Masters and Johnson’s Sexual Response Cycle
I liked Jason as soon as I met him. He was brilliant—a Harvard undergraduate, now in his last year at Stanford Business School. He had a youthful mop of unkempt brown hair that wouldn’t behave, and purple shoelaces—refreshing among the other buttoned-down MBA students.
“At twenty-five, I’m a miserable failure with women,” he declared. In what way? “My erections are totally unreliable, and I sometimes ejaculate too quickly.” How quickly? “Before the girl comes. You know how embarrassing that is?”
When I asked Jason what made these things a problem, he thought maybe I didn’t understand his situation, so he told me again. “Yes, I understand,” I said. “But why is it a problem if you don’t get erect when you want to, and if you come before you want to?”
“I don’t know how it was in your day,” he started, half joking, half annoyed, “but today girls expect certain things when they go to bed with a guy. And a good, solid fuck is one of them. And that should include an orgasm.”
“That sounds pretty intimidating,” I said gently. “Is that how you feel?”
“Yes and no,” he replied. “I don’t feel so confident, but it seems like a reasonable expectation for a woman to have, doesn’t it?”
“It depends on the details,” I said. “If she prefers certain things, that’s fine. If she doesn’t know how to enjoy herself without these things, then she’s setting you both up for failure.”
This wasn’t quite what he expected. “Maybe you can’t help me,” he challenged. “Maybe you don’t understand young people, or women.” This was my big chance to say something stupid. I didn’t take it.
“Jason, I’m sure there are things I don’t understand. And I want to get to know you better, so I can understand exactly what things mean to you. That said,” I continued, “there are a few things about your situation that I think I do understand. And maybe, in fact, I can help you understand them better.”
“Okay, go ahead,” said Jason.
“First, I think you’re overgeneralizing about what women want. I believe you’re accurately describing several women you’ve met, and undoubtedly many more, but they’re not even a majority, much less all women. Second, most women’s orgasms ultimately result from clitoral, not vaginal stimulation. So intercourse, as enjoyable as it can be, is generally not the activity that makes them climax. Third, anxiety about getting erections makes it harder to get or keep an erection. And most rapid ejaculation comes from anxiety, not from too much pleasure or stimulation.”
Before he could respond, I added, “These are not my opinions. These are facts.
“Now I do understand that intercourse has symbolic meaning for many men and women,” I continued. “And I appreciate that you feel bad about not being able to have, or deliver, that symbolic meaning in the way you want to—in the way you feel is necessary. But let’s separate practical value from symbolic meaning, and let’s accept fact as fact.
“You believe you have to deliver a fast-happening, long-lasting erection, and you believe you have to make a woman orgasm with intercourse. And you believe you’re not very good at all that, right?”
He nodded.
“Rather than try to fix your penis,” I said, “I propose we give it a rest and change two other things—the way you approach sex, and the way you select your sex partners.” The young man looked skeptical, but he was listening intently. “Let’s reduce the pressure you feel before, during, and after sex. That will not only maximize your ability to get and keep an erection, it will make it easier to enjoy the sex you do have, whatever happens.”
“And what about my partner’s disappointment?” he asked.
“Back to my first two points, Jason,” I reminded him. “First, look for women who like you for who you are, get to know them, and talk about sex before you start doing it together. Second, keep in mind that while many of them may want intercourse, for most of them it’s not a have-to. If you want to know a particular woman’s have-tos, ask. I can tell you from professional and personal experience,” I said, “that the most common have-to a woman has about sex is that she wants the guy to be emotionally present. And if we’re talking about her physical satisfaction, for most women intercourse is nice, but a hand, mouth, or vibrator on her clitoris is more likely to be the have-to.”
As he thought over this major change in how he approached sex, I said one more thing. “Jason, take advantage of what I know.”
He did. And after only a few more sessions, he was enjoying sex a lot more, and he said a grateful good-bye.
Accurate information is absolutely essential for good decision-making. However, America’s bizarre cultural ambivalence about sexuality mixes information together with gossip, opinion, superstition, and outright lies, so it’s hard to know what to believe. In addition, many people have so much anxiety about sexuality that they have trouble using accurate information to make decisions. Examples include contraception and sterilization, oral and anal sex, fantasy, and masturbation.
Let’s look at some information that can help you create sexual experiences that provide pleasure, bring you closer to your partner, and fit with your values.
Anatomy and Physiology
When I was first being trained as a sex educator (sometime between the invention of the wheel and the invention of the Internet), I learned about the sexual parts of the body—the “erogenous zones.” You know, the genitalia, mouth, nipples, anus, and ears. Some liberals would also add the thighs, butt, and neck.
But eventually I came to realize—this idea is so wrong. The whole idea of dividing the body into sexual and non-sexual zones discourages erotic experimentation, overemphasizes orgasm, and encourages Normality Anxiety. And it doesn’t reflect this common experience:
Although some body parts are terrifically sensitive under some conditions with some people, the same parts with someone else, in a physically uncomfortable location, when you haven’t showered, or you’re angry or embarrassed, won’t be even slightly sensitive—and so at such moments, they’re not sexual body parts after all.
On the other hand, perhaps you’ve had the experience of being so excited that your entire body was one big sexual organ. During those blessed moments, you have no non-sexual body parts.
There isn’t any part of your body that can’t be erotically charged. As you read this, somebody somewhere is making love with his or her elbow, knee, foot, hair, breath.
A little wiser than I was back in 1978, now I say there are no erogenous zones—because there are no non-erogenous zones. Call this approach Guerilla Anatomy: There are no sexual parts of the body. There’s the body. There’s erotic energy. The first experiences and expresses the second. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If there’s any exception to this, it’s the clitoris—the only organ in the human body with absolutely no purpose other than pleasure. You do know that most women only climax when this little pearl is stimulated (by a hand, a tongue, a vibrator, a pillow, running water, a turkey sandwich), right? A penis going in and out of the vagina generally misses the clitoris; since it doesn’t matter by how much, it might as well be by a mile. And if you’re keeping score at home:
clitoris + surrounding lips (labia) + vaginal opening = vulva
For most women who want to climax, the vulva, not the vagina, is their best bet.
So why do people make such a fuss about the holiest of “erogenous zones,” the genitalia? Two reasons:
1. The genitalia are the equipment we use to create a baby. It’s the Miracle of Life angle—which most people try to avoid virtually every time they have sex their entire lives.
2. The genitalia have this cool hydraulic capacity: when the brain experiences stimulation that it codes as sexual (a picture, a smell, a memory, a touch, an emotion, whatever), it sends a message down the spinal column to the pelvis, where the nerves instruct the blood vessels to open up and let in a small tidal wave. When tissue in the penis or vulva then gets engorged, the organ gets bigger and way more sensitive.
The Sexual Response Cycle
Here’s the origin of the mental model most Americans have of sex. Understanding this will help you realize both the limits of how you conceptualize your body’s sexual function and the value of Sexual Intelligence—an entirely different way to think about it.
In the 1960s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson studied how people’s bodies function during sex—which had never been done systematically before. (Insert favorite joke here about your cousin Vinnie, who studied this for years in various cars all over Brooklyn.)
Hundreds of volunteer couples had sex in a St. Louis laboratory, while trained staff measured their skin temperature, pulse, pupil dilation, and so on. Masters and Johnson tabulated this information, which is now part of the standard training for sex therapists. They conceptualized their subjects’ experience in a model they called the Sexual Response Cycle (below).*
The point of the model is to summarize and describe how “normal” bodies respond to “normal” stimulation. At a time when TV couldn’t show married people in bed together reading or talking, and Johnny Carson wasn’t allowed to say the word pregnant on the air, Masters and Johnson’s research, and its results, were revolutionary.
Masters and Johnson’s Sexual Response Cycle
In the early 1960s, science and the machine were the dominant metaphors that Americans used in art, advertising, education, sports, and health. So that was how Masters and Johnson looked at human bodies—as machines expected to function in predictable ways. Bodies that didn’t act in this predictable way had a pathology that needed to be addressed. In that historic moment, both sexual “normality” and sex therapy were created. They’ve been related ever since.
It’s good to know how most bodies typically behave. It’s bad to think that’s how your body must behave at all times and that, if it doesn’t, there’s something wrong with you. And it’s destructive to think that your body has to behave a certain way in order for you to enjoy sex.
Imagining and creating the Sexual Response Cycle was an enormous accomplishment, and Masters and Johnson withstood career isolation, government surveillance, and death threats as their reward. That said, the model does contain some limits:
• It doesn’t address desire, or how desire can affect the body’s reactions.
• It implies that the same physical stimulation will always lead to the same outcomes.
• It doesn’t address the reality that the same physical stimulation or activity can feel different at different times.
• It takes culture for granted rather than explicitly noting that the experiences of lab subjects—and the rest of us—are mediated by culture.
• Spirituality and other subjective experiences are not addressed.
• It assumes that orgasm is the normal conclusion of sexual events.
Since the model’s development, various professionals have proposed revisions or other models of sexual functioning. Each addresses some of these criticisms. Still, the Masters and Johnson model is so much a part of our culture that people forget that it’s just a model. It isn’t an accurate description of everyone’s experience. For example, as men get older, many don’t climax with a partner—and they still enjoy sex. Similarly, some women climax through psychological stimulation alone. The Masters and Johnson model doesn’t fit either of these cases.
Finally, it’s important to remember that sex is rarely a continuous increase of desire, arousal, excitement, orgasm. For most people, arousal ebbs and flows during sex—whether because of external distraction, internal dialogues, the need to pee, their desire to talk, laugh, or rest, or the simple natural rhythms of their bodies. Viewing this natural ebb and flow as a problem or dysfunction is unrealistic and often a source of problems.
A Word About Orgasm
It’s dessert, not the main course.
Okay, that’s six words. But making orgasm the point of sex is a problem for two reasons:
• It makes it harder to have an orgasm.
• It devalues all sexual activities that don’t lead to orgasm.
Orgasm generally lasts about, what—two, five, ten seconds? And sex, from the time you start taking off your clothes until the time you say, “That was nice” and reach for your BlackBerry, takes about, what—ten, twenty, thirty minutes? That means that orgasm is 1 percent or less of your total sex time. Making that 1 percent the point of the entire exercise seems rather foolish. And really not worth all the bother.
Some people find sex a little boring, and hope that a fabulous orgasm will somehow redeem the experience. That’s like eating in a restaurant with uncomfortable chairs, bad service, and mediocre food—and hoping that dessert will be so great, it will make the whole frustrating experience worthwhile.
Well, they haven’t invented a dessert that good, and they haven’t invented an orgasm that good either. If sex makes you feel lonely, gives you a headache, confuses you about your partner’s feelings, is physically painful, or is filled with avoidance and excuses, no orgasm in the world can make it all worthwhile.
Under these conditions, you might stop having orgasms too.
A better model? Do things you enjoy during sex. Get excited, please yourself and your partner. Include orgasm if you want to. But have sex that’s so enjoyable that even if you don’t climax, you’ll feel it was time well spent.
How to Have a Baby—Whether You Want to or Not
It’s hard to relax, become intimate, and enjoy sex when we’re concerned about creating a pregnancy unintentionally. And despite junior high school health class, many of us are still unsure about how babies are made—or prevented.
A woman needs three things to become pregnant: an egg, a sperm, and a place for them to hang out for nine months once they’re hand-in-hand. All three have a limited shelf life.
Each month while a woman is fertile (roughly ages thirteen to fifty), one of her ovaries releases an egg (“ovulation”). That’s when the window for the possibility of becoming pregnant opens wide. If that egg chances upon a fresh sperm, the pair could conceivably (!) implant somewhere (the “womb,” the “Devil’s incubator”), become a fetus, and ultimately, maybe, be born as a baby.
Here’s the math: sperm can live for five days before an egg shows up. An egg can live for one or two days before a sperm comes along. So a woman can become pregnant for 2 + 5 days. Add a couple of days on each end for safety’s sake, and that means that, each month, you and your partner are vulnerable for about eleven days. You can become pregnant if you have unprotected intercourse during these eleven days.
It’s easy to know when a batch of fresh sperm is injected into the vagina. The question is: when is an egg available to team up with one of those sperm? Approximate answer: about halfway in between menstrual periods (that’s what regulates the lining of the uterus, where a fertilized egg would implant and grow). In an average twenty-eight-day menstrual cycle, this corresponds to the second week and the beginning of the third week after the end of monthly menstruation. However, few cycles are exactly average, and any cycle can be thrown off by illness, stress, nursing, pheromones, abrupt changes in diet or sleep patterns, and other things.
If only you could predict exactly when you or your partner would ovulate, you’d have a great form of contraception—if you were absolutely, positively, rigidly unwilling to have intercourse during that open window of possible conception. A woman can estimate (but only estimate) when she’ll ovulate by counting ten days from the beginning of her last period, but that’s not terribly scientific.
People who rely on this unscientific counting for birth control call it the “rhythm method.” The technical term for these gamblers is “parents”; 25 percent of couples using this method become pregnant during a typical year. In the twenty-first century, taking this monthly risk is completely unnecessary and morally irresponsible.
Some people call this whole process the “miracle of life.” Except it’s no miracle—it’s simple science. If you refuse to use real contraception, memorize and use these simple facts. Here’s a chart that restates what I’ve just described:
How You Risk Creating a Pregnancy
Contraception: Why Is It Special?
For almost everyone, unintended pregnancy is the only serious thing that can go wrong with consensual sex.
Thus, effective contraception is a special part of Sexual Intelligence. When you’ve taken care of it, you can do whatever you like sexually; until you do, intercourse can have terrible consequences. That’s no way to live, and no way to make love. When nothing can go wrong with intercourse, you can enjoy it in a very special way. When intercourse can result in an unwanted pregnancy, how can a reasonable person relax and enjoy it?
To reduce both performance anxiety and normality anxiety, we have to make sex essentially harmless and meaningless. (If it’s meaningless, you don’t need to fear “failure.”) This approach frees you to create profound, intimate, and personally meaningful sexual experiences; you and your partner just have to arrange your attitudes and behavior so that it doesn’t really matter what happens during sex, as long as you both enjoy it.
I’m amazed at the casual approach many otherwise thoughtful people have about contraception.
When I ask patients about it, a surprising number say, “We’re not trying to have a baby, but if it happens it happens.” Most people wouldn’t use that approach about buying—or not buying—a toaster. But that’s apparently how many people think about the single most important decision a human can make.
After thirty-three years in the sex field, I’ve probably heard every reason supposedly explaining why people aren’t consistent about contraception, such as:
• “The pill makes me gain weight.”
• “The pill is dangerous.”
• “I just have a feeling that I’m not (or we aren’t) fertile.”
• “Various methods interrupt spontaneity.”
• “I’d feel pressured by all that planning.”
• “I get (or she gets) no feelings with a condom.”
• “I’m afraid I’ll lose my erection putting on a condom.”
• “We haven’t been using birth control reliably for years, and nothing’s happened yet.”
• “A woman who plans to have sex is a slut.”
• “I don’t want any more kids, but what if I get sterilized and then my kids die in an accident? Or my spouse dies and my next spouse wants a kid?”
• “We don’t agree on whether or not to have a kid (or another kid), and I don’t want to fight every time we have sex.”
• “I’m Christian and I’m not sure contraception is the right thing to do.”
• “Maybe it’s smart or well-off people like us who should be having kids.”
• “I heard you can’t get pregnant the first time (or standing up, or if you don’t climax, or if the girl is on top, or if you shower afterwards, or if the guy pulls out).”
I do understand that discussing contraception can open up conversations you might not want to have—on topics such as:
• The future of the relationship
• The quality of your sex life
• Whether or not you’re both sexually exclusive, and how you define that
• Conflict over whether or not you’re going to have a child (or another child)
• Where you might be living in five years
• The unsettled question of whether one of you is ever going back to work
That’s why contraception is more than just a technical activity; it can be the intersection of a number of emotional and relationship issues. When you haven’t settled the principles and future of a relationship, avoiding birth control can be a way of avoiding other things. The problem is that the price for this avoidance can be an unintended pregnancy.
There’s a contraceptive method for everyone, though each has its own inconveniences. Some people say, “I don’t want any of the inconveniences associated with any of the methods, and therefore we’ll use nothing.” If people needed a license to have sex, that sort of thinking would be exactly what would disqualify someone. Expressing your sexuality in a safe, enjoyable, life-enhancing way is a glorious privilege. Making yourself vulnerable to a life-altering, unwanted consequence treats sex—and yourself—terribly disrespectfully.
Having intercourse? Fertile? Not 100 percent sure you want a pregnancy? To get more of what you want from sex, use contraception.*
Don’t Forget the Morning-After Pill
Now here’s an amazing invention: emergency contraception (EC). A carefully configured high dose of birth control pills, you can, depending on the brand, take it up to five days after unprotected intercourse, and it will prevent you from getting pregnant. It’s not an abortion pill (that’s a different drug, RU486), and it won’t abort or affect a fertilized egg already implanted on the uterine wall. It just prevents pregnancy. Anyone who says differently is basing their opinion on something other than scientific fact.
Anyone seventeen or older can now get EC without a prescription. Its shelf life is several years. So if you’re fertile and you don’t want to get pregnant right now, you should get some at your local pharmacy this week. Keep it around so that if your regular method fails (a condom breaks, your dog eats your birth control pills), you can protect yourself and your partner immediately. If you don’t use it after three years, throw it away and buy a new package. Simply keep EC around as a matter of course, like toothpaste, balsamic vinegar, and AA batteries.
One year after you or your partner stops menstruating, you can stop buying EC. If you never used it, it was a good investment, a dollar a month for a very powerful kind of insurance. If you needed it, it was worth a million bucks. For more information on this modern wonder drug, see the Emergency Contraception website (http://ec.princeton.edu/questions/index.html).
Sexually Transmitted Infections
Then there’s STIs. When I was growing up, it was called venereal disease. We thought “venereal” was Latin for “dirty, immoral, and shameful.”
Many people consider an STI just about the end of the world. Once diagnosed they feel dirty, ashamed, broken. They wonder if anyone will ever again have sex with them, or if they’ll ever be able to enjoy it again. They can’t imagine ever telling someone about their condition.
Assuming you get treated, that’s the worst set of consequences for every STI (except HIV) most people will encounter—shame, stigma, isolation. And some long-term relationships are damaged by the revelation (or suspicion) of infidelity that accompanies the diagnosis of an STI (which is why so many people keep the information from their partner).
Modern medicine makes it possible to deal with STIs the way we deal with other medical conditions. Bacterial infections like syphilis are cured with simple medication. Viral infections like herpes cannot be cured, but they can be managed with simple medication and lifestyle adjustments regarding diet and stress. In a small number of people, an untreated STI leads to infertility—but again, prompt treatment can prevent this.
In all, the lifelong consequences of an unintended pregnancy far, far outweigh the consequences of catching an STI.
Some people really care about STIs, and they use condoms or avoid genital/fluid sex. That’s excellent; I want these folks to enjoy the sex they’re having, not simply dread disaster. Many more people say they care about getting infected, but they don’t do much to prevent it. Some of these people enjoy sex; some are too anxious to enjoy it.
Actually preventing the spread of STIs involves talking with your sexual partner(s). That can be unpleasant, but before you even get to that, let’s note two things you can do that don’t require any awkward conversation:
• Familiarize yourself with the outward symptoms of the most common STIs.*
• Casually check your partner for these symptoms, especially a new partner or one you haven’t seen in a while. Showering together is an enjoyable way to do this. So is playing around with a partner’s thighs, belly, and butt—in enough light that you can see what you’re playing with.
But very, very few people do this. People really don’t want to think about STIs. So why don’t people “protect themselves”? And scientifically, what does “protection” mean?
• Limiting the number of your sexual partners
• Periodically examining yourself (and knowing what you’re looking for)
• Examining your partners (and knowing what you’re looking for)
• Using nonfluid or nongenital forms of sex
• Using condoms for genital/fluid forms of sex
Very few people eagerly embrace all of these practices. The most that a lot of people can manage with a new partner is, “We should probably talk about, you know, disease. I don’t have anything you need to know about. What about you? No? Great, let’s proceed with abandon.”
I know that many single and nonmonogamous men and women think about STIs, but generally the same way we Californians think about earthquakes—“I hope disaster doesn’t strike, I know I should take precautions, but it’s too much trouble, and if it happens, I’ll just deal with it.”
So why don’t people deal with their anxiety or their rational concern about STIs?
• Who likes to acknowledge their partner’s previous (sex) life?
• Who likes to acknowledge their partner’s current (sex) life with others?
• Who wants to tell the truth about their previous or current sex life?
• Who wants to commit to condoms long-term?
By age fifty, one-quarter of the U.S. population tests positive for the genital herpes virus. Each year, over 1,000,000 people catch chlamydia, the country’s most common STI. If you have one of these, or another STI, you are not alone. And you are neither dirty nor broken. But you will have to get treated, and you will have to learn how to talk about it.
Because people do die from diseases associated with HIV, we can’t say that stigma and isolation are its worst consequences. But the risk factors for catching HIV are well known, and, statistically, most heterosexual Americans are not generally exposed to HIV. Nonmonogamous straight and gay people can protect themselves from HIV with reasonable decision-making regarding both sex and lifestyle choices.
Here’s what I recommend:
• Consider the advantages of being really truthful with your sexual partner(s). The benefits go way beyond protection from STIs.
• Decide if your sex habits—present or past—put you at risk for HIV/AIDS. (This includes your partners’ habits, right?) If so, get tested (it’s private and free in most communities) this month, and think about whether or not you want to continue living this way.
• Get a routine blood test for common STIs. Inform your partner(s) of the results, even if they’re negative (which could motivate them to get tested).
• Learn how to maximize pleasure during sex when you’re using condoms (yes, there are tricks).*
• If you’re fertile, get serious about birth control. It’s way more important than STIs.
Mars and Venus—Or Earth?
The last component of knowledge involves challenging the conventional wisdom about women and men.
Although we’ve all heard the expression “the opposite sex,” I prefer “the other sex” or “the other gender.” After all, men and women are not opposites. In fact, there’s nothing on this earth that’s more like a man than a woman. What’s similar to a man—a fish, a pineapple, a rowboat, a sweater, an audiocassette, a glass of fresh lemonade? No. The thing on earth that’s most like a man is a woman. And the thing on earth that’s most like a woman is a man.
The idea that men and women communicate in vastly different ways may have a few tiny grains of truth to it, but the bigger picture is more important: sexually, men and women want the same things, are anxious about the same things, and withhold communication the same way. Both men and women are shy about bringing up herpes, shy about asking for a finger in their butt, and shy about saying, “Oh, do that harder,” or “Please do that slower,” or “Let’s go brush our teeth first.”
Let’s remember there are over two billion adult women and over two billion adult men on this earth (and in late December it seems they’re all at the mall at the same time). That makes today’s “women” and “men” the biggest categories the world has ever seen. If you rely on those categories to understand your partner or yourself, you’re going to miss a lot.
Are there any sure things you can rely on when making love with a man or a woman? Well, everybody needs oxygen to breathe, sooner or later everyone needs to pee, and everyone has a pain threshold. Of course, everyone’s needs in all three departments vary widely.
Here are some other almost-sure things: most people want to feel special, most people want to feel attractive, and most people want to feel competent. So you can make assumptions in this direction, but pay attention in case your partner isn’t one of these “most people.”
And you? Get to know yourself; don’t categorize yourself, and don’t let your partner categorize you. When she says, “That’s just like a man,” tell the truth—“I do that because I’m me.” If you don’t stop for directions when you’re lost, it isn’t because you’re a man, it’s because you’re foolish. And a woman who overspends at the shoe store isn’t being just like a woman—she’s being irresponsible.
The whole Mars/Venus idea that men and women are radically different creatures gets in the way of our relationships, making it hard to trust and enjoy them. How can people expect to relate meaningfully if they imagine they’re from different planets?
Okay, so if men and women are so similar, why do so many people consider “the opposite sex” a problem? I think it’s an understandable mistake of distance and focus. If you ask gay men who drives them crazy, they sigh and say, “Men.” If you ask lesbians who drives them crazy, they frown and answer, “Women.” That’s because that’s the gender of the people they’re each sexual with. We already know who heterosexual people think is the problem—the other gender.
Most people have had negative dating experiences, and most of us occasionally get fed up with our significant other. We assign a range of negative characteristics to these characters we have loved, trusted, idealized, and been disappointed by: they’re selfish, impulsive, bossy, passive, unreliable, manipulative, and they don’t listen. And since most people are straight, this formulation sticks: men and women are “opposites” who keep betraying each other’s dreams. But what people really mean, I think, is this: “Being in intimate relationships is hard! My partner is never perfect, and he (she) wants stuff!”
Here’s a story that shows what happens when you base your marital and sexual decisions on “knowledge” that isn’t factual—but you insist that it is. This is the opposite of Sexual Intelligence.
Both William and Hong grew up in Vietnam, and each still had parents living there. Without knowing each other, they had both come to San Francisco for college, and then stayed, pursuing separate lives. They eventually met, and although it wasn’t exactly an arranged marriage, they each knew they were expected to marry a Vietnamese. And so even though Hong was divorced and eight years older than William, and even though they had very different personalities, they married a few months after being introduced.
That’s when they started having sex. It was clumsy and frustrating, and after six months of trying, their enthusiasm began to wane. So after only two years of marriage, they came to see me.
William was intelligent, energetic, and likable, but his opinions were so rigid that they were hard to discuss, much less challenge. That was the marriage Hong found herself in. It didn’t help the therapy to have William telling me, over and over, that he knew how things were for Vietnamese and I didn’t. When Hong periodically complained that this was how he insulted her and everyone else, he would temporarily switch gears—dismissing what I’d say with a faux-gracious “everyone has their opinion, and we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
It was aggravating, especially since they were clearly suffering, I liked them both, and I wanted to help them.
So what did William “know” about sex?
• Their chronic financial quarrels should not affect their desire or arousal.
• His low desire was at least partly because he was getting “older.” (“I’m on the wrong side of thirty,” he’d say.)
• It was wrong for an “older” woman to have as much sexual desire as Hong did.
• Marital sex should focus on intercourse, and Hong’s request for “variety” (in her case, oral sex) wasn’t part of “Vietnamese tradition.” Therefore he didn’t have to deal with these sexual interests.
Between sessions I’d make plans for how I would deal with William next time. But despite my plans, each week I’d somehow find myself debating him about the accuracy of his various assumptions. Sometimes I’d talk about narratives and constructed reality, but that never went anywhere, since William was convinced he was speaking truth, not simply giving his own perspective. So I’d get pulled into discussions about the “normal” desire of forty-five-year-old women, how common cunnilingus was in marriage, how the human nervous system works, and so on. Week after week I experienced exactly what Hong was up against.
Although Hong didn’t really believe in the traditional model, she was trying to be a good Vietnamese wife. But when she made these attempts, her resentment would build, and his enormous sense of entitlement (he wasn’t just stubborn and narcissistic, he was the firstborn son!) would become so hurtful and offensive to her that she’d oscillate between withdrawal and sudden outbursts. Then he’d be genuinely baffled: hurt that she had blown up at him, and he’d actually expect an apology—which would infuriate her.
No wonder they didn’t have sex.
I tried to explain to William that, at least here in the West, a good sexual relationship was something two adults built collaboratively, but he didn’t hear it. Further, I urged him to speak to someone else to get facts that would challenge his, but he refused. He said that he respected me and that if he was going to reconsider his “facts,” it would be with me. It was a flattering, but frustrating, moment.
Finally I suggested that Hong tell William she felt invisible to him. He was sympathetic. I asked how that feeling compared to the traditional mother and grandmother roles she had seen in Vietnam. “Just the same,” she said bitterly. “As a girl, my grandmother learned the rule of three obediences [to father, husband, and son]. Is that what my life is to be?” And her mother? “My father used to threaten to divorce her if she didn’t produce a son. And of course she was a slave to my father’s parents. Her reality was of very little interest in that house.”
Asking William what sort of life he wanted, I said that I was very sympathetic to his dilemma—should he have a traditional Vietnamese home or a more modern American one? In the former, his word was law, and his “facts” were facts. In the second, his word was more or less equal to his wife’s, and his “facts” were subject to challenge at any time. He thought about it for a long time. “I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “I want my marriage, but I don’t like being questioned, and I don’t like the idea of being wrong.”
And if that made sex unenjoyable for her, or for him, or if it prevented satisfaction? “That might be necessary,” he observed, “although it would be too bad.” To his credit, William suggested that they continue seeing me, but it was difficult to make progress with him “knowing”—inaccurately—all that he did.
Both William and Hong were responsible for their sexual and marital problems. When people are in conflict, it’s essential to separate fact from opinion, and opinion from ignorance or prejudice. As the husband, William believed he had the privilege of not having to examine his “facts”—i.e., his assumptions, beliefs, and superstitions—about sex and gender. This, of course, made change impossible.
Sexual Diversity
Stuck in his various stubborn positions (and claiming they weren’t stubborn positions), William didn’t appreciate sexual diversity—the wide range of how humans express their sexuality. His opinions about how others should live, and his beliefs about how others do live, were obstacles to a satisfying sex life and marriage.
So, unlike William, let’s examine some actual facts about this diversity. These may help you relax during sex, and perhaps help you understand your partner or your experiences better.
• In sexuality, diversity among people is the rule, not the exception.
• In the human family, every dimension of sexuality is diverse—desires, fantasies, comfort level, risk-taking, orgasm, concepts of virginity, structures of sexual relationships, what’s considered “kinky,” and so on.
• For many people, the psychological context of their behavior is what makes sex exciting. This can include role-playing, enacting fantasies, wearing costumes, telling sexy stories, watching (or making) pornography, using code words, or being observed by others. For some people, a rough hand on the wrist, a simple black bra, or the words “Spank me, Daddy,” or “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” turn an ordinary event into a thrilling one. Other people find such things silly or unsexy.
• Millions of American adults are into “erotic power play”—consensual spanking, bondage, domination games, controlled humiliation, carefully calibrated intense stimulation, sensory deprivation, and so on.
• You can’t tell what someone’s sexual interests are based on the other things you know about him or her. For example, some people who are into rough sexual games come from rough backgrounds, while others come from mild and loving backgrounds. Some very ladylike and gentlemanly creatures get nasty and/or nutty between the sheets.
• “Men” and “women” are heterogeneous categories—they don’t predict much about the sexuality of the people in them. In fact, all categories are like that when it comes to sex—of limited value.
I call this issue “diversity” rather than “normality” (see Chapter 2 on this) because my goal is not to allay your anxiety about your normality. Rather, I want you to not care about whether your sexuality is normal—to know that you can just be you. I want to remind you about the wide range of what people do, some of which probably makes no sense to you—just as some of what you do would make no sense to people from other cultures or historical times.
For example, a Chinese patient of mine who came to the United States for college thirteen years ago told me that the first time she ever saw two adults kiss passionately was at the landing gate at the Los Angeles airport. For a while she thought Americans were obsessed with not only kissing, but with kissing in public. A bunch of osculo-exhibitionists!
Similarly, many people across the United States and around the world keep some of their clothes on during sex. Others of us wouldn’t dream of doing so; in fact, we’d feel deprived of one of our greatest pleasures during sex, skin-to-skin touch. Which way is normal? Wrong question—because it doesn’t matter. Do what you and your partner find comfortable. (To expand your erotic vocabulary, see the hints throughout Part Three.)
This “diversity” issue is especially important if you’re someone who periodically tells your partner that she or he isn’t normal, or if you feel compelled to defend yourself from such an accusation.
Sexual Intelligence requires that you appreciate the concept of sexual diversity. That doesn’t mean you approve of every sexual practice—although people around the world are not asking for your approval to do what they do, thank you very much, any more than you’re asking for theirs.
Appreciating the concept of sexual diversity means that you understand that values—subjective values—determine what a person, community, or culture considers sexually “normal,” not some eternal truth. People and communities may claim that their values and judgments are inspired or dictated by “God,” “common sense,” or the “natural world,” but it’s all subjective, and all written by humans with human prejudices.
You can, of course, make the opposite, traditional argument, leaping to the defense of certain norms or alleged truths (it really doesn’t matter which ones). But keep this in mind: if you tell your partner that his or her sexual preferences, fantasies, and limitations are not “normal” (instead of saying you’re not comfortable with them), you’re asking for trouble. Either your partner will agree, and shrink back from you accordingly, or disagree, in which case you’ll have painful, irresolvable conflict. Claiming that you know what’s “normal” is exactly the kind of power grab that undermines intimacy.
When you judge yourself according to some imagined standard of what’s sexually normal, you’re also asking for trouble. You’re diminishing your individuality and comparing yourself to complete strangers. After all, you’re not “people”—you’re you. Thus, your sexuality doesn’t need to resemble that of “other people.”
Besides, a few centuries ago or a thousand miles away, you might be considered as normal as rain. Not that that matters, of course.