For the woman who seldom or never reaches orgasm during intercourse.
I want to speak very directly with you who up to this time have been unable to enter into the sexual pleasure God designed for every wife. In the past, you would have been called frigid—a word that seems to denote an icy personality, unfeeling and self-contained. And you know yourself to be a warm and loving woman. It’s just that you haven’t been able to experience the thrills and excitement you’ve read about. You love your husband and you want all there is from marriage. Perhaps both of you are feeling discouraged because it hurts too much to go on failing, so why keep trying? Why not be content with just loving each other and settling for what must surely be second best? I assure you that you do not have to miss out on the pleasure of sex with your husband.
Nor do you have to think of yourself as frigid. Today we reserve the term frigid for a woman who finds the sex act distasteful, even offensive. The more accurate term for the woman who has never reached a sexual climax is preorgasmic, which implies fulfillment ahead; it’s delayed, but only for a time.
Now, failure to achieve a sexual response may have stirred up feelings of frustration, self-doubt, and inadequacy in both you and your husband. This is an understandable reaction. When these feelings come from sincere attempts to express love to your mate, the wound goes very deep as you begin to sense failure in the very area in which you most want to succeed. Yet never forget that the warmth of your love does exist. It is the ability to express and receive this warmth physically that has become blocked by memories of previous failures, coupled with a lack of sexual knowledge.
Your problem may be rooted in the past, even before marriage, but psychological causes can seldom be exactly pinpointed, and the only purpose served by seeking the cause in your past is to find someone or something on which to place the blame.
The mature approach for the Christian couple is to realize that no matter what the cause, God is able to meet your need in any situation. You and your husband can start right where you are by asking God to raise your level of love and sexual interest for each other, and then both of you can enter into a mutual, loving cooperation in following some simple instructions.
Before I give you an effective (and pleasant) procedure—a series of training sessions—to solve this problem, there are principles to be underscored.
First, no matter which of you may seem to be the most at fault, both you and your husband will have to make a fresh start, as if you were just now getting married. Quit worrying about who might be at fault. This is not the issue. It is only important to discover how both of you can experience more pleasure in your sexual relationship.
So give each other a chance to make love without demand or criticism. This is not a time to keep score, but a time to practice and learn together without anxiety. This will be a period when you realize both of you have much to learn: You will learn to receive, and he will learn to give unselfishly.
Your goal will be to build up memories of pleasurable sexual feelings. When those are combined with some new experiences and a realization of your husband’s loving desire to give you sexual pleasure, this will increase the number of signals to the brain, which can build up to an uninhibited sexual response.
Second, I want you to understand yourself. Desire is your ally. If you desire to have an orgasm, because you know it is your right, your provision from God, and because you want to keenly enjoy the most intimate times with your husband, then there is no reason why you cannot experience an orgasm. It will come.
But it will not come as a result of your exerting your willpower. Certain things must happen within your body as you are sufficiently stimulated, and orgasm will be the result. You can never work it up by trying. Yet intense concentration is an important key. I hope that does not sound like a contradiction. The concentration must be on your own feelings, your own sensations, your own desires, as you move with them and let them take you where they will.
Third, beware of factors that can break your concentration and keep you from reaching orgasm. What will break your concentration? You may find yourself becoming a spectator at your own lovemaking, critically watching yourself to see if you are “performing satisfactorily.” Self-consciousness will interrupt your enjoyment and turn off desire, which may be only just beginning.
Or you may find yourself concentrating on your husband’s reactions. You may start worrying: He must be tired…. This isn’t much fun for him. . . . Fm sure he wishes he had married someone more sexy. And by that time another facet of self-consciousness will have spoiled all sensual delight, just as it was beginning to flower.
A third interruption in concentration may come from guilt feelings of a rather interesting variety. You may have overcome psychological hurdles in thinking of sex as a “bad thing,” for you now realize it is God-created and God-ordained. But as you concentrate on your own wonderful new sensations and look forward to a climax, suddenly the thought comes: I should be trying to please my husband. It’s wrong just trying to please myself. And again desire is aborted.
Let me give you true and sensible thoughts with which to program your mind before making love:
1. In these “training sessions” there is no need to judge yourself, for nothing at all will be demanded of you. The atmosphere will be relaxed and yet sensuous to permit a natural unfolding of the sexual response, which lies within you. Natural means that you force nothing, that you pretend nothing. As a matter of fact, it can be one of the most wonderful times of your life, when nothing is required of you but to let yourself ‘find pleasure as it comes.
2. You may not realize how much your husband is going to enjoy these training sessions! They are purely pleasure-oriented. Couples have reported that their relationship became particularly close and romantic as they began to concentrate on each other strictly for pleasure, without pressure. As you cast off all self-consciousness, you will become more sensual and more desirable to your husband.
3. As you learn to respond by concentrating on your sensations, you are learning to please your husband! You cannot imagine how devastating an indifferent response is to a man who tries time after time to arouse his wife with lovemak-ing. You also cannot imagine the ecstatic thrills that come to a man when he sees his wife responding totally, enjoying every moment of their time together with a lovely abandon.
Now as you go into these training sessions, your husband will have the opportunity to show you his love, as he temporarily defers total sexual gratification. You will show him your trust, as you put yourself in his hands and risk being completely vulnerable and honest in this relationship.
Your training sessions should be in a very private place with no chance of interruption. Of course you will both be very clean and as rested as possible. I suggest that your husband have a clean shave and trimmed, smooth fingernails. If his hands are even slightly rough, he should use a generous amount of hand cream or lotion to make his caresses more pleasing.
All caresses must be gentle, never harsh, brusque, or forced. If they are light, fleeting, and teasing in nature, they serve to arouse the imagination to a much greater degree.
You will both take off all your clothes, and your husband is to use his fingers and his hands to touch, massage, and fondle your body anywhere you lovingly direct him, while you just relax and become conscious of the pleasure gained from his care and caresses. At first, use a gentle trial-and-error method, maintaining very comfortable positions in bed, and avoid any thought of hurrying or any feeling of need to satisfy your husband or any seeking for your own orgasm.
You should repeat these unhurried relaxed times of receiving your husband’s caresses daily, for at least four days, for whatever period of time that gives you pleasure. For these times, you may wish to actually avoid touching the genital or breast areas. You should now both be discovering the most sensitive areas of your body. You should also be aware that you have permission to freely express your pleasure in sexual feelings without regard at this time for your husband’s sexual needs.
These few sessions in which you and your husband touch and caress each other unclothed will help to establish or reestablish a healthy climate of physical giving and pleasuring. The absence of actual intercourse during these sessions will help reduce tensions that have built up in former experiences of coitus.
Also, during this period, you should learn to talk things over. You each should begin to learn to anticipate the other’s physical wants and needs. Remember, if your husband tries a particular form of caress on you, it would be a good idea for you to reciprocate. The idea that it might be pleasurable probably occurred to him because he would like the same caress returned!
You can begin touching your husband, and as you delight him spontaneously and without duty, you may find your own pleasure increasing.
Up to this time, you should not have directed your husband’s hands to your breasts and genital area, but now you must follow some detailed directions for maximum pleasurable sexual stimulation. Your husband is to place himself in a sitting position with his back comfortably resting against pillows at the headboard of the bed. With his legs widely separated, you are to sit between his legs with your back against his chest and your head resting comfortably on his shoulder, your legs spread apart and draped over his. This position allows him freedom of access for creative exploration of your entire body. You should encourage specific direction for this by placing your hand lightly on his hand, so you can show by slight increases in pressure, or by gentle directional movement, the “where and how” of your desires at any particular moment. This will allow both of you to learn precise physical communication without the distractions of verbal request or detailed explanation. At this time you should direct his every movement, and he should absolutely refrain from any of his own ideas as to what may be stimulating to you.
Your husband may feel that he should now stroke the end of your clitoris, but this has been found to be too sensitive and tender an area. You will probably achieve much more pleasure by well-lubricated stimulation along the shaft or sides of the clitoris and around the upper part of the vaginal opening. Almost never is there pleasure in introduction of fingers deep into the vagina.
Often you will want him to just lightly stroke your neck, your earlobes, your breasts, your upper inner thighs, your buttocks, and then return to those most stimulating areas, just above the clitoral glans or just in front of the vaginal opening.
There is no hurry, and you should not at this point be attempting to force yourself to reach an orgasm. These are pleasurable times, which may extend over a period of several weeks, when both you and your husband are lovingly discovering exactly what it is that excites you sexually, and learning to communicate with each other physically and verbally.
If at any time you feel that you are highly aroused sexually, you should try to continue increasing the intensity of the stimulation with his hand or your hand, until you experience the intensely exciting sensation of orgasm. The sensation is centered primarily in your pelvis. While you are learning with your husband, you should have complete freedom to stimulate your own clitoris, if you feel it is needed to produce your first few orgasms. This will help to start a pattern of response, which will later make it much easier to experience orgasm in sexual intercourse. After you have had several orgasms by manual stimulation, you should begin having sexual intercourse in the female-above position. Then use whatever positions you desire.
Do not be concerned if your orgasm continues to come from manual stimulation of the clitoris. The idea that satisfaction for the wife comes from the penis in the vagina is only sometimes true. Your goal, now, is satisfaction given by a loving husband, and achieving the fulfillment of orgasm.
Also do not anxiously work toward simultaneous orgasm with your husband. This is wonderful when it happens but has been far overemphasized in current literature. The purpose should be pleasure for both partners during the sexual relationship.
Remember, skillful, gentle, appropriate stimulation of the clitoris and the nearby areas will almost always bring any wife to a higher level of desire and an experience of sexual release in orgasm.
You can see that the answer lies not just in collecting a group of new erotic techniques, but simply in learning to touch and enjoy each other, to communicate and discover how to please each other. As you learn to enjoy sex because of the wonderful sensations and the precious oneness with your mate—and not just because it is something that makes your husband happy—you will know fulfillment!
Now I want to describe for you some of the common physical conditions that may cause difficulty in achieving orgasm. Pain during intercourse will always inhibit pleasure and hinder sexual release. Painful intercourse is called dyspareunia, but this is a symptom, not a diagnosis. Any woman who has pain or other difficulty with intercourse should have a thorough physical examination, one that includes a pelvic and rectal examination. Since only a minority of doctors will ask a patient about the state of her sex life, you should never just hope the doctor will guess your difficulty. Take a deep breath, blush (if need be), and tell him what is wrong.
One common cause of pain is atrophic vaginitis, a thinning of the vaginal wall, caused by a lack of female hormones, especially estrogen. This occurs in menopause when the amount of estrogen is reduced, or it may occur at any age after removal of the ovaries or any time the ovaries are not producing enough estrogen. This thinning of the vaginal walls can be easily corrected by taking estrogen by mouth, by injection, or by applying estrogen cream up into the vagina. Atrophic vaginitis is the only physical
sexual problem actually caused by the menopause and it can be prevented by maintaining the proper level of estrogen through the menopause years.
Another kind of vaginitis, which produces pain and burning in the vagina, is caused by infection—candidiasis, a yeast infection, and trichomonas, a parasitic infection, are the most common. These infections are contagious, may become chronic when ignored, and demand medical treatment along with a few days abstention from intercourse as well as the use of condoms for a week or two when intercourse is resumed. The husband and wife must take medication simultaneously to eradicate trichomonas infections.
Other causes of pain in intercourse that must be discovered and treated include a dropped-down uterus, known as uterine prolapse, and endometriosis, which produces irritation and scarring in the pelvis. A much less common physical cause of painful intercourse for the wife may follow childbirth during which a tear in the broad ligament has occurred. This ligament is one of the supporting structures at the side of the uterus. Pain is experienced on deep penetration of the penis, but it is very difficult for the doctor to find this injury until several months after childbirth. If you developed this pain one or two months after you had a baby, be sure to ask your doctor to check for this tear. The tear may need to be repaired surgically to provide relief.
Pain can also be caused by vaginismus, a term that describes the involuntary action of the muscles of the vaginal entrance, as they go into spasm when an attempt is made to insert the penis. This muscular spasm may be so severe that even the little finger cannot be inserted into the vagina. This painful condition usually starts right at the time of the first attempt at intercourse but it may occur at other times, such as after the birth of a baby, after a pelvic operation, or even at the time of beginning a second marriage.
Vaginismus can usually be eliminated in about one week with the following procedure. With the wife in position for pelvic examination on the examining table at the doctor’s office, the husband is brought into the room and puts on a rubber glove. He is instructed to attempt to place one well-lubricated finger into the
wife’s vagina. This is to demonstrate to both husband and wife the severity of the spasm of these muscles around the outer one-third of the vagina.
Once the husband’s index finger is in the vagina, this very firm, tense muscular contraction around the vaginal opening will become readily apparent. Like any muscular spasm, it will become painful if too much digital pressure is rapidly applied against it, but slow, steady pressure in the vagina downward toward the rectum over a matter of several minutes will allow the muscles to relax.
The husband and wife are instructed to take three or four graduated dilators home and use them in sequence once or twice per day. It may be best for the wife to insert the dilators herself at first, just until some confidence has been gained. These are called Hegar dilators, the larger size looking like a rod, a little bigger than a fountain pen; or you can use a readily available set of plastic rectal dilators, which can be obtained at most drugstores. Of course, they should be well lubricated before insertion. Once the dilator is in the vagina, the wife should let it remain there for twenty to thirty minutes. When it can be easily inserted, the wife should retain one of these in her vagina for several hours each night. By using these dilators once or twice a day, the woman is gradually becoming comfortable with the idea that something can be in her vagina, and that it does not have to hurt.
At some time during the week it may be possible for the husband to begin inserting the dilator rather than the wife. Most vaginismus is caused by psychological problems, and the husband’s interested, loving cooperation and tender care of his wife is an important part of the treatment.
When the couple plan to have intercourse, the dilator should be inserted in the vagina and should remain in place until the wife feels it is time for penetration of the penis. Then she is instructed to assume the woman-above position, at which time she takes the dilator out of her vagina with one hand and within a few seconds inserts the well-lubricated penis with her other hand. It is crucial that this transfer require only a few seconds, because a longer interval than that may allow the vaginal muscles to go into spasm again.
This quick change is an essential step for at least the first few times that the couple has intercourse.
We have seen extreme cases of vaginismus at the clinic where not even the little finger could be inserted in the vagina. One couple had adopted two children after seventeen years of no intercourse. Another couple had gone fourteen years without intercourse. Both cases were resolved within six weeks with the use of graduated dilators.
If no regular dilators are available, a simple substitute for the Hegar dilators could be short, tapered candles in graduated sizes, the largest being just a litde bigger in diameter than a fountain pen.
Pelvic congestion is one of the most common causes of low-back pain and pelvic pain and tenderness. In the plateau phase, the time of increasing sexual arousal, all of the wife’s pelvic structures become engorged with blood under a significant amount of pressure. If she proceeds to a good strong orgasm, the involuntary muscular contractions close off the small arteries and open the venous system to produce drainage of this pooled blood in a matter of minutes. This leaves a distinct, pleasantly overwhelming sensation of comfort and warmth in the pelvic area, followed by a feeling of relaxation.
Each time the stimulated wife fails to reach orgasm, this represents some injury to the pelvic organs and to her emotions, often leaving her with nervousness, weakness, fatigue, and moderate to severe pelvic pain and low-back pain, which may become chronic. This also may lead to chronic vaginal discharge or heavy or irregular menstrual bleeding. Unfortunately many women undergo pelvic operations because of this pain. This repeated congestion may also contribute to significant enlargement of the uterus, which may fool a doctor into thinking that there is a disease requiring surgery. I suggest that you avoid surgery for pelvic pain until you have made every effort to learn how to achieve full orgasm on a regular basis.
With any of the chronic symptoms we have discussed, you should have regular pelvic examinations at least every six months to one year, since some physical condition could arise at any time, requiring medical treatment.
Most cases of failure to attain orgasm that I have seen began with poor preparation for marriage, a frustrating and fearful honeymoon, followed by a prolonged period of disappointment, blundering, and boredom in marriage that conditioned the wife to feel there was no hope for fulfillment.
This situation was often aggravated by the wife’s failure to understand that it is man’s nature to be adventurous. When a man realizes his wife is not being satisfied, this inclination is increased even more, as he attempts to please her. She begins to view his variety of approaches as distasteful, vulgar, or abnormal. Nothing will chill and remove the bright lustre of married love more quickly than a cool, silent, sullen, indifferent, or negative attitude toward the young husband’s advances.
Applying the information given in this book, today’s husband has the opportunity to become a skillful lover—one who can tenderly lead his wife into the richest pleasures of the sexual relationship. Remember: Every wife should be given the opportunity to experience orgasm in every intercourse. The relationship may be very loving and warm, but this is not enough. Fulfillment ahead! This can be yours! Back to main page: http://abooc.com/
Posted in For the Freorgasmic Wife
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.