I am not a sex-advice guy, nor am I an expert on intimate relations. I’m just a regular married guy, trying to tell it like it is from my point of view. I’ve got to get something out in the open, though, and it’s going to sound kind of obnoxious. OK, I’ll just say it: Married women don’t enjoy sex enough. I don’t mean they can’t; they just don’t. (I also don’t mean to generalize, but what the hell, I did it anyway. If you’re an exception, lucky you! Write a letter and tell me about it.) But I think there is a very easy solution to this, uh, widespread problem.
Men have long had a reputation for being selfish about sex. We want it, we gotta have it, we resent foreplay, we want to cut straight to the main attraction, and so on. (A corollary of this, by the way, is that women make love as a “favor” to their husbands—a favor they are happy to withhold, if necessary, in the usual give-and-take of the household. Can you imagine a man doing that? Not me.) Well, here’s a secret for all you married women: Men, despite (or perhaps because of) their somewhat simple wiring, are turned on by a partner who is turned on. Married men are too polite—and often too desperate—to say so, but it is not much fun to make love with someone who either isn’t enjoying it, or isn’t letting on that she’s enjoying it, even if she is your soul mate. Sub-secret: We tend to assume that she is not enjoying it, if she doesn’t make it fairly obvious.
Ironically, men are so selfishly focused on the finish that we assume women are incapable of faking it for the long haul. Even setting aside the orgasm issue, the fact of the matter is that it is easier for a woman to tolerate bland sex than it is for a man, just as it is easier for her to fake enjoying it. You could consider this just another example of male pig-headedness—he wants proof from you that he’s an irresistible, orgasm-inducing sex machine. Or you could take the opportunity to let yourself go and have more fun under the covers.
I freely admit that this may merely be a “reporting problem.” In fact, we all tend to be self-conscious about expressing desire and pleasure, in the heat of the moment. I know that most of my friends have worked really hard most of their postcollegiate lives to be sensitive to the women around them, maybe especially in our most intimate moments. We don’t want to be perceived as boorish or self-centered, and we don’t want our women to feel threatened or turned off by aggressive sexual behavior. But is it possible to be a good, liberal, sensitive male, and still be noisy and naughty in bed? A lot of us struggle with this, and we’d like a little help from our women.
Ladies, one of the nicest gifts you can give your beloved is to tell him—better yet, show him—precisely what it is that turns you on the most. We are so accustomed to being secretive about pleasuring ourselves that ironically we won’t do it in front of the one person we entrust to do it for us. It’s like: You own that beautiful instrument, but I’m the only one who ever plays it! I’d like to see how you play.
The underlying assumption here is what therapists and couples’ counselors have been saying for decades: Make a special effort to do it the way your partner wants to do it. Get outside yourself, amd try to speculate what might really turn your lover on, and then do it. But in my opinion, this suggestion should be directed squarely at men, not women. Women need different, opposing advice: Figure out what most turns you on, and then beg your husband to do it for you, and then, for once in your life, ignore him. I don’t mean forget him, but let yourself go a little bit, and don’t worry so much about whether he’s enjoying himself. If he’s a real man, your pleasure will directly fuel his.
If he isn’t that kind of man, find one who is. Love, marriage, and sex are a two-way street, and you owe it to each other to be honest about what really turns you on. You owe it to yourself to go ahead and do it. Life is too short and difficult to be shy in your own bed.
In the end, sex is one of those strange human transactions where the sum of the parts adds up to more than it should. Our mutual pleasure is an exponential thing; it’s a turn-on to participate in someone else’s turn-on. I’m certainly not expert enough to figure out what part of my pleasure is made up of my lover’s pleasure. I just know that, like a good movie or a funny joke, it’s a lot more fun when you can share. Here endeth the lesson; go forth and multiply.
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