The New Male Sexuality (37 page)

Feedback is something to be thankful for. When your partner tells you to touch her like so, or that she likes this or that, she’s telling you what she needs for a good sexual experience
with you
.

It’s possible, of course, that your partner is speaking in ways that are hard to hear. Or, perhaps because she’s anxious about hurting your feelings and how her comments will go over, she may not communicate very clearly. If you object to the manner of her speaking rather than to the content, it’s perfectly acceptable to let her know how you could hear better.

Otherwise, you have no choice but to get over your feelings of being criticized and listen. Unless you listen carefully to what she says and act accordingly, the chances of good sex are seriously diminished. Virtually all of the women I’ve talked to say that listening to, understanding, and acting on the woman’s suggestions are important aspects of being a good lover.
That’s what they want rather than a man who can anticipate their every desire or automatically know what they prefer.

If you’re not sure you understand what she wants, having a longer talk about it and getting a demonstration can be of great help.

GETTING A DEMONSTRATION

Let’s say your partner wants longer kisses or a particular way of being touched. Although you may be able to repeat back her words exactly, you may still not know what she means. For example, your understanding of “long” or “gentle” may be very different from hers. It happens all the time. The woman tells the man to touch her more softly. He shows his understanding by saying, “You want a softer touch,” and then proceeds to touch her in a way that is soft by his definition but not by hers.

Even the seemingly simple word
kiss
can present problems. There are many different kinds of kisses, and it’s by no means clear that you have the same kind of kiss in mind when your partner says she’d like more kissing. Is she talking about a peck on the cheek, an affectionate kiss, an all-out passionate kiss? It’s important not to assume that just because she said “more kissing” and you repeated back “more kissing,” the two of you are talking about the same thing. You may be, and then again you may not be.

Asking for a demonstration is very helpful, which is what the next exercise is about. I use the example of kissing because the first few couples I used it with were having trouble with kissing, but the exercise works well with many activities: genital and nongenital stimulation, hugging, holding, intercourse positions and movements, and even back rubs.

EXCERISE 12-2: KISSING (OR WHATEVER) SEMINAR

Time Required: 2-10 minutes

Tell your partner you’d like help with kissing, because she’s been complaining about it. “I’d like to learn to kiss the way you want, but I need help. Would you tell me exactly what you want and then show me? I want to get this right.”

Listen to her explanation and check your understanding by summarizing what you hear her say. When she agrees that you have it, have her kiss you that way. (If the issue is touching rather than kissing, you can have her demonstrate on herself as well as on you. You can also have her guide your hand with hers when you touch her.) Then you do what she’s been doing and ask for feedback Use that information when you try again. Don’t expect to have it perfect right away. Pay attention and take your time.

The exercise should probably not last more than ten minutes. End it when you’re both feeling good, even if you still haven’t mastered what she wants. You can always arrange another seminar later.

P
OSSIBLE
P
ROBLEM

You can understand and do what she wants, but it’s not what you want. Kissing her way is not your favorite way. One possibility is to try it her way for a time—say, a few weeks—to see if you get to like it more. If not, the two of you may want to agree to have more my-turn, your-turn sex, where sometimes it’s done mainly for her and sometimes mainly for you. When it’s done for her, you kiss her way. Another possibility is to kiss both ways during sex, sometimes her way, sometimes yours.

LISTENING TO REPORTS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

By now it should come as no surprise to hear that millions of American women have been victims of incest, molestation, or rape. These assaults are a leading cause of sexual problems in women. If your partner was a victim, it’s important to be able to listen to her if she wants to talk about it. Of course, she probably won’t tell you if you’re not already a good listener.

You may well find that her story stirs up all sorts of feelings in you, but it’s crucial not to let them overpower you. This is definitely one time where her feelings are far more important than yours. What you mainly need to do is listen, encourage her to say as much as she wants, and be supportive.

Whatever you do, do not explicitly or implicitly criticize her behavior now or in the past. You may believe that she shouldn’t have gone out with that guy in the first place, shouldn’t have been walking in that area alone at night, or should have fought back harder, but do everyone a favor and keep these ideas to yourself. She’s had a horrible experience and needs you to be there for her. Don’t give advice unless it is requested, don’t make judgments, and don’t try to fix her. You are not her doctor or sex therapist, and you shouldn’t try to be. If she needs professional assistance, she should get it from a professional. It is also counterproductive to get crazy and threaten to kill the man who assaulted her. Such macho posturing works only in the movies. Besides, if you get angry, she’ll be torn between
dealing with her own feelings and dealing with yours. She was the one who was assaulted. Don’t take the attention away from her by getting carried away with your feelings.

You’ll need all the empathy you can muster in order just to be there with her. It’s possible that talking will bring back strong feelings, and she may shake, scream, or cry. Try not to think you have to do anything about her feelings and behavior. The only thing you can do, aside from listen, is to hold her, if she wants to be held, and assure her of your love and support. If she doubts her desirability, you can reassure her of it, but that’s all. If at some point she wants to be alone, then let her be alone.

It may well be that she’ll want to talk about what happened a number of times, not just once. If that’s the case, be there for her as often as she needs. If you keep two words in mind—
understanding
and
support
—you should do fine.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Tools for Dealing with Conflict

We’re grinding each other up into mulch each time we fight. There’s got to be a better way.—
Man, 35

We almost got divorced numerous times. It took us until we had been together over thirty years to work out ways of being nice to each other and to work out differences. What a shame it took so long.—
Man, 67

Conflict is an inevitable part of close relationships. How it is handled determines to a large extent how well relationships and sex go. In this chapter I discuss a number of ideas and tools that can help keep conflict to a minimum. I have given examples of some of them in previous chapters, but I want to get into more detail now. They aren’t panaceas—unfortunately, there are no panaceas—and they cannot by themselves undo the effects of years of neglect, distress, and abuse. But these suggestions and tools can help discussions and negative feelings from getting out of control.

Keep two things in mind whenever you deal with or think about your partner and while you read the following material. One is your overall goal with her, which I assume is having a loving relationship. The more you focus on this goal, the less you’ll give in to temptations to berate or criticize her, or to withdraw from her physically or emotionally.

The second thing to keep in mind is that even though it may not seem that way, you always have choices. No matter how badly certain conversations have gone in the past, no matter how upset you’ve gotten when she said or did a certain thing, it doesn’t have to be that way now. You can choose to listen more empathically, to greet a complaint of hers with a request for more information rather than a countercomplaint, to phrase your comments in a more constructive way, and to call a time-out when things are going badly. These choices are always available, and every important
change starts with choosing to do one thing differently. The smoker decides not to have a cigarette after dinner, the drinker not to have a drink before. If you pay attention, you’ll notice many opportunities for doing things in ways that will help you reach your goal.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

The first thing, of course, is to keep bad feelings to a minimum and to take care of whatever needs taking care of before it becomes an international incident. If you have followed the advice in the preceding chapters, you have already taken several giant steps in this direction. By spending plenty of time being close and having fun with your mate, and by keeping up on each other’s feelings, interests, and concerns, you are developing and maintaining a loving friendship, and that bond in itself helps keep anger and nastiness from arising or getting out of control.

By doing these things, you are ensuring that each of you feels valued, loved, and attended to. Not having these feelings is precisely what causes conflict in many relationships. And by keeping in close touch with one another, there is ample opportunity for each of you to bring up concerns and complaints while they are still easy to manage.

Another important preventive measure is keeping your word. Not keeping agreements is a huge source of contention in many relationships. By only agreeing to do what you in fact can do and by sticking to your word, you will eliminate a great deal of conflict.

The rule is the same in business and in relationships: Don’t agree to anything unless you’re certain you can and will do it. If you don’t want to do what your partner requests, you need to be assertive and state your position; then the two of you need to see what can be worked out. While there are a number of reasons all of us sometimes fail to keep our agreements, men have a special one: We often agree just to stop the conversation, to “get her off my back.” While this is understandable, it’s going to cause trouble because she’s going to be even more upset when we don’t keep the agreement.

So if you’re asked to do something, first make sure you understand exactly what it is. The best way is to check your understanding with her. If the two of you agree on what’s to be done, take a minute to imagine yourself doing it. In her presence or not, imagine yourself doing exactly what the two of you are talking about. Then you need to seriously consider whether you can and will do it—and also whether you need any help in
doing it. All of this will take time, anywhere from a few seconds to minutes or longer. But it’s important to take the time you need. When you talk to her about your thoughts, you should close the discussion with a summary of what the agreement is. This is handy to prevent misunderstandings. Here’s an example of the whole process:

YOU
: I find myself in a strange place. I agree with you that it’s your body and I shouldn’t touch you in ways you don’t like. So I’ll do my best not to touch your breasts roughly. But I can’t guarantee never to do it. What feels rough to you comes from a strong feeling of lust. I’m not sure I can always catch this impulse before I grab you.

Depending on what she says, you might want to ask for her help:

YOU
: I think I can do it most of the time. But there may still be a few occasions when I don’t catch myself in time. I may already be squeezing your breast before I remember. It would help me a lot to know that you’re not going to get upset if that happens occasionally. Maybe you could just remind me of what I’m doing.