Table of Contents
To all my clients
Acknowledgments
It takes a team to create a book. I would like to thank: my agent, Barbara Lowenstein, and the staff in her office for their professionalism, efficiency, and support; my editor, Cherise Davis, and everyone at Hudson Street Press who worked on the book; John Webb, for the many times he showed me how to work his fax when mine wouldnt do the job; Julia Sokol for her editorial skills and insight. Finally I would like to thank all the men and women who shared their ideas and talked to me about their sexual issues.
Reminder
We are living in the twenty-first century. This means that sexually transmitted diseases are a fact of life. I would like to remind everyone about condom use. I realize that with some of the techniques and exercises in this book, it is not always possible to use a condom. These are best done within the context of a committed sexual relationship in which both partners have had honest conversations about their exposure to STDs such as herpes and HPV and have had blood tests with negative results for the more serious STDs such as HIV.
Introduction
You are a lucky woman! Unlike women who lived in other eras, you have sexual choices. You can have sex with as many or as few men as you want. Unlike your grandmother, you were not led to believe that you would have to marry the first man who managed to undo the hooks on your bra. You are free to embrace and enjoy your sexuality. This is a great thing!
Nonetheless, we need to be realistic. The typical sexually active woman knows that the sex that is happening in her life doesnt always resemble the sex that is taking place in movies or current chick lit. Sleep with more than a few men, and the odds are that you are going to find yourself in a passionate embrace with a man who is too quick. Go to bed with a few more, and you will probably meet a man who sometimes cant get it up. You may even find yourself in a sexual relationship with someone who has a difficult time getting it down. The more years you spend as a single, sexually active woman, the greater the likelihood of meeting a man who rarely (or never) wants sex as well as a man who always wants sexsometimes the kinkier the better. Right now, in fact, you may even be in a relationship with one of these men. Even if you opt for one monogamous sexual relationship for the rest of your life, and have no intention of ever having sex with anyone else, you will find that the sexual attitude and behavior of the man in your bed change with time and age. You owe it to yourself to be prepared for all these possibilities.
At one time or another, most women will have to ask themselves whether they should try to forge successful, satisfying relationships with men who have sexual issues. As women, we tend to hold ourselves responsible for the sexual behavior of the men in our beds. Weve been told things like If your guy has limited desire, buy sexy lingerie, learn sensuous foot massage, purchase off-the-rack dominatrix outfits, and share your fantasies. This tends to reinforce a womans belief that what happens in her bed is dependent on her ability to turn a man on. The opposite is also true. If the love of your life wants to have sex with everything that walks, youre told that you should take him to church or show him the way to a sexual addiction counselor or group. In all likelihood, at one time or another, every woman will ask herself, Is it my fault? or What should I be doing differently?
Complain to a friend that you are interested in a man who may not be the lover you dreamed of, and you may be advised to move on and look for greener pastures. The problem with that advice is that these problematic sexual partners may be men you like (and sometimes even love), real people with real concerns, not jokes on Comedy Central or Sex and the City reruns. In short, what can you expect from your love life? Is there such a thing as a normal sexual experience? If your experiences are less fulfilling than you expected, what can you do about it?
I started having sex at what I considered to be a late age (eighteen) . I was definitely ready and eager before then, but the truth is that I couldnt talk anybody into it. As soon as I started having sex, I knew right away that I loved it! I immediately began looking forward to a lifetime of pleasure. I was lucky. My first few lovers fulfilled my expectations; they were so wonderfully normal that I took it for granted that all men were going to be that way. I didnt realize at the time how lucky I was.
Then, when I was still in my early twenties, there came the year that changed my life: Thats when I became romantically involved with a group of men who were more than a little deficient in the bed department. It all started with Kevin, whose interest in sex was nonexistent. On a scale of one to ten, Kevin was about a minus two. He was followed by Harry, who couldnt (or wouldnt) ejaculate, and Brian, who I thought of fondly as the incredible two hundred pound, nonmoving man; he had an erection, but he would just lay there and didnt seem to know what to do with it. Brian was followed by several men with erection problems and several men with such serious alcohol problems that they couldnt get an erection.
You get the picture. For a while there, every man I met seemed to have a sexual issue or some other kind of personal issue that affected his sex life. My sex life was not turning out to be the exciting frolic I had expected. Whats going on here? I wondered. Trying to understand what was going on in my own bedroom, I had started to do some reading and research, hoping to figure out what to do with some of these men, or at least the ones I was still interested in. I wanted to know more about sex and since my primary interest was heterosexual, I wanted more information about men. Thats when I read an article in a local paper about a sex clinic that was employing sexual surrogate partners to help people with sexual problems. At the time, I was working for the post office, delivering mail in a little truck and wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life. When I read the article about sexual surrogate partners, I really did have an Aha! moment. I said to myself, I could do that... I could become a sexual surrogate and get a job having sex with men with problems. What a way to make a living! You see, I already felt as though I was doing exactly thathaving sex with men with problemsbut I wasnt getting paid!
Since my Aha! moment, I have spent much of my adult life studying male sexuality. Not only is it a subject about which I know a great deal, it is also the subject that is nearest and dearest to my heart. When I began my career in sexuality (sex researcher, educator, and therapist) as a sexual surrogate partner, I was in school studying for an Associate of Arts degree. I went on to earn a B.A., with a major in psychology, an M.A. in experimental psychology, and a Ph.D. in health psychology. In the past twenty years, I have taught all levelsgraduate and undergraduateof psychology and human sexuality. During my years as a sexual surrogate partner, I was associated with a sex therapy clinic where I was trained in a system based on the work of Masters and Johnson, pioneers in the behavioral treatment of sex problems. At this clinic I worked with hundreds and hundreds of men, women, and couples with all types of sexual concerns and issues. For many years I also had a private practice as a sex therapist. In addition to working with clients, in my personal life as a sexually active woman, I have been involved with many men who exhibited all types of sexual issues. In short, I have been to bed with great lovers, good lovers, bad lovers, boring lovers, clueless lovers, and everything in between.
