The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups (4 page)

I had no idea what humanism was and I didn’t know who to ask, so I decided to put the question to my smarty-pants medical students. Oops. They didn’t know, either. Nobody explained it. So over the five years of teaching, I had students write essays on what they thought humanism meant in medicine. After about two years, I began to understand. Humanism is nothing more than showing how much you care about others.

The same thing applies to sex. Men need to learn humanism toward their partners—namely,
you
! And also to realize that sex
isn’t just about their needs and their erection. Once you both start practicing more humanism in your relationship, it will transfer directly into your sex life.

Great sex isn’t just about mastering foreplay. One of the easiest ways to become a more accomplished lover is to have more sex. But here’s the catch. It has to be
good
sex.

I was on a football team in high school that didn’t win any games. We were about the worst team ever. But one thing that Coach said all the time resonated in a huge way, not just about football but about everything in life. “Practice doesn’t make perfect,” he told us. “
Perfect
practice makes perfect.”

If you keep practicing anything badly, especially sex, you’re not going to like it and neither will your partner. Sex will become a chore. I often hear women say, “I don’t want to have sex. I’m too tired.” That means they’re not having good sex. Because if your whole day is a miserable drudge, but you know you’re going to have good sex later, you look forward to it, regardless of how tired you are.

Look at it this way: I play a lot of tennis. I practice and take lots of lessons. They’re important lessons; I’m thinking about every shot and I work to make each one the best possible. But the real reason to keep practicing is that once I’m in the game, I
don’t
want to be thinking too much or I’ll miss every ball. I have to relax, trust that I learned the lessons well, and hope that muscle memory will take over.

It is the same with sex. You should “practice” and explore and try different things with your partner. But if you’re thinking
too much about the mechanics of what you’re doing during your actual lovemaking sessions, you’re not going to relax and enjoy what’s happening at that moment.

This is why it’s so important to know your body, know your preferences, know your partner’s preferences, and most of all, to speak up about what feels good.

If you have a hard time saying what you want, do a sex checklist. List what you want from your partner, such as “I want a massage,” “I want a dim room,” “Being on top is my favorite position,” or “This is my fantasy: (and spell it out).” Then ask him to do the same.

I’ve found that women tend to want their partners to concentrate more on foreplay, while men often just want to get going. Have some fun figuring out how to make each other happy by practicing the items on your checklist. Alternate your wishes with his, and then go back to the beginning and repeat. After a while, you’ll both be getting exactly what you want. Then write out a new checklist!

Since I’ve just discussed humanism and caring and, yes, his erections, let’s move to a topic that’s all about his penis, his hands, and why he’s placing them on himself when he should be placing them on you. Namely, masturbation.

Not so many eons ago, when humans were rutting in jungles and caves, their top priority wasn’t silk sheets or mood music or whether the door was locked to keep the kids out, but surviving through another threat-filled day. Sex had to be quick and productive because there wasn’t a lot of time to make love when you
knew that a woolly mammoth or saber-toothed tiger might be stalking you any minute, ready to pounce.

Nowadays, we don’t have to rush sex unless we deliberately sneak out for a quickie on our lunch hour. Instead, we can concentrate on pleasuring each other. But orgasms can be elusive for couples when ejaculation problems caused by masturbation ruin the mood.

A predictable saga unfolded when a patient named Sam came to see me. He was forty-four, overweight, and wanted to feel better. He assumed that he had low testosterone levels, and he was right. But he thought that a prescription for testosterone would be an instant, automatic fountain of youth. I didn’t tell him right away that hormone therapy wouldn’t benefit him that much. After all, he was asking for help, and the first step was to get his male hormones stabilized. Once they were at normal levels, I could tell him about the satisfaction stuff.

Once the blood work was back, we discussed Sam’s numbers and the improvements I’d seen. The testosterone had kicked in quickly, and he had more energy and more sex drive. Then I told him bluntly that both would be even better if he lost weight.

“No bread, pizza, pasta, cookies, and cakes. No salt and sugar,” I told him.

“Come on,” he said, “that’s all I wanna eat.”

“Well, that’s what you’ve got to work on,” I replied. “Start slow. Cut out one bagel a day. It’s nothing but junk flour and salt. You don’t need it.”

“Bagels have salt?” he said.

“Yes, a lot. Bread is full of salt. Fat’s not the enemy—sugar is.
And too much salt. Always taste your food before you sprinkle salt on it.”

I could see him mulling this over, so I moved to the next point and asked, “Now that you’re feeling better, what about your sex life? How often are you having sex with your wife?”

“Every couple of months or so,” he said quickly.

Which meant
never
.

“Okay,” I said, “why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know, doc. Maybe you could talk to my wife.”

“I’d be happy to, but let me just say that no woman is going to want to have sex that isn’t pleasurable. Are you using enough lubrication?”

“Sure, she’s lubricated, everything like that.”

“So what do you think is the problem?”

“Well, I kinda last a long time. When we do have sex, she has an orgasm or whatever,” Sam added. I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not. “Then she turns around and waits for me to finish.”

Aha, here we go. “How often do you masturbate?” I asked. “Once a day, once every two days? Are you good at it?”

He smiled smugly. “I’m
very
good at it.”

There it was—the reason why they never had sex. If a man tells me he’s a great lover because he lasts forever, I know there’s a satisfaction problem for his partner. She may have had an orgasm, be feeling great, and just want the sex to end and to have a lovely long hug before bed. But he’ll still be going at it.

If he’s been watching too much porn (which I’ll get to in
Lesson 4
), he may be thinking that’s the only way to be “great” in bed. Most porn movies feature extensive scenes where the men pump and pump and pump and the women moan in “ecstasy.”
In truth, they’re all faking it and likely thinking of nothing more satisfying than hearing the director say, “Cut.”

Or, like Sam, he could be equating great sex with how frequently he can ejaculate, because he was used to copious ejaculations through masturbation. Which is another
very
common mistake. But as we’ll see in the next section, since his masturbation was all about this ejaculation, he couldn’t ejaculate when he was with his wife any more.

Needless to say, Sam had a lot of work to do on his sexual skills. Sure, he was brilliant at pleasuring himself—to the detriment of pleasuring his wife. His technique was fine for a horny fifteen-year-old but not for an adult who wanted a satisfying relationship and sex life. He needed a refresher course on how to have good mutual sex, pronto!

On the opposite end of the time-to-orgasm spectrum was Edward, who came to me saying he wanted Viagra. After I determined that he was perfectly healthy and had no erectile dysfunction, I asked him about his sex life. He said that he rarely had sex with his wife and went to prostitutes instead. Wondering how this related to his desire for Viagra, I asked how long he lasted during sex. His answer was, “Less than a minute.” In other words, he had premature ejaculation.

As we discussed it further, the pieces started to come together. He
wanted
to have sex with his wife, but he worried that his premature ejaculation would upset her. That wasn’t a problem with the prostitutes, who pretended all was well and gushed over his
manliness. Of course, a prostitute or a mistress won’t tell a client that his blink-and-you-miss-it pumping isn’t satisfying. She’s getting compensated not to.

Edward had no idea he could be treated so that he could last longer in bed, please his wife, and stop seeing strangers for sex. If he wanted to save his marriage, he needed to understand that sex was about his relationship with his wife and not about a quick orgasm with a paid stranger.

He also had no idea the average man lasted about seven times longer than he did. At the time, I don’t think he cared to know because he was deep in denial. He thought he was a stud.

But if a man can’t satisfy his partner and can
only
satisfy himself by going to prostitutes or masturbating, how do you think his partner feels? Awfully upset, of course. Not only are they unsatisfied, but their lover is going elsewhere for satisfaction. Yet women in this position often feel responsible for not pleasing their lover…that something’s wrong with
them
. Not surprisingly, this can lead to friction, frustration, and fighting, which further reduces both partners’ chances for good sex.