Ian Kerner, Ph.D.
HE
COMES
NEXT
The Thinking Womans Guide
to Pleasuring a Man
F or Lisa,
my she in She Comes First
Contents
Preface: The Woman on the Shaky Bridge
Introduction
Dear Ian
Part I: The Male Body
1. Beneath His Armor: Inside the Male Body
2. Male Sexual Response: A Protected Process
3. The Male Brain: The Itch
4. The Male Mind: Overcoming Libido Limbo and the Fear of Fantasy
Part II: Techniques
5. Putting Ideas into Action
6. Fit to F**K
7. Foreplay
8. Extreme Foreplay
9. Dragon Tails
10. The Foreplay Files: An Oral History
11. Getting a Head-Heart on Great Sex
12. St[r]oking His Heart-on
13. Arousal, Part 1: The Hands-Down Hands-Off Secret to Hands-On Heat
14. Rubbing Him the Right Way
15. Fillin Good
16. Arousal, Part 2: Rhythmic Stimulation
17. Pump the Pedal!
18. The Butt Stops Here
Conclusion
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Ian Kerner, Ph.D.
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Preface:
The Woman on the Shaky Bridge
Warning: This book is not recommended
for any woman with a fear of heights.
A LLOW ME to explain.
If you ever happen to find yourself crossing the Capilano River in North Vancouver, Canada, youll have two bridges to choose from. The first is definitely not for the faint of heart: A mere five feet wide and 450 feet long, the Capilano Canyon Suspension Bridge is constructed solely of plank and cable and sways perilously in the wind some 250 feet above the turbulent rocky tidesright out of a scene from Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo . Your other choice? A solidly built anchored bridge that sits a mere ten feet above sea level.
In 1974, two well-known psychologists, Arthur Aron and Donald Dutton, used these bridges as the focus of an ingenious experimentone that sought to explore the mysterious nature of sexual attraction. Its informally dubbed the Shaky Bridge Study, but I like to refer to it as the If He So Desired Test.
The two-part experiment went something like this. On day one, whenever an unaccompanied man ventured across the shaky bridge, he would find himself stopped midway by a beautiful young woman. She would introduce herself as a psychology researcher and then proceed to ask if he would mind participating in a brief survey.
On day two, the identical routine would be conducted by the same woman on the sturdy bridge.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? But there was a little twist: When each of the men completed the survey, the young woman would hand him her phone number and tell him that he was free to call her later that evening for the results if he so desired .
Unbeknownst to the subjects, the real study was not the answers the men gave on the survey, but what happened afterward. Aron and Dutton set out to examine which of the men gave the pretty psychologist a call and, more importantly, why. In other words, they were interested in studying not just what happened on the bridge, but how that affected what happened later. They wanted to examine the rudiments of sexual desire, not merely the in-the-moment cause-and-reaction of talking to a pretty girl, but also how that first interaction evolved into a long-term desire for extended contact. Would the excitement and exhilaration of being on the shaky bridge, versus the more mundane experience of being on the solid bridge, promote romantic attraction?
In technical terms, Aron and Dutton were testing a concept called misattribution, also known as excitation transfer theory: Lingering excitement from one situationsay walking across a shaky bridge versus a stable onecould intensify a subsequent emotional state (in this instance, recollection of the encounter with the beautiful psychologist). Or, to put it simply: Does adrenaline make the heart grow fonder?
The answer? Indeed, it does.
Not only did Aron and Dutton find that the men on the shaky bridge were more likely than their stable-bridge counterparts to call the woman later for results of the survey, but they were also far more likely to ask her for a date !
Well come back to this experiment a little later when we talk about the roles excitement and novelty play in stimulating our brains natural sex wiring, and Ill outline my shaky bridge approach to great sex. (Dont worry: It doesnt involve getting it on while bungee jumpingthough that probably wouldnt hurt, accidents notwithstanding.)
Based on my experience working with couples, its my wholehearted conviction that beneath the layers of decorative linens that cover our conjugal beds, there lies a shaky bridge, ready and waiting for high-stakes action. Yet most of us spend our sex lives on the stable, sturdy oneoften without realizing it. As your friendly neighborhood sex therapist, Im here to help you take a monumental leap across the crashing tides to reach that soaring pendulous viaduct of desire.
But before we shake things up, allow me to wax poetic for a moment on The Woman on the Shaky Bridge:
She is Dantes Beatrice and Gatsbys Daisy; she is Guinevere, Juliet, Helen, and Eurydice, to name a few. Or, to put it in more contemporary terms, the woman on the shaky bridge is Billy Bobs Angelina; shes Toms Nicole and Katie all rolled into one; shes Nicks Jessica (before the alleged anorexia and cheating), Brads Jen, I mean Angelinaokay on second thought Id better stick with the classics.
You get the point. The woman on the shaky bridge is the stuff that dreams are made of, the gold from which love at first sight is wrought. Shes sexy and excitingthe embodiment of desirability, the essence of allurement.
But believe it or not, the greatest asset of the Woman on the Shaky Bridge is not her beauty or her body; its her brain. Its her knowledge of sexual psychology and her ability to apply it its knowing which bridge to walk on in the first place.
My goal in these pages is far more ambitious than to provide you with a collection of hot sex tips and techniques. I want to give you more than just a way of a way of doing ; I want to give you a vision: a way of thinking and being .
Regardless of your looks, body, or age; whether youre single or married; whether youre approaching date number three or 3,000, I want nothing less than to make you the woman on the shaky bridge.
T HE INSPIRATION for He Comes Next came to me on the road, while I was out spreading the word about She Comes First . At every stop on my national book tour, women approached me with questions and comments.
Many were all charged up about the whole She Comes First philosophy, but they wanted pointers on how to get their guys to read it without hurting their feelings or pissing them offa theme Ill return to later: How to deal with the sexual know-it-all who really doesnt know a whole lot. Others thanked me for their many fabulous orgasms and wanted to know when they could expect a guide on how to return the favor.
Truth be told, I was a bit surprised by the demand. Certainly, theres no shortage of how-tos on the subject. If anything, the overblown focus, pardon the pun, on pleasing men was the reason I decided to write She Comes First in the first place, as a means to level the sexual-playing field. But apparently, something was still out of whack. When I asked women what they wanted from a sex book on pleasuring men, in one way or another, all of them said the same thing: a thinking womans guidea book that doesnt treat us or our male partners like dummies.
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