The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups (3 page)

Take Bobby, for example. He sat in my office with a mopey expression.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” he confessed. “Most of my girlfriends tell me they don’t have orgasms during sex, but they won’t tell me what they want me to do. I feel like a complete failure.”

“This is actually a very common problem,” I told him. “Did you know that 50 percent of women can’t achieve orgasm through vaginal penetration? So there’s no reason to think you’re alone with this issue. Everyone thinks there’s a mechanical aspect to good sex, but with women, that’s just not how things work.

“Here’s the good news,” I went on. “The solution is actually simpler than you think. Next time you’re having sex, ask your girlfriend what she wants and which position she prefers. Tell her you want to make her happy, and you’d love for her to show you. It is very common for women to only be able to come to orgasm in one specific position, but believe it or not, sometimes they’re too shy or inhibited or embarrassed to say
so. Help them communicate better, and your own performance will get better, too.”

That means, don’t be shy. If you want something, speak up. It can be hard in the throes of lovemaking to say or do everything you want, so if the opportunity passes you by, bring it up afterward when you’re both feeling relaxed, and be sure to remind your partner about it before the next time you have sex.

The average man has eleven erections every day (including partial erections). Teenage boys and men in their twenties with high hormonal levels may think that having sex several times a day is totally normal. Otherwise, the typical average is two to three times a week. That was also the figure from the American Sexual Behavior Study, a 2006 survey reporting that the average frequency of sex for married couples went from about once every two to three days for couples between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, to about twice a week for couples between thirty and fifty, and less than once a week for older couples.

In the early phase of a love relationship, couples of any age tend to have a lot of sex—daily, if not more frequently. But the frequency of sex declines as any relationship ages, although married couples have more sex than those who are single. Obviously, regular access to sex makes it more likely to happen!

Remember, these are averages. Some couples are happy with more frequent sex, while some are happy with less frequent sex.
If you only feel like having sex once or twice a week but find those encounters deeply satisfying, that’s normal for
you
and that’s totally fine. Not wanting
any
sex is not.

And that’s really the point: not how much sex you’re having, but whether you and your partner are happy with the sex you
are
having. Quality wins out over quantity every time. It’s all about the satisfaction.

That said, quality sex isn’t just about frequency. It’s also about the length of the sex act.

There have been studies in which couples consented to be scientifically observed having sex while an observer timed each session with a stopwatch to make a fairly accurate assessment about the length of the coupling. Not surprisingly, the time it takes a couple to have sex varies widely, ranging from the excessively short (about two minutes or less, which famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey dryly noted was a “frequent source of marital conflict”) to the “Are you done yet?” (over forty minutes).

An astonishing 45 percent of men finish the sex act too quickly, which is to say, within two minutes. That’s quite speedy.
Way
too speedy for the average woman to be able to have an orgasm through vaginal penetration alone. At least five minutes, and more like seven, is usually what’s needed for a woman to be able to achieve orgasm.

And even though the average length of the average intervaginal sex session is about 7.3 minutes, that’s still not particularly long, especially for women, who usually take much longer than men to become aroused enough to have an orgasm.

So whether your man is done within two minutes of things getting hot and heavy or still not done forty minutes later, you
may want to gently broach the idea of getting a medical checkup to make sure everything’s functioning correctly. And don’t worry, if 7.3 minutes doesn’t seem like enough time for you to get the satisfaction you need,
Part II
of this book will teach you and your partner better communication skills so you both can be happy in bed and out.

Most people start learning about sex and reproduction in middle school, right when puberty hits, hormones are flying, and bodies are changing. But no one actually talks about the act of sex or how to do it safely and do it well. When I was growing up, we snuck copies of
Playboy
, thinking this would teach us all we needed to know.

Nowadays, with easy access to the online world of porn and YouTube videos, kids are “learning” about sex—and seeing it in far more graphic ways than I could have imagined at their age—long before they’re emotionally ready. Not only that, but the distorted, fake, fantastical sex exhibited in porn can have a huge detrimental effect on young men watching it, who begin to expect their own partners to look and behave like porn stars. (I’ll discuss this in detail in
Lesson 4
.)

However, most schools haven’t changed how they talk about sex, except to add information about HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Teachers go through the basics of biology and anatomy, and as teens get older, perhaps they are taught the mechanics of reproduction, how the sperm meets the egg, and so on, often along with stern admonitions about abstinence (something teens with raging hormones are unlikely to process). But none of this teaches people how to have sex in a safe, healthy, and rewarding way.

The vast majority of us are going to have sex at some point in our lives. Most likely, that will start in our late teenage years or as young adults. So who teaches teens and young adults how to have sex? Who can you ask? If you think about it, there are very few trustworthy or well-informed sources for most people.

As a result, we turn to friends, older siblings, and the media, along with the newest source of endlessly streaming information—the Internet. All of these sources may mean well, but they usually are completely wrong about how to do things. Sure, if they’re uninhibited about it, friends and siblings can talk about what works for them, but that doesn’t mean their advice will be good for you. And they may not be telling you the entire truth because they’re too embarrassed to admit that they don’t exactly know what they’re doing!

In addition, the sexual images plastered all over the media of porn stars and Hollywood stars with impossibly perfect bodies offer such a fake, idealized version of sex and how real bodies look and behave that young people are often more embarrassed and inhibited by these “lessons” than empowered to approach sex with partners in healthy ways. Young people simply believe that they’ll never measure up to those fantasy standards.

Put simply, the Internet is a hotbed of well-intentioned but often seriously wrong “facts” about sex and how to do it. The danger is that many people believe what they read on the Internet about sex is far more accurate than it actually is. Does this mean you should never go online for advice? Of course not. But it does mean that you should only get advice from reputable, medically sound sources like my websites and those of other sexual health experts, as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the Mayo Clinic.

Proof of this lack of knowledge came when I did a salon at
Cosmopolitan
magazine in 2008 called “Sex Education for Adults.” The questions I received from the smart, educated, sexually experienced women in the audience floored me. Why does semen taste sweet? How often should I be having sex? Can I masturbate too much? Is it harming our relationship? Don’t men always orgasm before women do? How can you tell if a guy is good in bed? And many more. Many of these questions were really basic, but I’d say that 90 percent of the people in the room couldn’t answer any of them. And if they couldn’t, there was little hope for the rest of us.

As you know, I’m writing this book because I want to rectify this lack of knowledge. So for everyone looking for answers to these types of questions and more, read on.

How does great sex start?

With foreplay.

When does foreplay start?

The minute you wake up in the morning.

It also starts when your partner puts the dishes in the dishwasher. Really. I can’t tell you how many female radio callers say they’d probably have an orgasm in the kitchen if their husbands put away the silverware!

Yes, something as mundane as participating in those boring daily chores is foreplay. This kind of foreplay shows that your partner cares about sharing the workload around the house (and vice versa). It demonstrates that you are equals, instead of you being expected to take care of the kids and the house and go to
work and then listen to your man moan about his boss and how hard his day was.

In other words, the more he helps make your household run smoothly, the more you are going to love him for it. That’s a nice way to set the mood, isn’t it? After all, who’d want to have sex with someone who can’t be bothered to clean up his mess? Or, on occasion,
your
mess?

I’ll discuss this concept in much greater detail in
Part II
, but suffice it to say that the best kind of foreplay starts when you both wake up and continues throughout the day. For example, a man should call his partner when she least expects it. To say that he’s thinking of you. Or if it’s not a good time to interrupt, he can send surreptitious, loving, teasing texts. Minimal effort—honestly, how long does it take to send a text?—can reap enormous rewards. A woman who is thinking about her partner’s thoughtfulness will be loving and happy to see him when he walks in the door that night.

Because where does foreplay really take place? For women especially, foreplay starts in your brain. It isn’t physical. In fact, it’s everything but, leading up to you or your partner creating so much desire that good sex is the welcome result. Here’s an example: A man shows you that he cares by being kind and thoughtful. He acknowledges your needs and desires during the day. He knows how important it is to be present, which means not checking his email when he’s on the phone with you. He compliments your shoes even if he’s seen them a hundred times, or your hair even if it’s a bit of a mess. He doesn’t interrupt your discussions to take a call.

He shows you he cares by simply saying I love you in little ways like this—and
meaning it
. (Let’s not underestimate the need for
these efforts to be genuine. Women can tell when they are being patronized or being given “lip service.”) So by the time you get to the bedroom, you’re already in the mood.

Foreplay isn’t just about sex—it’s about
life
. And in
Part II
, I’ll show you how to get your partner to listen better, to make you feel more secure and to increase your desire—the LSD—so you’ll be able to state your needs clearly and easily. He’ll hear what you’re saying. He’ll want to make you feel secure and loved…and yes, you’ll both be flooded with desire.

I see this all the time in the medical world. You can be the smartest neurosurgeon on the planet, but if your bedside manner stinks and you make it clear that you’re too important or too busy for your patients, you’re a failure as a doctor. Your patients will see that you don’t genuinely care about them, and they won’t trust you or feel comfortable being treated by you. This can lead to serious complications for them—and for you as the doctor trying to do your job and help them. I learned the importance of this concept when I ran the medical-school urology course at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons from 2002 to 2007 and was told to teach “humanism” as part of the curriculum.