Seeing it is obviously always the man who is the cause of all the trouble in the marital relationship, what about getting up off your backside and giving us lousy, ignorant, no good lovers some coaching, instead of adopting the holier than thou thing and dishing up the same line given by all and sundry for the last forty years in Christian circles?

Well, what about it? Have you got the guts to give instruction in foreplay or are you just going to write another article titled, The Issue and How I Shirked It? You seem very good at telling us what the problem is. Now what about some answers, or do you simply don’t do those?????????

Signed: Frustrated Old Man

To plunge in, click here but keep reading if you have reservations about anything slightly explicit.

Our frustrated friend, perhaps justifiably, targets Christians. It is not just Christians, however, who find this topic so intensely personal that they feel offended by the detailed information this man needs. Some couples are lucky enough to stumble upon the answers by trial and error in the privacy of their own marriage. It is common, however, for one partner to be inhibited, have a low sex drive, or be focused too exclusively on the mechanics of physical intimacy. Such a couple will most likely hit a brick wall in their quest for fulfillment. What then? They need more help than certain books, Christian “experts,” and so on are willing to publicly provide. Couples who have reached a stalemate will typically feel false shame. They feel mortified at the thought of private counseling. And decent people are understandably loath to do a general internet search, as it is likely to turn up highly offensive images and the like. Couples can end up tortured for years over this impasse.

As concerned as I am about the sensitivities of others, I cannot with a clear conscience let people like our Frustrated Old Man writhe in pain. I’ll be as delicate as I dare without incurring the wrath of our frazzled geriatric. If you are lucky enough, not to even understand the need for detail, I have some alternatives, but don’t ask me to abandon hurting people.

If you are seeking help with marital intimacy but prefer to avoid details, see Keys to Marital Fulfillment.

To move on completely, try Marital Issues, or, for other topics, More.

My heart goes out to the man writing that e-mail. Most likely, he is not just frustrated, but hurting.

A couple’s sexual problems are seldom solely the man’s fault. Sex is not what a man does to a woman. Great sex demands interdependence. It is a joyous partnership as precise as a doubles rowing team, and a hundred times more complex. Even if a woman can achieve orgasm alone, for her to blame her husband for her failure to climax during lovemaking can be as cruelly unjustified as a man blaming his wife for his impotence.

I admit my reluctance to take up Frustrated Old Man’s challenge, but I’ll do my best because multitudes of desperate men are drowning in the same perplexed frustration. I don’t expect to offend, but no one can please everyone. You know my assignment. You’re under no obligation to proceed. I have provided alternatives.

Unfortunately I must first reveal some facts of life that this gentleman will probably, at least initially, find even more frustrating. We’ll start with something everyone understands.

We can’t even give someone a drink and have any certainty that it will be appreciated without first asking if the person is thirsty and likes coffee and at that moment prefers coffee to another beverage. And that’s just the beginning. We need to be told whether the person favors decaffeinated or regular, strong or weak, instant or percolated, white or black, sugar or no sugar, and if sugar, how much. Without being told all these things, the best coffee maker in the world is likely to serve up something that turns the person’s stomach. And even with the above feedback, there are so many subtleties that there is little hope of the person saying it’s the best coffee he or she has ever had.

To ask, is to be fully human. It is to abandon acting as if we were God or an animal. It is to be less than all-knowing but blessed with the intelligence to seek answers.

If we can’t serve coffee without detailed feedback, none of us has a chance of consistently delighting someone sexually without highly detailed feedback. Some women or men imagine it should be possible, but it isn’t, except for the most unlikely possibility of a gigantic, one-off fluke.

I could make some wild, unsubstantiated guesses about how to bring your wife to orgasm, but neither I nor anyone else can say with certainty what will work, and I have no right to ever know. She’s your wife and every woman is unique. For instance, a few women have earlobes that are far more sexually sensitive than their nipples. Some adore licking; some can’t even tolerate wet kisses. Some are turned on by a foot massage; some find it unbearably ticklish. Likewise, some orgasmic women can’t bear having their clitoris touched. It’s no use protesting, “But the sex manual says . . .” She has no equal. She wasn’t built on a production line. She didn’t come with a manual.

As yet another measure of how enormously women differ, surveys of those who resort to doing it themselves indicate that female masturbators differ from each other in their preferred method, far more than male do-it-yourselfers differ from each other.

One of life’s tragedies is that you might have had previous partners. Given the uniqueness of every woman, such experiences could hinder you; giving you mistaken ideas as to what “should” please your wife.

There is one final variation that must be mentioned. Many a man has agonized over whether his childlessness is his fault, when in reality his wife is physically incapable of falling pregnant, even with the most fertile partner in the world. This, of course, is just a sad fact of life and is no one’s fault. Similarly, there are women for whom orgasm is physically impossible and there are those whose physiology makes orgasm far harder to reach than for other women. To be avoided like the plague, however, is the tragedy of a couple wrongly concluding that the woman is physically incapable of orgasm and needlessly settling for second best. Equally tragic, however, would be for them to blame themselves or each other if, for that woman, orgasm really is physically impossible.

Though I don’t do so now, I used to drink coffee as a child. I once visited a fisherman and coffee was served. My mother had always prepared my coffee and I had only known it as weak and white with plenty of sugar. The fisherman asked what to me were some meaningless coffee-related questions and through my shyness and ignorance I ended up with a strong black and no sugar. I remember it to this very day because I had never tasted anything so vile. Too shy to let on that my taste buds were rioting in protest, I reluctantly forced it down, a gulp at a time.

Thankfully, having coffee with that man was a one-off event. But think of what would have happened had I regularly visited him. I had set a precedent. My silence had established in that man’s mind that my preference was for strong, black, with no sugar. From then on, until I said otherwise, that is what I would have been expected to enjoy every time I visited him. If the first time I had been too shy to refuse or to say how I liked my coffee, it would have been even harder on subsequent visits because it would have been admitting that I never liked the coffee previously.

That’s the predicament that shy brides get locked into, with it getting harder and harder to admit to their husbands – who are blissfully supposing they are delighting their wives – that the sex they have been serving up repulses them or at least fails to satisfy.

It’s not the man’s fault. A minor adjustment that he’d be pleased to do might make all the difference for her, but he cannot know he is not meeting her unique tastes if his wife refuses to tell him. This could go on for years – even decades – with the wife too scared of hurting her husband’s feelings and, quite possibly, with her never even knowing that she is capable of enjoying sex so much more.

Finally, after who knows how long, the wife blurts out the truth to a flabbergasted husband. Both feel betrayed. She has been denied sexual fulfillment for years, and he has been deceived and made a fool of for all that time. That she endured, is a testament to her love, but it highlights the tragedy that dogs far too many marriages, of a partner not feeling secure or brave enough to be transparently honest with the person he or she is supposedly one with. No matter what the cost, honesty ends up being the best policy. And don’t get uppity: husbands are just as likely to keep secrets as wives.

If you want your wife to function with the predictability of a machine, you should have married your car.

I can give some suggestions that might happen to work, but if, beyond wild guesses that could do more harm than good, you desire coaching, it must come from the world’s greatest expert on your wife’s sexuality – your wife. She alone has the security code to her private vault. And so sophisticated are the security measures that the code randomly changes. Sadly, many wives do not reveal the secret code to even their husbands.

The most serious and common mistake that women tend to make is to suppose that love and marriage transmute the opposite sex into mind readers. They have not grasped that marital relations makes two people one flesh, not one mind. Neither have they grasped how different the sexes are. These particular women have no idea they are expecting men to lose their humanity and gain supernatural powers. Some are so oblivious to the complexities of male-female communication that they feel offended when their men do not display these unnatural powers. Even the exceptional man, who is highly skilled at knowing how his wife feels, has reached those lofty heights only because his wife has patiently taught him, by very deliberately and carefully and habitually articulating and explaining what is going on inside her.

Likewise, the most serious and common mistake that men tend to make is to suppose their marriage can survive without their wives providing all this information.

Good communication is the key to a good marriage and the key to good communication is to not assume that others have understood, just because they have been told over and over, but to question them until it is certain by their responses that they have grasped it.

The most common reason for a man being unable to thrill his wife sexually is because she has withheld from him the continually changing access code. Often men do not seek the regular updates needed to understand when a woman is ready for lovemaking, but when lovemaking commences, the need for feedback zooms from regular to moment-by-moment. If this vital information is withheld, it is usually because a wife hasn’t grasped that no human – not even a marriage partner – is a mind reader, or because she is too timid to give feedback, or rightly or wrongly assumes her husband is unwilling to be taught, or she supposes his ego is too fragile for the task.

We are created not to be like animals that do things instinctively, but as the highest of earthly creation – and perhaps the highest of all sexual beings in the entire universe. We are divinely designed not only to need love but also to need the highest communication skills, if a couple are to ever reach their highest sexual potential.

Marrieds need to teach each other what feels nice and what doesn’t, and to feel free and safe to experiment and make mistakes. It involves trusting and loving each other so much that both humble themselves before each other and become teachable. Surprise, surprise: it is those who humble themselves who end up exalted.

Good sex is the height of cooperation.

Suggestions

Given that there is almost nothing that applies to all women, any suggestion made by anyone other than your wife, might not work with her. And even if it works with her today, it might not work tomorrow, just as your preferred food for dinner will not be the same, time after time after time after time.

I will mention some things that might work but all you can do is try them and remain as dependent upon your wife’s feedback as a top fighter pilot is dependent upon his plane’s instrument panel.

Whereas men want sex because it makes them feel good, women can enjoy sex only when they are already feeling good. Every gender generalization has its exceptions, but this one, shared in another webpage on this site, is the general rule and it’s a vital concept to grasp. And who do you think is the person in a woman’s life most likely to be able to make her feel so good about herself and so relaxed and happy that she feels like sex?

Here’s another generalization that probably applies to your marriage: men can divorce sex from other things that are bothering them; women cannot – and male attempts to do so have contributed to divorce. For most women, sex is like salt cooked in a meal – unable to be separated from the rest of life’s issues. For men, sex remains a separate entity – best when accompanied with other goodies but able to be consumed alone. Since for her, sex is like salt in the meal of life, if a woman is not enjoying sex, it is usually a symptom of a wider problem. We men keep falling into the trap of treating the symptom, not the cause.

It has been said that the most important factor in determining whether a woman will have an orgasm during sex is how secure she feels. Part of that security is her certainty that she is loved. Rather than being primarily mechanical, orgasm is more about feeling loved than most men realize.

All of us deserve the assurance that we are loved and appreciated for who we are, and not treated as some mindless machine. Women tend to be particularly sensitive to this need and men tend not to be particularly skilled at conveying their true feelings. For instance, how proud of you do you think your father is/was? Given the reluctance men have in verbalizing their feelings, it is quite likely that your father has or had a higher opinion of you and loves/loved you more than you realize. And everyone is the poorer for him not communicating it as adequately as he thought.

Just as it is a tragic mistake for any woman to assume her husband is a mind reader in knowing what pleases her sexually, so it is a mistake for a man to assume his wife can know he loves her as much as when he married her or even as much as yesterday, unless he is continually going out of his way to convey it.

This is one reason why foreplay must start long before what is usually thought of as foreplay. It should start with romancing her. Sometimes that will mean going on a date together, buying her flowers, and so on. Don’t take her love for granted. Treat her as someone whose love must be won again and again.

More than that, for her to feel secure in the knowledge that she is valued far beyond the sexual pleasure she can give you, she needs you to express love to her at times when sex is not on the agenda. If she enjoys hugs, give them to her more often. Cuddle up to her when watching television together and surprise her by not expecting it to lead to sex unless she really wants it.

One of the most important aspects of making her feel valued is showing a real interest in her as a person by carefully listening to her, encouraging her to share her heart and for you to prove that her love and opinions are important to you by sharing your dreams, fears, frustrations and so on with the person you are meant to be one with. This might seem far removed from orgasm, but it isn’t. It should regularly be removed from orgasm time-wise, but for most wives it is on the cutting edge of what makes them orgasmic. For your wife to share the details of her day with you might seem tedious to you, but it shows how important you are to her. It will reduce her longing to find someone (even a man) who is interested in her day. Additionally, it helps her offload her stresses; freeing her to feel more like physical intimacy.

It is the heathen who lord it over each other, but it is not to be that way among us, taught Jesus (Matthew 20:25-28).

We live in such a twisted world that some of us can end up feeling as if being harsh and demanding is a sign of masculinity. What a perverted notion! To be harsh and demanding is a sign of being insecure and an emotional cripple – nothing else. A true man has such confidence in his masculinity that he has no need to “prove” himself by putting on a show of being tough. A true man is characterized by tenderness.

It is through sex that you and your wife became one, and because of this oneness, whatever affects her ends up affecting you. And in no area of life is this oneness – you being affected by what affects your wife – more evident than in sex.

Since, like it or not, you are one with her, for either husband or wife to hurt one’s partner – be it by word, action or neglect – is to hurt oneself. To honor her is to honor yourself.

A man continually hitting his head with a lump of wood who cannot figure why he has a headache, is brother to the man not treating his wife’s feelings like the most delicate flower, who cannot figure why he does not have a great sex partner. Skill in bed can undo the damage no more than hard pumping will inflate a burst balloon.

A man who focuses on sexual gratification will end up with nothing. A man who focuses on his wife’s emotional happiness will get everything. I’m not talking about self-centered, manipulative wives. No matter how good a car is, and no matter how good you are behind the wheel, it cannot perform well unless you look after the engine as the manufacturer intended. What happens off the road in the workshop sets the limits on what happens on the road. Likewise, no matter how good your wife is and how good you are in bed, she cannot perform properly if you neglect to look after her feelings as her Maker intended. What happens out of bed determines how she can perform in bed. She is marvelously human – far more sophisticated than the most highly computerized car. Her feelings must be nurtured with the utmost skill and tenderness.

Much is popularly made of the male ego and how if it is bruised it will cripple his sexual performance, but women are likewise fragile. For a woman to reach her sexual potential she needs the confidence that comes from feeling attractive. The media seems to be doing its utmost to destroy her in this regard. The current fad – and that’s all it is – is that if a woman doesn’t look like a cross between a worm and a giraffe she can’t be sexy. You know it’s a ridiculous notion, but it’s hard to find a woman who hasn’t been browbeaten into shriveling up in shame if she can’t disappear behind a chopstick. If she is the tiniest “overweight” by the ridiculous standards of modern society, she’ll be acutely aware of it without needing you to tell her. She might not be thin, but she’s not thick. Your positive view of her is the thread that is holding her cruelly cracked self-image together. To understand this is to understand why, if she knows you view porn or look at other women, you could hardly do anything more to destroy her sexually.

It is your responsibility to ensure that your wife is sexy in your eyes. This might stun you, but it is explained in a link below. And it is your duty to do your utmost to convey to her how desirable you find her body. Your wife seeing herself as being as sexy as you see her is such a critical issue that it might be the only thing keeping her from orgasm.

One of the most frustrating things for a loving husband to bear is a wife whose passion has shriveled because she sees herself, not as he sees her, but as the world sees her. It makes you wonder how God feels when Christ sacrificed his all for you because Almighty God couldn’t love you more, and you live a shriveled existence because you see yourself not as his loving eyes see you but how the world sees you.

If your best efforts to inspire your wife to see herself as you see her do not work, you should seriously consider encouraging her to see a counselor. No, not a sex therapist – someone who is good at self-esteem issues. I presume sex therapists are good at this since it is so critical to good sex, but suggesting a sex therapist would needlessly risk offending your wife, as well as risking her thinking that you getting sex is more important to you than her well-being.

Do whatever it takes to make her feel sure that you truly want her to teach you how to delight her romantically and sexually and that you want her enjoyment, not to boost your ego, but because her happiness is close to the most important thing in the world to you. She needs convincing that your ego is not so fragile that you could not handle being told that she has faked orgasm or found something you have done in lovemaking quite unpleasant.

Prepare for lovemaking by showering and choosing deodorant that you know she likes. (And you won’t know unless you have made her feel secure enough to tell you.) Use hand cream to make your hands as soft as possible. Consider the use of background music. Use soft lighting. Candles are a possibility but be very careful. In our era we are not used to the hazards of candles and they have caused many a fire.

Women sometimes claim that, unlike them, men can only do one thing at a time. If ever the tables were turned it is when it comes to lovemaking. If there is the slightest thing in the back of a woman’s mind that is bothering her, it is likely to distract her from the abandonment she needs for sexual enjoyment. This makes your choice of occasion for lovemaking critical. If she is engaged in any activity when you want to initiate lovemaking – cutting her toenails or some other life-or-death matter – give her a clue of what you have in mind, so that hopefully she might complete it in less than ten hours, but give her time to finish and feel composed.

I know you like being spontaneous and the wait is infuriating and you’re beginning to wonder about the legality of marrying your car, but you’ve just come hard against one of life’s stone cold realities. It means that trying to get a quickie in before visitors arrive or when something is bothering her, is about as effective as her telling you to do a chore when you are watching the telecast of that critical game involving your team. And yes, when she’s not ready, sex is as much a chore for her as you taking your favorite meal out of the oven too soon and trying to enjoy it before it is ready.

It’s not all one way. Whenever an older wife writes to me complaining about her always having to initiate lovemaking, I wonder how much life and spontaneity has been crushed out of her man over the years by her insisting they wait until she is in the mood. I would not be surprised if she can barely recall a single instance, whereas he is plagued with many vivid memories. So I’m not saying your wife should never die to self and respond as instantly as a robot, but don’t expect her to have fond memories of it. Don’t act surprised when you discover that robots are cold and tinny. Is it red-blooded passion you want, or have you sold your soul to instant gratification and sentenced yourself to shallow sex? Are you the master and leader in your marriage or the slave of your sex drive? Are you the head, like Christ who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a human sacrifice (Mark 10:45)? Or are you the tail, defeated by your lusts? Are you living the higher life of the One who knew it is more blessed to give than to receive? Or are you groveling and choking in the slime of the world?

By now you have waited so long that you’re hanging on to sanity by your fingernails but at last you have a time when she is able to give you her undivided attention. You have absolute privacy, interruptions are most unlikely and she has full confidence that this won’t lead to an unwanted pregnancy. Now you can consider moving closer to full sex. It might involve lots of kisses and cuddles. Having a lot of eye contact can help her feel she is being treated as a person, not an object. Don’t be silent. Give groans of enjoyment and appreciation. Tell her how much she means to you and how beautiful you find her. Prove that you mean it by going into detail. There are so many parts to her body, each of which are likely to have qualities you like, such as smoothness, softness, color, shape, size and so on. You’ll have to be pretty good to counteract what the media has been relentlessly beating her with, day after day.

Having been so sincere and communicative that she is convinced that her well-being is paramount to you and that she – body, mind and spirit – thrills you, you can gradually add gently caressing her body to your kissing and cuddling. Take your time on feet, thighs, earlobes, armpit, buttocks, and so on before slowly working your way to the particularly sexually sensitive parts of her body – which are possibly her breasts and genitals.

Make it so gradual that rather than you moving ahead of her, you are building up her passions so she is craving for you to take it further. Try gently teasing her by at first pretending to stroke or kiss her in her favorite parts, without actually touching her. Keep experimenting with different types of kisses and caresses. Try massages, and drumming your fingers one at a time in quick succession, and movements imitating a vibrator, and quick little pats like gentle clapping, and anything else that either of you can dream up. If your work life makes your fingers rough, look for smooth alternatives such as your knuckles, the heel of your hand, your cheek. I’m not saying any of these will necessarily work but you’ll never know unless you try on several occasions on different parts of her body. Try using oils and lotions. Try gently blowing in her ear and on her skin.

All the time, seek moment-by-moment feedback as to what she likes best. It is not enough for her to provide some information afterward. Detailed, moment-by-moment guidance is essential for any husband and wife to become skilled at lovemaking. It would be particularly helpful if she could be enticed into saying such things as: more, over here, harder, softer, faster, slower, and so on.

One of marriage’s biggest challenges is to create an emotionally secure environment in which a wife feels free and uninhibited about giving this degree of guidance. Achieving this is a mutual responsibility. Anyone expecting a woman to be satisfied without continual spoken feedback is expecting too much.

The theoretical ideal would be for her also to indicate on perhaps a scale of one to five the degree of pleasure she is experiencing. She might find numbers too clinical, however. Groans of varying intensity that indicate different levels of pleasure are a possibility but you would both need to work them out beforehand to ensure you understand the signals. Forcing him to resort to groan interpretation is putting a considerable burden on the man. It took the poor guy years just to master English; should he now be required to be an expert in chimpanzee or something?

Some couples eventually become very skilled at communicating non-verbally. Nevertheless, especially before the couple becomes exceptionally proficient in lovemaking, a woman must be feeling extremely lucky or living in a fantasy world if she abandons intelligent speech and is still expecting to be brought to an orgasm. It is no accident that the Creator of sex bestowed language on the crown of earthly creation.

Encourage her to take the initiative by guiding your hand and moving her body to best position herself. She might enjoy being on top. It gives her more control and frees you from some of the responsibility for what she experiences. In this position in particular, to avoid pain, deep penetration would best be avoided for a few sessions until she gets used to it. Ensure she is extremely aroused before attempting intercourse. If she suffers from vaginal dryness, ensure you use a lubricant such as K-Y jelly to minimize any discomfort and maximize her pleasure.

Try to prolong the entire experience for as long as you can. If you climax, chances are that she’ll still want more, so keep caressing her until she has had all that she wants.

What is too often overlooked is that what happens afterward is often as critical to a woman as foreplay. It is a time when some men feel so relaxed they can barely stay awake but it is a time when women feel a particularly strong need for their husband’s affection. Depending on the woman, just being held might be all that is required, but to roll over and ignore her at that time is surprisingly hurtful to most women. To get just a whiff of how many a woman feels, imagine how you would feel if your wife lovingly aroused your expectations of intimacy and suddenly walked out the door to go shopping, leaving you high and dry.

The longer the beautiful feelings you have created within her linger, the more she will long for more frequent encounters, but turning away from her sends these feelings crashing to an abrupt halt. It’s a bit like buying her a costly gift, showing it to her and immediately tossing it away. It would be a shame to waste even a fraction of all the good you have done up to that point. If you feel an uncontrollable need to go to the bathroom or be alone immediately after sex, do so as briefly as possible and explain to your wife that you will be back soon to hold her.

Don’t forget that when next you want sex, her feelings will be inseparably bound to what happened the previous time. If it ended in what to her felt like painful rejection, it cannot help but dampen her desire for more.

Born to be Adventurous

Show off your intelligence by being highly creative and inventive and full of surprises. Don’t let yourself fall into a rut.

Your wife might have a favorite food, but she chooses to vary her diet. She might have a favorite dress, but she does not restrict herself to one dress. To be human is to crave variety and it is often the man who falls into robotic predictability. To climb out of the rut might seem like too much effort, but you’ll end up appreciating it. To help yourself burst into new modes of lovemaking, use different locations. While remaining sensitive to what she feels comfortable with, consider making love in the shower, the bath, a couch, the floor, a motel, a waterbed. Even in your bedroom, try different lighting, different music, different scents wafting through the air, different times of the day, different positions.

Show yourself an intelligent leader by using your wife’s creativity to the max. Don’t leave it all to her, but inspire her to dream up her own ideas. Ask her how she would like you to dress, what she would like you to say, to avoid, and so on. Talk over ideas. Have brainstorming sessions together.

Note how superior all of this is to animal behavior. You are soaring to your full potential as a man.

Wrap Up

My suggestions are pure speculation because I am not married to the unique person who is your wife. Only she can tell you, and it is quite possible that not even she knows. Hold on. That’s not as alarming as it seems. If she doesn’t know – and there are sure to be things you alone will awaken within her – all it means is that you both need to keep experimenting, with her giving constant feedback.

If there is something she currently does not like, it is not at all impossible that she will gradually develop a liking for it and that stopping it forever would actually be robbing her of unique pleasure. There are men and women who originally considered tongue kissing repulsive but ended up so pleased that they persevered with it. Many a woman who now finds something exquisite, at first found it a little painful or unbearably ticklish or embarrassing or outlandish. This needs to be treated delicately, however, and certainly not by forcing it on her or it could indeed turn her off it for life.

This webpage might not be the quick fix you were hoping for, but we humans are sophisticated beings, not machines. We are individuals and need to be treated as such. Sex should be a continual adventure and a learning experience for both of you. It will take very many sessions involving detailed feedback for both of you to become skilled, and there will always be room for further improvement. And yes, you are as deserving as your wife is of a partner who is teachable and willing to experiment with giving you new pleasures, but are you the leader?

Finally, don’t rob yourself of the greatest asset a lover could ever have – direct, moment-by-moment access to the very Creator of sex. If you’ve missed out this, the height of human experiences, please see immediately What Your Fantasies Reveal.