Q: After a decade of marriage our sexual relationship has stagnated to the point of making love every three weeks, always at night, lights out, in bed, in the same position, little or no foreplay, and never twice in one night. I love my wife and still am attracted to her, but am unsure whether the feeling is reciprocated. Yet I have had offers of sex from women who have told me that they find me attractive and desirable. I want to do the right thing--be faithful--but am finding the temptation increasingly more difficult to restrain. I have tried communicating my feelings to my wife, but I do not see that the seriousness of the situation is realized. She says I have a problem: sexual obsession. And I've now begun to doubt myself. AM I being obsessive by asking my wife to increase the quantity and quality of our sex?          

A: At face value, your story is common as dirt. A decade of careless familiarity can breed sexual indifference which in turn can foster resentment because sex is so central to our well-being--our health, joy, optimism. The two of you have become frozen with each other. Assuming that your sex life was happy earlier, then it's likely that your wife has in effect translated her sexual boredom as a lack of desire, so she won't have to deal with it. You say, passively, she doesn't realize how serious things are. Don't allow her to entertain illusions. If you havenít already, take her to lunch and be direct without losing your temper or whining or self-pitying; tell her the marriage is at risk. Discuss the poverty of your sex lives. Do not tell her that other women are interested in you, it will only make her angry and defensive. If she calls you sexually obsessed it's a sign she's feeling lonely or ignored or angry--and by now there's some truth to it since you're getting so little. After you reiterate to her your love and attraction, demand the truth about her feelings. Are you two in a rut that a bit of romance and some small life changes can repair? Do you have major worries (money, health, family)? Has one of you changed drastically in the past 10 years while the other hasn't? Does one of you wield more power in the world and over your daily life than the other? Are you two anything like the people who got married 10 years back?
     As for your getting involved with someone else while you love your wife and want to be with her, it will only complicate your relationship, and may end it, messily: guilt, fear, lies can mark a marriage indelibly (not to mention making the other woman feel used as well). If your wife was once blissful in sex, that can be rekindled through romance, traveling, fantasy, daring; but if she always raised taboos, she may be someone for whom sex is easier to repress than express, who was taught to treat it as a means to another end, and you shouldn't have married her. If together you can find ways to increase the quality of your sex life, the quantity will naturally follow. If you've been reading this column, take each month's topic and emulate it at home with the two of you playing all the parts. Don't go by any ideal number of times Average Man must bonk a week. You're not a statistic. And if there's no foreplay, kissing, etc., it's as much your responsibility as hers: your frustration has led you to discouragement which has led you to feeling inadequate (you want to be a better lover for her but you canít get started)--and this will lead you to resent her.
    If the lights stay out when you do get it on, your wife either hates her body (which is a battle you can't win, whether she hates it now because she hates her life, or she's hated it all along), or--and this is always a possibility, no matter how sure you are of her--she hates you because she's infatuated/obsessed with someone else. Whatever is the source of her unhappiness, insist that she owes you the truth if ten years together mean anything. Assuming you aren't abusive, quarrelsome, or otherwise beastly, thereís something going on with her that you need to find out. If she remains vague or cold in the face of your best efforts, then shes not in love with you anymore and you're only postponing the inevitable. If you have no kids, it's not a tragedy. Move on; and do better next time. If you have kids, youíre both obligated to compromise; if that fails, you're headed for an emotional mess that makes how you feel now a walk in the park. Shrinks and marriage counselors--neutral platforms whereupon you may vent and soulsearch--can help you split up without feeling the world has come to an end.  Sex therapists, on the other hand, can help you stay together. They may guide you through homework exercises, lasting 6 to 8 weeks, called sensuate focus, which were originally developed by Masters and Johnson to assist couples experiencing desire disorders; each week you'll be told how to touch each other and how many minutes a day to practice doing it (the first week you massage each other without touching genitals, the second week you touch genitals without having intercourse, and so on, re-focusing on pleasure). Find a therapist who has a Ph.D. or MD in sex therapy (not marital or family therapy, general counseling, psychology) and is certified by the AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists).
     Remember, life is based on accident. Words were invented to add a logical system of meaning to the world, but not to express the fundamental irrationality of desire. Sex is basic. Whether it's psychologically formative or genetically determined, is not the point. You donít need it explained, you need it experienced.

Q: I am a 26-year-old virgin. I'm attractive, I exercise, I thrive at work, and yet even around available women, I can't relax and flirt. I can't help but worry about how to get one to go with me without making too big a thing out of the fact that I've never done it before. I won't go to prostitutes because having to pay for sex would confirm that I am such a failure I can't get anybody for free. My problem is compounded by the fact that I masturbate a lot and am fearful I won't be able to get or keep it up when the big moment comes, but if I give up masturbation I'll come so fast I'll hardly know I've been in, and she'll hate me. To my friends I pretend I'm an old hand at sex. What should I do to break the ice?

A: Find a woman who leaves you no doubt that she wants you. Cultivate anyone at work who has a crush on you. Take her out to movies and excursions, wine and dine her, tell her about your daily life, let her meet your friends and family, and get to know her so well that you feel totally at ease with her. All this time treat her like a friend: flatter her, charm her, but don't even think about sex, and if she brings it up say you donít believe in sleeping with someone you work with. Absolutely do not tell her what you've told me, unless she's like me--someone who would relish the rarity of initiating a novice who is not a pimply boy but a full-grown man. There are many women who would find it charming to be a man's first, and to those you must confess, coyly, as part of the seduction. Those women know that late bloomers become fireballs in bed. But if you've chosen a relatively inexperienced, non-threatening girl, there's no need to put your chastity on the spot. Think of it as an ace up your sleeve: if all else fails, you can present your case in a heart-melting light (I've been waiting for the right woman) and any girl will think you are romantic rather than impotent. After at least two months go by, but no more than six, tell her you can't control yourself anymore, work ethics notwithstanding, you canít think of anything but the curve of her back, the smell of her neck, the feel of her hair against your skin, you are dying to touch her. If your timing is good, she won't go home to think about it (leaving you to be eaten alive by nerves) but will jump in your arms at once. You'll be scared but only for seconds; your tension will be soothed as she casually touches your erogenous zones. Unless you have an underlying psychological block (say, a fetish, nourished since childhood, that you haven't hit on yet, and you won't unless you peruse all fetish magazines, videos, and websites you can find and a certain visual moves you to an ecstasy you never knew before), let her take over and get you hard: you'll be surprised by how easy sex is. Do to her as she does to you. If she's shy masturbating you, don't be ashamed to arouse yourself--you can always do it while you give her cunnilingus. And keep your mind off your penis. A guy your age shouldn't have a problem performing even after he jerks off. As for premature ejaculation, it only means you'll have to do more work to get her off; some women get disappointed and lose their arousal when guys come too soon ,so don't announce your spill if she's close to getting off; if she's not, start from scratch--rubbing, chewing, sucking--which in your case shouldn't be boring. If somehow the whole scene is a failure (meaning not even one of you either orgasms or falls in love), then definitely tell her you are a virgin; instead of taking it personally and being convinced she turned you off, she'll feel flattered and will probably try all over again to help you pop your cherry.
    What you suffer is just performance anxiety--the fear of failure during sex, common at the beginning of new relationships. Instead of feeling natural and spontaneous, you are preoccupied with the idea of sex, the thought of every move you must make, you're overwhelmed by options, and in the end you'd rather not try at all than be ridiculed or mortified by your clumsy ignorance. Like a true narcissist, you can't take your eyes off your performance, as if you live in front of rolling cameras. You can try yoga, meditation, breathing, closing eyes; but what you're struggling with is puritanism: the ingrained fear that if you give in to your impulse and open Pandora's box, dark furies will leap out and choke you. It's myth. If you think sex is a healthy, positive, amazing part of life, invest serious energy and effort into it; what awaits you at the other end is liberation.
Shed your armor. Surrender. Die a little. Get laid.

Q: I've just broken free from a negative, go nowhere, highly abusive relationship with a manipulative woman-- someone with a lot of hatred for men. I stayed with her because I don't know how to approach women, and when I do, I fail miserably. I end up putting my foot in my mouth, and feel ashamed. I am a professional businessman, age 33, and have no problem making mega-money sales deals. But when it comes to matters of the heart, I'm painfully inept. Can you recommend some type of book or tape that will help me learn how to reach out to the opposite sex? I feel trapped, frustrated, and pretty damned hopeless and lonely.
 
A: Guys, stop confusing sex with love. Sex is the fun part of socializing. Even abuse, in the confines of the sex act, is fun. Love is the tough part. Except for being an aphrodisiac, love is trouble. As Sartre said, Hell is other people.
     So if you stayed in an abusive relationship because you're shy, before you try to meet someone new, ponder your priorities: you chose to be unhappy rather than be alone. Start by taking time off love and finding ways to be alone that don't bore or frighten you. Make sure your primary desire is not to fill a void or escape negative feelings about yourself, that you don't operate out of weakness and neediness, wanting someone who can give you an identity. People will always take as much power as you give them--though they may eventually feel as burdened by controlling you as you will by being controlled. Even if they love you sincerely and deeply, they'll smell your desperation and use it to prop themselves up while they appear to prop you up. You sound ready to repeat old mistakes, and there's no ready-made how-to that can recast you into Don Juan. Forget women for a while. Pretend youíve just come out of a gruesome divorce. Learn or do something entirely new that will send you into a fresh view of the world. Enroll in an art or music class, study photography or art collecting, keep at it, and stay celibate. By the end of that enforced retreat, you may have a serious hobby, a circle of new friends, a better sense of yourself. If you find interests that take you out of yourself, if you develop a specific talent wholeheartedly, women will notice you and admire you. Learn  to negotiate life within your strengths and weaknesses.
     Another venue that may suit your temperament is the Internet. Join a chat room, or fifty. Meet dates anonymously, express and expose yourself., try on different personalities. Buy any of The Joy of Cybersex type books as guide; and be careful when meeting cyberdates in reality. Being verbally confident with sex is no guarantee of being physically confident with it.Wash away your old patterns.

Q: I have trouble getting a firm erection without a long drawn-out period of stimulation. Viagra really helps, but it makes me feel a little "artificial" and it spooked the most recent woman I was intimate with. Is there anything short of hanging some sort of appliance on myself, any technique I can use to stay "up there"? And is there a delicate way to bring up my penile problems with my next girlfriend? Should I wait until we are almost there? Sneak a few Viagra? Or bring it up early in the relationship?

A: First of all, there's nothing wrong with long, drawn-out foreplay, from the woman's point of view. And you're not supposed to pop a few Viagra. The diamond-shaped blue pill that made its debut in 1998, has side-effects (blue-tinted vision, upset stomach, diarrhea, headaches, urinary tract infections), it clashes with medications and illnesses, and we haven't begun to know its long-term effects. (Your feeling of artificiality is likely the result of numbness, and a rise in your temperature.) We only know that, taken 30 minutes to 3 hours before intercourse, it affects the blood flow in a man's body and sends it to the penis; it doesn't increase desire, only the physical response that leads to erection. If a medical condition prevents you from getting erections, if you are Bob Doleís age and have had your prostate tissue removed, merrily gulp it down. But if youíre not 65 or older, are not taking antidepressants, tranquilizers, high blood pressure drugs, are not diabetic or undergoing radiation and chemotherapy, and don't ingest drugs or booze in excess, there's no simple cure for your erectile dysfunction. See a urologist to find out if it is biological.
    Impotence--a man's inability to achieve or maintain an erection sufficiently firm for intercourse--is not necessarily chronic. According to The Journal of Urology, the inability to get an erection on a regular basis affects approximately 10 percent of the male population and 35 percent of men over 60. And almost all men have at least one or two experiences when they can't get an erection--when they are too tired, distracted, uncomfortable. The most popular method of prolonging an erection is the pump--a plastic tube attached to a mechanism that applies suction to draw blood into the penis. Guys put the tube over their penis before sex and use it like a bicycle pump until the penis becomes engorged with blood. But they can pop a blood vessel or pump up one of their testicles accidentally. Other treatments include hormone injections or surgically implanted plastic penile implants, which are used in two ways: either a semi-rigid piece of plastic is inserted in the penis and puts it in a constant state of erection, which can be hidden by bending it downward and wearing tight clothes; or a limp piece of silicone is implanted in the penis and connected to a tiny pump implanted in the scrotum which the man can manually inflate whenever he wants an erection. This is how so many retirees sport perennially hard cocks.
   Once your doctor makes sure there's no physical cause for your gravity problem--there rarely is--you can see a sex therapist and learn ways to find sexual pleasure that don't involve erections. Meanwhile, if it's all in your head, it's a hard place to treat. If you sometimes get erections with women, your difficulty is probably related to your relationship to women. Find the common denominators among the affairs where your penis was most troubled; identify when you successfully stay hard--say, when you first wake up or in the shower. You may notice that you only get a boner next to women who don't want you; or who smother you. Ask yourself: if you had to, would you hire a dom or a slave? Know who you are and whom you desire. And whatever you discover, go for.
     At the same time, you can try acupuncture, Chinese medicines, health-store herbal potency supplements. Keep a top-of-the-line lubricant nearby and use it for manual stimulation--which you can direct her hand to do for you--to get you fully erect. Have sex at different times during the day, preferably when you're energetic and rested, not right before sleep. Watch porn, talk dirty, use toys and tools, act out fantasies, try positions that don't put physical strain on you, list all the sexual things youíve wanted to do and try them.
     Most problems with erection stem from stress or fatigue, including the obvious stress of having sex with someone new. Worrying about not getting it up will cause you to go down, and what fails to go up will get you down. It's a vicious cycle--you worry, can't get hard, medicate yourself to get hard. Don't bring up the issue beforehand, even if you hope to avoid failure or embarrassment. By taking your half-mast for granted and telling the girl this is all she gets, you deny your body the opportunity to surprise you. Worse, she could be attracted to your problem, either as a savior or because it might indicate to her that you're not very sexual. So unless your new partner is an old friend, unless she cares about you a good deal, don't say anything; it will only spook her or lead her to think you've got lots of emotional garbage. But also consider this: sometimes men have erectile problems because they're not really excited about their partners, and only their bodies know it; or they suppress some fundamental sexual need they can't acknowledge to themselves (a kink to wear feminine clothes letís say). On the other hand, men don't get it up well if they're totally gaga over someone, if the stakes are high. Finally, even too many short-term affairs can lead to soft-ons--your body gets bored with years of shallow mechanical sex, whether itís obtained in monogamy or promiscuity. 
     Sexually, here's what you do: Increase manual and oral stimulation one hundredfold. Put your flaccid sword inside every orifice and get hard there. Use your impotence to discover your myriad erogenous zones beyond the penis and get away from the phallocratic sex that women find boring. You may become a great lay.

Q: I have recently encountered a new "fad" among the men I date. Many of them shave their balls. It puts me off. Why do they do this? I cannot believe there is a vast right (or left) wing conspiracy by men against hairy balls.

A: It's a fad men copied from women. Itís a direct result of guys having seen in strip joints women without pubic hair, and found it attractive. When a woman shaves her genitals, she looks vulnerable, exhibitionistic, even prepubescent--all of which is supposed to give her, and her mate, great pleasure. Her decision to shave--or wax/laser/pluck--means that she's willing to expose herself (the clitoris and its hood are naked to the eye) in order to be pleasured. As a male fashion statement, pubic baldness originated with the gay community who borrowed it from Latinos (who do it to sweat less and cool off) and prison inmates (who do it to avoid lice, crabs, etc.). Roman soldiers shaved. Athletes do. Normal guys do to make their balls and perineum more attractive in hopes of greater oral contact--to inspire the woman to put her tongue where she hasn't before. And they want to be objects of desire in their own right; they envy women and want to reclaim their adolescence, before they had seven inches of rambling rabbinical beard. It's common practice in porn films, and men figure if it's OK for a Euro macho porn stud, it's good enough for Joe.
     If you're averse to hairless testicles (if you feel you got a child's balls in your hand, or if his scrotum is like chicken flesh), tell him. He's taken the time to groom himself for you, so you'll get aroused and feel like going down on him and licking his perineum. If you think he looks like a ten-year-old, say so. If you like bushy smelly thatches, if you don't mind boring your way through the thick of it, you'll be very popular indeed.
     The other response you could try is to shave yourself. Well-oiled hairless crotches are among the most sublime visual stimulants--the Chinese knew it 5000 years ago.
     Either way, let your senses do the thinking.
 

Q.Once and for all: does the vaginal orgasm really exist? When I was in College, it was considered politically incorrect. Girls said the G-spot didn't exist. Suddenly I hear a lot about female ejaculate. I believe it's a real thing, but does it mean that the woman is just enjoying herself in an extraordinary way, or is it physiological?
 

A. Sex Files: FEMALE EJACULATION 101

 

Q.  The way you depict  sex and sexual identity in  your works is very objective.  You always seem to maintain a certain distance and enjoy thefact that you are the one in control.  Through your works,  you (and of course the readers) are able to  "get the upper hand" of the fixed category called"female,""women," or whatever you want to call it, and freeyourself (and us) from ridiculous illusions.  Does this distance have anything to do with the fact that you conceive yourself as a foreigner in America who keeps an outsider's point of view? A. Great Question. Of course, I don't agree that women are a fixed category.  But yes, it's my project to speak for the (female) body. My films and my novels try to describe the so-clled indescribable—to show the body, inside and out, not in the cliche Playboy/Hustler sexualized objectification nor the feminist/medical desexualized sterilization. What is perceptive in your question is the association between foreignhood and womanhood, which I think is valid. I believe in being an exile It is interesting to me that Americans refuse to perceive my foreignness; you will never find my work listed in New Immigrant or European anthologies; you will find it in Avant-Pop anthologies, for instance, which is as American a movement as apple-pie. My foreignness is very important to me & I maintain it wherever I am. I have no home where the rules apply.