The Truth About Sex, A Sex Primer for the 21st Century Volume II: Sex for Grown-Ups. Gloria G. Brame

sex than techniques and anatomy. Sex is both private and social. It is intensely private in that most people don’t talk about what they do in the bedroom. But it is also very social, in that most people abide by, or at least are aware of, “rules” set by society.

      What most people don’t realize is that those rules are in constant flux and, like all social customs, change, evolve, revert, and are subverted by historical, political and religious forces. In the 21^st century, I must also add “technological” forces since the advent of a generation raised after the Internet was invented, and in possession of gadgets to hook up and “sext” with from puberty on, has altered the course of human sexual history.

      When we look at the emerging data on sexual relationships, it’s still a chaos of unanswerables. For example, a 2012 study reported that more women are breaking their vows of monogamy than before, and that their number may soon rival or even outpace the number of male cheaters. The way it was reported and blogged about, one might think the news that wives are now fooling around almost as much as husbands is proof that Western Civilization is collapsing. The notion of women doing something men have traditionally done is terrifying. Prepare for Armageddon! At least, that’s how the story sounded, filtered through the minds of sex hysterics always on the look-out for proof that the Rapture will be triggered by a lubricated vagina.

      As a sexologist, I take all such data to mean exactly what they mean: we are looking at a snapshot of human sexual behavior at a moment in time and at a particular place. Even if I trusted that this one study was definitive, it still said very little to me about overall human behavior. It is interesting only in that it suggests we live in a culture where American women feel freer than they did 20 to 30 years ago to break their marriage vows.

      The key difference between now and past times is not that we are necessarily more permissive as a society: it’s that we keep more records now. But we’ve only been gathering data on sex since the Victorian era and, needless to say, have gathered it from a Victorian point of view, operating from some of their assumptions, possibly asking the wrong questions, and then acting alarmed by data that shows society is not living up to the idealized model.

      To my knowledge, no such survey existed at the time but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that female adulterers were numerous during the WWII era. The draft and the War’s effect on ordinary civilians was what you’d expect: an awful lot of lonely military wives left behind in the prime of youth, surrounded by men yet to be drafted or soldiers passing through, at a time when happiness was about what you could have now because tomorrow might never come. If the statistics didn’t show massive amounts of fooling around during the war years, I’d be surprised.

      What we don’t know about the history of mating and sex will always be greater than what we do know. We may know a period or place’s public face of sex, according to the dictates and precepts of the dominating religion or political system. The only assumption we can make with any certainty about the past however is that despite different customs and belief systems, humans have always been sexually creative, sexually diverse, and very horny.

      Even when religious fervor was at a pitch in Medieval Europe, and a celibate monk named Albertus Magnus was describing the only correct position (missionary) for married couples – a theory which later became religious doctrine – there is abundant documentation that people carried on then just as they do now. Unmarried sex, extra-marital affairs, threeways, gay and lesbian sex and everything else many people still call abnormal have always been pretty normal for humans. As someone who has looked at tens of thousands of vintage porn photos, I’m absolutely certain that if there were webcams in the Middle Ages, we’d have footage of debauched serf orgies. Instead, we have to rely on Flemish paintings depicting them.

      I find it grim how many adults are inexperienced or clumsy with sex and how many limit themselves to a tiny, sometimes monotonous repertoire of sex acts. Whether it’s the traditional couple who only have intercourse in one position their whole lives, or the kinky person who obsesses so much over toys, he or she never learns the basics of orgasmic sex, acquiring basic techniques for giving and getting sexual pleasure is a litmus test of your own ability to function as a satisfying, adult sexual partner.

      If we really cared about supporting committed relationships and marriage, we would encourage grown-ups to mature sexually. Like the rest of your life, if your sex life doesn’t grow it will stagnate. In my perfect world, adults would experiment with all the different ways they can climax – oral, anal, manual, penetrative, non-penetrative – so they can have enough variety in their sex lives to sustain them and keep them interested into old age. The longer you are with someone, the more ways you should know how to turn them on and get them off. That would be a more successful model for permanent sexual partnership than telling people they can only have sex in one or two positions for the rest of their lives.

      I’m more flexible when it comes to frequency. Some experts claim there is a fixed number of times it is normal to have sex. I disagree. I encourage people to orgasm regularly but I’m content with whatever is regular for them, without pressuring them to meet an artificial standard. The desire for orgasms is one of the greatest variables in human sexuality. I’ve worked with couples who had sex ten times a week and wished they had time for more; and couples who didn’t want or need it more once or twice a month. When all partners are satisfied with their pattern, their sexual health is good, and they’re getting enough intimacy to feel content, there is nothing to fix or change.

      To me, frequency is not as important as respecting the importance of sex and making it a regular part of your relationship, according to your and your partner’s needs and schedules. The couples I worry about are the ones who make sex their lowest priority, avoid it, never make the time for it, don’t communicate about it, and thus don’t really sexually mature.

      LARRY and JEAN-MARIE had been married for 45 years. They were in my office because she didn’t want to have sex with him anymore. While she sniffled into a hankie, he glowered as she said that while she didn’t mind it too much, he wanted to have it every day and after 45 years of it, she just couldn’t anymore.

      My first thoughts, naturally, went to menopause and the thought that Jean-Marie’s libido had significantly altered. But by the next session, the problem came into focus.

      In 45 years, they had never changed their routine. When Larry got to bed at night, he always began by touching her breasts until he was aroused, and then penetrated her. Jean-Marie had come to dread that breast-grab. She didn’t really know if she’d ever had an orgasm. All she knew was that she was tired of having sex with him. Larry, meanwhile, was hoping I’d tell them if there was a pill to make her more sexually compliant. She wouldn’t let him touch her anywhere but her breasts. Neither was open to making changes in the way they had sex. Jean-Marie wanted to write sex off completely; Larry just wanted what he wanted, a wife who’d let him get on top of her every night.

      Frankly, I would be tired of having sex too if it was that predictable and unvaried. A common thread uniting many marriage partners who complain of poor sex lives is that neither of them are actually very good at sex. Sometimes, it’s because one partner is selfish in bed and doesn’t care as much about how their partner feels. Sometimes they’re too shy to introduce alternatives, too embarrassed to make themselves look foolish if they make a mistake, or too inhibited or guilty to suggest variations that might make it better for one or both of them. Sometimes, one partner’s shame or inhibition casts such a chill over the bed that the sex itself is cold and anti-septic.

      My clinical view is that the problem here was chronic sexual immaturity. Larry was still a fumbling fratboy, trying to have the kind of sex he had at age 20, with about the same success most men that age have (i.e., limited). Jean-Marie had never reached her own erotic potential and she blamed it all on her husband. No longer the newlywed drenched with hormones, she was turning into a bitter old lady who had stopped caring about her husband’s genuine need for intimacy and physical love.

      For them to heal, they had to restart their sex life on a healthier footing, and learn to spend more time on all the cuddly parts of sex – the fondling and kissing