Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex and How to Get It

Introduction

No Wonder Most People Don’t

True or False?

(Answers appear on page 7.)

•   You can now buy vibrators, handcuffs, dildos, and anal beads on Amazon.com.

•   Eighty-six percent of American adults say they masturbate.

•   Although millions of men get a prescription for Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra every year, the number of men who renew their prescription is very low.

•   People into S/M—spanking, whipping, blindfolding, etc.—are no more likely to come from abusive backgrounds than non-S/Mers.

•   Many men of all ages don’t ejaculate every time they have sex—and many women consider themselves a failure when this happens.

•   In 2010, only 20 percent of a university student sample said that oral sex is sex.

•   More money was spent on pornography in the United States last year than on tickets for all professional baseball, football, basketball, and hockey games combined.

•   More than one million Americans went to a swingers’ club last year.

•   Half of all mass market paperbacks sold in the United States are romance novels. Last year half of all American adults read at least one romance novel. The average reader of romance novels reads fifty per year.

•   Most school sex education programs in the United States are not allowed to use the words clitoris or pleasure.

Sex isn’t just an activity—it’s an idea.

Our ideas about sex are so complicated that we make the activity complicated. I’m here to make both your ideas and your sexual activity less complicated. In my thirty-plus years as a sex therapist and marriage counselor, this almost always makes sex easier and more enjoyable. In many cases, more frequent, too.

When we’re young, sexual desire is driven by hormones, lust, hunger, novelty, and an urge to prove ourselves. Most of us are soooooo horny. We desire the most profound—and primitive—fusion with our lust object. If only we could unzip our torso and he or she could climb right in!

We’re told that eventually, desire will be driven, not by hormones, but by love. We plan to feel, one day, You’re so great, so perfect for me, I want you.

And eventually most of us do fall in love. We idealize our partner. And typically, we’re horny for him or her.

As the relationship continues to evolve, both partners finally get to know each other. Routine sets in. If we want novelty, we must create it—a weekend in the country, new furniture, new fantasies. And we stop idealizing our partner. Once we do, love no longer triggers desire reliably, because the rest of life interferes.

Sex becomes less frequent. Or more routine. Or both.

When a relationship is new and the sex is exotic and enjoyable, the start-up cost of each sexual encounter is low. We’re not nervous about hearing no, and we’re usually not nervous about hearing yes. But as sex becomes less frequent, we feel increasingly awkward. Starting up each sexual encounter becomes more complex, more time-consuming, more fraught with anxiety.

The hassle of initiating sex starts to outweigh the perceived advantages of having it. If a couple gets along, they have other, dependable ways to enjoy themselves: a walk, cooking together, watching TV, napping, photographing their kids, playing Scrabble. When a couple has limited free time together and they know they can reliably have fun doing other things, choosing to have sex that they imagine might involve self-consciousness, disappointment, criticism, and emotional distance is simply irrational.

So long-term couples who like each other do the most obvious thing: they have sex less often, and instead do other things they enjoy more easily.

If you and your partner want sex to be part of your lives after the first few years, you can’t rely on feeling hormonal lust, you can’t rely on feeling overwhelmed by being in love, and you can’t rely on feeling there’s nothing better to do. The two of you have to do something fundamentally irrational—propose something that’s less enjoyable and more emotionally expensive than practically any other leisure activity available.

And what about the actual sex you are going to have when you get around to having it?

Every one of us learns about sex when we have the body of a young person. By the time we’re thirty, virtually no one has that body anymore. And forty? You can look fantastic. You can have great style, that special something that still attracts attention. But you no longer have the body you had when you were learning about sex. The body you have now behaves differently, doesn’t it?

If you use your young adult vision of sex with your mature body, you’re going to have trouble. And your emotions will rebel: if sex means, for example, instant wetness, rock-hard erection, pounding intercourse, and simultaneous orgasm, you will feel anxious about failing—and that’s another reason to not initiate sex, or to not respond when your partner does.

On the other hand, if you put together a different vision of sex that is attuned to your current situation—a body with a few dings, a partner who isn’t young, limitations of time and place, emotional scars—you’ll be more willing to initiate, since your chance of a satisfying encounter is much greater. That means you have to change a few of your ideas about the meaning of desire and arousal, of sexual function and dysfunction.

In fact, you have to change the way you think about sex.

Of course, changing your vision of sex can feel uncomfortable—If I were still young I wouldn’t have to change my vision, or, If I were still great in bed I wouldn’t have to change my vision—and so you have to come to terms with this necessity. If you do, and you change your vision, and you’re willing to push yourself to participate, and your expectations are different, and you have a sense of humor and some humility, you might create something enjoyable.

No wonder so many people don’t.

In this book, you’ll meet more than three dozen of my patients. They’re nice people (well, mostly), but they make sex difficult for themselves. They make it about being normal, about hiding, about romance, about being young, about perfection, about being womanly, about desperately trying not to fail.

So of course they feel intimidated, resentful, pessimistic, enervated. And they blame: they blame sex, women, pornography, menopause, the economy, their small breasts, stress. I like most of my patients, but I’m afraid it’s people like these who give sex a bad name.

My patients want sex to be natural and spontaneous, to just happen. Many reject the idea of putting effort into creating adult sex, so they just retreat into adolescent sex—affairs, romance novels, Internet chat, constant pornography, low desire.

But it’s time for us all to grow up and relearn how to experience our sexuality. It’s time for Sexual Intelligence. What is that?

Sexual Intelligence = Information + Emotional Skills + Body Awareness

Here’s a preview of this idea:

•   Sexual Intelligence is the ability to keep sex in perspective regardless of what happens during sex.

•   To get more out of sex, we have to change. To change we need a different perspective. Sexual Intelligence is that perspective.

•   Sexual Intelligence is useful in different ways at different times of life: in our twenties, in exploring the sexual world; in our thirties, in bonding with a partner and establishing a sexual rhythm; in our forties, in tolerating and adapting to change; in our fifties, in saying good-bye to youthful sex; in our sixties and beyond, in creating a new sexual style.

This is good news—it helps explain why you may not have been able to improve sex (because you haven’t been changing your paradigm), and it should give you hope that there’s something you haven’t tried that might work.

The Sexual Intelligence perspective predicts and explains some of the key features of contemporary sexuality:

•   Why Viagra doesn’t help a lot of people, even though it gives them erections

•   Why learning new positions doesn’t improve frustrating sex

•   Why desire problems are the most common issue people bring to sex therapy

•   Why desire problems are sex therapy’s unresolved treatment challenge

•   Why Internet porn use has risen astronomically, and why so many people make or enjoy amateur porn

•   Why most people feel so bad when they’re sexually dissatisfied

Sexual Intelligence allows us to use sexuality to express ourselves authentically. We can have sex without it, of course, but it won’t necessarily reflect who we are (or think we are). When we are sexually dissatisfied, we typically don’t look at our Sexual Intelligence. We try to fix the wrong things—erections, orgasms, lubrication, an aging body—but even if these fixes are successful, that usually doesn’t make the sex more enjoyable. It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing: you ultimately don’t accomplish what you want, and it mostly just annoys the pig.

Sexual Intelligence is what gets you from adolescent sex to adult sex. It’s what gets you from hormone-driven sex to sex you choose. It’s what gets you from sex has to validate me to I validate my sexuality. It’s what allows you to adapt sex to yourself, instead of you adapting to sex.

After thirty years of listening to sexually frustrated, unhappy, confused, resentful, anxious, impulsive, and self-critical people, I’ve noticed the similarities in all that unsatisfying sex. But satisfying, life-affirming sex is different. It comes in an infinite number of flavors, created anew by each person and each couple. Let’s find out what your version is—and how to use your Sexual Intelligence to create it.

Answers to quiz on page 1:

Each of these ten statements is true.

Part One

Telling the Truth

About Sex

Chapter One

What Do People Say

They Want from Sex?

What Do They Really Want?

Carlton came to see me with a simple question: Why don’t I want to have intercourse?

Yes, just another day in the office.

Carlton is a retired engineer, a friendly-looking sixty-eight-year-old guy with a quick smile. He told me he had a new girlfriend, Lina—although ‘girlfriend’ is a funny word for a sixty-three-year-old woman, he laughed.

Carlton was a year out of a thirty-year-long marriage, which sounded terrible. His wife, Genevieve, disappointed that her career in real estate never took off and that she never had kids, had turned bitter and cold decades before. He had withdrawn—first from her, then from life in general. Week after week, he spent his time working and avoiding Genevieve. Sex had never been central to their marriage, and they soon stopped.

When Genevieve finally divorced him in disgust, he was left alone. About eight months later, he met Lina through a friend. I couldn’t believe it, he beamed. She was warm, friendly, colorful, so full of life. They had lunch a few times, and eventually were spending every afternoon together. Then it was every evening, too.

She loved to kiss, she said I was good at it, he said shyly, not quite looking at me. No one had said that to him since he was eighteen. So soon we were doing other physical things, and eventually we were sexual in lots of different ways. We’d spend all morning fooling around. It was great!

In the afternoons they’d go out into the world—hiking, biking, seeing old movies, going to museums. He rediscovered his love of music. It was a delirious time. She helped him buy some new, more stylish clothes. Look, I’m wearing a silk shirt, he smiled. And she dresses up for me, even around the house. Fabulous!

But she wanted intercourse. He didn’t. She asked why. He didn’t know. She suggested he see me.

So why don’t I want intercourse? he asked.

Why do you think you don’t want intercourse? I responded.

Well, Lina’s counselor says I’m probably afraid of intimacy. And I saw a therapist for a few sessions before seeing you—she says I’m hesitant to assume my manly role in this relationship, especially after being emasculated in my marriage.

Is that what you think?

Um, it doesn’t really sound right, but I don’t know. Doesn’t everyone want intercourse? Lina’s so hot for it. She swears I’ll love it. What’s wrong with me?

Well, I said, turning the conventional wisdom upside down, why should you want intercourse?

I never thought of that. Doesn’t everyone?

We’re not here to discuss everyone, Carlton, just you. You’re not trying to conceive, are you? We both chuckled. Then why should intercourse be special, why should it be at the top of some hierarchy?

This is pretty strange talk, he announced, but he was intrigued.

You’re having the best sex of your life, right, Carlton?

Right.

You’re having a great time, almost every day you’re kissing and touching a lovely nude woman who’s energetic and enthusiastic, right?

Right.

You’re both having orgasms and pleasure, and you’re looking at each other the whole time. Why change anything?

He thought about it for a while. Then he said quietly, She’s the one who wants me to want intercourse. She says she wants to feel desired, and that’s how a woman knows a man desires her. But of course I desire her! I tell her constantly, and we’re always having sex, even if I’m not totally in the mood.

Carlton was no lazy lover, and he loved sex and intimacy with Lina. But as he started paying more attention to his actual experience with her, he realized he was feeling bossed around. And she’s nervous about why I don’t want to screw, he said. I’m getting tired of reassuring her.

Lina kept saying she wanted Carlton to make love to her like a man. I don’t really go for that, he frowned. It seemed clear to me he wasn’t afraid of being manly—he just didn’t find it very entertaining. As her sense of urgency about this increased, he found himself increasingly resentful—and that scared him.

Carlton, you’re like Sleeping Beauty, I said. Your months with Lina have woken you up, which is glorious. At first you welcomed her as your guide back into life. Now you’re becoming more independent, and some of Lina’s rigidities and insecurities are losing their charm.

Yes, he nodded vigorously. It’s my life, and I don’t have to do everything her way—in fact, I want to keep some of my old shirts! We both laughed.

I’m nervous about confronting her, he continued. I want to be with her, but I can’t let her tell me how to make love. And I can’t let her bully me into being her kind of man.

In fact, they almost broke up when Carlton started setting some limits with Lina. But after weeks of quarreling, they understood themselves and each other a lot better.

When intercourse isn’t loaded down with all this pressure and meaning, I might find it more interesting, he said. For now, we’ve agreed that great sex is more important than what kind of great sex. At least, she says we can do that for a while, and then we can talk again.

What People Say

What do most men and women say they want from sex?

On the one hand, various people mention a broad range of things: orgasm, intimacy, feeling desired, a great blow job, lots of kissing, a hard penis, light spanking, and satisfying their partner, to name a few.

On the other hand, almost everyone’s answer comes down to this: what most people say they want from sex is some combination of pleasure and closeness.

Yet, as a sex therapist, I can tell you that that’s not what most people focus on during sex. Think about it—do you?

So what do people—what do you—focus on during sex instead?

•   How they look

•   How they smell

•   How they sound

•   Preventing unwanted activity (for example, having their shoulder bitten)

•   Ignoring (or preventing) pain

•   Hurrying to climax

•   Trying not to climax too quickly

•   Maintaining an erection or lubrication

•   Suppressing emotions

•   Trying to function the right way

•   Silently, indirectly urging their partner to do a certain activity (such as stroking their clitoris)

It’s not surprising that if people say they want one thing from sex and then spend the experience focused on everything except that, they’ll be dissatisfied.

But people say they focus on those other things (like how they look, or suppressing their emotions) in order to have better sex. I don’t want him turned off by my big butt, some women say, so I usually don’t let him get me from behind. I’ve heard men say things like, I’m always afraid she feels bored while she’s giving me oral sex, so I guess I’m constantly checking—is she frowning, does she seem uncomfortable?

In the quest for sexual satisfaction, many people especially insist on focusing on how their genitalia are working: I need to know I’m gonna stay hard long enough for my wife to be satisfied, or, When I think I’m taking too long to climax, I hurry up, or even fake it.

Most people don’t think of this as a distraction, but it is—bigger than dirty dishes or unpaid bills could ever be. Focusing on how your penis or vulva is working is an enormous distraction from pursuing pleasure or intimacy. Although many people think that’s the way to make sex better, I’m afraid they’re exactly wrong.

A lot of people (and a lot of therapists) apparently don’t understand that. When people come to my office, they never say, Please help me stop focusing on my erections, my orgasms, my desire to function the right way—it’s preventing me from enjoying sex. No, if anything, they want me to help them do those things better. Doc, how can I make us climax at the same time? Doc, how do I stay hard during oral sex even when she’s being too rough?

Helping people identify what they’re actually thinking about during sex is powerful. Helping them realize that their thoughts are often obstacles to satisfaction is even more powerful.

Many people are watching themselves during sex more than they are experiencing sex, which typically undermines sexual enjoyment. We usually imagine, harshly judge, and worry about what our partner sees, smells, hears, and tastes. This is far more distracting than thinking about work or laundry. Because once sex becomes about how we appear to others, we can’t stop monitoring ourselves. We’re constantly making decisions about how authentic to be, and how much to pose. (This is one reason men and women fake orgasms.) This continual vigilance dramatically disrupts our erotic feelings, expression, and satisfaction.

It’s like trying to enjoy dinner while wearing a brand-new expensive white suit. Even if you succeed in keeping the suit clean, constantly paying attention to it eventually takes over, and ruins, the meal.

Okay, so we focus on other stuff. Why?

Whether it’s our big bellies or our increasingly gray pubic hair or our no-longer-quite-so-perky breasts (remember, breasts don’t sag as we get older, they relax), whether it’s our concern about keeping an erection long after our partner has had enough thrusting, or our fear of smelling bad while our partner goes down on us, why do we focus on extraneous stuff like this during sex?

One reason is that we think this is where sexiness lives or dies, and we think sexiness is crucial to satisfaction. We’ll address this damaging (and incorrect) belief soon enough. But another reason