one thing that has helped me to process many things (I have a tendency to coulda woulda shoulda or to ruminate over certain things that are 'shocking.' My mother's coughing throughout the day comes to mind, as trivial as that will sound to most people it has caused me a great deal of pain over the years) is considering that when you remove the emotional context of a thing (i.e. how it makes you feel) what's left is completely neutral (with my mother's coughing, as an example, it's just a sound by itself caused by a physical event, like a leaf falling off a tree. It happening 6 times or a dozen times in a minute for 25min., 40min., 1hr etc. without, say, a 5 minute break makes no difference; without considering the amount of stress it causes it can continue for 24 hours, a week, a month straight and it's just a series of inherently value-neutral physical events, I don't normally feel the need to process how much bigger the pacific ocean is than a raindrop because that doesn't impact me emotionally). I think that normally when we talk about processing emotionally charged events or issues we mean the value of those things (or outlining the value of those things). We don't really care about unexpected events when those things don't mean anything to us emotionally (even saying that something is 'shocking' is really just saying that it's 'surprising,' isn't it? That or extremely bad, or even pleasurable). When I analyze the distinction between a preferred outcome or reality that I assumed by default and what actually happened/how things actually are the difference, in value, is the difference between happiness and suffering. It used to help me to consider that all of my expectations about things going a certain way were never justified; nothing happens that wasn't already possible, but we realize that when it actually happens (at the very least that it was possible, if not that our expectations were never 'justified' which is my position as an epistemic solipsist), the fact that we expected something just sensitizes us to how deeply we would prefer it (it's harder to lose a million dollars than to never have a million dollars even though I'd prefer a million dollars in both scenarios). This might sound insane, it's hard to communicate what I mean, but it's helped me. Whenever I talk about 'happiness' and 'suffering' in the abstract I'm including every painful or pleasurable experience I can immediately recall; I'm grateful that I can at least make my pain a source of clarity, I don't know how else I could make sense of life.