The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love (19 page)

It has now been widely reported that many women who are quite normal psychologically nevertheless fail to reach full sexual completion. A typical report is made by Dr. Peter A. Martin, clinical professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University in Detroit: “When I started in psychiatry, I was taught that orgasm in the female is related to the psychosexual level of development. Thus, a mature, emotionally healthy woman who had achieved a genital level of development should have a vaginal orgasm… [but] I have seen the emotionally sickest of female patients report… several consecutive orgasms. Also, I have seen women who were the epitome of emotional maturity in all other areas incapable of vaginal orgasm.”

Reading back into the psychiatric literature, one finds that long ago some of the chief exponents of psychoanalysis had second thoughts as they treated unresponding women. One was the famed Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, an associate of Freud and Adler, who wrote volumes on sexual problems. By 1926 Stekel felt “frigidity” has to be viewed in three different forms. The first was “the absolutely frigid woman,” who experienced no orgasm and felt no response to any level of physical affection. The second was “the relatively frigid woman,” who felt a little more in both ways. And third was “the passionate-frigid woman, who in spite of great longing and keen forepleasure is unable to achieve orgasm.” Of this last type, Stekel wrote, “This is the form most often seen by us as specialists.”

For “the passionate-frigid woman,” clearly a better concept was needed. She wanted the physical relationship. She was moved by it. Only at the last was she thwarted. Was she also a neurotic?…

One factor which certainly led to some early questions about an unqualified view of “frigidity” as a neurotic symptom was the overwhelming number of women who seemed to suffer from it. This was one reason why Stekel, for example, began to look for sociologic and physical causes. He wrote long and ardently about social injustices to women which made them resent the feminine role and the masculine assumption of authority. And he began to study the work of Rohleder, a sexologist of the time, who advocated, among other things, premarital examinations of men and women to assess their physical compatibility….

Perhaps the first important study of how commonly women reach orgasm was made at the turn of the century, by the noted gynecologist Dr. Robert L. Dickinson. Dr. Dickinson asked four hundred and forty-two of his patients if they experienced orgasm. One woman in four answered, “Never.” Only two of each hundred answered, “Usually.”

Between these two extremes, the answers were suggestive, but rather vague. Forty percent said they had the experience “rarely.” And another 40 percent answered, “Yes,” without stating the frequency. Of this last group, however, Dr. Dickinson believed that about one-third were not really achieving true orgasm in intercourse.

Three studies were made in Europe during the next few years. Otto Adler found that 30 to 40 percent of women had no orgasm and probably felt little sexual response or desire during actual sexual union. Guttceit said that 40 percent of women “felt nothing” during intercourse, “participating in the act without any pleasurable sensation during the friction of the sexual parts and without the suspicion of a climax on their part.” And Debrunner reported, “Over 50 percent of our women in eastern Switzerland know nothing of the sexual libido,” without specifying precisely what he meant.

Still later, in the United States, Dr. Carney Landis studied forty-four women. He found that only seventeen of them reported “satisfaction,” though he did not specify what kind or how frequently.

Though these studies took place at different times, and in only a general way measured the same things, one may draw from them some rough conclusions about sexual response in the first few decades of the century. First, only a rather small minority of women appear to have reached orgasm dependably. Secondly, a much larger minority, a group ranging from one-fourth up to one-half of the women sampled, never reached orgasm at all.
¹⁵

On the basis of these and many other statistics, it is safe to assume that the majority of married women do not experience orgasm regularly.
If
, as many psychiatrists try to suggest, such women are “neurotic,” “psychotic,” “sexually infantile,” or in some way “abnormal,” it would mean that most women are abnormal! Frankly, that is just too big a psychological pill to swallow. It would be better to look for other causes.

The Causes and Cure of Orgasmic Incapability

At best an orgasm is a complicated maneuver that culminates many activities. Consequently a malfunction of any one or a combination of several of these functions could keep a woman from experiencing all that God intended for her. For that reason we will examine the most common contributing causes of orgasmic incapability and offer some workable remedies.

1.
Ignorance
. The average woman knows far more about the operation of her sewing machine than she does her own reproductive organs. That’s not hard to understand when we realize that her sewing machine came equipped with an operation manual; if she gets into trouble, she merely has to call the serviceman to rectify the malfunction.

Unfortunately most women and their equally uninformed husbands have never read a good sex manual, and when they run into trouble, they are often too proud to go for help. Even when they do seek counsel, the materials they read or the counselor they find is woefully inadequate. One writer asks,

Where do women learn about their own sexuality? From those who are least able to teach them. Ninety-nine percent of “experts” in the sexual problems of women never had a menstrual period, a hot flash, or a baby—and never will. In fact they will never have any female sexual experiences at all—because they are men.

What makes these men qualified to explain female sexual responses to women? Nothing. Scholarly books on women and their sexual behavior began to be written about five hundred years ago, during the Dark Ages. At that time women occupied a social position somewhat higher than cattle and somewhat lower than male lunatics. Just as no self-respecting scientist would think of asking a cow how she felt, no medieval scholar would stoop to interviewing a woman. The next generation of sexologists prepared for their projects by reading the books written by their forerunners. They piously pored over the questionable revelations they encountered there and mumbled something like, “Hmmm, that’s just what I suspected. I knew it. I knew it all along.” Fortified with the ignorance of the Dark Ages, they sallied forth to further muddy the sexual waters. No one ever took the time to ask the ladies what they were feeling (or not feeling) in the sexual department. They didn’t have to—after all, they had the word of a whole generation of experts—all of whom would be more likely to interview a cow than a woman.

Did these experts do any harm? Only to women. Most of the early “facts” about female sexual behavior consisted entirely of male wishful thinking. Little things about women not really being capable of enjoying sex and men being sexually superior to women began to appear in medical textbooks with monotonous regularity. As the same misconceptions and misunderstandings were repeated over and over again, they began to take on the veneer of facts. As one expert repeated some scientific gossip to another, the errors took on an aura of authenticity. Gradually the platitudes found their way into magazines and newspapers and became part of American sexual folklore. By relentless repetition they finally achieved wide acceptance as facts.
¹⁶

Deutsch expands on this theme:

The fact is that women who are sexually unfulfilled to some degree appear to make up a majority of American womankind. The old idea that she is thus, by definition, psychoneurotic is fading. For it has now been widely demonstrated that the key to relieving such a woman is usually a true understanding of her body and her sexual role.

This is not to say that emotion cannot block sexual response. It can. And I have no intention… to convey a mechanistic view of love, which I abhor, or to challenge the emotional or spiritual bases of love, in which I believe.

Yet the act of love remains a physical act. As we shall see, most authorities agree that in most respects this act is not instinctive, but is learned. And we shall see that for most men and women, the understanding of the act persists as a melange of myth, confusion and superstition. As a result, in a day of supposedly great sexual sophistication, only the unusual couple achieves anything like the fully satisfying expression possible for almost any good marriage.

Though science has learned much about the physical side of sex in the last two decades, little of this knowledge has been communicated. As sex researcher Dr. William Masters wrote recently in the
Journal of the American Medical Association
, in answer to the question of a doctor who asked help in treating an unresponsive wife:

“With any marital unit, one can anticipate that the couple has a vast amount of misinformation, misconception, and quite simply, inadequate knowledge of sexual physiology.”

This may seem curious in a time when we are so open about sex, when the subject is so frankly overworked and coldly exploited by commerce of every kind. Oddly, it seems to be only the useful and accurate information which is excluded from the torrent of sexual dialogue.
¹⁷

Until the last few years, the Christian wife has faced an even greater problem. Because of the humanistic philosophy and lack of moral values reflected in most of the literature on sex information available today, most Christians are apt to discard it all. This is most unfortunate, for I have found that those who tend to reject it are the ones who need it most. In addition, “doing what comes naturally” is likewise inadequate.

Within the past few years some Christian publishers have had enough courage to print books dealing frankly with this subject. Thirty years ago I could not recommend a single book in the field, and thus I devoted forty-five pages to physical adjustment in marriage in my book,
How to Be Happy Though Married
. Later I discovered that the publisher came within an eyelash of not producing that book for fear it would be offensive to the Christian public. However, the firm did publish it, and now the climate has changed to such a degree that no Christian wife or husband should be ignorant of the intimacies of lovemaking, nor should they limit themselves to the information they discover only by themselves. Both should study some of the excellent books by Christians now on the market. Of course, Dr. Ed Wheat’s tapes mentioned in chapter 7 should not be overlooked. These resources will do much to dispel ignorance and will enable both partners to achieve open communication about physical pleasure.

No Longer an Excuse

A few decades ago, sexual ignorance was a reasonably acceptable excuse for orgasmic incapability, but that day is past. Regrettably some husbands are carryovers from the Dark Ages, like the one who told his frustrated wife, “Nice girls aren’t supposed to climax.” Today’s wife knows better, for modern research has proved that women, unlike men, can experience several climaxes in a single lovemaking experience. That is hard for a man to understand, because after ejaculation, he is finished with lovemaking for from one to twenty-four hours (depending on age, tension, and energy). Well-documented tests have proved that a woman, if continually stimulated after orgasm, is capable of four, five, or even more climaxes, and some women report a continued increase in intensity. In fact, some women do not feel sexually fulfilled by experiencing only one orgasm.

If more husbands knew that fact, they would be more inclined to bring their wives to orgasm manually once or twice before entrance (and some wives may desire manual stimulation after his ejaculation). An uninformed man may be afraid that if he tenderly massages his wife to climax before entrance, she will not have anything left for him. In reality, quite the opposite is true! He would find his wife much more sexually exciting and cooperative.

Every couple I marry must promise me that before separating for a single night under duress, they will come to see me for counseling. That is probably one reason for such a low divorce ratio (17 known divorces out of 450 weddings). Among those who have returned for help, the most common cause of difficulty is the lack of orgasmic capability in the wife. One such couple came in six weeks after their wedding. After talking with them for an hour, I lent them about five pounds of books I keep in my study for such occasions. Three weeks later the wife stopped at my office after a church service carrying the books in a brown paper bag. Grinning, she thanked me and said, “We don’t need these books anymore!”

Reading this book, it is hoped, will provide for you the necessary information to produce a normal, healthy love life that includes orgasmic ecstasy for both husband and wife.

An All-Time First

2.
Resentment and revenge
. At the conclusion of a seminar, a twenty-six-year-old mother of three children asked, “Would you explain why I am unable to respond to my husband after six years of marriage?” She not only had never reached orgasm, but also quickly acknowledged, “I hate sex!” What amazed me most was the fact that she described her husband as “kind and considerate, even after no sex relations in two years!” That violated my long-standing conviction that a woman will always respond to a man who is kind, considerate, and thoughtful of her. I was curious because she was an all-time-first exception to me.