Communication
After evaluating attitudes, you need to consider your communication. Sex without communication has little to commend it. Your communication may be of the nonverbal kind during the lovemaking process itself. Perhaps you have learned to do what the sex therapists suggest—to put your hand lovingly over your husband’s and show him where you want stimulation. And if he is too rough or too gentle, to show him again with your hand over his. There are ways of telling him when you are ready for intercourse without saying a word. But even before you make love, you may need to communicate your needs to your husband, frankly and clearly. He may have needs to tell you about too. If you want to reach orgasm and are not doing so, ask him to give the manual stimulation that will bring you to orgasm. It is amazing how silent we women are on something as important as the sex act in marriage. We wish in silence or we suffer in silence or we hope that this time he will be different, that this time he will think of doing that which we long for him to do. Why not just tell him?
While we are speaking of communication, let me caution you about one thing that is better left uncommunicated. Some wives, out of a desire to please their husband (or for other reasons), have pretended for years that they are wildly enjoying lovemaking, when really they never even reach orgasm. Now with all the talk in magazine articles about attaining orgasm, they realize that they could have it after all—if only their husbands knew what to do. But the poor men think they have been doing it all these years. Some women, in an attempt at honesty, tell their husbands they have been faking a response. The results of this can be almost disastrous. We have known husbands whose egos were crushed by this revelation. When they found out that their wives had been pretending all along, they were so disgusted they would have nothing further to do with them. Realizing that the wife has been living a lie, a husband may well wonder what other areas of the relationship have been dishonest as well. I believe that the husband, in most cases, is better off not knowing. If you have painted yourself into a corner by pretense, you’ll have to work yourself out of it with wisdom and a lot of prayer. Make some graceful suggestions to your husband concerning techniques you’ve read about, without implying that he has failed to arouse or satisfy you all this time. As these techniques are tried, you may find pretense becoming a wonderful reality.
Posted in Attitudes and Communication
To Ed Wheat Sr. and Gladys Gibson Wheat, whose commitment, devotion, warmth, generosity, and integrity stood for fifty years as a beautiful picture of genuine agape love.