Chapter 4: Physical Harmony 6. Overcoming Difficulties in Sexual Adjustment

Selfishness. Selfishness impairs all relationships in home life, including the sexual. The unselfish husband thinks of this form of intimacy in its effect upon his wife as much as for his own sake, while the selfish man uses sex as a mere personal gratification, and only aggravates his mate. He stimulates her sex passion but leaves it unsatisfied, giving her a sense of being abused and exploited rather than loved and treasured. So also the wife may on occasion fail to have sufficient consideration for her mate.

Both must learn to love unselfishly or they will never find the fulfillment of love's promise. The husband should learn to be sensitive to his wife's feelings, and each should understand the needs of the other.

Masturbation is an extreme instance of the use of sex in a self-centred way. The person who has become addicted to this immature practice and carries it into marriage may be defrauding the mate and making the normal relationship difficult. It may be said, however, that those persons who are tormented with the idea that masturbation in early life may have ruined their chances for adjustment or for full mental and physical health need to be set free from a fear that is groundless.

Faults of Sexual Approach. By wrong approach the husband may fail to make the marital relationship a means of charming and delighting his wife, but rather may repel her. With a demanding rather than a love-making attitude he neglects to bring his wife's sexual emotions into life. From ignorance he passes through a sequence of haste, and clumsiness, causing pain and possible aversion. This can be remedied by attention to the woman's needs and the ways of satisfying them which we have discussed!

Lack of Control. Another type of difficulty is experienced in a temporary inadequacy of the husband due to nervous fear that the new adjustment may be difficult. He may experience a quick ejaculation of the seminal fluid, after which he may be unable to bring his wife to her orgasm. Since the wife's emotional tide naturally rises more slowly, it is only by learning to delay his orgasm that the husband will be able fully to satisfy her. To learn this may take time, but if he will think of his love rather than his fears, and in the course of experience will seek to discover the positions and movements which bring his wife to her culmination while enabling him to delay his own, he will find it possible to lengthen the time of intercourse to their mutual benefit.

The husband will find it desirable to make the entrance gently, to allow a little time for the vagina to adjust itself to his entrance, and to remain quiet for a brief time whenever his own climax approaches before the wife is ready for hers. As the wife develops her true sexual personality, which was dormant in her girlhood, she will be able to have her orgasm more quickly. In the course of a few weeks or months the two who started out requiring dissimilar periods of time will probably find that the wife's culmination can be brought about more readily, and that of the husband can be delayed.

When there is difficulty the two may need to give themselves with greater joy and self-forgetfulness to preliminary love play and mutual petting. On the other hand such difficulty may indicate that they need to devote more attention to the creating of harmony in the ordinary relationships of the home.

The husband should try to have the wife's orgasm beginning before he allows his own to take place. While this may seem impossible to some couples in their early experience, it can be achieved in time by most. If after some months of marriage this is not found to be true, it will be time not to be discouraged but to seek advice, from books or a counselor.

Impotence. Seeming impotence is usually due to nervousness, fear, a wrong emotional attitude, or a wrong program of living. A young bridegroom who was working long hours writing a book, feared he was becoming impotent because he was frequently unable to carry intercourse through to mutual consummation. It was pointed out to him that as he was using so much energy in his work and was living a sedentary life, it was unreasonable to suppose that he ought to undertake intercourse as frequently as he had been led to believe. Relief of his worry along with a more sensible program of living brought improvement.

The impotence that some young men fear is usually imaginary. If a man forgets his anxiety and lives an active and wholesome life the occasion for his worry will usually vanish. If not it will be almost certainly curable through the help of a skilled physician. Paradoxically, however, use of alcohol first accentuates passion and in the end decreases sexual potency. A wife complained that when her husband was under the influence of alcohol he always wanted intercourse but was never able to carry it out.

Frigidity. Usually a woman should experience orgasm at least in a fair proportion of occasions of intercourse. There are some women, however, who have well developed responses short of climax. Women who are constitutionally frigid are few, perhaps one in a hundred, but those who arc frigid because of mental factors, such as fear, worry or an unworthy attitude toward marital union, are many. Therefore, it is necessary to give attention to those cases in which the sex life is inadequate because of factors which could be improved. If the sexual experience is unsatisfactory, let the wife reflect that this may be a result of mental bias, and subject to correction. If she were hopelessly frigid she probably would not have loved ardently. Having so loved, let her realize that her coldness is in some degree inconsistent with her love.

Let such a person realize that the other values of friendship could have been secured in other ways. Anyone incurably prejudiced against the marital relationship ought to remain unmarried or to discover whence comes her inhibition; but a woman who has entered marriage with this point of view ought to take herself in hand, to heal the sickness of her mind. Many women who have been frigid or partly so at first, have gradually learned to be normal, greatly improving their married life, through the removal of some mental or physical impediment to complete union.

Physical sex response takes some exuberance, which the over-tired woman or the woman who takes little care of her health may not possess. Fullness and vigor of life are worth cultivating and preserving for many reasons, and for few, if any, more important than that they help the wife and mother to be her best in family life. However, it should be assumed that if sickness should come to either mate the other would of course, show all possible consideration, finding other ways of expressing love in tenderness toward the one who is ill.

Some women experience strong and frequently recurring sex desire and yet fail of sexual fulfillment with their husbands. Such a wife should not necessarily assume that the husband is at fault. In such cases a careful study of their problem, perhaps with the aid of a skilled counselor, would be desirable both for the husband and for the wife.

As to mental attitude, though it is difficult by an act of will to change our deep-seated emotional reactions, progress can be made in this also when it is undertaken with patience and determination. The attitude of love should rule so that fear may be overcome.

When Adjustment Is Difficult. In the rare cases in which a fully satisfactory adjustment is impossible let the couple put all the meaning of their mutual devotion into the sex life they can have and compensate by making the other parts of their experience together unusually happy and companionable. Although they fail of ideal physical adjustment they may find a total sharing of life that is a great joy to them through shared devotion to their children and through such common interests as the home, work, hobbies, friends, social activities, congenial intellectual pursuits, or devotion to art or to religion. The thing for them to do is to cultivate success in other areas rather than to worry when perfect sexual adjustment is lacking. After all there is no way of achieving an ideal relationship for those whose main demand is for mere gratification.

The finest and most complete union of personalities is the real end and aim of marriage. This can be achieved by many to whom perfect sexual union is denied. It is, after all, the entire nature, rather than just the sexual nature, that is to be expressed in marriage. While all forms of fulfillment are to be desired, a rich fulfillment on the personality level is the greatest and most enduring reward of a fine marriage. Research studies have shown that personality factors are more important tor success in marriage than physical factors. Marriages which do not stop short of the highest goals of understanding, appreciation and comradeship are the ones that hold up best.