6 DISCOVERING AND SHARING
OUR BODIES
And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen. 1:27 NASB, emphasis added)
OUR BODIES ARE GOD’S WORK
Our bodies—including our sexual anatomy—are God’s work. He created us with all our internal and external body parts; all our sexual organs were made by him. “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31 NASB).
Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; you know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day. (Ps. 139:13–16 MSG)
Even our sexual parts are good. They were not added as a result of sin. They were there from the moment of creation and are to be enjoyed and discovered. The entire sexual anatomy is present in a newborn baby. This was affirmed for us when each of our children was born. It was amazing to us that each body part was there. They were like miniature adults in their newborn bodies.
Self-Discovery
It is natural for children to discover their genitals. Even in infancy, during the first year of life, a girl may find her clitoris and enjoy touching it because it feels good. In the same way, the boy finds his penis. These good feelings are God-given. They are natural and normal; they have not been conditioned by a sinful society. Rather, sexual feelings are God’s gift to us, just as intellect or other abilities are.
If we accept this premise—that our sexual parts and feelings are of God—then it would follow that, as with any other gift from God, we should become familiar with them and develop them. A child will naturally become familiar with sexual anatomy and feelings if allowed the freedom to do so. Unfortunately, too often this is not the case. Most of us have been brought up to believe that sexual exploration is “bad” or sinful. Without really stopping to think about the biblical teaching regarding our bodies, we automatically impose on our children the negative standards we learned. The constant repetition of the warning to keep yourself pure from sexual play outside marriage tends to affect both childhood and marriage. That is, we do not allow children an innocent touching of their bodies; and we do not allow ourselves the full freedom of sexual pleasure in marriage.
Most children between three and six years of age will engage in self-exploration and discovery activities, as well as “playing doctor,” or peer exploration, with children of the same and/or opposite sex. When our daughter was four years old, Joyce walked into her bedroom after her bath. She found Julene sitting on the floor with her legs spread apart, her head down as she tried to examine her genitals. When she heard Joyce enter the room, she remained in the same position and casually asked, “Mom, what is that hole in my bottom?” Joyce’s first tendency was to respond with shock, but Julene’s comfortableness made her stop and think. She remembered that just the day before Julene had spent a long time in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to examine and watch the uvula at the back of her throat. There was no difference in the child’s intent in discovering her body. She did not think that while looking at her throat was fine, looking at her genitals was shameful.
Joyce got a hand mirror so Julene could see her own genitals better. She sat down with Julene and pointed to the various openings, the lips and the clitoris, and indicated their technical names. Julene’s curiosity seemed satisfied, and she ran off to play.
You may be a woman who never felt free to sit down with a mirror and really find out what your genitals look or feel like. For men, this lack of exploration is unlikely, since a man’s sexual anatomy is so externally evident. As a woman you may think of your genitals as the “doctor’s area”—he’s the one who examines you regularly—or maybe as your husband’s territory to fondle, but you have never really thought of becoming familiar with your own genitals. You may be more familiar with the map of the world than your own sexual anatomy.
We encourage you to engage freely in a natural discovery of your sexual anatomy. You probably will not have the spontaneous feeling that a young girl would have, but you can think of it as something you missed in the development and understanding of yourself. It is something you need to do to have complete sexual freedom with your body. The more familiar you are with your own and your spouse’s sexual anatomy and feelings, the less guessing will be involved in the sexual act. This obviously leads to greater confidence and freedom.
Women: Discovering and Knowing Your Own Genitals
Begin with clean hands and body. Using a hand mirror, examine your external genitalia. Become familiar with what is normal for you. There can be medical benefits from this also. Once you are familiar with yourself, you will be able to notice changes that may need medical attention. You can mention these to your physician long before your next gynecological examination.
When you use the hand mirror to examine your genitals, what you see will look something like Figure 1. The female’s external genitals include the labia majora (the outer lips), the labia minora (the inner lips), and the clitoris.
The Labia Majora and Labia Minora
What you see when you look at your genitals before you open the outer lips (the labia majora) are the mons pubis, the soft part above the clitoris that is covered with pubic hair, and the thick outer lips, the labia majora, which are also partially covered by hair. If you have never given birth to a child, your outer lips probably meet in a closed fashion at the center or midline of your genitals, providing protection for the inner lips, the urinary opening and the vagina. In women who have borne children, it is common to find that the process of childbirth has interrupted the neat fit of the outer lips at the midline. This change in the midline makes a difference in the changes that occur when the outer lips spread apart during sexual arousal (refer to the following chapter, excitement phase).
Figure 1: External Female Genitals (Front View)
The Clitoris
With a hand mirror in one hand, use your other hand to spread apart the outer lips to examine the rest of the external genitalia. Look for the clitoris (refer to the previous diagram). Even though the diagram points out the three parts of the clitoris—the glans, the hood, and the shaft—these may be difficult to identify specifically on yourself. The hood that covers the shaft flows down to form the inner lips.
The shaft is a miniature penislike cylinder located under the hood with the glans or head being the only part exposed. Even the glans may not be easy to locate. For some women the glans, or tip, of the clitoris may tend to hide under the hood, and the hood may seem like the point at which the inner lips join.
If you have difficulty visually identifying the clitoris, you may be able to find it by touching the place where you expect it to be. The tip of the clitoris is particularly sensitive to any touch. In fact, rubbing the glans may actually be painful to you. Many women report that the most pleasurable place to receive stimulation is around the clitoris, not directly on it. You may want to touch various points around and on the clitoris, not necessarily for the purpose of stimulation, but to learn where the best feelings occur for you. The discovery of where pleasure points are for you and where you tend to experience pain is crucial to communicate to your husband for the enhancement of your lovemaking. We will talk more about this later.
Intense pleasure and pain are closely related in our bodies. Those areas like the clitoris that are loaded with nerve endings are most receptive to pleasure and, for the same reason, most receptive to pain. As pleasure intensifies, susceptibility to pain increases (see graph below).
Your husband will not automatically be able to differentiate where to apply, how much, and what type of pressure feels good. He does not know this by instinct. If you learn this for yourself, you can show him and even guide his hand to demonstrate the most pleasurable pressure and touch (refer to Exercise 10 in Chapter 13). This can do away with much of his guesswork and add to your pleasure. Self-discovery comes first, before you try to show or demonstrate. Your husband’s presence may introduce some level of tension and/or excitement, which may hinder the initial learning that needs to take place.
Before we move on to further self-exploration, we want to say more about the clitoris. This factual data will be particularly important if you think that men are by nature more sexual than women, or that God created men to have more intense sexual feelings than women. Maybe you have underlying feelings that a woman is to be the passive recipient of the man’s sexual desire. Women were created with vaginas as a receptacle for the sperm and seminal fluid of the man, you may reason; should this not make the woman a passive receiver of the man’s aggression, rather than an active participant?
The presence of the clitoris counters this attitude. The clitoris is the only organ in the human anatomy designed solely for receiving and transmitting sexual stimuli. Physiologically, that is its only function. The woman, not the man, was created with the clitoris. The penis is the equivalent organ for the man, in that it is composed of similar erectile tissue—tissue with spaces that fill with blood and become engorged when stimulated, making the organ larger and firmer. However, the penis serves many other functions. The fact that the clitoris in the woman is unique in its function of receiving and transmitting sexual stimuli is confirmation that God intended women to be intensely sexual beings, not just “vaginas” to receive the man’s sexual expression.
This is an important concept to consider. It often affects how couples make love, how a woman feels about herself, and how the man relates to the woman sexually. We feel that the Christian community has assimilated society’s “passive woman vs. aggressive man” mentality, which is sometimes translated into the wife’s being submissive and passive in the sexual act. If you hold that view, we challenge you to study the New Testament teachings on sex in marriage (refer to Chapter 3).
The Urinary Meatus
Moving on with your hand-mirror exploration, let’s talk about the location of the urinary meatus opening. The urinary meatus is not part of the sexual anatomy per se, but its proximity makes it important to locate. It is found right above the vagina or, for some women, it may actually be in the opening of the vagina. It may look like a little pimple. It is the opening to the urinary tract that leads to the urinary bladder and on to the kidneys. That entire system is sterile. When there is no infection present, it is free of microorganisms. It does not carry germs or transmit diseases.
The other two openings the woman has in the genital and perineal area are the vagina and the rectum. The vagina is the largest opening you see.
Women: Knowing What’s Inside
Okay, now that you’re familiar with your external genitalia, let’s look at your internal sexual organs. Looking at the diagram of the front-view cross section of the internal female reproductive organs (Figure 2), you will see the ovaries, uterus, fallopian tubes, and vagina. The ovaries look like large almonds and are located one on either side of the uterus, below and behind the fallopian tubes. Some of the sex hormones that affect the whole menstrual cycle are produced by the ovaries. Primarily, however, they produce the ova, or eggs, for reproduction. The egg is usually released fourteen days before a woman’s menstrual period. It is carried by one of the two fallopian tubes to the uterus, where it is implanted if it becomes fertilized. Or it is discharged from the body with the menstrual flow if it does not become fertilized. This process begins in puberty and ceases during menopause.
Figure 2: Internal Female Genitalia (Front View)
The Uterus
The uterus, or womb, is a pear-shaped organ located between the urinary bladder and the rectum, as you can see in Figure 3. In its normal position, the uterus is flexed toward the front of the body, pointing forward and slightly upward. If you have been told that you have a “tipped” uterus, this probably means the uterus is retroflexed or flipped back toward the backbone. Less frequently, a tipped uterus may be anteflexed or tipped too much toward the front of the body, putting pressure on the urinary bladder and thus causing the feeling of needing to urinate frequently. A retroflexed uterus is likely to cause momentary, intense pain upon deep thrusting during intercourse. When a woman comes to us complaining of pain during intercourse, we immediately want to know just where she feels this pain and when in the process of intercourse it is felt.
A woman complained that she was not enjoying the sexual experience. She did all she could to avoid her husband’s approaches. Though she used to become very aroused, as time passed she was less and less responsive. From further questioning we learned that she was almost completely inactive after entry—because “It hurts!” The pain she was trying to avoid occurred when her husband was highly aroused and thrusting deeply. She confirmed that her physician had told her she had a tipped uterus. By some shifts in positioning and exercising, she learned that this pain can be avoided. She was freed to begin to enjoy the sexual experience without pain (see Chapter 30 for more detail on pain).
Figure 3: Unaroused Internal Female Genitalia (Side View)
The Vagina
In contrast to the urinary system, the vagina does have microorganisms present. The microorganisms present in the vagina are not disease-producing microorganisms (germs). Rather, their function is to ward off infection and to keep the vagina in a healthy state. Therefore, the vagina is considered a clean passageway when there is no infection present.
Some of us have tended to think of our genitals as dirty. That was also probably what we read into the message, “Don’t touch.” It might also be a response to the important and necessary sanitary practice of washing hands after toileting. It is important for us to note that the need for washing after going to the bathroom is not because of the possibility of the genitals contaminating our hands, but rather because of the rectum. The rectum is highly contaminated. It is loaded with potentially disease-producing microorganisms. When you wipe after toileting, it is important to wipe from front to back, from the urinary meatus to the rectum, to avoid contaminating the vagina and the urinary system. If you are a woman who tends to suffer from frequent vaginal or bladder infections, begin to note your wiping habits. You may be carrying disease-producing microorganisms from the rectum to the urinary bladder and vagina.
There are other facts about the vagina that may affect sexual attitudes and habits. In a healthy state, the vagina maintains its own acid-base balance. This is another mechanism that helps to fight off infections and enhances the process of impregnation. Because of these functions of the normal acid balance within the vagina, douching is not recommended unless so directed by a physician.
One more characteristic of the vagina is that it produces lubrication. This lubrication is a normal response that occurs shortly after birth and continues throughout life. It may lessen after menopause, in which case a woman may need to use a lubricant to enhance the comfort of entry. Lubrication is an involuntary response of the body. By that we mean it is something over which you have no control. Lubrication can best be described as beads of perspiration that appear along the walls of the vagina. Lubrication may occur when you are in a relaxed state, with or without any obvious sexual stimulation. For example, adult women lubricate every eighty to ninety minutes while asleep.
Now back to the self-examination of your genitals. To examine the vagina, we would encourage you to use a lubricant. There are many available including Astroglide, Probe, Replens, Intimate Moisture, and Long-Lasting K-Y Jelly. After lubricating your forefinger, insert it into the vagina as far as the second knuckle and slowly follow the wall of the vagina all the way around.
You might think of the opening of the vagina as a clock, with the top of the vagina, the point nearest the clitoris, as the twelve o’clock location. When you follow the wall of the vagina, start at some point on the clock and put varying degrees of pressure on the wall of the vagina with your finger at each point of the clock. As you do this, notice the sensation.
Identify any differences in feeling at the various places within the vagina. For example, identify any areas that are particularly sensitive to touch and seem to trigger either a painful feeling or a pleasurable feeling. In this process, some women for whom intercourse has always been painful locate a specific tear or irritation of the vagina wall that needs medical attention to promote healing. Alleviating the pain will enhance the intercourse experience.
Other women have found that a certain area of the vagina is much more responsive to sexual stimulation. This discovery can enhance sexual feelings during intercourse if a position is assumed that places the penis in more direct contact with that area of the vaginal wall. For example, some women find that stimulation at the twelve o’clock, four o’clock, and eight o’clock locations provides the most pleasurable vaginal sensations. Assuming the lateral position, with the top person straddling the legs of the person on the bottom, will allow the penis to provide more intense friction of the four o’clock and eight o’clock areas of the vaginal wall (see diagram, page 62). The woman-on-top position will typically allow the penis to stimulate the G-spot area at twelve o’clock.
PC Muscle Conditioning (Kegel Exercise)
The vagina is the most important anatomical structure for intercourse. It is often referred to as the “organ of accommodation”; that is, the vagina is a muscular passageway very changeable in size. It can tighten or expand to receive any size penis during intercourse. It can even expand to deliver a baby. This ability of the vagina to tighten or expand can be enhanced by exercise, and the same exercise will also increase the vagina’s sensitivity to sexual stimulation and its responsiveness. The muscle to be exercised is the pubococcygeus (PC) muscle, which is also used to start and stop urination. Although the exercise should not be done regularly during urination, you can identify the correct muscle by sitting on the toilet with your legs spread apart. Start urinating, then stop urination for about three seconds, then start again. Do this several times before you finish emptying your bladder. If you can do it easily, you probably need to tighten and relax this muscle only about twenty-five times a day to keep it in good condition.
If this process is very difficult for you, however, it means that the muscle is sloppy and needs a great deal of work. We would recommend that you start with tightening it twenty-five times a day and work up to two hundred times a day. When the muscle is sloppy, it may take a great deal of concentration to tighten and hold for three seconds before relaxing. As it develops better tone, you can do the exercise anywhere at any time, and no one will even know (unless you get a little smile on your face!). It’s often helpful to associate tightening the PC muscle with some other daily activity, such as waiting at the grocery checkout counter, stopping at red lights, ironing, washing dishes, taking notes at the board meeting, working at the computer, watching your son’s Little League game, or whatever happens to fit your lifestyle.
Experiment with tightening and releasing the PC muscle during an actual intercourse experience as well. This will be particularly helpful if you are not aware of feelings in the vagina after entry. We will give more explicit instruction regarding this particular enhancement exercise when we talk about increasing the responsiveness of the preorgasmic woman.
This concludes the self-discovery exercises for women. If this has been difficult or uncomfortable for you, we would encourage you to repeat the process several times in the future until you have a sense of being at ease with your genitals. If you find that your genitals are distasteful or ugly to you, or this whole exercise seems like something wrong that would be condemned or frowned upon by God, we suggest that before you enter into this self-discovery experience you read the Song of Songs in a modern version or paraphrase such as The Message. Then, as you explore your genitals, thank God for creating each part and for its function in your body. If you found the self-discovery exercise to be comfortable, we would still encourage you to take time to thank God for your genitals, for what you have learned about yourself, and for the good feelings this part of your body brings you.
Now, if you are a man, knowing yourself genitally probably will not be a new or difficult task. Somehow, little boys grow up automatically familiar with their genitals—maybe because the male’s genitals are so obvious. It is not uncommon for a mother to hear her little two- or three-year-old giggling because he has just discovered it feels good to touch his penis. This type of self-discovery is typical for most boys sometime during their growing-up period. This tends to be true whether or not the home environment has been open to allowing genital exploration. If your home environment condemned touching yourself genitally, you probably have guilt associated with the good feelings. This guilt associated with good feelings in your body may play havoc with your sexual experiences in marriage. You may find yourself having difficulty really enjoying the pleasure of your body even when this is a condoned, expected part of being a husband. Since you learned to associate bodily pleasure with something wrong, you did not automatically associate sexual behavior with marriage after the wedding ceremony.
Whether your self-discovery as a child was positive or guilt-related, you probably are familiar with what it feels like to touch or stimulate your penis and scrotum. You may not, however, be familiar with all the various parts of your genitals and what they are called. You will need this information when you learn, in Chapter 8, how your body responds during a full sexual experience.
The Scrotum and Testes
The scrotum is like a pouch that holds two small, ball-like glands called the testes (see Figure 4). The testes, which you can feel moving around when you press on the scrotum, are the primary sex organs in the male. They are similar in function to the ovaries in the female. The testes produce the sperm that unite with the female egg to begin a new life. In addition to producing the sperm, the testes also produce a portion of the semen or seminal fluid that carries the sperm from the testes through a series of ducts and out through the penis. The seminal fluid containing the sperm is called the ejaculate. The third function of the testes is totally unrelated to the duct system; it is the production of the male hormone testosterone, which is secreted directly into the bloodstream.
Figure 4: Circumcised External Male Genitals (Side View)
Testosterone. Testosterone is what causes the changes in puberty that transform a boy into a man. These changes begin to evidence themselves about three years after testosterone begins to be produced in the boy’s body. The production of testosterone gradually increases from that time until it reaches its peak around twenty years of age. It maintains that peak level of production until forty years of age and then gradually declines. The decrease in testosterone after age forty does not need to affect a man’s sexual pleasure or sexual functioning (see the section on aging and impotence in Chapter 27). This hormonal function of the testes is an internal function that is not something you can examine on your body or identify on a diagram.
Sperm. We would like to guide you into becoming more familiar with the first two functions of the testes, the production and secretion of sperm and seminal fluid. Once the sperm and seminal fluid leave the testes, there is a series of ducts through which they travel. This process can be identified on Figure 5. The epididymis begins this duct system. The epididymis is housed within the scrotum and then connects to the seminal ducts, which carry the seminal fluid and sperm to the inside of the body; there the sperm connect with the ejaculatory ducts and pass through the prostate gland, which is doughnut-shaped. The prostate gland supplies additional seminal fluid to the ejaculate. The ducts that carry the ejaculate from this point are short tubes that end almost immediately and join the urethra. The urethra is the tube that carries the urine from the urinary bladder out through the penis. Given this whole setup, you can see why swelling of the prostate gland, which can occur in older men, would cause difficulties. This swelling is usually detected when the man begins to experience difficulty urinating or pain upon ejaculation. A vitamin/mineral/herbal supplement is often recommended for men to promote prostate health. Speak with a healthcare professional or check a health-food store for a recommendation.
The Penis
The ejaculatory system, as you can see in the diagram, joins the urinary system and leads into the penis. The penis is the obvious essential organ for sexual intercourse in that it is the means by which the ejaculate is introduced into the female vagina. The penis is composed of erectile tissue. This tissue has a lot of spaces called venous sinuses. When there is sexual arousal, blood rushes to these sinuses, causing the penis to become enlarged, firm, and erect. This makes possible the penis’s entry into the vagina.
Figure 5: Unaroused Internal Male Genitalia (Side View)
The penis has various parts. There is the glans or bulging tip of the penis with the coronal ridge. If a man has not been circumcised, the glans is covered with a loose skin called the foreskin. This can be pulled back from the glans; it is important for the uncircumcised man to pull back the foreskin and wash underneath it during his daily showering to promote cleanliness and to prevent infection. The penis head (glans) of a circumcised man is exposed. The shaft of the penis is the whole cylindrical structure that responds most pleasurably to being stroked. The loose skin around the shaft of the penis forms what looks like a seam down the backside of the penis. This is called the frenulum and for some men is the part of the penis they find most responsive to caressing. You might note if that is the case with you.
Fallacies About Penis Size. Many fallacies regarding men and their sexual anatomy and responsiveness have been perpetuated by locker-room or construction-crew jokes and comparisons. Frequently these relate to penis size. The assumption that the larger a man’s penis, the better he will be able to satisfy a woman, just isn’t true.
First of all, most women don’t gain the majority of their sexual satisfaction from the penis being in the vagina, no matter what size the penis. Women tend to be most responsive to general sensuous caressing of the body and stimulation of the breasts and external genitalia.
Second, the unaroused (flaccid) penis size does not relate proportionately to erect penis size. A small flaccid penis, upon sexual stimulation, enlarges to a greater extent than does a larger flaccid penis. In their erect state there is not much difference in size between one penis and another, even though they may differ significantly in size when they are not aroused.
Third, as we will describe in more detail later in this chapter, the primary contact the penis has with the walls of the vagina during intercourse occurs in the lower one and a half to two inches. During sexual arousal the vagina changes from a collapsed, cylindrical passageway as the inner or upper two-thirds expands and the lower third thickens and tightens due to vasocongestion (blood rushing in to fill up the tissues, similar to a man’s erection). This lower third, which is one and a half to two inches into the vagina, becomes highly responsive to sexual stimulation and is the only area of contact the vagina has with the penis. In our seminars we often teasingly tell the men that if they have two inches that’s all they need to please a woman!
Fourth, just as the length of a man’s penis has little or nothing to do with his effectiveness during sexual intercourse, contrary to the many ads on the Internet and radio, neither does the circumference or thickness of his penis have much importance to sexual performance. The woman’s PC muscle can tighten so as to completely close the opening of the vagina; therefore, a thin penis can still have firm sensation and pressure on the vagina.
If a woman’s PC muscle is sloppy, she may need to keep her legs together to help with the pressure until her exercises have enhanced the quality of that muscle. The muscular nature of the vagina is also such that it can expand to allow the passage of a newborn baby, so there is no need to worry about a penis being too large, either in length or in circumference. If you are a new bride having painful intercourse because of the circumference of your husband’s penis, you may need to use dilators to stretch your vaginal muscle.
If you have had concerns about penis size, we trust these facts will reassure you and allay your self-consciousness in the sexual experience. We would encourage the two of you to talk about the facts just presented regarding penis size and sexual functioning. What feelings have each of you had? How have these affected your sexual experience or feelings about yourselves? Affirm each other when you can honestly do that. For example, if you as the woman are hearing for the first time that your husband has had feelings of inadequacy because of his penis, but his penis size has never been a problem for you, reassure him of this fact. Continue to explore these areas of concern with each other.
SHARING YOUR DISCOVERIES WITH EACH OTHER
Many couples have had full sexual experiences with each other for years, but these may have been “quickies” that have occurred at bedtime, in the dark, under the covers, and possibly with nightclothes on. Or even if the sexual experience hasn’t been that “covered,” there may not be a sense of freedom with each other’s bodies. For certain, most couples are not very familiar with each other’s genitals. Many have the feeling that they would not want such familiarity—that it would take away the romanticism by removing the mystery. We cast our vote for the removal of that kind of mystery. Mystery or unfamiliarity does not enhance the sexual experience. In fact, most couples who have been functioning within a closed sexual relationship soon lose romantic enjoyment of each other and fall into a humdrum, routine sex life.
We have found that the process of becoming familiar with each other’s genitals may be an incredibly difficult task for some couples. Yet when this hurdle is conquered, the communication may open up a whole new dimension of freedom and enjoyment with each other that they never have had, or at least have not had for years.
What we would like to guide you through is an “I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours” kind of sharing time. You might think of it as being very similar to children playing doctor. It is basically a repeat of your self-discovery experiences except that now you are in it together. This may feel awkward. Talk about any uncomfortable feelings before you begin. What fears, concerns, or embarrassments does each of you feel? What could make the experience more comfortable without taking away from the openness? Often, sharing our hesitant feelings with each other makes moving into the exercise less difficult. Once you both have communicated your feelings, read the assignment together. After gathering the necessary equipment (a light, a hand mirror, lubricant, and tissues), you may proceed as outlined below.
Sharing Your Genital Examination
Step 1: Shower or bathe together; suds each other’s bodies and enjoy the pleasure of relaxation and of touching each other in that process, not for purposes of arousal.
Step 2: In a private, well-lit room, with the diagram of external male genitalia, identify all the specific parts of the penis and testes. Wife: Join in the exploration by touching the various parts as your husband identifies each. Particularly note the coronal ridge and the frenulum or seam on the backside of the penis. After exploring the various parts of the genitals, talk about what kind of touch feels good. Husband: Talk about any stimulation of the genitals your wife has given you in the past that you would like more of and any stimulation and handling of the genitals that have been unpleasant for you. Wife: Talk about ways you enjoy pleasuring his genitals and/or feelings of discomfort you have with male genitals.
Step 3: Wife: Assume a comfortable position with legs spread apart, light focused on genitals, the diagram of external female genitals within view, and hand mirror between legs so the genitals can be seen clearly. Look at how the outer labia come together. Then spread the outer labia and identify the inner labia. Find the clitoris and note how the labia form a hood over the clitoris. See if you can feel the shaft of the clitoris, almost like a hidden, small penis up behind the tip of the clitoris. Touch the tip or glans of the clitoris and then the areas around it, and talk with your husband about what kind of touch feels good and where it feels good. Husband: Join in exploration and touching as is comfortable. Identify the urinary meatus, vaginal opening, and any other points of interest. Wife: Talk about what genital stimulation your husband has given you in the past that felt good, what you would like more of, what touching has been negative, and how stimulation of your genitals might be enhanced.
Step 4: Husband: With closely trimmed nails and the wife’s invitation, gently insert your finger into the vagina to the second knuckle. Then gently press on the wall of the vagina. If you think of the opening of the vagina as a clock, start at the twelve o’clock position and then slowly move around the wall of the vagina, pressing or stroking at every hour. Try varying degrees of pressure and types of touch. Wife: Feed back what sensations you note. Particularly be aware of any points of pain or pleasure.
Wife: After this exploration is completed, tighten the PC muscle while your husband’s finger is in the vagina. Talk about how that feels to each of you. Husband: Now, with your finger in the vagina and the PC muscle tightened, move your finger just below the inner/upper ridge of the PC muscle to explore the G-spot area (refer to Figure 6 on page 73, which shows aroused internal female genitalia). Explore that area with various degrees of pressure and stroking while the wife notes and talks about the sensations she feels in the vagina.
Step 5: Talk about the experience: What felt good, what you each learned, what was uncomfortable about it. You may want to spend some time just holding and affirming each other.
This is a clinical learning experience, not for the purpose of arousal. If arousal should occur, it is okay. Enjoy the feelings, but do not focus on the arousal.