Bettina Arndt - What men want in bed

IN BED

BETTINA
ARNDT

WHAT
MEN
WANT

IN BED

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS
An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited
187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia
mup-info@unimelb.edu.au
www.mup.com.au

First published 2010
Text Bettina Arndt, 2010
Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Ltd, 2010

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

9780522859782

National Library of Australia Catalogue in Publication data available from the National Library of Australia.

To my children: Jesse, Taylor and Cameron. Simply the best.

Heartfelt thanks to my brave diarists for taking the time to participate in this project and for revealing the most extraordinary details of your personal lives with such candor. I was touched by your stories, delighted by your frankness and felt most privileged to be privy to your feelings on these intimate matters. Sitting for months locked up in an office answering emails about other peoples sex lives is a lonely and sometimes trying business and I felt blessed to have a cheer squad to keep me enthused, including diarists who became valued friends.

There were also many people who assisted in putting the project together. My research assistant, Allison Macbeth, diligently combed the professional literature for relevant research; Nick Terrell saved my sanity by superbly executing the referencing process; and editor Helen Koehne efficiently cleaned up the manuscript and my new friend Ann Chatfield provided constant, much valued support throughout the project.

Then there was the wonderful team from Melbourne University Publishing, particularly my publisher Elisa Berg, who gently dissuaded me from focusing entirely on erections, leading to the rich variety of topics ultimately included. Im delighted to be working again with the very professional Dina Kluska to promote the book, and with Terri King and Jacqui Gray who make it all happen. Clare Marshall has provided valuable backup as I have talked to audiences all over Australia about my new research, and my agent Gaby Naher has worked hard to achieve overseas sales of my books.

On the home front, our house guest Manon Ouimet helped out with tricky word processing problems, while computer guru Robert Kulik dealt with my regular technology disasters. And my marvelous children, Jesse, Taylor and Cameron, not only continue to cope well with their embarrassing mother but also provided constant support, as they always do. Having a daughter who is super-smart, eagle-eyed and a medical student proved a real bonus when it came to checking my more technical passages.

The second half of this book focuses mainly on erectile problems, and here I relied heavily on experts, such as John Mulhall from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and leading Australian sex therapists, particularly Rosie King who is always so generous with her time and vast knowledge, and the ever helpful Michael Lowy. They provided vital information about how erections work, what goes wrong and how we can fix themall brand new knowledge destined to enhance the lives of many older men. Yet it is the amazing tales from my diarists, your thoughts and experiences, which provide unique insight from the coalface of this new revolution. Men and women reading this book will benefit greatly from your courage and honesty.

Forty years ago American writer Philip Roth made a huge splash with Portnoys Complaint, his exuberant tale of the randy Jewish adolescent who spends half his waking life locked behind the bathroom door. Ever since then Roth has been writing about the pulsating, driving life force that is male sexuality.

As Roth turned seventy, the lion of literature was still pondering that never-ending itch: the fact that, as far as I can tell, nothing, nothing is put to rest, however old a man may be?

In The Dying Animal, Roth has his central character, David Kepesh, look back on the frustrations of curtailing that robust drive within the constraints of marriage, and provides a telling insight into what sex means to men. He asks what there is, besides sex, to help men take the defeats, and the frustrations. Yes, theres having children, and making money.

That helps, but its nothing like the other thing. Because the other thing is based in your physical being, in the flesh that is born and the flesh that dies. Because only when you fuck is everything that you dislike in life and everything by which you are defeated in life purely, if momentarily, revenged.

The greed of desire. This notion of sex as a reason for being is alien to most women. They dont begin to understand that robust, compulsive male driverelentless, uncontrollable, all-consuming. That hydra-headed urge. Constant, sparking sexual energy. Roths other thing.

Men have been talking to me about that other thing for much of my adult life. It was the male voices that resonated most strongly in the project that led to my book The Sex Diaries. Ninety-eight couples wrote diaries describing how they negotiate their sex supply. Both men and women wrote vividly, describing how they deal with tensions over mismatched desire, but it was men who really seized the opportunity to pour out their emotions, sometimes in daily emails. Long after the book was published, letters continue to arrive from men keen to have the chance to explain the place of sex in their lives, its intense joys and incredible frustrations.

Many describe their relief at the discovery they are not the only ones experiencing a sexual drought in their relationships. As one man put it:

I can liken it to being the first in line for crucifixion. Being at the front of the line, you are bearing the cross and cant see that behind you there is a whole line of men going through the same experience. Sure you will still get crucified but at least you know you wont be lonely on top of the hill.

The loneliness he speaks of stems from the fact that men rarely talk publicly about why sex matters so much to them. They dont dare. Some twenty years ago Rolling Stone journalists Steve Chappie and David Talbot took time out to take their countrys sexual pulse. Their book, Burning DesiresSex in America, carefully dissected the growing forces that were making heterosexual union so precarious and male sexuality so reviled.dangerous sexual nature. There was anti-porn campaigner Andrea Dworkin, the woman who regarded intercourse as collaboration with the enemy; and sex researcher Shere Hite, who saw men as dehumanized beings, half mortals who disconnected sex and feelings. There seemed no escape from the attack on mens sexuality.

Unsurprisingly, it left many men reeling and silenced: Like a man who sullenly withdraws to his tool shed to escape his wifes temper and misery, American men simply opted out of the culture dialogue, explained Chappie and Talbot, commenting that men were so far removed from the field of battle that the term sex war seemed a misnomer. The stronger sex could only mount an occasional guerrilla raid, leaving women firmly in control of the ideological terrain.