The Guide to Getting It On (4 page)

However, there are exceptions. So let’s say your partner of fifteen years is the most trustworthy and hard-working man on the face of the earth. He’s a great father to your kids, and you love him dearly, but the romance in your relationship is kaput. And let’s say you have been noticing the pool man a lot more than you did before. By the time he leaves each week you are wetter than the pool deck. How do you get that kind of passion back with your husband?

It’s quite possible that in your husband’s mind his way of being romantic is by working his tail off for you and the kids. Worse things have happened. Be sure that at least a couple of times a week you tell him how much you appreciate how hard he works. Do this from now until the end of time. Then, think back over the past fifteen years and come up with things the two of you have enjoyed doing together—without the kids. Maybe it’s river rafting, maybe it’s shopping for antiques or going to a carnival. Maybe it’s working in the garden together. If it’s possible, find ways for the two of you to start doing some of these things together again.

Keep in mind that this kind of approach is a traditional one that doesn’t reach too far into the world of sexual novelty. Someone who is less traditional might recommend that you broach the subject of trying a threesome with your husband and the pool boy. But swinging is more apt to work if the primary couple has a solid and satisfying sexual relationship to begin with. Unless your husband is secretly lusting after the pool boy as well.

Please see the recommended books on desire issues that are listed at the end of the chapter. This is a complex subject that requires way more consideration than the few pages it receives here!

What Readers Have to Say about Romance

“Romance is being kind, gentle, and thoughtful. Sometimes intense as when making love, sometimes only on pilot light, but never off.”
male age 70

“Romance is being naked in the sun.”
male age 42

“Romance is when she and I can absolutely forget that the rest of the world exists. Just today we both had a million things to do to prepare for the coming work week, but I turned on the CD player and played a great Spanish song about a bull that falls in love with the moon. Soon we had dropped our work and were spinning each other around the living room like two people who had no idea how to dance flamenco.”
male age 25

“What is romance? Stroking my hair, holding my hand, helping me with the housework, cooking, talking, sharing the day with me.”
female age 43

“Romance is waking up in my partner’s arms and being told that he loves me.”
female age 27

“Romance is when we go Rollerblading at the beach.”
male age 32

“Romance is sitting on a hammock together reading our books.”
female age 26

“For romance, I enjoy a great bubble bath together with candles and wine, lots of great smelling scents whether it’s perfume, incense, or just the smell of my man.”
female age 36

“It’s bringing home a single rose or a little something to say I was thinking of you today.”
female age 34

“Doing things that show he values me as a life partner and not just a bed partner.”
female age 45

“If he brings you flowers or jewelry and he’s not there in any other way, it’s not romance.”
female age 45

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BOOKS:
If the sexual excitement is gone in your relationship, or one of you still wants sex and the other doesn’t, an excellent book to read is
Wanting Sex Again: How to Rediscover Your Desire and Heal a Sexless Marriage
by Laurie Watson, Penguin, 2012. Keep in mind that no book on something as complex as a subject like this going to be perfect or exactly what you need, but this one will at least give you some valuable insights.

Another highly recommended book is Kathryn Hall’s
Reclaiming Your Sexual Self: How You Can Bring Desire Back Into Your Life
from Wiley, 2004.

Yet another intelligent approach can be found in
Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic
(Harper Paperbacks, 2007), where therapist and author Ester Perel looks at whether it is possible to keep sex alive in a long-term relationship.

A Highly Evolved Thanks
to Anthropologist Helen Fisher from Rutgers.

CHAPTER

3

Kissing

T
his chapter is about kissing on the lips as opposed to kissing on the genitals, although one often leads to the other. Sometimes kissing is the start of sex. Other times, kissing is the main course and dessert. Either way, its hard to find a better way to pass an hour when you’re hanging out together.

Kissing can be awkward at times, especially at the start. It’s also one of those rare things that doesn’t cost you a dime but that you can remember for the rest of your life. Biologically speaking, it’s what causes panties to become drenched and precum to flow.

It’s funny how guys will worry about the size of their penises when they should be worrying about how well they kiss. Kissing usually says more about you and is more likely to be a deal breaker.

Talking in Tongues

Kissing a partner on the lips often makes more of an emotional statement than kissing him or her on the genitals, even if the latter sometimes feels better. One of this book’s advisors, who makes her living by having sex with different men, won’t let anyone but her husband kiss her on the lips. And when a relationship starts to go sour, couples usually stop kissing on the lips long before they stop having intercourse.

There are reasons why kissing can be more intimate than getting into a partner’s pants. From the moment we are born, most of us are kissed constantly by moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and anyone else whose approaching lips we can’t successfully dodge. Being kissed on the lips, cheeks, and top of the head symbolizes a profound love that we hopefully come into the world experiencing.

Another reason for the added power of kissing is so many of the major senses—vision, smell, hearing, and taste—have their outlets on the human face. Not to mention that the lips and skin are exquisitely sensitive to touch. There are, in fact, so many sensory centers located on or near the human face that we have terms such as “You’re in my face” or “Get out of my face” to express annoyance or social discomfort.

Look at the importance of lips in style and fashion. You can buy a zillion different colors and kinds of lip gloss and lipstick. (Be sure to see the section “Kissing and Lip Gloss.”)

When Kissing Is the Main Course

Kissing is often a prelude to other things, but there are plenty of times when kissing is all you get. Like when you are sixteen and necking all night long. Or when you are older but want to feel like you are sixteen. Or when a woman has started her period and she hasn’t yet read
The Guide’s
most excellent chapter on period sex, Chapter 51:
Surfing the Crimson Wave.

Don’t for a moment think that monster make-out sessions are kids’ stuff. Some people experience these as hotter than much of the intercourse they’ve had. If all you plan on doing is making out, be sure to put your gum in a safe place where you can find it afterward. It will help take the edge off until you can go home and masturbate.

Great Kissing Advice

“The best thing you can do during a good kissing session is to ask your partner to kiss you the way he or she likes to be kissed. It really works. Just sit back and let him or her take over; you’ll learn all kinds of things.”
male age 26

Kissing is so powerful, yet we seldom take the time to ask a partner how he or she likes to be kissed. Maybe delicate butterfly kisses are what get your partner going rather than the dramatic lip-lock action you saw in a movie. You’ll never really know unless you ask.

Movie Kiss Remake

Maybe you are too shy to ask a lover how she or he wants to be kissed. Here’s a playful way to achieve the same result.

In her how-to book on kissing, Violet Blue lists some of the best movie kisses, from
Bull Durham
and
Sixteen Candles
to
Gone With The Wind
and
The Matrix Reloaded.
Why not do a search for “best movie kisses” and make a list of cinematic spectaculars to download?

Think of how much fun you and a partner can have trying to imitate each of the kissing scenes. (Remember, actors often do several reshoots before they get a scene right. The same should be true for the two of you!) If each of you gives the other an Academy Award for best kissing performance, that was probably how your partner wants to be kissed. (Hopefully, your partner’s favorite kissing scene isn’t from
Lady and the Tramp.
)