One of the most interesting phenomenons I've witnessed in dealing with human sexuality is the ability of people to train themselves into having an orgasm. Any one who has ever masturbated has engaged in a selftraining program which has taught them how to orgasm. Before we talk about female training, I'll give you an example from male sexuality.
I worked with a male once who was a regular masturbator. During masturbation, he fantasized about having his partner bent over the edge of a couch and engaging in rear penetration, not anal sex. For months he used this same fantasy to help him reach orgasm during masturbation. This affected his sex life. When he was having sex with his partner, he found that he was losing his erection and finding it difficult to climax in any other position. The only way he was able to reach orgasm during actual sex was by imitating what he had been doing in his masturbation fantasies.
Essentially, he had trained himself about how to get off. Men are not the only ones who train themselves. In fact, the training men do usually does not interfere with their ability to reach an orgasm during actual intercourse. With women, it's different. Women train themselves in two ways. First, they train themselves to reach orgasm using specific techniques. Second, they train themselves for each orgasm using certain fantasies. Let's talk about both of these.
When women begin masturbating, they do tend to try multiple ways of accomplishing the goal. Once they find something that works then they stick to it. Let me give you an example. One woman I worked with had been masturbating with a vibrator for about ten years. She had to use the same vibrator every time because she claimed no other vibrator could bring her to orgasm. With sexual partners, she would fake orgasm then excuse herself to the bathroom where she would reach a real orgasm using her vibrator. After a decade of relying on the same toy and the same technique to reach orgasm, this young woman had taught her body how to have an orgasm.
Since her partner's penis was not her vibrator, it was not capable of doing the job. To his credit, he did try a variety of things to help her but the problem really wasn't his alone to fix. She had to re-train her body. The second method of training often begins even before a woman ever masturbates. As soon as girls begin fantasizing about men, they are beginning to train their bodies about how to reach orgasm. I have another example to share which illustrates this fact as well. A woman I worked with had been relying on the same fantasies during masturbation for almost two decades. Her preference were rape fantasies in which she was the victim and was non-violently coerced into having intercourse with multiple partners.
The fantasies involved different scenarios, locations, and men but the basics were all the same. Even when she tried to have other fantasies, they would always end up deteriorating into a rape fantasy before she was able to orgasm. The only time she was able to reach an orgasm with her husband was when they attempted to act out her fantasy. Like the other woman, she had to re-train her mind about what turned her on and what would lead her to an orgasm.
The reason I'm sharing these stories with you is because orgasm training is one of the biggest, yet most often unrecognized, reasons for women's difficulties in reaching an orgasm. The only way to break free of that old training is through experimentation. The more the two of you try different things the more likely she is to find something else that can help her climax.
What You Need to Remember
Keep in mind as you read the next two chapters that there are a number of reasons why women may have more difficulty reaching an orgasm than men will. Those reasons include social pressures not to enjoy sex, a lack of trust in the relationship, anatomical differences between men and women, and limited orgasm training.
Understanding what may be hampering your sexual relationship will help you determine the best course of action to take in order to enjoy mutually satisfying sex.
Female Orgasm and Foreplay
For men who want to please their partners, foreplay is not optional. I make that point because I've worked with lots of men who hated foreplay and just wanted to get down to business without realizing that foreplay has an important role in female orgasm. I've also worked with men who enjoy foreplay just as much as the women in their lives. What's important to realize is that foreplay should be about what makes her feel good because at this point you're probably already in a state of arousal. She is probably not at that point yet.
In this we're first going to discuss the female sexual arousal cycle and compare it to yours. Then, we'll look at some types of foreplay which you can try with your partner in order to help her become physically and psychologically ready to orgasm.
Who Teaches Men How to Be Effective Lovers?
Who teaches men to be effective lovers? Until now, no one. The prevailing word in that question is “effective.” Almost any woman can compile a list of ineffective teachers. Most women that I have interviewed report that their male partner has few clues about how to be a consistently effective lover.
Every man has teachers. His own “urge to merge” provides the drive. Then he looks around for guidance in how to use that phallic power. Other boys or men will share their stories of sexual prowess. The movies and TV provide sexual images, portraying what appear to be well-received offers and action leading to sexual intercourse. Most young men (of any age) find their way to pornography. Pictures and videos provide models for sexual intercourse.
We all recognize the scene. First of all, the woman is obviously ready, willing and able. Most times a passionate kiss begins the encounter. She responds to his kiss and embrace. Both begin almost immediately to rip off each other’s clothing, and find an acceptable space for the man to lie on top of her. We may see a few seconds of his passionate caressing of her breasts and nipples, and then, almost immediately he is inside of her and she is moaning in ecstasy. The next scene usually shows one of them leaving the bed, either soon thereafter or early the next morning. End of one more ineffective lesson.
In spite of the prevalence of, our culture remains sex-phobic and uneducated. Most women have little permission to explore the sensual riches of their own bodies or to experience the fullness of their own sexual passions. Therefore, most women are unprepared to teach their male lovers what to do. The almost mythic story of the older woman who takes the young male and teaches him the secrets of sexual intercourse remains fascinating and always a bit frowned upon.
Sexual incompatibility, which adds to relationship tensions, frequently has more to do with ignorance than with poor intention. The time has come to move beyond cultural taboos to sensitive, relationship-affirming sexual education for women and for men.
Every man has teachers. His own “urge to merge” provides the drive. Then he looks around for guidance in how to use that phallic power. Other boys or men will share their stories of sexual prowess. The movies and TV provide sexual images, portraying what appear to be well-received offers and action leading to sexual intercourse. Most young men (of any age) find their way to pornography. Pictures and videos provide models for sexual intercourse.
We all recognize the scene. First of all, the woman is obviously ready, willing and able. Most times a passionate kiss begins the encounter. She responds to his kiss and embrace. Both begin almost immediately to rip off each other’s clothing, and find an acceptable space for the man to lie on top of her. We may see a few seconds of his passionate caressing of her breasts and nipples, and then, almost immediately he is inside of her and she is moaning in ecstasy. The next scene usually shows one of them leaving the bed, either soon thereafter or early the next morning. End of one more ineffective lesson.
In spite of the prevalence of, our culture remains sex-phobic and uneducated. Most women have little permission to explore the sensual riches of their own bodies or to experience the fullness of their own sexual passions. Therefore, most women are unprepared to teach their male lovers what to do. The almost mythic story of the older woman who takes the young male and teaches him the secrets of sexual intercourse remains fascinating and always a bit frowned upon.
Sexual incompatibility, which adds to relationship tensions, frequently has more to do with ignorance than with poor intention. The time has come to move beyond cultural taboos to sensitive, relationship-affirming sexual education for women and for men.
Shanghai Embraces Sex Education
Many people in Shanghai are still ignorant about sexual health issues, but attitudes are changing fast, writes John Gittings. University students in Shanghai are to be given training in Aids peer counselling and school teachers will take a more active part in sex education, in a city where sexual mores are probably changing faster than anywhere else in China.
The nation's first sexual health phone hotline, run by Shanghai's central family planning clinic 24 hours a day, is now well established. It provides contraceptive advice on the web regardless of marital status.
Newly published research among young Shanghai adults also shows that unmarried relationships are widely accepted and sexually active young women are no longer stigmatised.
In general attitudes towards sex are more relaxed than in most other parts of China. However medical experts acknowledge that behind the new sophistication there are still large areas of ignorance.
Shanghai's Red Cross has just announced that it will train 80 student volunteers in Aids education. These will then fan out among more than twenty local universities and colleges to work as peer counsellors.
A Red Cross survey last year of 20,000 college students discovered that 77% did not know how AIDS was transmitted.
In another recent move, Shanghai's secondary school teachers have been asked to discuss sex "interactively" with their students, instead of relying on textbook tuition, in a plan now being considered by the city's education commission.
Teenagers in China especially in urban areas are becoming physically larger and are maturing more quickly, in common with their counterparts in developed Western countries.
"The onset of the first menstruation of girls is becoming earlier and so is their sexuality," says one Shanghai doctor.
Reports from Beijing, where a new teenagers' clinic was recently set up at the city's No 2 hospital, suggest the same pattern. Young people are reaching sexual maturity there a year earlier than was common a decade ago.
China's first sex hotline, set up two years ago, is run by the Shanghai Institute of Family Planning Technical Instruction. The institute, which was founded in 1970 (when China's planned birth programme had hardly begun), seeks "to prevent unwanted pregnancy, decrease induced abortion and promote reproductive health." Doctors say they receive calls on a wide range of topics previously regarded as taboo.
The hotline operates from a small room at the clinic divided into two by a screen, with a bed for the duty doctor and a bare table with a telephone on the other.
A record kept on a typical day by Dr Yu Meiying, working a 24-hour shift, showed a wide range of questions dealt with over the previous night. Several callers expressed concern about their sexual performance, with worries about lack of enjoyment and about the time taken for intercourse. Others enquired about contraceptive precautions and general sexual health.
The institute's website provides information on emergency postcoital contraception, listing several forms of intervention available at its clinic.
Anyone who is anxious about unwanted pregnancy is invited to send an enquiry by email. The online form includes a space for the "unmarried" with no hint of the disapproval formerly shown.
An important new study published this month shows that social censure of sexual activity before marriage is on the decline in Shanghai, and that a new youth culture has emerged based upon "romance, leisure and free choice."
"The concept of 'purity' still exists," says James Farrer of Sophia University in Tokyo, "but judgement is based much more on the motive [for having sex before marriage]. There is understanding for sex based either on material motives or on love."
His book Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai, published by the University of Chicago Press, is the result of several years of field research in residential neighbourhoods and among the city's nightlife.
It charts a new sex culture dominated by modern transnational values and driven by consumerism, although some elements from the socialist era survive. Images of the decadent colonial past provide an ambiguous historical backcloth.
Mr Farrer believes that there is now "a more nuanced understanding of change in sexual standards and what they mean for individuals, especially for sexually active young women ... "
Derogatory terms used by young men towards women assumed to be sexually available are also on the decline, and there is now "a strong discourse of gender equality."
However the most popular methods of contraception suggest that women in Shanghai, as elsewhere in China, still have to shoulder the main burden of responsibility.
SIFPTI director Dr Zhu Huibin says that they are working hard to develop a male hormone contraceptive. "It is the best hope for the 21st century, but it will take a lot of work to persuade men to take it. We still have too much inequality between man and woman in our country."
Statistics compiled by the Institute for forms of contraception used by married couples show that the IUD is employed in 73% of cases. Only 13% use condoms: the remainder use the pill or the rhythm method.
Condoms are more widely used in premarital sex but experts admit that there is a growing problem over HIV-Aids prevention. In Beijing, couples intending to get married are routinely screened for HIV-Aids. This is only done in Shanghai for pregnant women and couples seeking artificial fertilisation - and for the special category of "Chinese women marrying foreigners".
"Our government has only begun to do Aids publicity this year," says a doctor. "It is hard to persuade young men to take it seriously."
The nation's first sexual health phone hotline, run by Shanghai's central family planning clinic 24 hours a day, is now well established. It provides contraceptive advice on the web regardless of marital status.
Newly published research among young Shanghai adults also shows that unmarried relationships are widely accepted and sexually active young women are no longer stigmatised.
In general attitudes towards sex are more relaxed than in most other parts of China. However medical experts acknowledge that behind the new sophistication there are still large areas of ignorance.
Shanghai's Red Cross has just announced that it will train 80 student volunteers in Aids education. These will then fan out among more than twenty local universities and colleges to work as peer counsellors.
A Red Cross survey last year of 20,000 college students discovered that 77% did not know how AIDS was transmitted.
In another recent move, Shanghai's secondary school teachers have been asked to discuss sex "interactively" with their students, instead of relying on textbook tuition, in a plan now being considered by the city's education commission.
Teenagers in China especially in urban areas are becoming physically larger and are maturing more quickly, in common with their counterparts in developed Western countries.
"The onset of the first menstruation of girls is becoming earlier and so is their sexuality," says one Shanghai doctor.
Reports from Beijing, where a new teenagers' clinic was recently set up at the city's No 2 hospital, suggest the same pattern. Young people are reaching sexual maturity there a year earlier than was common a decade ago.
China's first sex hotline, set up two years ago, is run by the Shanghai Institute of Family Planning Technical Instruction. The institute, which was founded in 1970 (when China's planned birth programme had hardly begun), seeks "to prevent unwanted pregnancy, decrease induced abortion and promote reproductive health." Doctors say they receive calls on a wide range of topics previously regarded as taboo.
The hotline operates from a small room at the clinic divided into two by a screen, with a bed for the duty doctor and a bare table with a telephone on the other.
A record kept on a typical day by Dr Yu Meiying, working a 24-hour shift, showed a wide range of questions dealt with over the previous night. Several callers expressed concern about their sexual performance, with worries about lack of enjoyment and about the time taken for intercourse. Others enquired about contraceptive precautions and general sexual health.
The institute's website provides information on emergency postcoital contraception, listing several forms of intervention available at its clinic.
Anyone who is anxious about unwanted pregnancy is invited to send an enquiry by email. The online form includes a space for the "unmarried" with no hint of the disapproval formerly shown.
An important new study published this month shows that social censure of sexual activity before marriage is on the decline in Shanghai, and that a new youth culture has emerged based upon "romance, leisure and free choice."
"The concept of 'purity' still exists," says James Farrer of Sophia University in Tokyo, "but judgement is based much more on the motive [for having sex before marriage]. There is understanding for sex based either on material motives or on love."
His book Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai, published by the University of Chicago Press, is the result of several years of field research in residential neighbourhoods and among the city's nightlife.
It charts a new sex culture dominated by modern transnational values and driven by consumerism, although some elements from the socialist era survive. Images of the decadent colonial past provide an ambiguous historical backcloth.
Mr Farrer believes that there is now "a more nuanced understanding of change in sexual standards and what they mean for individuals, especially for sexually active young women ... "
Derogatory terms used by young men towards women assumed to be sexually available are also on the decline, and there is now "a strong discourse of gender equality."
However the most popular methods of contraception suggest that women in Shanghai, as elsewhere in China, still have to shoulder the main burden of responsibility.
SIFPTI director Dr Zhu Huibin says that they are working hard to develop a male hormone contraceptive. "It is the best hope for the 21st century, but it will take a lot of work to persuade men to take it. We still have too much inequality between man and woman in our country."
Statistics compiled by the Institute for forms of contraception used by married couples show that the IUD is employed in 73% of cases. Only 13% use condoms: the remainder use the pill or the rhythm method.
Condoms are more widely used in premarital sex but experts admit that there is a growing problem over HIV-Aids prevention. In Beijing, couples intending to get married are routinely screened for HIV-Aids. This is only done in Shanghai for pregnant women and couples seeking artificial fertilisation - and for the special category of "Chinese women marrying foreigners".
"Our government has only begun to do Aids publicity this year," says a doctor. "It is hard to persuade young men to take it seriously."
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