The Truth About Sex, A Sex Primer for the 21st Century Volume II: Sex for Grown-Ups. Gloria G. Brame
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one has ever been able to make a rational case to explain why such behaviors are bad quite simply because there is no rational evidence for it. There may be reasons why people who enjoy casual sex or have fetishes have problematic relationships but usually it’s because of judgment and shame stemming from those unquestioned rules and standards about what normal sex “should be.” I think many of our old rules about sex should have been laughed out of existence around the time doctors stopped examining the bumps on people’s heads to determine their mental abilities.
So I’m going to set out what I think are the only three rules you really need to know about sex.
Dr. Brame’s 3 Rules of Sex
1. Sex is as complicated as the adults having it
A successful sex life depends on individual variations in the people having it.
2. Diversity is normal
Everyone is wired a little differently.
3. Every adult can have good sex
Each of us has the capability to give and receive sexual pleasure.
These three rules are the framework for this book and for a complete adult education (or re-education) in sex. They express the most important concepts every adult needs to grasp in order to make their sex lives work for them, individually, and to develop a more sensitive and optimistic view of human sexuality in general. They apply across the board to every sexually active adult, regardless of orientation, sex, gender, or sexual identity.
The Shame of It
It’s strange how many people seem to believe that the solution to their sex problems should be something you can bleat out in 25 words or less. People want fast fixes, especially for problems they are embarrassed to talk about in detail. Many is the time people have emailed hoping for magic bullets or saying, “Just tell me what to do in bed and I’ll do it,” as if my telling them to manipulate genitals in a certain way will resolve the lifetime of inhibition that led them to a sex therapist in the first place.
Similarly, when a woman emails, “How can I get my husband to stop masturbating?” expecting me to deliver a meaningful answer in a quick email back, I take a deep breath, and ask her to make an appointment.
When I can spend an hour with someone, I take a full sex history. I can delve into the circumstances that created the problem and evaluate all the factors – is the behavior hurting their sex-life, is he compulsive about it, does he lie about it? Only then can I provide advice that will work for that individual couple.
I usually have to start with cold facts: so in the above case, I’d have to mention that there is no way to stop masturbation (psychiatrists devoted themselves to a cure for masturbation for a century until they finally, grudgingly, accepted that it wasn’t a disease in the first place). Also, it’s normal for adults to masturbate, married or not. What’s less common is for a partner to worry about or interfere with their spouse’s masturbation. Until I have a complete picture, it’s possible that the real problem is that the wife thinks it’s a problem, and that it’s her issues, not his, that need to be addressed.
Because people are generally unaccustomed to talking about the personal details of their most intimate relationships, they often never find out if the sexual behaviors they experience are normal or not. Instead, they base decisions upon what they learned growing up. The problem is that when you grow up in a culture where people are chronically ignorant about sex, the dialogue about sex at home, at school, and certainly at places of worship is often tragically out of step with real life.
Everyone pays a lot of lip service to the social rules of normality. And many, if not most of us still measure ourselves, and our sex lives, according to the model that our society holds up as ideal: a man and a woman in monogamous wedlock, happily bouncing away in man-on-top bliss. But how many of us actually live by that model? How many of us wait until marriage to experience intercourse and then stick with that one “normal” position for life? How many grown-ups are strictly monogamous and strictly heterosexual? Actually, a minority of us.
Most adults experiment with other positions in bed. Most adults enjoy sexual variety to some degree. Very few of us wait for a marriage license to begin sexual activity. Many of us have bisexual experiences, especially in youth. Even that segment of American culture which viciously demonizes promiscuity and upholds virginity as the golden standard, can’t uphold its own belief system in the real world. A 2009 study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, for example, cited data which showed that contrary to their core religious belief of chastity until marriage, 80% of 18 to 20-year-old unmarried American Evangelicals have premarital sex (as compared to 88% of other unmarried Americans in that age group).
That Evangelicals turned out to be as horny as other people their age is, well, basically what sex scientists like me would expect. Perhaps this is disappointing to people who think we should all practice what we preach. I think we should strike at the root, though, and learn to preach what we practice.
A scientific way to look at the study is simply that human sexual identity (needs, lusts, behaviors) trumps religious identity. Even though the study group’s primary belief system explicitly prohibits pre-marital sex, 80% of the surveyed adherents nonetheless chose sexual desire over religious belief. If they were completely unconscious of that choice, or attribute their behavior to magical spiritual forces, then it may suggest that the brain itself is wired to prioritize sex drive above spiritual feelings and finds ways to rationalize breaking its moral code. Where religious people may see “temptation,” a sex scientist sees someone’s brain perceiving a mating opportunity, and what they may call “the devil,” we acknowledge as the brain merrily churning up the hormones that compel us to mate.
Sex really is the most natural thing in the world, its primal consciousness buried in our deepest brain functions, and connected to a vast network of fluids, organs, and nerves throughout the entire body system. Its reach is so powerful that it may, at times, override other powerful human emotions, like altruism, love, or piety. This power may, in fact, be stronger in the moment than intellectual constructs, which may explain why sexual desire can be stronger than our powers of reason and land us in sexual situations we didn’t plan to get into in the first place. That may also explain why – when a disinhibitor like alcohol is added – sexual behavior itself becomes primitive.
There are very good reasons why we can’t allow humans completely free reign over their sexual behaviors. At the same time, there are better reasons why adults should learn enough about sex to make good choices, rather than fear-based ones. In this atmosphere of cultural shame, all too many of us let sexual fears and inhibitions dictate our lives.
It’s massively sad to listen to stories of people who, for lack of hard facts and a soft shoulder, have sex lives that are frustrating, depressing, and shameful. The inner feeling of being sexually viable (a nice way of saying “fuckable”) is so deeply rooted in the primitive part of our brain that when we feel sexually flawed or sexually inferior to others, the shame cripples our ability to form solid partnerships. People who think they are sexually unattractive in some way find it very difficult to integrate their sense of themselves as basically good people with their sexual image of themselves. I meet wonderful people sometimes who are ashamed to look me in the eye because they are about to admit that they can’t sustain an erection, and assume I’ll think less of them for it. This can be particularly painful to anyone who doesn’t fit into the conventional model of what sex should be.
LOUISE, an accountant in her 30s, was terrified that people would find out about the things she enjoyed in private with a man, including being tied up and spanked with paddles and canes. She blamed it on her profession: she worked in a very sensitive field and couldn’t risk being exposed, she said. She was afraid to keep BDSM toys in her house so she only played in other people’s homes. She did not want to meet any of her partners’ kinky friends,