perfunctory quickie. With a
be believed) are in the
good mutual-orgasm
same ballpark in terms of
technique, it can be deeply
their level of sexual ath-
fulfilling virtually every time.
leticism, so the statistical
odds of compatibility on
this dimension are high.
For the vast majority of lovers, the key is the
quality
, not the quantity, of their lovemaking—and here, once again, the most important thing is having an approach to mutual orgasms that works for both partners. Most couples settle into a routine of having intercourse one to three times per
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week. If the couple’s orgasm technique is working well, this may be enough to satisfy both partners’ latent lust.
If a couple doesn’t have a good technique, frequency may loom large in their minds (as it did, perhaps, for Alvie and Annie)—but frequency is not the real problem.
The one-to-three times a week average puts sex into perspective: a man and woman who make love with that frequency (assuming about 30 minutes per session) are spending six-tenths of one percent of their total time on sex, which means they are spending 99.4 percent of their lives doing other things. This may not seem like very much time for sex (young lovers are at it a lot more than that!), but for married people with full lives, or for older couples whose bodies are slowing down a little, it may be just about enough to satisfy their biological and emotional needs—provided they have satisfying mutual orgasms. In fact, having a lot more sex than this can take the edge off enjoyment. A couple might make love every day on a romantic vacation, but the expectation that sex should happen on a daily basis every single week, month after month is a killer. No matter how good the orgasm technique is, this will make sex into a chore. Many people find that orgasms are more powerful after a few days of abstinence; built-up libido makes lovemaking that much more satisfying when it occurs.
What about times when sex is impossible? Any number of reasons can conspire to keep a couple from 1 6 6
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making love as frequently as they would like: exhaustion, illness, menstruation, urinary-tract infections, the final stages of pregnancy, a new baby, children waking up with nightmares, ups and downs in the relationship, worries at work, travel, and other intrusions on the routine. It’s at times like these that there is the greatest temptation to stray. But the emotional and health risks of infidelity are enormous, as many have learned to their sorrow. Temporary abstinence or masturbation look far better when a couple is in a sexless dry spell.
The Issue of Duration
When newly infatuated lovers engage in sexual “outercourse” (touching but no penetration), sex can last all night. This may be because both are full of fresh passion, find the novelty of a new partner highly arousing, or haven’t yet worked out an approach that brings about mutual orgasms and sends them into dreamland. When couples graduate to intercourse, the amount of lovemaking time usually decreases, and as people become better acquainted with each other’s sexual responses, sex becomes more “efficient,” to the point where it can take less than half an hour.
This can be good and bad: it’s good if a couple can have satisfying sex despite being tuckered out or not having much private time; it’s bad if those sessions are perfunctory, loveless, and ungratifying. So the issue is not
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the quantity of time but the quality of lovemaking. We tend to assume that the less time a session lasts, the less enjoyment there is, and there’s something to that: longer foreplay (within reason) extends the pleasure and enhances the quality of orgasms, and people’s most memorable bouts of lovemaking tend to be extended trysts in idyllic vacation spots with absolutely no time pressure.
But sex on normal weekends (or times that can be captured during the week) doesn’t have to be a perfunctory quickie. Once again, the key is having a good technique for mutual orgasms. For couples who have found one, even a brief roll in the hay can be deeply satisfying for both partners.
Married couples whose
children sleep in nearby
Couples who make love only
bedrooms have another
when both are “in the
challenge—keeping the
mood” may find themselves
sexual noise level down.
waiting for a long time. Better
Back when they were
to get the ball rolling and
teenagers, most people felt
get themselves in the mood.
the need to be fairly hush-
hush about masturbation.
The same was probably true when they were young lovers conducting early, furtive liaisons within earshot of parents, siblings, or college roommates. But when they found more private spots, their lovemaking became more vocal and expressive.
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The noises people make during sex are intensely personal (another reason for suppressing them); as trust grows between lovers, inhibitions fade and expressions of pleasure and ecstasy tend to become an important way of expressing love. But when children overhear their parents’ sexual noises, they are often confused (“Daddy, why are you hurting Mommy?”). As a result, most couples with children stifle their full-throated expressions of enjoyment for a number of years—and appreciate those occasions when they have the apart-ment or house to themselves or are ensconced in a hotel room with good thick walls.
A final worry couples have about duration is that sex will literally shrivel up when they are in their sixties and seventies—the age-old afflictions of vaginal dryness and erectile dysfunction. Isn’t it ironic that early in our sex lives, the opposite is true: young women have a surfeit of vaginal lubrication (often leaving a wet spot in bed) and young men have too darn many erections (sometimes at embarrassing moments) and tend to ejaculate too quickly during intercourse.
The good news for aging lovers is that there’s now a much greater comfort level talking about these formerly taboo subjects; we have a better handle on the factors affecting sexual health (smoking, exercise, and obesity, among others); and there are effective medications for erection problems (Viagra and others) and excellent
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vaginal lubricants. The best news is that our sex organs continue to function throughout life: men can continue to have orgasms into their eighties and nineties, and women have been assured by Natalie Angier that “your clitoris will always be there for you.” Most couples who stay healthy, use the available remedies, and keep the lines of communication open can continue to have a robust sex life right through their senior years.
Being in the Mood
In the passionate opening months of a romantic relationship, lovers are interested in having sex pretty much any time, and spontaneity is the name of the game. A wink, a raised eyebrow, or a secret phrase is all that’s needed for them to tumble into bed. But as couples get more immersed in work, kids, hobbies, community, etc., there’s less free-floating libido, and the times when each partner is in the mood for sex become less frequent—and are less often in synch.
The factors that influence being in the mood are many and varied. A romantic candlelit dinner can make two hearts go pitter-pat. Erotic movies, music, books, and works of art often get the juices flowing. An enforced period of abstinence can turn the temperature up. Some women are more lustful at certain points in their menstrual cycle. And there are times when lustful thoughts arise for no apparent reason. The problem is 1 7 0
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that for busy people, these sexualized moments don’t always occur at the most opportune times, and the moments when
both
partners are in the mood within the same one-hour period may be few and far between.
But this doesn’t mean that a couple’s sex life has to be put on hold until those rare occasions when both sets of loins are stirring simultaneously. In fact, the belief that both partners must be spontaneously in the mood for sex to happen can cause major problems in a relationship. A couple can wait for
weeks
for the planets to align; during that time, one partner may make several sexual overtures and have the unpleasant and deflating experience of being rebuffed (“Not tonight…”). This can lead the spurned partner to retaliate in kind when the now-eager partner finally proposes sex (“Sorry, but my back is killing me.”). A dynamic like this can create strong resentment and ripple into other parts of the relationship.
The problem here is the underlying assumption that the only good sex is spontaneous sex. It’s simply not true. Just because sex isn’t happening at the drop of a hat doesn’t mean that the magic in the relationship is gone. In the words of Michele Weiner Davis in
The Sex-Starved Marriage
, “waiting for the urge to strike is pointless; better to bash ahead and hope for the best.”
The euphemism “in the mood” may also be part of the problem. When we say we are in the mood, we mean that we are mildly (or highly) aroused. But if we
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say we are not in the mood, it sounds like our mental state can’t be changed for a while (until we
are
in the mood)—whereas if we say that we are not aroused right now, there’s the possibility that we are
arousable
. One of the great things about human sexuality is that, with the right stimuli (mental or physical), most people can go from zero (thinking of other things with no libido in sight) to 60 (aroused and hot to trot) in a matter of minutes.
But when, oh when, can that happen in the over-scheduled, stressed-out life of a busy couple? Natalie Angier reports on a sophisticated statistical study that sheds some light on this question:
If you plot the incidence of intercourse among couples, you’ll see an amazing statistical high point, and it’s called the weekend—not because people necessarily feel sexy each Sunday, but because people have sex when it’s con-venient, when they’re not exhausted by work, and when they have the whole day to toy with. A hormone may lead you to water, but it can’t make you drink.
However, the advice to forge ahead and
just do it
is not enough. When people are not spontaneously in the mood, what will motivate them to go about getting themselves aroused? The key is knowing that there is a real sexual payoff for both partners at the other end of 1 7 2
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making love—and that means having a technique that virtually guarantees real physical and psychological satisfaction. If lovers have one and know that they will almost certainly wind up having good orgasms together, they are more likely to get the ball rolling, even if they are tired and preoccupied. Conversely, if one or both partners are unhappy with their lovemaking technique—if there usually isn’t an orgasmic payoff for at least one lover—then sex will seem like too much trouble and there will always be reasons for one or both partners to call it a night. Good sex involves giving pleasure, to be sure, but it’s also about getting satisfaction, and if that’s not happening, sex inexorably fades over the years.
The hypothesis that was advanced in Chapter 1 was that the absence of good mutual orgasms (rather than exhaustion or job stress or male-female power struggles) is the root cause of a lot of marital abstinence. Here’s the reverse of that hypothesis: a really
satisfying
sex life can be part of a positive feedback loop that smoothes out the daily tensions of life and reduces stress from other sources. If this is true, good sex will make a man be more likely to remember to put the toilet seat down and pick up his socks. And helpfulness around the house could in turn result in less resentment about everyday omissions and grease the skids for more and better sex.
It’s been said that there’s nothing sexier these days than
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a man who takes out the trash without being asked. It seems plausible that this kind of good will between partners can contribute measurably to a willingness to go ahead and get themselves “in the mood.”
Fine. But at a very practical level, how and when is the process of getting “in the mood” going to happen? Some busy couples have found that the best strategy is having a tacit agreement that certain times of the week are set aside for making love—times when they are least likely to be interrupted, have a fair amount of stored-up libido, and don’t have to worry about an alarm clock waking them up six hours later (sounds a lot like Friday and Saturday night and Sunday morning). At the appointed hour they get the ball rolling—with kissing being the leading favorite because, as Emma Taylor and Lorelei Sharkey so nicely put it, “the kiss is the most compact, powerful, diverse, complex, practically perfect sexual act ever invented.” One thing leads to another, and with any luck, they both get in the mood and… (fadeout).
Returning to the gustatory analogy, we may not be actively hungry when we walk into the restaurant, but it’s dinner time, our stomachs are empty, and when we smell the food cooking (or feel our tongues intertwin-ing), our appetite is suddenly back. For healthy people who have not had an orgasm all week, sexual urges that seemed to be deeply submerged can come to the surface quite quickly.
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People who have default times for lovemaking every week are not forcing themselves to do something they don’t want to do; they’re just taking steps to ease themselves out of a pre-