He Comes Next (14 page)
Always end a session of restraint on a note of intimacy. After you untie him, make sure to hug, cuddle, snuggle, and kiss. Guys often feel very emotional and vulnerable after being tied up and want to feel loved and protected. Savor the moment for all its worth, both for the sexual power before and the tenderness after, and you will travel miles in gaining his trust and stimulating his desires.
Dear Ian,
My boyfriend and I recently started sharing fantasies, and it’s been really liberating: We don’t judge each other, nor do we feel a pressure to act them out. But many of my boyfriend’s fantasies have included scenarios where I dominate him, like one where he told me that he fantasizes about me tying him up and spanking him. I asked him if this was a situation in which he’d like to turn fantasy into reality, and he smiled and nodded his head. Now I’m sort of freaking out. It’s one thing to talk about a fantasy, but I’ve never tied up a man, or spanked one for that matter. What do I do?
—Rachel, twenty-nine, legal editor
First of all, congratulations on using fantasy to build excitement and newness and sustain a more satisfying sex life. So many fantasies go awry in their transition into action, so I think it’s important that you don’t feel pressured to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. The spirit of nonjudgmental sharing you’ve established with your boyfriend is far more important than gratifying any one particular fantasy.
That said, if you are curious to explore domination with your boyfriend, know that you’re not alone in feeling a sense of hesitation. Women are very often socialized to be accommodating and sexually submissive to men, so it only makes sense that you may not be completely comfortable with playing the dominant role. Take the time to talk to your boyfriend in greater detail about the domination fantasy he’d like to enact and make sure you’re both comfortable with it. Talk about the activities you’re going to engage in. One of the problems with domination fantasies is that they’re often so general—“Dominate me; I’ll do anything you want.” The more specific you get, the better. Decide on the activities you both find sexually exciting, and also talk about the activities that you’re not necessarily excited by, but open to trying. Also talk about the activities that you’re definitely not comfortable with and take them off the table.
For example, maybe he’s fantasized about you spanking him, and you’re comfortable doing this with your hand, but not with a paddle. Or maybe you’re more comfortable hitting him with a riding crop, but not a cat-o-nine tails presoaked in oil. Or perhaps you’re totally keen on handcuffs, but prefer to pass on putting him in a collar and making him drink from a doggy bowl. You’ll find that out by talking through your fantasies together in a light-hearted, nonjudgmental way; you’ll be able to chart the terrain to greater sexual intimacy, regardless of what you wind up doing. You’ll also develop greater trust, facilitating an endless array of new fantasies to follow.
Make sure you feel encouraged and supported and that the environment is trusting and stress free. Don’t set your expectations too high: My professional experience has shown me time and time again that fantasies when acted out rarely meet the sense of sexual excitement and gratification we expect. This is especially true of the first time we try something completely different. However, I’ve met scores of women who have really enjoyed, sometimes unexpectedly, the power of being on top and end up getting more out of the experience than just sexual thrills.
One woman I counseled was in a marriage where she was emotionally submissive and felt as if her husband held all the power. By exploring domination in the bedroom, she was able to redevelop a sense of confidence, assertiveness, and self-esteem that helped her to do the same outside the bedroom. On the flip side, her husband, the CIO of a Fortune 200 company, was finally able to relax and relinquish control, gratefully serving his wife’s unwieldy sexual demands and taking his pleasures as she saw fit to bestow them. He, for one, was thrilled to rediscover this self-assured side of his wife, as it reminded him of the woman he’d fallen in love with many years ago, when they met at business school. They have been far happier for it, both individually and as a couple, and their sex life has never been better. Which goes to show that sometimes acting out a sexual fantasy or playing roles can help you take action and subvert real-life roles where you least expect it.
Blindfold Him
This introduces an element of surprise and gets him more attuned to what he’s feeling. Chances are he will try to catch a glimpse, but that’s all the better. Most men are visual creatures and secret peeping toms, but it will build tension and allow him to focus on the sensual and physical, while making him all the more desperate to get a good look at you after. Also, men are so hard-wired to get aroused through visual stimulation (reinforced through porn), that hobbling this sense allows his other senses—touch, taste, talking, smell, and hearing—to
come
center-stage.
The Joy of Massage
Massage his feet, head, toes, neck, even fingers. We’ve talked about the role oxytocin plays in women as the cuddle hormone, but men have an equivalent hormone, vasopressin, which is also released during touch. This hormone tempers testosterone and helps him feel calm, relaxed, and connected, which is why it’s informally dubbed the monogamy hormone. Dr. Theresa Crenshaw, author of
The Alchemy of Love and Lust,
wrote, “Testosterone wants to prowl; vasopressin wants to stay home.” In the long run vasopressin plays a role in fostering his sense of paternalism, but in the short-term, the more you focus on touch, the more vasopressin gets released into his system and the more he’s going to feel calm and connected to you. Massage also boosts circulation, which is essential for arousal.
Here are just some of the rave reviews I’ve heard from male patients whose partners have incorporated massage to foster greater sensual intimacy.
“I love a good firm, foot massage—it totally relaxes me: stretching my toes, kneading the skin in between them, it’s a total turn-on when she sucks my toes, too.”
“Nipples. Bite them, pinch them, tickle them, and nibble them—mine are more sensitive than my wife’s.”
“Fingernails on my back drive me crazy—I love a good backscratch.”
“I like to have my calves worked. My girlfriend holds my leg steady with one hand and really works it down to the knees.”
A good scalp massage is totally invigorating. I also love it when she puts a really hot washcloth on my face while she massages my scalp.
As you’re massaging him, remember that his entire body is an erogenous zone, and many areas—like the earlobes, eyelids, and nipples—are rife with sensitive nerve endings.
Work His Pelvis
As we discussed earlier, men’s genitals grow outward. From an early age, boys intuitively protect them. But over time, this instinctive desire to protect them manifests itself as a permanent sense of inwardness, a physical pulling in that ultimately extends to the entire pelvic area. According to Dr. R. Louis Schultz, “the muscles at the base of the penis may pull the organ in with habitual contraction.
Most women generally approach this area cautiously and briefly, as a pit stop before direct genital stimulation. But make this area a stop in its own right and open up his pelvis.
To get into the groove take these basic principles of full-body massage and apply them creatively to his pelvis.
- Effleurage:
These are long, stroking movements, which are performed using the flat of the hand or fingers by gently gliding your palms across his skin and then gradually putting your body weight behind the glide. - Petrissage:
These movements involve kneading, rolling, and the pulling of his skin. Begin with your fingers pointing away from you, and press down with your palm, while grasping his flesh between your fingers and thumb. - Tapotement:
These are fast and stimulating percussive movements that include cupping, hacking, and pounding (also called pummeling). While cupping, gently curve the hands to make a loose-cupped shape, bending at the knuckles while keeping the fingers straight and firm. While gently pounding (or pummeling), loosely clench your fists, keeping the wrists relaxed. Stroke your partner with either the outer edges of the loose fist or the front of the knuckles. - Friction.
Using your thumb, fingertips, and knuckles, apply direct pressure to a particular site of muscular tension. Lean gradually into the muscle and slowly deepen the pressure. Press for a few seconds, then release.
If you’re interested in learning more about how professional Rolfers approach pelvic massage, I encourage you to read Dr. Schultz’ eye-opening (wait till you see the photographs) guide for practitioners,
Out in the Open: The Complete Male Pelvis
.
Turn Him Over
Make sure to work his buttocks, which hold a great deal of tension.
Many
men have a hands-off attitude about being touched in this area, but there’s a big difference between massaging the buttocks to relieve tension and sensually massaging the anal area. Later we’ll talk about direct anal stimulation to enhance and deepen the pleasure of orgasm, but for now, we’ll focus on relieving tension.
Use a tennis ball to work his sweet spot and add some posterior pizzazz. By rolling a tennis ball along his back, you can give him a good massage, but the tennis ball is also a great way to get him comfortable with your exploration of posterior regions. Rolling a tennis ball along the lower half of his buttocks is a great way to take a hands-off hands-on approach to the more sensitive areas around the anus, like the space between his butt cheeks, as well as his perineum and anal entrance. You’ll activate and stimulate the nerve fibers without transgressing boundaries that he may be uncomfortable with, at least for now.
Keep It Hot
Literally. Sex, especially vigorous, sweaty sex, stimulates the production of steroid hormones, tiny molecules like testosterone and estrogen that contribute to desire and arousal. Says psychologist Cameron Muir of Brock University in Ontario, Canada, on the virtues of sweating during sex and pursuant testosterone release: “The concentration is more than ten times higher, and that concentration is almost as high as the concentration doctors would prescribe for women to enhance the libido.”
A
S YOU FOCUS ON BUILDING
arousal, don’t let his erection or semi-erection distract you. Depending how well you manage to slow him down and relax him, you may notice his erection is semi-hard as opposed to being rigid-hard. He will probably need direct stimulation to get him fully rigid-erect.
Which brings us to the next stage….
Rubbing Him the Right Way
S
O LADIES,
if you were to watch a guy masturbate in slow motion, what, precisely, would you see?
1.
Well, you would probably see him engage in nonrhythmic manual stimulation, sometimes referred to as filling, because this form of light unfocused touch facilitates the filling of his penis with blood and its transition to tumescence from a flaccid or semi-aroused state. To get himself hard, he may:
- Tap lightly along the shaft of his penis (as though he were playing piano on it with his index and middle finger).
- Squeeze the glans (as though he were checking the ripeness of a melon), and gently stroke the frenulum and corona, where the glans meets the shaft.
- Grasp the shaft and shake it.
- Massage his testicles; pinch the scrotal skin; press, stroke, and graze his perineum and anal area.
The length of time it takes for this phase of filling to unfold ranges widely from man to man and is dependent on a multiplicity of factors: his level of arousal at the start, his age, the last time he ejaculated, and his overall sexual fitness. Some men like to linger in the filling phase and enjoy the feeling of becoming hard, while others will do the bare minimum to get to the next stage of arousal where the sensations are more intense.
2.
Once he’s even minimally erect, he will likely grasp and clasp his penis: If he’s a rightie, he’ll use his left hand to firmly grasp the base of the shaft and stretch the penile skin down toward his scrotum. This stretching taut of the penile skin significantly increases the sensitivity of the frenulum and glans as he forms a ring with his thumb and index finger and clasps just below the corona. Rhythmic stroking of the frenulum and glans increases blood flow to the penis and facilitates the build-up of sexual tension required for orgasm.
This sexual tension will manifest itself throughout his body, and many men will break from stroking the frenulum to squeeze their nipples or touch other parts of their body. While rubbing up and down along the frenulum and glans, he may also break his clasp at peak moments of arousal to squeeze the glans firmly, which will momentarily force blood back down out of the head and consequently slow down the path toward ejaculatory inevitability while heightening sexual tension and building propulsive force.
3.
As his levels of arousal build to a peak, he will experience the first of a series of pleasurable orgasmic contractions. Most men recognize this first contraction as the point of ejaculatory inevitability and take this as an intuitive signal to increase frictional massage of the frenulum and glans and tighten the grip on the base and shaft.
4.
As the pleasurable orgasmic contractions propel semen through the urethra, he will retain his tight grip on the shaft and continue massaging the frenulum and glans, maximizing the pleasure and stroking through the orgasm and its first expulsion of ejaculate. He is likely to increase the force of stimulation to augment ejaculatory expulsion. Before finishing, he will squeeze or tap on the frenulum to expel the last pleasurable drops of semen before the tension in his body subsides and his penis returns to a flaccid state.
What I have just described is a four-part process of direct genital stimulation.
1.
Filling
2.
Grasping and clasping
3.
Stroking and squeezing to ejaculatory inevitablity
4.
Stroking and squeezing through orgasm and ejaculation
As his partner, you need to be able to do all that and more. By all that, I mean you need to get attuned to his individual process of arousal and learn how to use appropriate levels of stimulation at each stage to maximize his pleasure and orgasm.
For example, though women often complain to me that their partners are too fast and furious when it comes to clitoral stimulation, according to their boyfriends and husbands, they, too, “jump the gun” and rush too quickly into heavy rhythmic stimulation of the penis.
Other common gripes are that women often stop stroking or sucking too soon, lessening the pressure and consistency of movements at the point of orgasm, rather than stroking through the orgasm to maximize ejaculatory propulsion. Alternately, they often continue stroking well past ejaculation and comfort.
I’ve often heard men say that their well-meaning partners will apply a new sexual technique they’ve read or heard about, but do so mechanically without any regard to their partner’s particular arc of arousal, focusing on form over substance.
Playing Your Hand
When Wanda came into see me, she was positively frantic. Not surprising given that her fiancé, Bob, had gently informed her that sex with her was becoming B-O-R-I-N-G and that he was having trouble maintaining an erection. As a result, she had loaded up on French maid’s uniforms, fish-net stockings, and paddles and stocked her nightstand with every book she could locate on how to give the perfect blowjob and have sex like a porn star. She’d spent hours practicing how to deep throat on countless dozens of innocent zucchinis (purportedly the best phallic instrument for gauging teeth marks). By the time she came in, her head was spinning with all the different “signature” techniques and positions she’d memorized. Yet, despite her impressive efforts, her fiancé’s interest and erection were middling and falling steadily. My sense was that she was too focused on pleasing him rather than actually connecting with him. So I gave her the simple assignment of placing her hand over his while he pleasured himself to get more attuned to his particular arousal process through all four stages of stimulation. At first she balked. “You mean you want me to give him a hand job?”
Like many of us, Wanda had placed too high a premium on sexual flash and novelty and had therefore dismissed manual labor as something he could do himself. But in truth, she, like many others, needed to start from the beginning, learning how Bob liked to be touched from the expert, himself. Almost like learning how to swim, she needed to learn the basic strokes before she dove into deeper waters.
The upshot? (pun intended)…. Well, let’s just say the zucchinis are back in their vegetable bin, and Bob is no longer bored.
In short, masturbation serves as a critical baseline for understanding your partner’s unique arousal arc through all four phases of genital stimulation. But you will recall that I said that I want you to be able to do all that “and more.” By more, I mean that the physics of male sexuality seem to tilt toward a conservation of energy: Men only stimulate themselves long enough to develop the requisite levels of tension necessary for orgasm—no more, no less. Creatures of habit and efficiency, they tend to follow a fairly straight line from start to finish.
Using his masturbation approach as a baseline for understanding his pattern of genital stimulation, you’re going to move him through the process, but you’re also going to diverge. Rather than merely facilitating his arousal, you’re going to slow him down, thus forcing him to develop significantly higher levels of sexual tension than he would normally experience during self-stimulation or standard intercourse-oriented sex. In this way, you will be able to expand and heighten the parameters of his pleasure at each and every level of stimulation by introducing variety and unpredictability.
As the avant-garde filmmaker Jean Luc Goddard said, all stories have a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order.
