Posts tagged relationships

A Very Special Crosspost

September 10, 2008 · Filed under Girly Parts, Man to man · Tagged , , , ,

You may have noticed there was no Girly Parts yesterday.  This is Girly Parts.  It’s also Man to Man.  WDM is out of town today on business, so I decided to do the lazy thing and do a crosspost to both categories.  Anyway, today I’ve decided to talk about something that doesn’t get nearly enough press in the sexual health realm:  Unequal Libidos.

No, hear me out.  Every bad stand up comedian has a routine about how women never want sex.  It’s partially based in fact, testosterone is the hormone primarily responsible for your sex drive and men have a lot more of it.  It’s also more socially acceptable for men to want sex and for women to withold it.  But what happens when the opposite is true and a woman finds herself in a relationship with a man who has a lower libido than her?

Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t an uncommon situation.  I’ve spoken to several people who found themselves with exactly this problem.  The shitty thing is that the problem isn’t with the partners, actually.  It’s with the way society perceives human sexuality.  Humans have many different levels of sexual desire regardless of gender but society forces a stereotype of the perpetually horny man and the frigid wife which can lead to all kinds of misunderstandings and hurt feelings if not addressed.

Here’s how a situation like this usually plays out:

  • Woman attempts to initiate sex.
  • Man either attempts it and fails or flat out refuses.
  • Woman feels rejected and unattractive and pulls away.
  • Man feels inadequate.
  • Woman with wounded ego doesn’t want to initiate sex as much.
  • Man becomes afraid of failure and doesn’t initiate sex.
  • Both parties become hurt and pull away from each other.

You can see where this is not an effective strategy for long-term happiness, no?

I’ve spoken to a man whose lady-love has a higher libido than him.  They’ve both decided to accept that she’s just going to masturbate several times a day and they’ve decided that works for them.

It’s true confession time:

I’m in a similar situation myself.  My libido is slightly higher than my fiance’s.  They’re fairly equal in that usually we both can be talked into The Mood when the other one is ready, but unfortunately he never initiates sex because my libido is higher than his so usually it’s me doing the initiating.  See, unfortunately we live on different continents so the first time we managed to get together for sexin’s, this became a bit of an issue since we were living together for a month at the time.  Did it lead to hurt feelings?  Hell yeah.  Did I swear off initiating sex?  Yep, but unfortunately my libido is so high I couldn’t resist him.  That says a lot about me, I know, but we’re getting to the point here.

I’d love to sit here and be all, “as soon as I told him how I felt we had mind blowing sex and everything was SUPER COOL!” but I’d be lying to you and that’s not really the point of this blog, now is it?  I told him how I felt while crying and generally being a drama queen and we didn’t have sex a couple times and eventually we got used to each other.  Do I wish we had more sex?  Not really.  Like I said, we’re pretty evenly matched except in the initiation department.  It’s funny, but one of the things that really helped me was switching to ugly pajamas.  It makes no sense, right?  But the thing is, when I was wearing pretty silky satiny things, I had in my head that holy shit I was HOT! So if he didn’t attempt to initiate anything I’d have to do it just to sooth my aching ego.  So now?  I wear yoga pants and a free t-shirt I got free from the Xbox pavillion at Warped Tour this year or I’ll wear a pair of froggy pajama pants my step-grandma made for me and a t-shirt I swiped from my step-brother.  It doesn’t get me thinking about sex, so I’m more comfortable if we don’t have it or if he doesn’t initiate, because I’m not making an effort.  He feels less pressure to perform, because I’m not needily crawling on top of him at 3 in the morning desperately.

I’m not suggesting you intentionally ugly yourself up, but I’d be remiss not to mention what helped me accept the situation.

Look, the important thing to remember is that if you’re unhappy, your partner probably is too.  Fellas, if you find yourself turning your girlfriend down more than you initiate sex, maybe you should try “being there for her” and track down one of our lovely tutorials on the female orgasm to get started.  Ladies, if you feel rejected by being turned down for sex, maybe try being there for yourself sometimes.

But long term, you do have to talk about this.  It’s not something that’s just going to magically fix itself down the line and the longer you let it go, the worse it’s going to get.  Just whatever else you may think, know that you’re not alone here.

Leave a comment »

Getting What You Want When You Want It: A How-To

July 21, 2008 · Filed under Girly Parts · Tagged , , ,

So I’ve actually been doing this for a long time.  No really!  I’ve always been the one people go to for advice on various subjects about sex and relationships, even though this is the first time I’ve ever actually tried to write about it.  Do you know what the number one thing that women want to know about sex is?  How can I have an orgasm with my partner? Guess what the number one thing men want to know is.  Go on, guess.  Ready?  Men want to know how to give their partner orgasms.  No really!  So it appears that we’ve got a bit of a communication breakdown here.

If women want orgasms and men want to give orgasms, why do so few women have orgasms during sex?  Well, that’s actually a rather complicated question to answer.  There’s a lot of miscommunication in popular culture as to what women want and need to have a satisfying sex life.  How many times have you been watching a movie and the male and female lead are panting and gasping in time with the thrusts and suddenly the female lead tilts her head back and gasps!!!! Or maybe you’re a fan of the literature under your mom’s bed and you’re getting to the good parts where the heroine is so overcome by passion and lust for the hero that they manage to have a simultaneous orgasm?  Well, probably actually you’ve seen those types of scenes a whole lot.  In fact, those scenes were probably among your first exposure to the idea of sex and orgasms.  They make for great fiction, but they’re just exactly that:  great fiction.

In the three dimensional world we inhabit, only 1 in 4 women are able to have an orgasm from intercourse alone.  And even those women need G-spot stimulation in order for that to work.  Even if you’re a g-spot orgasmer, if your partner’s penis doesn’t hit the right spot then you’re not going to have an orgasm just from straight missionary style sex.  Unfortunately, since most men don’t have G-spots or clits, they tend to assume if it feels good for him, it must feel good for his partner.  Well, if that were the case we wouldn’t have had anal sex days last week.  This generally wouldn’t be a problem except that most women are rather shy about expressing their desires to their partners because they don’t want to come across as pushy or worse, like a slut.  Well, unfortunately, that sort of thinking is going to doom them to a lifetime of not enjoying sex.  Have you ever had a partner who was so good he just knew exactly what to do to make you scream?  Did you ever wonder where he got that from?  Well, chances are he either took the initiative to look it up himself and get better or else he had an ex-girlfriend (or even just a female friend) who took the time to explain to him exactly what he was doing wrong.  Good lays aren’t born, they’re made.

Let’s just stop right now and mention that not being good at providing orgasms to your partner crosses all personality and experience barriers.  Just because your guy doesn’t know he needs to go down on you doesn’t mean he’s selfish in bed and just because he DOES know how to go down on you doesn’t mean he’s a good guy.  If he refuses to even attempt to get you off, then we’ll talk about selfish.  But if he tries to make you happy once corrected, that’s not a flaw on his part.  It’s just something he needs to be corrected on.  If you want something, and you don’t happen to be currently sleeping with someone who is psychic, you’re going to have to tell them.  Yeah, it’s never fun to go “Hey you know that thing you do with your thumbs?  It makes me want to gouge my eyes out.” or worse “Sometimes I come dangerously close to falling asleep before you’re done.”  Unfortunately, part of being an adult and being in an adult relationship is being mature enough to communicate your desires in a loving and thoughtful way.  If you can’t bring yourself to utter the words “I’d really like it if you’d go down on me” then grab a book of sex positions or the joy of sex or hell, find a picture on a porno site that tickles your fancy, point to it, and go “Hey, can we try that?”  And about 90% of the time if it doesn’t involve putting his testicles in a vice, he’ll probably go “Hells to the yeah!” and break the sound barrier on his way to the bedroom.

Do you know why?  Because guys LOVE when women make it easier on them.  It’s not just guys, either.  Everybody loves it when somebody else makes things easier for them.  Most people appreciate it especially when things are made easier for them in bed, because it’s such a vulnerable time for everyone.  Nobody wants to suck at pleasing their partner.  Everyone wants to be good in bed.  So talk about it.  Bring it up in conversations.  You think it makes you seem pushy and look like a slut?  Take an informal poll of your male acquaintances.  What you think makes you seem like a bossy whore is probably just about the sexiest thing he can possibly imagine.  To his mind, a woman who talks about sex is a woman who enjoys sex and men love sex and they love women who share their hobbies.  If you need him to tie you up and go at you with a vibrator, let him know!  If you want to strap him to the bed and use him to pleasure yourself, I bet you $1 he’ll buy the restraints.  Or maybe you’d be more ready if he just did the goddamn dishes for once.  Well, if you frame it in the context of, “sweety, I think I’d be more in the mood if I had less work to do around the house” you could probably squeeze a decent amount of housework out of your average guy.

And guys!  For God’s sake, if your partner doesn’t seem to be having as good a time as you in bed, well then ask her what she wants.  Some women really ARE afraid of asking.  Ask her!  Feel around and ask if she likes it.  Encourage her!  Do what she wants!  And if the mother of your children is too tired to put out, then well, do some damn housework.  Take the kids off her hands for the day.  Arrange for a babysitter and take her to a movie.  But don’t expect to get sex every time you take the trash out, or even the first time!  If she needs a break (which she probably does) then give her some support and she’ll start to feel intimate and relaxed and eventually you’ll probably be having more sex.  But we’ll do more on that in another column.

So there you go, the number one tried and true tested remedy for bad sex:  tell your partner what you want instead.  That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Leave a comment »