Male sexuality and the penis
As a man, you may think
that your penis governs your life. Whether you want to have casual sex with no
personal interaction, to encounter deeper aspects of your own self in a spiritual union with another person, or to enjoy a permanent
relationship with a soul mate, somewhere at the bottom of it all, your sexual
drive is
dictating what you do.
Owning a penis allows a man (and boy) to
feel unique and special. Whether you see yours as a "wand of light" to
bring sexual ecstasy to you and your partner, a weapon of anger, a fun toy, or a
troublesome organ to be tolerated, the truth is that it will occupy much of your
time as a man. You can use it to provide temporary pleasure and relief from boredom,
or as a means to increase your self-esteem and feeling of masculinity. You may
have a sense of shame, disgust or regret about it, or you may see it with pride,
pleasure and joy. You may have to exercise it every day with many different partners
to have any feeling of worth, or you may wish to reserve its pleasures for one
special person.
You may see sex as totally penis-centered,
or you may be a wiser lover who knows the value of the whole body as a sexual organ.
If you measure your masculinity by your sexual performance, things like how big
you are, how long you can keep it up for, how long you can keep going
during sex, and how many partners you have notched in the bed posts, are likely
to be important to you.
So which of these myriad of possibilities represents
male sexuality? Well, the obvious answer, of course, is that they all do.
What I want to address here is the male tendency
to want sex more often than a female partner. This is more commonly, but not
always, a man's complaint, and when I hear it I always get the feeling that the
person with the complaint believes that he or she is right and that his or her
partner is wrong. It would be easier if they asked me to let them change. After
all, most people who eat more than their spouses don't complain to anyone about
that; they just eat more and get on with life.
RICHARD
Richard was 46, a building contractor and active
in the politics of his home city. He and Marie had been married 25 years, had
five children and one grandchild.
"For most of our marriage I was of the opinion
that our sex life was normal. (It was.) It began to dawn on us about five years
ago, after I read some books and saw some
porn on the internet, that the
sex life that we were leading wasn't the beginning and end of it all. People
were doing it in other ways. (What he's thinking is, "We weren't doing it
right.")
"The problem has been one that's been rearing its
head on a sort of weekly basis for the past couple of years. I've been getting
uptight about the fact that I have to initiate sex. It's been a nighttime
ritual. The act is initiated in the bedroom and it's been without any great
sexual eroticism, and in the recent months it's been over as far as I've been
concerned in a matter of minutes. (Even though this way of making love has
not worked, they continue to do it.)
"The fact that I love her so much and she arouses
me so much is in fact causing me a problem, because there's been many a time
I've been so overwhelmed by something she's said or done that I wanted to get it
on, even in the middle of an afternoon, and she's told me, 'Don't be silly.'
(Note: She's desirable, he's arousable.) So I've done some pretty stupid things
lately to try to wear off this sex drive. I've taken up sky diving. I took
lessons and stayed with it until I hurt my leg and decided I'd give that up. I
play a mean game of squash and I wore myself out. There've been times when I've
told her I was horny, and she's nicely told me it wasn't the time or place, and
why didn't I take a cold bath. (He'll do nearly anything to accommodate her
in the postponement of sex. He may also wish to accommodate her in sexual ways
as well - ways he merely hasn't thought of yet.) One can take only so many
cold baths. (And cold shoulders.) So I masturbated, more often than I've
had sexual intercourse. (And probably did it with some degree of shame and
without productive fantasies.)
I learned my basic sex knowledge in my teens from
the boys at school because I attended an all-boys' school. I really came into
contact with girls the first time when I was about fifteen or sixteen, when I
dated the girl who lived
next door. Nothing sexually happened between us except that I became very
aroused after being with her, went home, took a bath, and masturbated. That was
my sex life. (He learned that particular pattern before meeting his wife.)
I met my wife when I was about eighteen, and after a year of going with her, she
allowed me to fondle her breasts. Another year, I think, passed before we petted
heavily enough for ejaculation to take place. Fear, however, of pregnancy
precluded intercourse until we became engaged, when I was twenty and she was
nineteen. (No mention of her orgasms.)
We married shortly after my twenty-first
birthday, and still no one discussed sex with us. It was considered that we'd
learn it as we went along. I think it must have been the seventh or eighth year
of marriage before my wife indicated that she would get some pleasure if I
manually touched her clitoris. Oral sex was something I not only never heard of,
but certainly never even considered as being something to even try. We only in
the last five years experimented with other than what I call the standard
positions, that is, man on top."
Richard's fantasy was predictably linked to his goal (his purposefulness), even
though he said fantasy was "rather difficult. . . because this is not a thing
I've been into at all."
"I would like to be able to find my wife with the soft music bit and the
candlelight. You know, exotic nightdress, revealing, ready to 'attack' me as I
walk in. (How about enjoy?) That's the way I see a fantasy.
I don't believe that our marriage can continue at its present level with me
knowing that while she loves me, I want sex more often. Indeed, there is nothing there sexually. I am
seeing and possibly overemphasizing to myself the passing of the years and the
possible diminishing of my sexual powers."
Richard was so typical, and so ready, to find out
how to give a woman an orgasm. I
suggested that he and his wife listen to a tape on sexual
satisfaction, or sexual responsiveness. It goes as follows:
The whole subject of sex is surrounded
by discomfort, embarrassment, misinformation, and, unfortunately, a lot of
unhappiness. I think that people in relationship, at the very least, should enjoy sex. Since sexual satisfaction means enjoying that which
you're doing in bed, it doesn't matter really to anybody
other than you and your partner what it is you do.
There is nothing wrong with sexual activity, providing the two people concerned have mutual respect
and understanding for each other.
There are certain
aspects of sexual activity that might turn your partner
on and you off, and vice versa. You can only find out about these by talking
about them.
Everyone doesn't have to have an orgasm, either
at the same moment or right after one another. You know that's one of the many
prevailing myths, just like the myth that only sexual intercourse leads to
normal sexual gratification. Still another myth says people must know
how to have an orgasm
during sex at the same time. Couples don't have to have orgasm at the same
time. Couples should be sexually satisfied. But on a Thursday evening it might
be her occasion because she feels most like it. On a Monday night, it might be
geared for your satisfaction because you feel most like it.
You don't have to have an erection in order to
gratify your partner. You don't have to roll over and go to sleep right after
you've ejaculated, or come. Indeed, you don't have to ejaculate at all - thought
in cases of delayed
ejaculation treatment is better because otherwise the man's inability to
ejaculate can lead to sexual friction. You are the expert when it comes to
teaching your partner how to please you and bring you to the heights of sexual
pleasure - and she is the expert in teaching you
how to please a woman and bring
her to orgasm. Not marriage manuals. Only you two are the experts, because only
you two know what it is you like and what it is you don't like.
But don't magically think that your partner
knows. And your partner can't and shouldn't magically think that you know what
it is she likes, unless that's what you talk about.
You see, we've grown up with this nonverbal thing
about sex. Many people don't talk when they have sex. I don't know why, except
they haven't learned to. But how else can people convey likes and dislikes
except verbally or except with certain new signals? This doesn't mean you have
to talk exactly at the moment when you're involved with sexual activity. You can
talk about what happened moments later, or in an hour; it really might be your
style to moan and groan and sigh and be happy and not talk. That's all right.
You don't have to.
But you do
have to communicate. You do have to develop signals. And when something
happens that you don't like, say you don't like it.
Men and women have years of self-stimulation and
self-satisfaction. Men masturbate (with a much greater frequency, by the way,
than do women) and women masturbate too. That word "masturbation" seems to carry
with it some discomforting connotations. Self-pleasuring may be a better phrase.
Self-pleasuring implies producing sufficient stimuli to your body to produce
sexual satisfaction, often in the form of an orgasm.
If two people are together and lovingly caress,
touch, kiss, that is sex. If a man ejaculates or a woman has an orgasm at a time
when such caressing is going on, even before a penis has been inserted in a
vagina, that's sexual satisfaction. Funny words or phrases like foreplay exist,
as though foreplay is something you do before you do sex! But foreplay is also
sex. Any sexual activity or behavior is sex, including touching and warmth and
affection and stroking and caressing. Sex is everything that two people,
as people, enjoy.
Oral-genital sex,
a woman kissing a man's
penis or a man kissing a woman's clitoris and vulva - are forms of sexual
satisfaction that are very common.
To be continued |