Deadline

I apologize to my regular readers for the lapse in posting over the last week. I could use Christmas as my excuse, but the bigger reason has to do with final editing work on my book, Taking Sexy Back. I'm trying to get the manuscript to the publisher within the next two weeks, and it's only when you're actually ready to hand over the final product that you suddenly become aware of all the revisions that are needed.

Realistically, I probably won't be back to posting regularly for at least another week. I'll check back in at that point and let you know how it's going.

Thanks for your patience.

Lube Jobs

Lube Jobs is the name of another sex book I acquired recently. The subtitle is A Woman's Guide to Great Maintenance Sex. I haven't read it cover to cover, but the main idea is the need for balancing differences in sex drive in a couple's relationship - and strategies for how to achieve that balancing act without resentment.

The couple who wrote the book are addressing the stereotypical situation in which it's the woman who wants nothing more than to climb into bed and go to sleep and the man is grumbling about the lack of action in the bedroom. I really don't like reinforcing that stereotype, but for women who fit the category, the book contains some interesting methods for jump-starting a stalled sex life. The maintenance requires some real effort, however, so if you're a woman looking for an easy, effortless way to keep your man happy, this probably isn't the book for you.

Cold and Flu Season

I've posted previously on the health benefits of sex that include improved circulation, lowered cholesterol levels, pain relief, and strengthening of the immune system. But even if your immune system fails you and the dreaded cold gets you down, sex can still be an ally. The adrenaline released during sex is a natural antihistamine.

Now you're probably thinking that sex is the last thing you want to do when you're stuffed up and achy and listless. But if you ask your partner for exactly what you need - maybe starting with a full body massage - you might be surprised at how great a distraction sex can be from your aches and pains. And your partner might be a better nursemaid than you thought possible if the nursing contains a little afternoon delight.

Reversing Roles

In The Guide to Getting It On, the author describes a role-playing exercise that took place during Betty Dodson's sex groups for women. It involved women getting on top of imaginary lovers and penetrating them with their clitorises. The women had to thrust for 3 minutes while the moderator commented on everyone's technique. "Keep your arms straight; don't crush your lover. You're too high up; your clitoris just fell out. Don't stop moving, you'll lose your erection. Don't move so fast; you'll come too soon. And don't forget to whisper sweet things in your lover's ear between all those passionate kisses."

Following the exercise, the women said, "How do men do it?" They complained of tired arms, lower-back pain, and stiff hip joints. It increased their empathy for men as well as their willingness to try other positions for lovemaking other than missionary.

Nipple Pleasure

Though everyone has their individual preferences, here are a few things to consider when pleasuring your partner through their nipples. And remember that the size of a breast has nothing to do with sensitivity.

• One nipple may be more sensitive than the other. Ask your partner about differences in sensitivity and whether they want you to spend more time on the more sensitive one.
• You can make the nipple taut by placing your fingers on each side of the nipple and lightly pushing down before licking or sucking.
• Be sure to alternate breasts and focus attention on the entire breast and not just the nipple.
• Your lips can create a seal around the nipple. When you suck in and out without breaking the seal, the nipple feels the alternating currents of pressure.
• You can use different temperatures to create intense sensations such as an ice cube in the mouth or drinking something warm before licking or sucking.
• The kind of nipple play your partner enjoys is often dependent on their state of sexual arousal. Hard nipples are not a reliable indicator of sexual arousal, so it's important to ask.

Nipples

What's there to say about nipples? Both men and women have them, and they're typically loaded with nerve endings. So they're a natural erogenous zone - what's complicated about that?

What's complicated is that there's a lot of variation in nipple sensitivity, and a woman's sensitivity can vary depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle. A touch or a nibble that will send one person into nirvana might just plunge another person into pain. In other words, the sensations transmitted from the nipples can either be extremely pleasant or downright annoying. So it's important to get to know your partner's body and to be sensitive to their preferences.

Tomorrow I'll post on some hints for maximizing nipple pleasure.

Getting Naked

When was the last time you did something naked besides showering, sleeping, or having sex? Maybe you've never done anything else au natural. Skinny dipping? Hot tubbing? Housework? Dancing? Sunbathing?

Being naked is uncomfortable for many women because of their generalized body discomfort and the specific changes that have occurred in their bodies over time. I hear women speak disparagingly of their sagging breasts and pot bellies and cellulite-ridden thighs, so I shouldn't be surprised when they add that they never let their husbands see them without some kind of cover-up.

But denying their husbands the visual stimulation men crave is only part of the problem with nude phobics. Staying covered up doesn't allow women to get comfortable with their imperfect bodies. Here's a challenge for you phobics: start going naked for short periods of time when you're all alone. Try putting on your make-up without a robe or reading the newspaper or just walking around the house. At first you'll probably feel awkward and uncomfortable. That's ok, just stay with it. Exposure - in this case, literal exposure - has a way of breaking down barriers and reducing the squirm factor.

When you've gotten more comfortable with solo nudity, graduate to short exposure of your body with your partner. You may never want to run the vacuum cleaner or play volleyball in the nude, but getting naked can open up a new level of acceptance and comfort with your body and with your sexual self.

Sex Tip

Since I've written over 400 posts and covered a lot of the biggies that affect our sexuality, I'm going to start sharing some simple sex tips when something more profound doesn't occur to me.

Today's tip is a suggestion I picked up from the Guide to Getting It On about places to consider kissing when you're warming each other up. I'd never before lumped these areas together in a category, but it makes sense: skin folds. Turns out that the places on the body where the skin creases or folds tend to be very sensitive and love to be kissed. You can probably figure out where these places are, but just to help you out, they include the nape of the neck, eyelids, the backs of knees, the fronts of elbows, under breasts, armpits, crotches, between fingers and toes, and behind ears.

Of course, just because these are sensitive areas doesn't mean everyone is going to respond the same way to having them kissed or carressed. But if you haven't explored these erogenous zones, you and your partner might be missing out on a treat.

Sex and Religion

I've posted previously on sex and spirituality, and from where I sit, the best sex definitely has a spiritual component. But for many people, negative religious indoctrination has been a hindrance to their full sexual enjoyment. Shedding a sense of shame and guilt about the pleasures afforded by uninhibited sexual activity can be an obstacle to orgasm.

I just read an interesting statistic: nearly 60% of Protestant women surveyed reported they regularly had an orgasm during sex whereas only 26% of the Catholic women did. How much can that be attributed to the Catholic church's prohibition against masturbation, which is how a lot of women learn to have orgasms? Or maybe there's just more guilt in general among Catholics. That's not an indictment of Catholicism. As a Protestant, I, too, was exposed to a heaping dose of guilt. Fortunately, it didn't 'take'. But I remember the guilt I experienced as an adolescent after the sermon about bad thoughts being as sinful as bad actions. I guess I had a lot of 'bad' thoughts.

If religion is getting in the way of your sexuality, you may need to do some de-programming. Write down the beliefs you were taught and then write down beside each one what it is that you believe now. Make sure you keep talking back to the guilt-inducing beliefs that rob you of sexual wholeness.

Vuvla Acceptance - Part 2

The discomfort many women feel with their genitals is related not to appearance but to fears or concerns about discharge. All women have vaginal discharge because the vagina produces secretions to cleanse itself. Discharge is usually heavier around the middle of the menstrual cycle and during sexual arousal. Without the lubrication provided by discharge, sex would not be as comfortable or enjoyable.

The scent connected with the vagina is natural and often a powerful turn-on for a woman's partner. Strong odor from a discharge usually indicates a yeast or bacterial infection that needs medical attention. Women can avoid infections and keep their vulvas in great shape by keeping them clean and dry. The genitals should be washed daily with a mild cleanser and then thoroughly dried to discourage the growth of bacteria. Cotton panties are the best - or wearing none at all. Sleeping without underwear gives the genitals a chance to breathe.

If a woman doesn't have a medical problem but simply isn't comfortable with her genital odor, she has a couple of options. She can douche with a water and vinegar solution (no more than once a week) or use feminine cleansing cloths. Unscented baby wipes are another option.

It's pretty tough to feel good about your sexuality unless you feel good about your genitals. Becoming more familiar with your sexual anatomy and appreciating its complexity and marvelous adaptability will go a long way toward helping you embrace this special part of your body.

Vulva Acceptance

Unlike men, women's genitals are a more covert operation. Not only are they more hidden, females are discouraged from exploring their genitalia and often go to great lengths to keep their private parts 'private'. Without any reference point for comparison - other than the photo-shopped and air-brushed vulvas of women in porn magazines - women may wonder if their genitals are 'normal'. Many don't think about their genitals at all. There's often a real disconnect between a woman's feminine identity and that nether region between her legs. The issue of smell and taste is also a concern.

So how do women begin claiming, celebrating, and connecting to their genitals? First off, they need to know what they look like. It was back in the early days of the feminist movement when women were first encouraged to get out their mirrors and take a close look at their genitals. The advice is still sound. Women's genitals come in lots of shapes and sizes, and symmetry is not always the rule. Because there's lots of variation in the layout of the outer and inner labia, as well as the appearance of the clitoris, 'normal' has little meaning. Women need to accept their genitals as they are if they are going to have a healthy sexual identity.

Tomorrow I'll tackle the issues of smell and taste.

Genital Self-Image

Has it come to your attention that the average man seems to have a love affair going with his penis? He plays with it, whips it out at the slightest invitation (and sometimes without an invitation), shakes it at his partner when toweling off after a shower, and walks around naked with a sense of pride? Wouldn't it be wonderful if women had the same kind of love for their vulvas?

According to Dr. Laura Berman, positive thoughts about our genitals are essential to self-acceptance and sexual growth. At the Berman Center, she found that women with more positive genital self-images were found to have more sexual desire and better sexual response. This means they reported more lubrication during sexual activity and better quality orgasms. In fact, they were 6 times more likely to have a good sex life than women with poor genital self-images.

So why are women so disconnected from their genitals and how can they develop move vulva-love? I'll be posting on that next week.

Making It Easier for Your Partner to Love You

A quick glance at the relationship section of any bookstore would indicate that a lot of people struggle to get what they want from their partner. Maybe that's because they're not looking at how they make it hard for their partner to give them what they want.

I know it's a lot easier to focus on your partner's faults than to turn the magnifying glass on yourself, but the good news is that you have a lot more control over what you do than what your partner does. The even better news is that when you transform yourself into a partner who's easy to love, you're a lot more likely to get what you want from your partner.

Is it sex you want? Then stop pushing, pressuring, criticizing, and complaining and start giving your partner what he/she wants. Is it more emotional engagement you want? Then stop rejecting your partner's physical advances every time he or she tries to get close and become more affectionate. Being more aware of how you make it hard for your partner to love you can create new possibilities for getting the love you want.

Internet Pornography

I recently attended a conference on sex, love, and relationships. One of the many tidbits of interesting information I picked up was from a survey of divorce attorneys. Two-thirds of the divorce attorneys said that the internet played a significant role in divorces. Of course that could be anything from compulsive net surfing to visits to a chat room to a full-on internet affair, but one of the biggies was a partner's interest in online pornography.

Forty-two per cent of surveyed adults indicate that their partner’s use of internet pornography made them feel insecure. There must be a lot of anxious partners out there because there are an estimated 40 million adults who visit adult web sites on a regular basis. Seventy-two per cent of those adults are men and twenty-eight per cent are women.

The problem with internet pornography is the dopamine rush it provides sets up a craving for more and more - and with the internet, more is always easily available. If your on-line habits are creating problems in your relationship, it's time to make some changes. If you can't do it on your own, seek help from a therapist or a 12-step program. The problem is unlikely to just go away on its own.

Last Minute Desire

Two-thirds of women (the same two-thirds who are low-testosterone) don't feel desire until they're having sex and are close to orgasm. Think about that. Since it's desire that pushes you to seek out sex, it's no wonder these women aren't chasing their partners around the kitchen table!

This phenomenon is why women frequently say to themselves -or their partner-right after orgasm, "That was fantastic - we should do this more often!" But then the pleasure is soon forgotten, and unless the low-testosterone woman has made an intentional decision to make sex a priority, sex will wait until her partner pushes enough for it to happen.

Knowing that low-testosterone women lack spontaneous desire should help men take their partner's lack of initiative a little less personally. But low-testosterone women can also focus a little more on the memory of sexual pleasure and seek to add more pleasure to their lives.

Natural Aphrodesiac

The most potent aphrodesiac we have available to us doesn't come in pills, herbs, or injections. It's not dependent on youth and it doesn't cost a thing. It can bring someone back to life that has felt sexually dead for a long, long time, and it's probably the single biggest cause of affairs. What is this powerful and magical agent?

It's an energized person who's interested in YOU. That's the real allure of an affair - someone who looks at you and really sees you, someone who listens and actually laughs at your jokes, someone who thinks you're intelligent and attractive and sexy... Nothing fires up your sexual motor faster than that kind of focused, caring attention.

Now think about the last time you gave that kind of attention to your partner - or the last time they gave it to you. The #1 cause of divorce is growing apart. The #1 cause of growing apart is resentment. The #1 cause of resentment is withdrawal of interest. Couples get lazy and stop paying attention to each other. They stop expressing interest. By doing so, they not only shut down their sex life but put the entire marriage at risk. It may not be too late to start investing some interest in your partner.