Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (55 page)

Tender loving sex involves things like letting yourself be held and engaging your partner through eyes-open sex. Eyes-open orgasms are like Dr. Spock’s “Vulcan mind-meld” in
Star Trek:
a profound level of partner engagement and emotional transparency.

S
ome time ago I had lunch with one of sweetest and dearest people in my life. He is a man I hold in the highest regard. Someone whose impeccable integrity does not permit me to mention his name. He was my therapist. He became my friend. He’s one of finest therapists I’ve ever known.

Now in his senior years, I went back to visit him as a peer. We spent an afternoon in a restaurant, talking frankly about our respective professional work, our lives, and ourselves. In the midst of our conversation my dear friend asked,
“Do you still fuck?”

I convulsed into laughter and nearly fell out of my chair. It was hard to breathe! After several minutes, I managed to get out, “Yes. How about you?”

“No,” my friend said. “Not like I used to. That’s why I asked you. I’m taking too many medications, my medical problems have taken their toll, and I’m getting old. But I tell you, I miss it! You need to
write another book—about fucking. That’s where so many couples need help.”

This whole thing was so precious and funny I couldn’t stop laughing. “I’m not sure about a whole book about fucking, but I’m writing something now. Maybe I can work in a chapter.”

“Do that,”
he said and smiled. “So many people don’t know what they’re missing. But I do!”

This was a small part of a wonderful lunch full of rich, meaningful, funny interchanges and the best crab au gratin I’ve ever tasted. As we said our good-byes, my friend brought the topic up again. With great seriousness, he implored, “Write about fucking. Write it for young couples. They waste so much time!”

Once again I was laughing. But this time my friend kept a straight face.

“You’re serious,” I said.

“Indeed I am,” he said forthrightly.

I became serious too. “I need you to clarify this. Do you mean write about sex, like making love, or do you really mean
fucking
?”

“I mean
fucking
! That’s what I said. Fucking. That’s the part I miss. It’s too important to let just slip away.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

We knew this might be our last time together, which it turned out to be. We expressed our love for each other. He kissed my head. His last words as we parted were, “Couples waste so much time. Teach them about fucking. It will save so much heartache in so many marriages!”

This chapter is in his honor.

My friend was referring to couples like Nicolle and Phillip, who came to see me for their sexual desire problems. Sex was down to once a month. Nicolle was the low desire partner. She said she wasn’t interested in sex but she wasn’t sure why. She thought she liked sex. Phillip was sure he liked sex, and his problem was he couldn’t get enough.

In short order Nicolle revealed she couldn’t stand the way they did it. Phillip got defensive. Nicolle went on to say she found their sex
boring
.
They always did the same old thing. It was predictable. It wasn’t interesting. Phillip reached orgasm too quickly. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t satisfying. It wasn’t worth doing. Nicolle acknowledged she was partly to blame. She was lazy, too. She didn’t put the energy into sex that she knew she should.

Phillip squirmed during Nicolle’s list of dissatisfactions. He managed to hold on to himself, but just barely. I could have asked Nicolle what she liked about their sex, to shore up his reflected sense of self. But she might not have anything really positive to say, and I didn’t want to encourage her to prop him up.

Instead, I asked her to describe what kind of sex she liked. It was a better move for both of them. Nicolle hesitated and then answered my question. As she described what she wanted, her face lit up. Her description was pretty detailed and graphic. When she finished and realized I was looking at her and smiling, she blushed.

“Why are you smiling at me?” She grinned.

“Do you like
fucking
?”

“I … I don’t know.”

“That’s what you just described.”

“You mean do I like sex? Yes, I do.”

“No. I mean, do you like to
fuck
? You just described you and your partner fucking. First you do him, and then he does you. Throughout your whole description you two are fucking. Apparently you know about fucking.”

Nicolle agreed. “Apparently I do!” Phillip stopped squirming and paid attention to what was unfolding.

“You didn’t answer my question. And you don’t have to. But I’ll ask you one more time: Do you know about fucking? Do you know what I mean?”

Nicolle glanced at Phillip, and then to me. Her hesitation was obvious. She took a deep breath and finally let her secret out. (It was already out.) “… Yes.”

“How do you know about fucking? From your relationship with Phillip?”

“… No.” Nicolle watched his reaction. I paused to let this happen.

“I see. Then you’re in a box that’s difficult to get out of. Particularly for women.”

Nicolle watched me closely. “What do you mean?”

“It sounds like you like sex, but you’re dying of frustration and boredom. You know what you like: You like to fuck. But you can’t tell Phillip because he’ll ask you how you know. Then you’ll have to tell him you discovered this with someone else, and you’re afraid he’ll feel threatened. So you look like a sexual dud, who doesn’t know what will please her, to keep your husband’s reflected sense of self from taking a nose-dive.”

Nicolle looked amazed. She was openly astonished. “How do you know all this?”

“Many women are in that box. Lots of them never get out—they just give up sex instead. Or have affairs.”

“I think Phillip and I got close to fucking once or twice.” Nicolle was trying to be supportive and optimistic, but it sounded hollow.

“Maybe so. But you haven’t said whether or not what I described is accurate about you.”

“About being in a box?” Nicolle was tracking Phillip’s state of mind.

“Yes.”

“… Yes. I’m in that box.”

Phillip shook his head in disbelief. “When Nicolle first started talking, I thought I sounded like a dumb fuck. Now I’m learning I’m not even that.”

I said, “Play your cards right, and you could turn out to be a great fuck.”

After several seconds, Phillip nodded. “All right. I’m willing to learn.”

When Nicolle and Phillip had sex at the start of their relationship, she realized he didn’t
do
her. Initially she attributed this to lack of experience. She was willing to be patient. She figured they’d work into it as she had with previous partners. Only this didn’t happen. Nicolle subtly encouraged Phillip, but he didn’t want to go there.

Nicolle tried to map out why Phillip pulled back from
doing
and
being done
. Over time she realized it wasn’t just naïveté. Sometimes when Nicolle sensed things were heading in the right direction, Phillip did something to cool things down. At first she couldn’t figure out why Phillip did this. She assumed anyone would want to fuck because it feels so great.

Then she though maybe Phillip was holding back to slow his rapid orgasms and prolong sex. She thought this for a long time. However, from mind-mapping over many sexual encounters, Nicolle realized there was something else: Phillip pulled back because he feared his own aggression. She encouraged Phillip, saying that she wasn’t fragile or breakable, that she was built for action, but to no avail. Nicolle put two and two together as she got to know Phillip’s out-of-control father.

By their third year of marriage, Nicolle gave up. They still had sex, but it was lackluster. Nicolle mostly went along with whatever Phillip wanted to do. She struggled with the urge to have an affair many times.

In many ways, Nicolle epitomized a common type of low desire partner: A fire-breathing momma who looks sexually uninterested, but who is frustrated, angry, and misses being
done
. Nicolle wanted Phillip to
do
her, and she wanted to experiment with
doing
him. She wanted Phillip to be the kind of man she would like to
do
. He had the right body, give or take a few pounds. The real question was, would he allow himself to be
fucked?

Like many men, Phillip was intimidated by women’s sexuality. His first intercourse occurred when his high school girlfriend proposed it. The next several times other women came on to him, Phillip demurred. Being with a sexually hungry (and presumably sexually knowledgeable) woman was daunting. The few times Nicolle had tried to
do
him, he got nervous, too. Phillip knew society and Nicolle expected him to be the high desire partner. But he didn’t think he could fill this tall order with women who really like sex.

Perhaps the female anatomy simply doesn’t encourage it, but terms depicting female sexual power don’t really exist. It reflects how Western
civilization plays down women’s carnality.
²⁰³
But countless generations have known it existed. Remnants of your ancestral grandmother’s sexuality have been trickling down for ages. Phillip didn’t realize part of his feeling intimidated stemmed from millions of years of human breeding.

It’s a common stereotype that men are more into fucking and women prefer making love. I would believe this too, if I didn’t do the work I do. But in helping many female clients, they let me see them as they are. And having worked with lots of them, I have to say this isn’t so.

Around the world, women are
at least
as interested in sex as men. Anthropologist Helen Fisher notes that although people commonly think men are supposed to take the sexual initiative, a 1970s survey of ninety-three societies found men and women in seventy-two societies believed both sexes had roughly equal sex drives.
²⁰⁴

Actually, in my professional experience, women are
more
interested. Meaning many women want sex frequently—
if it is good
. Women are more concerned about the quality of their sex. Many are more sexually interested and knowledgeable than their husbands. Women are at least equally interested in, and often more knowledgeable about, fucking.

One aspect of sex is its strength and quality of
intention
. Intention is desire. Intention is crucial when you are courting someone to have sex for the first time. It’s crucial when making love to your partner after several decades together. And a large part of what you fuck someone with is your focused carnal intentions.

Men and women look at sexually explicit photos differently. Men look first at faces, whereas normal cycling (non-contracepted) women look first at genitals, and women taking oral contraceptives look first at non-sexual contextual aspects.
²⁰⁵

Studies of
intention cues
(one of five courting behaviors) indicate women exhibit more intent: The woman usually makes the first move by touching her suitor’s body. Studies conducted in singles bars say women begin two-thirds of all pickups.
²⁰⁶
Women around the world frequently actively initiate their sexual encounters.

Contemporary wisdom holds that “good girls make love, and bad girls fuck.” Many women rail at this double standard. The idea that women aren’t supposed to fuck seems especially peculiar when you realize
women’s interest in fucking goes back to their ancestral grandmothers, who went into heat like other primates.

All female primates have a period of heat (estrus), human women being the only apparent exception. Female apes and monkeys have monthly menstrual cycles just like women, but they also go into heat in the middle of each cycle. The vast majority of copulations occur during this time. When the females cease having monthly menstrual cycles while they are breastfeeding, our ape brethren aren’t as sexually frisky. (The same occurs when couples have a new baby, except the man’s reflected sense of self declines for lack of attention. Male orangutans presumably handle this better because they don’t have as much of a sense of self.)

Each month a woman’s sexual desire peaks during some point in her menstrual cycle. Is this the remnants of our prehistoric grandmothers’ heat? Very likely it is. But women’s hereditary desire for sex goes farther then recurrent hormonal blips: Their brains are hard-wired to have sex for social regulation of anxiety. This is certainly true for Bonobo monkeys, the primates most sexually similar to humans.
²⁰⁷
Like people, Bonobos separate sex and reproduction. Sexual contacts are not confined to estrus.

Female Bonobos copulate during most of the year, because their heat extends through three-quarters of their menstrual cycle. But there’s another powerful reason: Bonobo females initiate sex daily to ease tension, reaffirm friendships, and reduce stress in the group. They also use sex to bribe male and female friends for food. Sexuality is a primary way female Bonobos and women relate to the world.