The Truth About Sex, A Sex Primer for the 21st Century Volume II: Sex for Grown-Ups. Gloria G. Brame
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learn to go slow.
I designed a special behavioral challenge for them: they couldn’t have intercourse again until they had each been able to make the other climax with hands and mouth. It took them a while to get going because they both avoided their homework for months. But once they began the exercise in earnest, it was amazing how quickly things began to shift. Re-learning sex, and focusing on new ways to do it, empowered them to return to intercourse with a new sensitivity and understanding of the kinds of pleasure they could give and receive.
Jean-Marie’s libido did not hugely increase as a result but they were able to reach a happy compromise. Larry still wished it happened more often, but Jean-Marie was now enjoying it. Getting such positive results from their experiments convinced Larry to change his attitude about adding sex toys to their intimacy. Though their intimacy was still more mild than wild, they were tickled to death to think they were having sex like “the kids do today.” It really changed their lives. The anger and resentment melted from Jean-Marie’s face and Larry was so much more self-confident and upbeat. It was a wonderful thing.
I attribute some of the lifelong sexual immaturity in couples to an exasperatingly common cultural myth that “sex isn’t that important in a relationship.” When I hear people say that, I take it to mean that they’ve given up and think others should, too. For the rest of us, sex is important in a relationship. If we are monogamous, then our sex life with our partner is critical, because they are our only source of sexual intimacy. Take that one source away or obstruct it, and the stability of the relationship becomes unpredictable. Sooner or later, one or both partners may look for that sense of sexual intimacy elsewhere.
KYLE came to me because he had been having an affair and his wife had just found out. She accused him of being a sex-addict and said that she would give him another chance if he went for counseling and tried to fix himself. If he could come back to her, saying that he’d dealt with it and he’d never cheat again, she would take him back.
Kyle told me he started the affair after his wife had their second child. Her body had snapped right back after the first one, but after the second, her breasts were droopy and her waistline was gone. He accepted the changes as part of the price of having children and wanted to get back to a regular sex life, but his wife pushed him away, telling him she didn’t feel sexy with all the extra weight, that she was too tired from taking care of the kids, and other excuses that left him completely high and dry in the romance department.
Being a 21st century man, he started visiting dating sites as a hoot, but before too long, one thing led to another. He met a woman who shared his libido, and they had started an amazing affair. The sex was so much better than it had ever been with his wife. His girlfriend was adventurous and playful in bed, whereas his wife had always acted like sex was something she just went along with for his sake.
The problem was that he really loved his wife and he couldn’t stand the thought of being apart from his babies. He didn’t know what to do – he’d never had such great sex as he did with his girlfriend, but he felt obligated to his commitments. Should he stay with the hot girlfriend or should he go back to his wife, knowing in his heart he’d never have really great sex again?
If there is any one theme which unites all the diverse people who see me, it is their disappointment with their sex lives. They may come to me for an issue concerning their genital function, but inevitably, there is an underlying emotional reality we have to puzzle through. To help clients make smart sexual choices, I have to understand who they are as human beings and what their relationships are like. And that’s a big piece of what makes sex between or among adults so complicated: we aren’t just dealing with body parts. We are dealing with interpersonal dynamics and psychological landscapes.
While we do not have all the answers, we know more than we ever did both about the nature of sex and how to turn things around emotionally for people. People can overcome inhibitions. People who are inorgasmic can become orgasmic. People who fail with partners in bed can succeed with partners in bed. People who cannot have penetrative sex can still enjoy sexual intimacy. Most importantly, people can learn from their mistakes and make better choices which will bring them much greater sexual happiness.
I’ve witnessed radical transformations in the course of therapy that leave me in awe about our seemingly innate capacity for sexual resiliency and recovery. Even when a person’s early sexual potential is damaged by traumatic sexual experiences, such as rape or molestation, their underlying sexual identity can become vibrant. It’s such an important message, yet so rarely expressed: Good sex is as beneficial as bad sex is harmful. I’ve seen people rehabilitate themselves and re-start their emotional lives through better, more nurturing sex.
Clients may think I work miracles but mainly what I do is give them the tools – the science, the education, the self-empowered perspective – to look critically at the choices they’ve made in the past, and why they made them, and then to start making smarter ones. It is by making better choices that people heal from the pain of the past, regain their confidence and make the changes necessary to get them to that next level of inner peace.
To me, an optimum model of adult sexual health is one we have yet, as a culture, to build: it’s a model that finds a place for all consenting adult sex while supporting standards of health and safety that protect both the individual and the public.
Thus the mission of this second volume, Sex for Grown-Ups: to provide encapsulations of the theories and perspectives that have enlightened and challenged my clients over the years, and which have transformed so many lives for the better, happier, and more orgasmic. It’s my way of offering sex therapy to people who’d never go for sex therapy, and sharing what I know about sex to as many people as possible. This book is dedicated to my clients, to my friends, to everyone who hungers for the truth, and to my loving and beloved life-partners William Brame and Jennifer Kleiman, and to my long-time friend, David Browde.
Three New Rational Rules of Sex
One of the most irrational yet widespread assumptions about sex is that there is a “right way” to have it. In the first volume of The Truth About Sex: Sex and the Self, I devoted a section to the evolution of that assumption from its roots in Roman philosophy, medieval theology, and Victorian psychiatry, respectively. For most of Western history, our religious doctrines, our national laws, our customs, and much of our thinking about sex has simply assumed that missionary position heterosexual intercourse in a monogamous marriage is normal and everything else is a deviation, something that abnormal or sinful people do. Until the late 20th century, psychiatrists too demonized everything from masturbation to homosexuality as “diseases,” perpetuating Victorian ideology instead of relying on the actual medical science which amply demonstrated otherwise.
Evidence shows that the only “wrong way” to have sex is to have sex that you or your partner do not enjoy. Equipped with data and studies as we are these days, sexologists can generally agree that psychological harm derives from unwanted or non-consensual sex. Behaviors where all partners feel fulfilled are acceptable, regardless of the precise way in which the partners fulfill one another.
If you look at sex and relationships without moral judgment or religious ideology, all sexual relationships which satisfy both partners are positive sexual relationships – whether they are casual or permanent, straight or gay, poly or monogamous or anything else. When it comes to sex between consenting adults, there is only one important question: was it good for all involved?
Over time, there have been so many false lessons about sex, and so many arbitrary boundaries, that most people end up completely confused about what is and is not acceptable. It’s not surprising that adults often look for rules on how to have a functional sex life. Unfortunately, many of those rules come down to pat clichés that are handed from generation to generation without question, rules like “casual sex is bad for you” (nope) or “fetishes are bad” (nope) or “open marriages are doomed” (nope, no more