Sex (Over)Drive
Q: As you can imagine, I’ve spent more time at home with my family than ever in the past year. This has affected my marriage in a lot of ways, good and bad. We’re closer than ever. I am hornier than ever. She is not. I know that part of it is that she’s tired and stressed, but even when we managed to leave the kids with the grandparents and get away for a few days, she had trouble getting horny.
We’re kind of at that make or break age, where I’ve had some friends say that after a certain age sex got even better and more intense with their wives, whereas other friends complained that the well dried up completely. Anyway, you can imagine that I’d like to steer us on a course toward the former, not the latter. How can I do this?
A: You are certainly not alone with this issue! Sexual desire is affected by so many factors, and one of the main culprits of lowered libido is stress. I’m so happy to hear that you are “closer than ever” as this closeness and intimacy is ultimately what keeps couples together, above the sex. That’s not to say that sexuality is not important. But we need to figure out what is keeping your wife from “choosing” sex. For many women, they lose their spontaneous desire for sex (their horniness or hunger for it). That doesn’t mean they stop being attracted to their partner or that they don’t enjoy the sex when they are having it. Basically, they are missing their “get up and go”. This is why I talk about “choosing” sex, allowing your partner to stimulate you, and then the hunger/desire usually kicks in. So it works a little differently for many women (and some men). Find out what conditions she needs to feel relaxed and open to being intimate—Maybe she needs more help from you, more nonsexual touch/affection, more time for herself, etc. I recommend you view my TEDx talk on the subject together.
Learning The Basics
Q: I’m an 18-year-old female and my boyfriend is 19. We were both virgins until about a week ago, and before dating, he’d never even touched a woman below the belt. Based on stories that friends had told about their own sexual experiences, I had very low expectations for my boyfriend—but even those weren’t low enough. His knowledge of the female anatomy is functionally zero.
From my own solo experiences, I know I can orgasm pretty easily with clitoral stimulation. He doesn’t even know what the clitoris is, let alone where. I could tell after our first time that it hadn’t exactly gone as he’d envisioned it—after all, I didn’t effortlessly cum just from him putting it in, which is what I think he expected. How do I help him improve sexually without bruising his ego?
A: There’s no shame in not knowing something. Most people don’t get adequate sexuality education and when they do get some, they certainly don’t learn about pleasure or how to pleasure their partner. We all have to learn somewhere! You both need to have a chat about sex, and look at this as an adventure in discovering each other’s bodies. You need to give him a road map to your body, which means you have to teach him how to touch you. Take turns exploring each other’s bodies. Remember, no one is born a great lover—we become great lovers. Both of you can scroll through this site—we have articles and videos from the most basic sexual information to the far more complex. This needs to be a journey you take together.