The New Male Sexuality (43 page)

Focusing on sensation means exactly that. You put your attention in your body where the action is. When you’re kissing, keep your mind in your lips. This is
not
the same as thinking about your lips or the kiss; just
put your attention in your lips. When your partner is touching a part of you, put your attention in that part. When your penis is being touched or when you are having intercourse, put your attention inside your penis; be aware of the fit between the penis and whatever is around it, pressure, texture, temperature, and wetness.

I have noticed that when I ask men to focus, some of them screw up their faces and grit their teeth. They’re working very hard. When I ask about this, they usually say this is how they concentrate. Focusing need not and should not be hard work. The tension generated by trying too hard does not help. See if you can focus in a relaxed way, with no pushing or shoving—just gently moving your mind, your attention, to where you want it.

A problem with focusing is that our minds tend to wander. There is no cure for wandering minds—that’s what minds do—but practice will help yours wander less often. What you need to do is gently bring your attention back to where it belongs as soon as you’re aware that it has drifted off.

Some men find it helpful to move back and forth between focusing on sensation and focusing on a fantasy. That’s fine and often very arousing. You can also shift between focusing on sensations and focusing on feelings. You may be aware of how good it feels when your partner is touching your penis and then may shift into focusing on your feelings of love for her. That’s fine, too.

EXPRESSING COMPLAINTS AND CONCERNS

Sex therapist Bernard Apfelbaum makes the important point that in sex we all try to be as positive as possible and to cover up any complaints or problems. If it doesn’t feel good kissing your partner because she has bad breath, we try to ignore the odor and continue with the kissing. If we feel pressured by our partners to have erections, we do almost anything to avoid telling her about this.

Apfelbaum goes on to say that expressing the negative feelings—doubts, fears, concerns, complaints—can be very liberating. It can allow you to feel more in control of your life and to get more aroused. It is important, of course, that what you say be put in a way that will be possible for your partner to hear. Blaming and accusing statements will cause trouble and decrease everyone’s sexual arousal.

One man I saw with erection problems was making progress by refocusing
on sensation when he started to feel anxious in sex. Then I suggested the effectiveness of this strategy could be increased if he also told his partner about the anxiety when he felt it. His report about it is instructive.

I used to internalize the anxiety. But keeping it inside seemed to make it stronger. Tuesday I externalized it by telling her, and it was amazing. I felt free of it, and it was easy to refocus on sensation. My penis behaved like a champ. I like this idea and will continue with it. It makes me feel more in charge of what’s going on.

That may seem too easy, because although he was expressing a concern, it was about his own anxiety and wasn’t in any way critical of his partner. So let’s take a more difficult example, your sense of pressure from her to get an erection. Whether or not the pressure is truly coming from her, what you know is that you feel some urgency coming from somewhere that you get hard, and this is making you anxious. Here’s a way you might express it, in this illustration when you’re not in the middle of sex: “Ever since I failed to get hard on our trip, I’ve felt tremendous pressure to have an erection when we’re in bed. It makes me tense and I can’t even pay attention to what we’re doing. I know a lot of it comes from me. I feel rotten about disappointing you and not doing my part. But lately I feel that some of this pressure is coming from you. My impression is that you’re as tense as I am and it’s like you’re demanding that I get hard. That’s how it feels when you’re using your hand on me. Is there anything to what I’m feeling?”

There’s probably a good chance she’ll agree with your impression. It makes sense that she’d be feeling anxious. She wants the problem resolved and, perhaps more important, she doesn’t want to feel that you’re not hard because you aren’t turned on by her or that she’s not stimulating you in the best way. If this is the case, the two of you are now in a position to decide what to do to relieve the tension.

EXPRESSING PLEASURE

While expressing concerns can clear the way to feeling more arousal, expressing pleasure with words, sounds, and movements can amplify the good feelings and get you more turned on. It will probably also excite your partner, and her increased passion will undoubtedly do the same for you. I
discuss this issue in detail in
Chapter 10
, so I will do no more than underscore it here as a means of increasing arousal. The more you express your excitement and pleasure, the more turned on you will feel.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

One of the easiest ways to increase arousal is to have sex in different locations. Sure, the bed is nice and comfortable and it’s also where people are supposed to make love, but it can get boring if you never take a vacation from it. What about sex on the living room or den floor, in the hallway, or in some other room? In the shower or a walk-in closet? On the desk in the den, or even at night on the desk at work? Or with one of you sitting on the washer or dryer while it’s on spin cycle, or with one of you on the kitchen or bathroom counter? You could also try sex in the car or van.

Wherever you can lie, sit down, or bend over, or one of you can get a tongue or hand on the other’s genitals, that’s a good place to consider. Sex in different locations gives a sense of variety and adventure and is usually a huge turn-on. Sex in unusual places is worth doing even if the actual act isn’t as great as it would be in a more familiar and comfortable setting. For example, although a favorite fantasy for lots of people is sex on a beach or in a meadow, the reality is often uncomfortable. You may well end up with sand or dirt in your orifices and mosquito bites all over you. But even when that happens, people fondly recall the memory years later.

SIMMERING

Virtually all of us, including many who say they aren’t turned on very much, experience surges of sexual energy during the day. Unfortunately, we don’t do anything with these feelings. But why let these bursts of sexual arousal disappear? Why not use them? Here is a simple but effective technique that sex therapist Carol Ellison and I developed some years ago. It’s a way of hanging on to and developing your spontaneous sexual urges through the day, which can result in more arousal and better sex.

EXERCISE 15-1: SIMMERING

Time Required: A few minutes a day

The next time you’re aware of a sexual feeling, hang on to it for a few seconds. Get into the experience by imagining what you’d like to do with that woman you see on the street or on TV, or by recalling in greater detail that fantasy or memory of a good experience. Whatever you’re imagining, get into it. Imagine the touch of her lips, hands, breasts, vagina, or whatever. Feel the texture, the temperature, the way your bodies connect. In other words, run your own X-rated movie of what you want to do. Continue this for a few seconds, or even longer if you prefer. Then let the image fade away
.

An hour or two later, close your eyes and get back into the image again for a few seconds. You can imagine exactly what you did the first time or change the experience any way you like
.

Continue in this way every hour or two during the day, whenever you have a few spare seconds
.

One way to enhance the simmering is to do a few Kegels (see
this page
) while you’re imagining your scene
.

The last step in the simmering exercise is to incorporate your real partner in the fantasy if she’s not already included. You can do this when you’re on the way to meet her—say, driving back home from work. Start the imagery with what you’d like to be doing with the person who started the simmering, then fade her out and put your partner into the fantasy. Might you enjoy doing the same things or something similar with her? Develop this idea any way you like. When you get home with your partner, you’ll probably be highly aroused and ready for a good time
.

Unless your partner is almost always ready for sex—which probably means she already knows about simmering—it’s smart to include her in your thinking. A short phone call is all that’s required. This way you’ll both be ready to go when you get together, or at least you’ll be aware of what obstacles may exist
.

Simmering should become a regular part of your life. People who consider themselves sexy and have good sex lives do it all the time. It does not get in the way of doing your work or interfere in any way with your life. But it does make you feel good and keeps your sexual feelings flowing, ready to blossom when the time is right.

If you find that you don’t have many surges of sexual energy to simmer
with, carry around a small notebook or some index cards in your pocket for a week or two and write down each instance of such an impulse (rating it on a scale of 0 to 10) and the stimulus. An example would be: “10
A.M.
, Mon., 7, tall redhead in store.” Almost every man I’ve worked with who has done this for a week or more discovered that he was indeed having sexual impulses. He just hadn’t been paying attention before.

USING FANTASY

Simmering is one way of using fantasy to increase arousal. But there is at least one other important way: fantasizing during sex with a partner, something many people do. The fantasies can increase arousal and therefore help maintain erections and intensify orgasms.

If you haven’t been fantasizing during sex, you might want to try it. Whenever it feels appropriate or useful, conjure up in your mind an especially arousing image and stay with it as long as you like. For further information about sexual fantasies and their use, read the rest of this chapter and also
Chapter 5
.

USING EROTIC MATERIALS

There are a number of erotic materials that can help increase arousal. These include magazines such as
Playboy
and
Penthouse
, popular and pornographic novels, and R-and X-rated videos for the VCR.

Even if your initial feeling about erotica is negative, you might want to give it a try. Many people who thought they couldn’t stand reading or looking at this stuff found out that they got turned on anyway. The question of why this is so need not detain us here. The point is simply that reading, viewing, or listening to erotic materials can increase your arousal.

But, as with everything else, it’s important to let common sense be your guide. If you always use these materials, they will themselves become boring. And if your partner is new to them or shy about them, you need to take her feelings into account and proceed slowly and only with her permission. You would certainly do well to start with the softest-core stuff and not with the raunchiest. A selection from a romance novel or D. H. Lawrence may do more for her, and be more acceptable, than a hard-driving pornographic account. There are now also many
collections of erotica
written by women, and erotic films made by women, that may be more to her taste, and perhaps yours as well.

Many women are more turned on by love than sex, so love poems and literature may be a more promising field to explore for the purpose of arousing your partner. Her greater excitement may well have the effect of turning you on more. And if you’re willing to check out the kinds of things that arouse her, she may be more willing to explore those that do the same for you.

ROLE-PLAYING

One very powerful way of increasing arousal is through role-playing or the acting out of fantasies.

Many years ago I was involved with a woman who sometimes would drop into a role in the middle of sex. She would suddenly say something like, “You haven’t been a good boy today, so you’re not going to get any.” Since what we can’t have is infinitely more exciting than what we can, my passion immediately skyrocketed, even though I knew she was only acting. I fell into step and would start apologizing and begging. She would repeat her refusal and give in gradually. “Well, okay, since you apologized, you can touch my pussy, but that’s it. Just a touch.” This would progress through steps including “You can put it in but only halfway. Not an inch further” and “Okay, your behavior is getting better, so you can put it all the way in, but no moving at all.” It seems ridiculous on the written page, but I assure you the effect was real and powerful.

There are infinite possibilities as to what roles or games to play. You can get ideas from erotic literature, movies, and your own fantasies.

There is one common kind of role-playing that deserves special mention. When one person (let’s say it’s your partner) pretends to resist—to not want to have sex or engage in a certain activity—it is crucial that certain rules and signals be worked out beforehand and strictly adhered to. She has to know in her gut that if she really means
no, stop
, or
not yet
, and expresses it, you will understand and immediately comply. Trust has to be taken for granted.

Don’t ignore your own fantasies. I find that many men are quite creative in their own minds but don’t follow up on their ideas for a number of reasons. If your mind throws you an idea that really turns you on, consider it. If it is not likely to harm you or your partner and not against either of your values, maybe there’s some way you could try it out.

I recall one man who got very aroused by fantasies of having sex on an airplane on one of the frequent trips he and his lover took. He hadn’t thought about putting it into practice, because he couldn’t figure out how both of them, being large people, could even fit into the toilet on a 747, let alone do anything there. After he finally mentioned the fantasy to me, I asked why it had to be in the toilet. His incredulous response was, “In the aisle?” No, not in the aisle; that would get him arrested. But on the night flights they frequently took, there are usually rows of empty seats, and you can move the armrests out of the way. The session ended on that note and nothing more was said about the matter for a month. But when they returned from a cross-country flight, they happily reported that the armrests could indeed be moved. They haven’t yet managed intercourse, but they did some other interesting things and were pleased.