The New Male Sexuality (9 page)

This shows why fantasy sex is so popular. It feeds into the childish fantasies we all carry around, where people instinctively know what the other wants and willingly provide it, where there are no serious problems, where we can have whatever we want and all we want of it.

We have no trouble planning dates and social events. Few people show up at airports, laden with suitcases, asking, “Do you have planes going to any interesting places today?” Rather, they plan their vacations, and no one seems to suffer because of this. And few people have any problems discussing what to do about dinner tonight: “Do you want to eat in or go out? Early or late? Chinese, Mexican, Italian, or what?”

But because we still view sex, even in marriage, as not quite all right, we’d rather sneak our way into it—and call it spontaneity. Planning sex usually involves talking about it, something that makes most of us very uncomfortable. So the less we plan and the less we talk about it, the less real it seems and the less embarrassed we have to get.

We pay heavily for our desire for spontaneity. Because of a lack of planning, we often have less sex than we want. Our spontaneous invitations often get rebuffed because of insufficient time or energy. Because we don’t want to plan and talk, we often fail to use necessary protections against disease and conception. Yet another price is that sex often isn’t as good as it could be if we were willing to plan for it (by making time, anticipating it, setting the appropriate mood, and so on).

If you want more sex, safer sex, and better sex, you might want to rethink whether spontaneity is really crucial. And while you’re thinking, keep in mind that planning does not rule out spontaneity. Couples who have good sex talk about it and plan for it, and also take advantage of spontaneous opportunities.

These and similar myths have made men and women anxious, created problems and dissatisfactions, and made resolution of existing problems more difficult. But we are not stuck with these destructive notions. We can reject them and put in their place more realistic and more constructive ideas. In the process, we can make our sex lives a true reflection of our values, feelings, thoughts, and the best interests of ourselves and our relationships, rather than trying to measure up to ridiculous standards set by others. In the rest of the book, you’ll have numerous opportunities to examine and modify beliefs that may be creating problems in your sex life.

SEXUAL REALITY

CHAPTER THREE

What Is This Thing Called Sex?

Sex! Everything connected with it. People spend more time thinking, worrying, agonizing over it than all the rest of the woes of man put together. Nothing so drives people—men, women—off the rails. I sometimes think God had begun to doze, was excessively fatigued, hadn’t worked it out properly, when he put that part in place.—
William Brinkley

I used to think I was a hot stud in college and knew everything about sex. Turned out that I knew very little: just get her hot, stick it in, hump away, and come. Took me a while to find out sex is a lot more than that
.
—Man, 31

The main problem with the fantasy model of sex is that it holds up standards that are for the most part unattainable by human beings and probably not desirable even if they could be reached. But because people take the model as defining what’s normal, as a standard against which to measure their own behavior and feelings, they not only end up feeling inadequate but also miss the obvious. They don’t ask if they’re getting what they want and if their erotic activity in fact enhances their pleasure, self-esteem, and relationship.

In many ways, the sex people actually have doesn’t differ that much from the sex animals have. And that’s depressing, to think that what you’re doing isn’t much different from what a mouse or chicken or monkey does. And in some ways, lower animals have it better. They may not have long-lasting intercourse, but at least they aren’t sneaky about their matings and apparently they don’t feel guilty about what they do, and I doubt they worry about their performance. In a reproductive sense, it doesn’t make much difference, of course—just whatever gets the job done. But humans are capable of so much more.

The model of sex I discuss in this chapter and that will take me most of the rest of the book to illustrate is more distinctly human and more
intimate than what we’ve had before. It’s a sexuality in which
people
interact and relate, not just genitals; in which deceit and coercion play no part; in which what’s between your ears is as important as what’s between your legs; in which you can plan for sex and talk about it before, during, or after the actual events; in which you can change directions or stop at any point. The goals of this intimate model of sex are pleasure, closeness, and self-and partner enhancement, not performance or conquest.

This is a freer and better-feeling kind of sex. It’s freer because you have more options: You and your partner can select from a huge range of ways to express your sexual feelings and are no longer limited to just the old foreplay-followed-by-intercourse routine. You can even decide not to plan or talk or be intimate; in other words, part of this new sex is the option to have sex in the old way. It’s more enjoyable because it’s understood that pleasure rather than performance or obligation is the goal; you don’t
have
to do anything, and there’s permission to be yourself and get what you want and need. You can be loving, playful, silly, lusty, or whatever else you want. You can have affection without sex, sex with or without affection, or none of the above. You’re freer to enjoy yourself because of all the choices and because most of the worry is taken away: The emphasis on talking and planning allows you and your partner to protect yourself against unwanted consequences.

The freedoms gained in the sexual revolution allow us to create a smarter, more enjoyable, more exciting and satisfying, and more humane sexuality. Unless we want to continue paying the price that sex has exacted from the beginning of time (bad feelings, unnecessary anxiety, dysfunctions and dissatisfactions, unwanted conception, debilitating and even fatal diseases), maybe it’s time to try something different.

GOOD SEX

Although good sex is often defined in terms of specific behaviors and specific body parts, feelings are paramount. And this is as true for men as for women. Even though men tend to think and talk in terms of activities—“I’d like to fuck [make love to] her”; “I’d like her to give me head”—it seems clear that what’s really wanted is the feelings these actions will produce. They will make him feel sexy, excited, satisfied, manly, powerful, and so on.

Good sex is not about using any particular organ, following any particular script, or doing any particular act. Rather, it has to do with the
emotions generated by whatever you and your partner do. The best definition I’ve heard derives from an idea of San Francisco sex therapist Carol Ellison and goes like this: You’re having good sex if you feel good about yourself, good about your partner, and good about what you’re doing. If later, after you’ve had time for reflection, you still feel good about yourself, your partner, and what you did, you know you’ve had good sex. As such, it need not include intercourse or any other specific act or sequence of acts, need not include orgasm, and can take anywhere from a few seconds to several hours.

Certain things, however, are excluded—any kind of coercion, for example. If coercion is used, whether physical or psychological, at least one partner is not going to feel good during and after the activity. The same is true for deception. I would make a similar point for impulsive sex that goes against one’s interests and values. If you don’t want conception to occur, yet take no measures to protect against it, you’re going to worry and feel bad afterward. I wouldn’t call that good sex.

Let’s take an example from another area, driving. If you believe the ads on TV, a good drive consists of quickly shifting through the gears and getting your car to do 150 miles an hour. Given the condition of today’s roads and traffic, it’s a mystery where you could do this—on most roads these days you’re happy if you can get up to 20 mph—but it’s clear that lots of people buy the fantasy, always looking for a place to “open it up.”

Even assuming you could safely drive at 150 mph, it would still represent only one kind of good drive. Suppose you took a leisurely drive through the country, looking at the sights and smelling the scents. Couldn’t that be a good drive? Or suppose you took a drive with a friend and had a stimulating conversation. Wouldn’t that constitute a good drive? And wouldn’t it also be a good drive if during it you worked out a problem in your head, had an interesting fantasy, or enjoyed listening to the radio? And what about the unlikely circumstance where there was little traffic and good weather and you simply got to your destination without hassle—might that not be a good drive as well? Isn’t it also possible to have a good trip by letting someone else do the driving, by carpooling, or by taking a bus? You could also consider using a bicycle rather than a motorized vehicle. Couldn’t that be a good drive as well as good exercise?

Just as there are lots of ways to have a good drive and lots of kinds of good meals and good experiences, there are lots of ways to have good sex.

Before getting to sexual options, let’s take a closer look at what they’re alternatives to, the traditional sexual script.

THE PRIMACY OF INTERCOURSE

As I mentioned when discussing sexual myths, almost everyone seems to believe that intercourse is what sex is mainly about. Even people who consider themselves liberated and are comfortable with many different sexual acts feel cheated if intercourse isn’t part of the routine. This goes for women as well as men.

Although there’s no doubt that social conditioning plays a role in reinforcing the belief that intercourse is
the
sexual act, common sense requires us to acknowledge that the desire for sexual intercourse is also, perhaps mainly, caused by something else. Intercourse is the only way to reproduce the species, and reproducing the species is nature’s main interest. All of us, women and men, are programmed to want intercourse. That much is fact, and it is folly to ignore or deny it.