How To Make Love To The Same Person For The Rest of Your Life and Still Love It – part II

Author: Dagmar O’Connor

Language: English

Summary: How To Make Love To The Same Person For The Rest Of Your Life …and Still Love It. Part II Can help you and your partner regain the electric intimacy you felt when the relationship was new. You may find you’re making love as if for the first time – again and again and again. Best of all, you can make this newfound intimacy glow passionately…for the rest of your lives!

Double DVD plus How To Make Love book 1

Author: Dagmar O’Connor

Language: English

Summary: This double DVD plus Book set will help you…Take the monotony out of monogamy!     * Learn to deal with the common problem of “I’m in the mood for sex … why aren’t you?”     * Bridge the gap between family life and sex life.     * Free yourself for sexual activity by booking time for sex.     * Resist the temptations for infidelity and put the excitement back into your sex life. This is not a download. The double DVD plus How To Make Love To The Same Person For The Rest Of Your Life…and Still Love It Part 1 can be purchased online, and you will receive it in the mail.

WHY PEOPLE HATE SAFE SEX

Stopping to put on a condom can suddenly pull you back to the reality of how dangerous sex can be today. You start asking yourself, How well do I know this person.. Am I being “bad” Conscious and unconscious guilt get mixed together and block pleasure. Problem: None of this is compatible with being swept away, an experience that so many people enjoy.

In addition most couples today are choosing what seems to be the easy way out. Instead of taking a creative approach to safe sex, they equate the term with using condoms (which are not considered 100% safe). Problem: They have sex a few times, decide that they like and trust each other and stop using condoms. Trap: Just because someone’s nice doesn’t mean he/she doesn’t have AIDS.

WHAT DOES SAFE SEX REALLY MEAN?

Ideally, safe sex means only having sex with someone who is not involved with drugs and who you’re absolutely, positively, 100% sure has not had sex with anyone else in years.

In reality, although it can be very difficult to develop and maintain such a relationship, safe sex means not having sex until you trust a person and have thoroughly discussed his background.

Even better: Don’t have sex until you and your partner are tested for AIDS. And don’t have the AIDS test until you’ve been dating for a long time (recent research shows it can take years for the AIDS antibodies to show up).
In the meantime, be as creative as you can?

FRUSTRATION CAN BE FUN

If it’s treated as an opportunity to experiment and have fun rather than as a hindrance to sexual expression, delaying intercourse can be very exciting.
Remember how thrilling petting and necking were when you were a teen? Remember what a turn-on it was being pursued (or pursuing someone)? and constantly saying (or being told) No?
Most of us have exciting memories of adolescence, which was a very sensual period ? a time when you couldn’t and you shouldn’t but you wanted to. Analogy: Being on a diet and not being able to eat candy. You get obsessed with it. Safe sex can give the same charge to sex.
A lot of sex is just game-playing anyway ? a regressive activity in which adults get to play like kids again. Rationale: Sex, which is physical, takes people back to infancy, when the only way they could relate to the world was through being held, cuddled and stroked.
Instead of having business-like, goal-oriented sex ? which is supposedly mature, adult sex, but isn’t half as much fun ? we can have playful sex. For most of us that’s very healthy. We can enjoy suddenly being forced to do something that we really wanted to do anyway.

MORE SAFE SEX STRATEGIES

- Revive the art of courting. Send a bouquet of flowers, enjoy a quiet can dlelit dinner. This very important part of every relationship became almost obsolete during the sexual revolution.
- Make out. Do it in the back of the car, on the front porch or wherever you found it exciting as a teenager. Or do in the park, on the beach, in an airplane or in any other setting where you can actually have intercourse.
- Oral sex. More women have orgasms with oral sex than with intercourse. Caution: Semen carries them
AIDS virus. The ejaculate taken internally can be dangerous ? though the are no clearly defined cases of transfer of AIDS heterosexually through or sex.
- Treat condoms as sexual toys. The woman should put them on the man ?slowly and seductively. Recommended: Some condoms come with a because it enhances the size and duration of erection.

Men’s and women’s traditional roles can make touching a mechanical and often unsatisfying activity. It’s hard for men, who are used to being in control, to lie back and be touched, and it’s difficult for women, who are usually passive, to take an active role.

As you touch your partner, you should experience the pleasure of touching rather than watching for a reaction. This translates into sensual touching. Many men are stuck in the ego trip of touching a woman and getting pleasure from watching her being turned on instead of forgetting about the woman and getting into the experience themselves.

IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD

Sensual responsiveness is a delicate mechanism. Although we were all born with it, many things can interfere with it. Self-consciousness about stepping out of a traditional role as well as the distractions of everyday life can have a lot to do with blocking out feeling. But the important thing to remember is that you can learn thing to remember is that you can learn to overcome these obstacles.

Exercise: Gently stroke the back of your arm while your kids are screaming or during a business meeting. Later, relax in a quit spot, let your mind wander and fantasize, and stroke your arm again. You probably felt very little in the first instance, and a lot more in the second. The touch itself wasn’t different, but how you experienced it was. When the brain is overloaded with distracting stimuli, other sensations, even pain, are lessened. In order to experience the intense pleasure of touch, you have to learn to refocus and block out competing messages.

THE ABC?S OF TOUCH

The first thing a couple should do is have sessions in which they alternate touching each other without sexual intercourse. Each partner gets to initiate sessions? and to be both passive and active. The trick is to learn to be selfish and communicate what you like ? eventually developing a nonverbal language of touch.

It’s very hard to get couples started on touching exercises, because they seem so nonserious and nonsexual. Men often are the biggest complainers. A man feels he’ll become frustrated, that the exercises are boring and not the real thing, or that they mean the woman is controlling his sex life that is, him. Women are more enthusiastic, but they may also feel threatened by playing the unfamiliar role of active partner. It’s also difficult for a woman to face the fact that just because a man loves her, he can’t magically read her mind ? she has to tell him what she likes.

HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS

- Don’t insist on separating sex and affection. Women complain that when they just want to be affectionate the man will turn it into foreplay. Problem; We fail to see affection and sex as a continuum. We’re too used to turning ourselves off during affectionate moments because we had to as children when we kissed and hugged our parents. And now we have to as parents with our own children. But you should remember that the affectionate hug or kiss with your spouse is exactly the same physical act that turns on during sex.

- Communicate with your body. If you can’t say I love you with your body, there’s a whole dimension lacking in your relationship. How you express yourself is an individual matter. One woman I worked with felt love when her husband just felt her body. You might go to sleep after sex without disengaging from intercourse, or with one leg or arm over your partner.

- Sleep in the nude to create a sense of intimacy.

- Be flexible ? in terms of touch, body contacts, positions?. and where you touch each other in the house. I don’t suggest being explicit in front of children, but I give couples with affection problems the exercise of hugging and kissing throughout the day.

? Don’t make it a power struggle. People who have trouble touching each other often toss accusations back and forth, such as I always touch you ? how come your never touch me? The one who’s having trouble gets more resistant because he or she feels forced. It winds up that the family dog gets more affection than anyone else in the household. Solution: Acknowledge to your partner that there is a difficulty. Take it in small steps. Keep touching your partner for your own gratification, no matter what the response. Eventually your partner will stop feeling threatened and reciprocate of his or her own accord.

- Don’t forget about usually untouched areas. If I don’t tell my clients to touch heads and feet, they’ll forget about them. Licking toes and massaging feet can be very sensual. Some mothers put their baby’s foot in their mouth, an experience that is pleasurable for both. This pleasure can be revived with a lover.

For examples, if you are in the investment business, you must rely on the constant feedback from stock prices, etc., to gauge how well you are doing. The mechanical’score? can become an emotional reflection of self ‘esteem. If you make money, you feel worthwhile and confident. If you lose money, you feel like a failure. Problem: Sex becomes just another performance, and failure affects life in the bedroom.

DETACHING FROM THE DOW JONES

If you can’t separate yourself from your work, you need to build up your self-confidence so you can view yourself not just as a performer in a business, but as an individual. Concentrate on separating your business life from your private life ? or on developing a private life if you have none.

How to begin: For someone with performance orientation, erection and ejaculation are just two more ways of keeping score. To overcome this, I recommend touching experiences. Aim: To learn to experience pleasure without being graded. These exercises deal with arousal and sensitivity without intercourse, which for many reasons is associated with performance. I compare it with investing in the market for sheer enjoyment, without worrying about profit.

Exercise: You and your partner take turns touching each other’s body for a minimum of 15 minutes or as long as 45 minutes. When your genitals are being touched, guide your partner, communicating what feels good? how slow.

This exercise should be done at least three times a week for a minimum of one month. I tell my patients to continue doing the exercise until they get it right ?and I find that most couples need two or three months.

FEELING GOOD IN BAD TIMES

We need balance in our lives. Society is too oriented toward measuring and scoring every facet of our lives. There is constant pressure on us to succeed? as workers, parents, students, lovers, etc.

The school system is partly to blame for this problem. It teaches children the importance of being scored and graded but never focuses on the importance of developing a sense of self apart from the performance.

Realize that your individuality is composed of hundreds of thousands of ideas, feeling, talents, etc., and that no single role or activity completely defines who you are. Practice allowing yourself to experience pleasure for its own sake. Don’t fall into the common trap that when the Dow Jones goes down, sexual performance goes down with it.

To handle seductive people you have to understand what unfulfilled needs make you seduceable. To not get sucked in, you have to learn to give to yourself.

WHO IS SEDUCTIVE

Some people have a great need to be loved. They are excessive people-pleasers dependent on positive feedback because something is lacking in their self-esteem. The only way they can feel good about themselves is to see themselves reflected in the desires of others.

Seducers are very attractive to others because of their unstated promise to provide people with large doses of love, acceptance and nurturance. However, they’re also afraid of intimacy. When you take them up on their offer of closeness, they often back off.

Seductive people are most often compulsive caretakers, givers who have difficulty communicating their owe needs. Their relationships often falter when they get angry because the other person doesn’t fulfill needs of theirs, needs they haven’t spelled out.

Example: Julie seemed willing to listen to all of your problems and give advice endlessly. But one day she stopped returning your phone calls. What happened: Julie was thinking, but not saying, I want you to spend time listening to me. In order to get that, I will listen to your and your problems. But then it will be my turn to talk. You have to ask me about my problems. Julie probably habitually attracts needy people who want to tell their stories, who aren’t terrific givers, and then gets angry at them when they don’t give her what she never said she wanted.

In another script, the seducer wants you to find her attractive, to get closer to her. But as soon as you start getting close and really liking her, her weak self esteem tells her that if you like her, you must not be good enough. If you had been more unavailable, she would have been more interested.

HOW THEY GET THAT WAY

Most seducers come from dysfunctional families. The family couldn’t function with children who expressed what they really felt. So the child learned to suppress feelings and be a caretaker to the parents. The child got approval as a nurturer and never learned how to be taken care of. The seducer is potentially very angry because he or she never gets enough nurturance.

Example: Marilyn Monroe came from a dysfunctional family and spent most of her childhood in foster homes. She felt the only way she could get approval or nurturance was through sexual seductiveness ? but she couldn’t tolerate real intimacy. When she found men who wee willing to take care of her ? Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller ? she became insanely demanding and drove them off. Nothing made up for the early nurturing that she had missed.

The kind of behavior is especially common among people who were seduced or sexually abused in childhood. They are often highly sexual very early and use their sexuality in order to get the nurturance they were deprived of.

Highly seductive people are also very insecure. They have to prove again and again that they’re lovable. But when they get that reassurance, it isn’t what they really want. What they really want is early nurturing and security.

Seductiveness is not limited to women. We even have a name for seductive men ? sugar daddies. They promise to fulfill the classic female fantasy of being called for in a limo and told Don’t worry about a thing, dear, I’ll take care of everything.

Many of these men turn out to be arrogant or over controlling once they get a woman’s acquiescence. Or they are Don Juans, interested only in the conquest. The sugar daddy doesn’t have enough self-esteem to say I’m a worthwhile person who can be loved for myself. He thinks that he must wine and dine a woman and shower her with gifts in order to win her love.

DELAYNG WITH SEDUCTIVE PEOPLE

People who fall for seductiveness are themselves very needy and so anxious to get those needs met that they overlook even the most blatant signs of inadequacy in anyone who promises to nurture them.

Example: The woman who falls for the sexy great lover who promises her the world? but then rarely shows up for their dates. Her excuse for his behavior is usually denial. She says, But he really loves me.

To avoid being continually disappointed by others, you first have to deal with yourself. Ask yourself. How good am I at taking care of the ?starving little kid? inside me? When I feel down, do I phone a friend and share my thoughts? Do I take enough vacations? Do I forgive myself when I make a mistake?

When you start nurturing yourself, you’ll have less need to be taken care of by others.

Another important remedy: Develop your assertiveness so you can take certain things from certain people and then say No, I don’t want any more than this ? thank you very much. This is a healing step. When you learn to let seductive people go instead of begging them to stay, you can relax and enjoy them for what they do have to offer ? the ability to nurture you ? at least for while.

This is an especially common question. In my view, the problem stems not so much from the realities of aging, as from the cultural fallacy that a man must be physically powerful to be a good lover. Compared with younger men, men in their 60s and older do take longer to get an erection and older do take longer to get an erection and to achieve orgasm, and their orgasm are often less intense. But these changes need not hamper a man’s ability to enjoy sex and to be an exciting lover. In the vast majority of cases, a middle-aged mans growing self-knowledge and life experience can more than compensate for the slight decline in his physical capacity.

Crucial: A willingness to take sex more slowly and deliberately, with less emphasis on performance and more emphasis on the pleasures of stroking and caressing. For men of any age suffering from importance or other forms of sexual dysfunction, effective treatment is available. Some cases of impotence have specific, reversible physiological causes. These should be investigated by a urologist.

Will menopause ruin our life?

Many middle-aged women worry that menopause will destroy their libido and ruin sex for themselves ? and their partners. Menopause can bring about certain physiological changes ? vaginal dryness or a loss of sensation, for example. Fortunately, these problems are usually treatable, via the use of lubricants, estrogen replacement therapy or homeopathic herbal remedies. Moreover, many women find that menopause actually improves their sex life. Following menopause, for instance, sex is often more spontaneous, as there is no longer any need for contraception.

Bottom line: As long as both partners are emotionally prepared for menopause, there is no physical reason that it should interfere with sexuality.

We have fallen out of sync sexually. Why?

Middle age affects men and women quite differently. Many women find middle age a time of sexual liberation. After years of relative inhibition ? brought on in part by the time constraints and emotional demands of child rearing ? middle-aged women begin to seek greater satisfaction from lovemaking. They have become more comfortable with their bodies, so they are more willing to experiment sexually, and they start to want more from their lovers. Unfortunately, this increasing sexuality among middle-aged women often clashes with the changing sexuality of their husbands. Reason: Unlike their wives, middle-aged men often find themselves becoming less, rather than more, interested in sex.

Happily, this rift can usually be repaired.

Crucial: Honesty, communication, playfulness, tenderness, an openness to sexual experimentation and self-exploration, including masturbation. However, where there are specific sexual problems or dysfunction, sex therapy is essential. In such cases, the couple may be asked to refrain from sexual intercourse while learning once again to derive pleasure simply by touching and through foreplay. Forgoing intercourse in this manner seems strange to most couples who have been having intercourse for decades. But the payoffs in enhanced pleasure and greater intimacy are well worth the effort. For couples willing to work together with love and sensitivity, middle age can be the time during which they first learn how to make love, rather than merely copulate.

What’s happened to my sex drive?

In some cases, a loss of libido can be traced to a crisis outside the marital bedroom: Serious illness, a death in the family, the loss of a job, failure in business, increased work load, unresolved feelings of anger or resentment, etc. All can cause one or both partners to lose interest in sex. Happily, desire usually returns upon the resolution of the crisis. All that’s required is a little patience.

Other cases of waning desire are more complex. For example, some people find their libido diminished the more intimate they become with their partner. A middle-aged man may lose interest in his wife because they know each other so intimately ? and in the same way a middle-aged woman can lose interest in her husband. In such cases, the trouble usually stems from some early emotional trauma resulting in a fear of intimacy. For couples who feel this phenomenon is playing a role in their relationship, the best solution is psychotherapy.

Why doesn’t my spouse turn me on anymore?

Your premise is wrong. Your spouse doesn’t turn you on, nor does he/she turn you off. Each of us is responsible for turning ourselves on and off. If you are no longer aroused by your spouse’s loving touch, the question to ask is, why am I turning myself off? In many cases, the answer can be traced to unexpressed or unresolved feelings of anger or resentment. If you have difficulty becoming aroused, scan your mind for such feelings, then discuss them with your spouse. In other cases, a souse unwittingly sabotages the arousal process by reviewing a mental list of his/her partner’s flaws.

Better: Run a list of his/her good points. Instead of letting your thoughts wander, try focusing directly on yourself, on just how pleasurable it is to be held and caressed. Remember, the brain is your most sensitive erogenous zone.

Why do my spouse and I argue so much these days?

For most couples, middle age is the time when the kids leave home and strike out on their own. This emptying of the nest seems innocuous enough. In many cases, however, it profoundly alters the emotional dynamic that exists between a husband and wife. Reason: After years of concealing their sexuality and focusing on childrearing, the couple suddenly find themselves alone, with nothing and no one to keep them apart.

Typical: Point of conflict that once were glossed over ?to spare the children? flare up into big fights.

Good news: While often scary, fighting is not without its practical side. It helps couples negotiate important emotional boundaries, providing emotional ?space? when necessary. A more congenial way to accomplish the same thing, however, is to learn to state your needs directly to one another, and not wait until resentment turns into a fight. If you feel grouchy, for instance, ask your mate for a couple of hours alone. That way you can create some distance without causing a fight. But, remember, a little fighting is healthy.

We just don’t have time for sex anymore.

Many couples who complain of not having enough time for sex are really filling their time with other activities ? often so that they can avoid intimacy.
And no wonder. Though they can’t admit it, even to themselves, most people are terrified by true intimacy. All too many of us grow up in dysfunctional households, seeing our parents argue, suffering harsh discipline and perhaps even abuse or incest ? all from the first people with whom we are close, our parents. As we grow older, we fear intimacy out of a sense of self-protection. If you really want to have sex and be intimate with your partner. You can find ways to make the time.

Sexual activity is a natural and healthy part of life. In fact, you can get better at sex and enjoy it more ? at any age. I treat couples in their 80s and 90s who wouldn’t dare tell their children or grandchildren that they’re seeing a sex therapist. Typically, whatever the state of their sex life, therapy improves it.

With retirement’s gift of time, you can learn how the aging body works differently from its younger self, what pleases you individually and how to please each other in new ways.

PRACTICAL MATTERS

Yes, bodies change with age. Many women start to feel old and asexual at menopause. Men may develop erectile problems. But most difficulties can be overcome.

Physical change: Chronic conditions, such as diabetes, thyroid disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease and depression, can affect sexual function. With heart disease, sex can cause chest pain, and with asthma, breathlessness.

Remember, intercourse is the equivalent of walking two city blocks. Check with your doctor first.

Physical change: Joint pain and stiffness from arthritis makes sex difficult.

Solution: Relax in a Jacuzzi or bath before sex? vacation together in warm climate? find new positions that won’t stress your sore spots.

Physical change: Many drugs antidepressant, hypertension, heart disease and some cancer medications, as well as alcohol ? can affect sexual function.

Solution: If your sex drive is down or you’re having other sexual problems, ask your doctor whether your medications could be the cause and if switching might help.

Physical change: After menopause, vaginal tissue becomes less elastic, the vaginal opening becomes smaller and lubrication decreases. Result: Discomfort during intercourse.

Solution: Don’t avoid sex, increase it. The more tissue is exercised, the more it stretches and the more you relax your muscles. Using your finger or a dildo, gently widen the vaginal opening every day. If the problem persists for more than two months, see a gynecologist or sex therapist.

Meanwhile, smooth the way with a nonprescription water based lubricant, such as Astr-oglide or K-Y Jelly.
Not as good: Oil-based lubricants or petroleum products such as Vaseline. They may linger in the Vagina and irritate it.

Bonus: Applying lubricant may get you in the mood for sex. Or let your partner apply it as part of lovemaking. Good foreplay makes lubrication flow naturally.

Physical change: With age, men require more manual stimulation for erections, take longer to ejaculate and have a longer re-factory period ? the amount of time between an orgasm and the next erection.

Solution: Patience. These changes are an invitation to discover the slow, loving sex that many women, in particular, have always wanted but haven’t received.

Erectile problems can be treated medically, too. Discuss the situation with your doctor. You may be referred to a urologist for medication or other treatment.

BEYOND INTERCOURSE

Couples in their 60s and 70s and older often ask me what to do about erectile problems and other issues that interfere with intercourse. I tell them to slow down ? expand their sexual horizons, develop new sexual habits and start all over again. The goal is simply to feel more.

Our society fears low-level arousal ? pleasurable excitement that doesn’t lead to penetration or orgasm. But those who have always resisted ?just touching? become gluttons for such physical connection once they realize how great it is.

Exercise: During the day or with a light on at night, one partner lies back and is touched by the other ? but not on the breasts or genitals ? for 15 minutes to an hour. The person being touched stipulates what’s wanted in a nonverbal way. If you would like your partner to touch more slowly, put your hand over your partner’s and slow it down, switch places.

Simple interludes set a loving, sensual tone and encourage you both to overcome shyness about requesting what pleases you. Prolonged sensual touching without genital contact removes sexual anxieties? helps you become relaxed, sensitized and responsive? revives sensitized and responsive ? revives a sense of trust and well-being that you may not have experienced since you were stroked as a child.

You’ll emerge from the interlude feeling wonderful about each other. Resentments and recriminations will evaporate. Making sensual, uninhibited love often follows naturally. If not, there’s always next time.

LOVE YOUR BODY AS IT IS

Our society presumes that only the young and skinny are ( or should be ) sexually active. As a result, many older people avoid sex out of embarrassment about spotted skin, a protruding stomach, wrinkles and flab. (Do remember that while you are ashamed of your wrinkles and protruding belly, your partner’s eyesight has probably also diminished! A mastectomy or other surgery can interfere with self-esteem, too, especially with a new partner.
Your body is miraculous. Learn to love it the way it really looks. One woman attending my sexual self ? esteem workshop said  ?I did not learn to love my body until I lost it.? But your body at any age is a gift. Value it for itself? not as it compares with anyone else’s or to how you looked when younger.

Exercise: Stand together before a full-length mirror. Say what you like about your own body out loud. Do this exercise alone first, before sharing it with your partner. Then try the exercise with your partner, taking turns. Listen, but don’t respond.

To learn to appreciate your body, admire it often. Come away from this event loving five things about your body.
If you look better, you’ll feel better. I recommend exercise ? walking, swimming, Pilates ? to couples of all ages. Getting stronger makes both women and men look better and feel more powerful ? more sexual.

EDUCATE YOUR PARTNER

The young body works without thought. As you grow older, you can ? and may need to ? benefit from learning more about your body and your lover’s. the key to intimacy is to express your needs ? once you have learned what they are ? and to insist on knowing the needs of your partner so that you can try to fulfill them.

Special note to women: If you rarely initiated sex but would like to, take baby steps. Try asking for different ways of being touched, or take his hand and show him how you like to be touched.

Exercise: Turn up the thermostat, and hang out nude together. Sleep nude in the same bed even if you haven’t done so for years.

The fact is that women and men can have active and frequent sex well into old age. A man who hides behind age as the reason for his flagging sexual appetite is fooling both his wife and himself. It is not sexual energy he lacks ? it is a sense of sexual power. The same man who acts sexually lazy in the marriage bed can go through an entire day feeling aroused as he flirts in the office and fantasizes on the train. But because his wife openly wants sex, he’s no longer the aggressor, the pursuer. And without this role he does not feel very sexual with her.

One husband said his wife’s sexual openness, All she has to do is say something like ?I could go for some loving tonight, and the panic sets in. The only way I can calm myself is by fantasizing that I’m seducing the young woman who lives next door.

No wonder his fantasy is calming: in it he is the aggressor, the seducer.

I recommend the following exercise for a couple on this particular seesaw. I call it ?The Middle-Aged Man’s Guide To Lazy Sex. For one month, the wife can ask for sex whenever she wants it “ up to twice a day” and her husband must comply. But he is allowed to satisfy her with as little effort as he wants to put out. He can lie back, stare at the ceiling, and masturbate her with one hand if that is all he wants to do. She may not complain that he is lazy ? as long as she is being satisfied.

After only a few weeks the husband usually discovers that his wife is not really ‘insatiable’ ? she only seemed that way when he was begging off so often. Moreover, he soon finds that he is ready and willing for all kinds of things that he had been “too tired” to do before.

Gwynne’s have sex at least once a week, he became anxious and grumpy. “It’s like a vitamin pill I need to take regularly or I just go bananas. But if I tell Gwynne that, she gets furious. She says that she doesn’t want to be a pick-me-up; she wants to be a princess. We’re just badly matched, I’m afraid.”

Jack and Gwynne have not always been sexually mismatched. In the early days Gwynne had been “in the mood” two o three times a week, and Jack’s steady need for sex had been perfectly satisfied. Yet as time went on, Gwynne began to see Jack’s “need” as a drag on her; she felt blackmailed by his threats of glum moods, so she retreated, waiting to be turned on. And Jack began to feel rejected: no matter how hard he tried to create “the right moment” for his wife, she was rarely interested in having sex.

Like many women “ and many men too “ Gwynne resented being “used” to fulfill her husband’s needs. But need is not a dirty word. It’s what sexuality is to all of us “ a need “ even if we are loathe to admit it. I said to Gwynne, “Stop worrying about Jack’s longings and start trying to feel your own.”

Still Gwynne was right to feel that something was missing. Husbands like Jack tend to want to “get down to business.” Affectionate touching is simply a means to an end: taking care of their need. I always do at least fifteen minutes of foreplay, Jack told me earnestly. It’s not like I pounce on her.

Foreplay is the most unsexy word I know, I answered. It’s a dead giveaway that, to you, it’s just something you have to get out of the way before the real thing,

Jack was ignoring all the pleasures that merely touching and being touched can bring. Small wonder that he and Gwynne had become polarized: she yearning for affection, waited endlessly for a “magic moment,” while he, needing to “get down to business,” lived constantly with frustration.

The first assignment I gave Gwynne and Jack was designed to depolarize them. I asked them to make a deal with one another: for one month, Gwynne was to allow Jack to ask for sex as often as once a day. And she had to respond by physically initiating sex. Gwynne was not enthusiastic: “I’ll do it, but I’m not promising I’ll like it.”

That’s okay, I said. Don’t enjoy it any more than you want to.
As often happens, Jack asked to make love every day the first week, every other day the second week, and by the third and fourth weeks he was content with twice a week. Gwynne had assumed that he would want sex all the time, but he had only felt that way when he thought he could not have any sex at all. For her part Gwynne timidly admitted that by about the third week she found that she enjoyed their sex “a little more” than she had expected, that once they got started, she ?somehow got into the mood.?

When Gwynne and Jack were able to stop seeing one another as extremes ? “a sex maniac and a nun,” as Jack said ‘ they were ready to take the next step toward a mutually enjoyable sex life. Their second assignment was to have sex that did not lead to orgasm.