Column #4: You Know What Your Problem Is?

At least once or twice a month, I get a story order from someone (usually a woman), that goes something like this:

“I’d like a story where I surprise my husband by bringing home another woman with whom I then have sex with. The other woman is about my height with slightly smaller breasts and since I’m blonde, let’s make her brunette. He watches and mostly tells us what he’d like us to do but at the end he joins in. He doesn’t have sex with the other woman but she can give him a blow job.”

Now, whose fantasy do you think that is? His or hers?

The answer, of course, is his, which is perfectly fine because these kinds of requests are usually placed by a wife or girlfriend to give as a gift to her male significant other. It’s actually sweet that she should want to honor a sexual fantasy of his—especially through the safety of an erotic story, where the risk is minimal but the eroticism still runs high.

But sometimes, these clients will disclose more information to me. They will tell me that they feel a little pressured to have a threesome or that they had one and didn’t like it, so they’re hoping the story will serve as an almost conciliatory gesture or a replacement for the real thing. They feel guilty or inadequate for not wanting the same thing their partner wants. Not all of them feel this way, but enough of them do for me to notice.

And then there are the requests from the men that help explain some of the dynamic that might exist between some couples:

“My wife is not very adventurous about sex and can sometimes be uptight when I suggest new things to try. So, we go slow because she’s shy. I would never want to make her uncomfortable so please stay within the guidelines I’ve outlined.”

Boy, did you find some red-hot warning words in there? “Not very adventurous,” “uptight,” and “shy” certainly send off some alarms. If he feels this way about her, she’s likely to be sensing that – and it’s probably not predisposing her to open up or feel at ease with who she is or what she likes.

But the question is: should she open up? Is she actually closed? Unadventurous? Uptight?

Obviously, only a shrink can assess this situation accurately, but I’ve got a few thoughts.

Because I write erotica and by the nature of my business, come into contact with some of the sex industry’s “celebrities,” I have a pretty good sense of what’s being peddled to you. You’re told that you need to talk dirty in bed, learn how to wear and wield a dildo, take anything from a butt plug to a baseball bat up your ass, pierce your erogenous zones, and appreciate the dual nature of dominant/submissive play. You’re being exposed to people who blog about their sexual exploits with impunity. You’re expected to believe that Kim Cattrall’s over-the-top “Samantha” character on Sex in the City bears any resemblance to any reasonable, believable, plausible woman on this earth.

In an attempt to entertain and shock us, our media has been feeding us a steady stream of ludicrous sexual performers, who engage in most of the stuff they do not because they really love it but because outrageous sex sells like the freak shows and carnivals used to before television was invented.

Not all of this is bad, of course. We often learn about what we like by being exposed to it, either through reading or first-hand observation. If, for instance, you watch a self-proclaimed “sex educator” shove something foreign up her ass and that evokes a rush of blood to your head, then you might want to go out and get a similar object and emulate what she did with it. But if you watched and thought, “What the hell is she doing? She’s going to end up in the emergency room!”, then I’m willing to bet that anal activities are not for you.

That’s doesn’t mean you’re repressed or unenlightened. It just means your wonderfully intrinsic sexual barometer is functioning normally. If something stirs you, do it. But if you have to intellectualize it and ultimately decide to do it because you think everybody else is doing it, you’re not acting out of that primal programming that keeps life simple and uncomplicated. You’re responding to peer pressure.

And the irony is that when you put yourself in sexual situations that are motivated by intellect instead of libido, you’re almost guaranteed to have a bad experience. You or somebody close to you might suggest you have a problem, and that’s just not true. Sexual curiosity is healthy but only when it’s truly sexual.

Stick with what whispers in your ear, makes your skin tingle, and weakens your knees. That’s what sexually sophisticated people do. What’s the point of anything else?

Sage.
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