The New Male Sexuality (42 page)

Being turned on is the best feeling in the world. It’s even better than orgasm because orgasm is an ending while turn-on is a beginning. Makes me feel totally alive and awake.—
Man, 34

I think arousal is what it’s all about. I love feeling sexually excited and I love my partner feeling it. Her turn-on pushes mine even higher and mine does the same for hers. It’s an incredible spiral of greater and greater passion
.
—Man, 46

When people talk about “getting it up” in regard to sex, they usually mean the man’s getting his penis up. But there is another kind of getting it up that is more important for men, and women too. I’m referring to getting your arousal up. Arousal, a feeling that is also called
excitement, passion, lust, turn-on
, and
horniness
, is what powers erections in men, lubrication in women, and orgasm in both. Arousal is also most of what makes for a sexual experience that feels really good.

EXACTLY WHAT IS AROUSAL?

Arousal is like love; even though we know what each one is, neither is easy to define. Let’s start with what arousal is not. It definitely is not the same as the overwhelming excitement described in the popular media, which can make all of us feel inadequate. Even at the peak of passion, few human beings have felt that their bones were melting, or that they were floating in paradise, or that they were experiencing a tidal wave of unbearable pleasure. Arousal is also not the same as an intellectual interest in sex. For example, if you say to yourself, “Gee, it’s been six weeks since I had sex,” but don’t feel any excitement, you’re not aroused.

Although
desire for sex
and
turn-on
are often used synonymously, clarity is served by making a distinction between them. I use
desire
to mean wanting to have sex. It’s easy to understand wanting sex when you’re already aroused. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You could also want to have sex for other reasons. Perhaps your partner gets irritable and provokes a fight unless she has sex twice a week. Since she’s starting to get irritable and you want to avoid a fight, you initiate sex. But what you really desire is to avoid trouble; having sex is merely the means to this end. There are men and women who want lots of sex even though they have trouble getting aroused. One reason for their high desire is the hope that if they keep working at it, they’ll figure out how to get turned on.

It also works the other way. There are people who get easily and highly aroused in sex but don’t want much of it. This sounds strange but really isn’t. A man in this category may feel that sex is a distraction from other things—usually work—that have a higher priority. Or he may believe that too much lovemaking makes him more committed or vulnerable than he wants to be.

I use
desire
to mean only that you have an interest in sex, whether or not you’re aroused. A high level of desire simply means you want sex a lot. Arousal, on the other hand, is how high you get when you anticipate sex or engage in it.

The most important thing arousal is
not is
an erection. The two often go together—arousal is usually what makes your penis get hard—but they are best thought of as separate. You may, for instance, wake up in the morning with an erection but without any excitement. That means only that you have an erection and are not turned on. And just as it’s possible to have an erection without being aroused, it’s also possible to be very sexually aroused and not have an erection (because fear, anger, another feeling, or a medical condition is getting in the way). Some men with erection problems say that erections accompanied by lust feel different from those without the feelings. When there’s no turn-on, the erection seems like an anomaly, not at all connected to you. When there’s an erection and arousal, you feel more connected to your penis; it’s part of who you are as a total person at the moment. If you want to keep sex as good as possible and prevent erection problems, don’t attempt to use your penis unless you are turned on. If you are already having trouble with erections, this becomes an absolute rule.

Let’s go to what arousal is. Above all, it has to do with things you sense and feel. One way of looking at it is that your body (and mind) is on, as in “all systems go.” One man put it this way: “My heart was racing, my body
was tingling, and I was raring to go”—not as extreme as having your bones melt, but pleasurable nonetheless. Terms frequently used to describe arousal, aside from the synonyms already given, include
warmth
or
heat
(as in “I was hot”),
tingling, blood rushing, heart pounding, wild, wanting to have her
, or
to touch her
or
to be inside her
. Arousal is almost always described in positive ways; it feels good. Think of an activity in your life that excites you: skiing, tennis, running, sex, closing an important deal, or whatever. Then recall a specific example of that activity when you were even more excited than usual. Take a moment or two to get into the details of how you felt. It’s as if you’re all fired up, your attention is narrowly focused, the blood is rushing through you, and you feel fully alive and terrific. That’s what I mean when I say
arousal
or
turn-on
, even though we’re talking about the high end. I wouldn’t expect that you’d be that aroused every time you went skiing or had sex. But the extreme does offer a good way of defining the idea for yourself.

I hope you don’t get upset if you discover that you get most excited by something other than sex. That’s not unusual. You may never get as wild in sex as when you learned you were accepted by the college of your choice or as you do when closing a million-dollar deal. But if you feel your sexual arousal is not as high as it could be, you can do something about it.

Now recall a time when you were very sexually aroused. You were really hot for it and really into it. You could feel it in your pelvis (whether or not you had an erection) and elsewhere, maybe in your heart or stomach. This is what we’re talking about.

When people are highly aroused, they are narrowly focused. Their attention is devoted to what they’re doing and going to do. So one way of telling how aroused you are is by asking how distracted you are by extraneous matters. A person who’s distracted in sex by common outside noises (barking dogs, backfiring cars, the normal creaking of houses, and so on) is probably not very aroused. A person who’s repelled or disgusted by a partner’s varicose veins, or hair in a place he doesn’t think there should be hair, or similar items is probably not very aroused. When you’re excited, you either don’t notice these things or they don’t bother you much because you’re too focused on something else.

RATING YOUR DEGREE OF AROUSAL

Although not necessary, it can be helpful to learn to rate your degree of arousal. The best way I know to do this is to recall the time when you felt
most excited in sex, whether it was last night, last week, or twenty years ago. Try to recall exactly how exciting that was. And assign that degree of excitement a 10. At the other end of the scale we need a 0, a time when you felt no arousal at all. Any occasion when you weren’t thinking about sex or having any sexual feeling will do.

Now you have anchored your scale at both ends. You might want to assess your average degree of arousal in sex. Go over in your mind the last three or four times you had sex and rate your arousal for each. This can be a bit tricky, because your arousal probably varied during each experience. The most intense feeling was during or just before orgasm. A good way around this is
not
to include orgasm or the seconds just before it. Rate arousal based on how you felt before orgasm was imminent.

If your usual arousal is less than 7 on a scale of 10, and certainly if it’s less than 6, you might want to consider following some of the suggestions in this chapter. If your arousal is generally 5 or less, you should definitely attend to them. There’s an excellent chance you can increase your excitement and enjoy sex more.

One wonderful feature of arousal is that it is responsive to direct effort; it’s fine to work on increasing it, to try to make it higher
. I mentioned earlier that trying to get and maintain erections can lead to problems. There’s too much pressure put on the penis, and its response may be the opposite of what you want. In general, however, this danger does not exist with arousal. So feel free to focus on arousal during sex and at other times and to consider what might intensify it. The more you can work on increasing and enjoying arousal during sex, and the less you try to force your penis to do anything, the more fun you’ll have and the more functional you’ll be.

I now turn to some ways of increasing arousal, all of which work for some men. You should read them over and experiment with those that seem relevant to you.

MAINTAINING AN ONGOING EROTIC CONNECTION

I discussed the importance of an ongoing erotic connection between you and your sweetheart in
Chapter 8
. If you have sex regularly, talk about it regularly, and touch in sexual ways regularly, this will do wonders for your arousal, and your partner’s as well. This is a very powerful practice.

CONDITIONS

As mentioned in
Chapter 6
, determining and meeting your conditions is essential. Certain conditions will allow higher arousal than others, and the absence of these conditions may make arousal impossible. It will pay you to do the conditions exercise in
Chapter 6
if you haven’t already done so.

Randy, for example, had been badly stung by the derogatory remarks his ex-wife had made about his masculinity and sexual abilities around the time of their divorce, and so he was wary about getting serious with another woman. At the same time, however, he sought women’s company and their bodies. But either he had difficulty getting an erection or he ejaculated very quickly. It soon become clear that he was very tense with these women, whom he saw only once or twice, and not the slightest bit aroused. This is not a good foundation for enjoyable or even functional sex. As we did the conditions exercise, he realized that in order to get aroused, he needed at least three things: to be less tense with a partner (which necessitated knowing her much longer than a few hours), to like and be attracted to her, and not to feel such tremendous pressure to prove that his wife was wrong about his sexual prowess. It took several months to meet these conditions, but once that happened he started enjoying sex again.

GETTING THE BEST PHYSICAL STIMULATION

One of your conditions may be getting certain types of physical stimulation. If so, it’s important that you be able to express what you want.

First, however, you may need to find out what you want. Many men have little idea of what they like in sex and dismiss the question with a blanket “It all feels good.” If you think it all feels the same, you can do a lot to improve your sex life by challenging that notion. The problem, I think, is that we men are so busy performing that many of us haven’t taken the time to determine what pleasures us the most. If you want to find out more about what feels best to you, get your partner to do different things. You can also try touching yourself in different ways during masturbation. Focus in on the sensations and see how you feel. That’s all there is to it. Doing this over a period of weeks will give you more information about what you like.

However you discover what you like, you may still need to express your desires to your partner. Even if she was there when you realized you like
her to hold your balls when she strokes your penis and during intercourse, this does not mean she’s going to know you want her to hold your balls right now or that she should hold them tighter. Only you can let her know. Rereading the chapter on assertiveness will help you be more forthcoming about your desires.

If you already know what kinds of stimulation you like, you might want to consider showing her. This is often more effective than simply telling her. The kissing seminar exercise (
this page
) will give you some pointers. Another possibility, if you’re comfortable with the idea, is to masturbate in her presence so she can see how you like to be touched.

The most important suggestion for expressing your desires is to put it positively and avoid the impression of blaming your partner for not doing it right. In other words, say what you want, not what you don’t want. The following will definitely
not
work: “That’s too light. I’ve told you I want a firmer touch. Why can’t you remember?” Here’s a better way: “A little harder … harder yet … that’s it, just like that, feels great.” This will be even more effective if you reinforce it later, after sex is over, with a comment like this: “I really enjoyed the stronger touch today. Thanks.”

Try not to assume that she’ll remember what you want the next time. If she doesn’t, there’s no need to get upset. Not doing it just right does not mean she didn’t listen or doesn’t care. More likely it means only that it’s difficult for her to change her habitual way of touching. Just remind her by saying “harder” again. You may need to do this many, many times.

Men and women I know who are good lovers give feedback like this all the time, even to partners they’ve had for many years. It’s no big deal to them, just an integral part of lovemaking and getting exactly what they want.

FOCUSING ON SENSATION

In talking to thousands of people over the years about what they think about during sex, it’s clear that many of them are light-years away from what’s going on and are thinking about work, tomorrow’s schedule, or sports. In general, not focusing on what’s going on will decrease arousal and make sex less enjoyable. Focusing, on the other hand, will amplify the sensations, make them feel better and more intense, and increase arousal.