by Betty Dodson
ORGASMS
FOR TWO
The Joy of Partner sex
Betty Dodson, Ph.D.
HARMONY BOOKS
New York
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Half Title
Preface
1 Liberating Partner sex
The Myth of Foreplay
2 Heterosexuality Revisited
Intergenerational Sex
3 Loving Love
Romantic Love Junkies
4 The Bridal Shower
We Haven’t Come a Long Way, Baby
5 Loving Others
Defusing the Power Struggle
6 Did You Come?
The Mystery of the Female Orgasm
7 G-Spot or My-Spot
Reaffirming the Clitoris
8 Masturbation for Couples
Sexual Compatibility
9 Sex Toys
For Couples Who Want to Have Fun
10 Orgasms for Two
Intercourse with Clitoral Stimulation
11 Especially for Men
World-Class Lovers
12 I’ll Show You Mine
Our Magnificent Sex Organs
13 Creative Partner sex
Exploring New Sexual Skills
14 Rosebud
Anal Eroticism for Heterosexuals
15 Sexual Seniors
The Beat Goes On
16 Sex Coaching
Teaching Sex in the New Millennium
Afterword
About the Author
Other Books by Betty Dodson, Ph.D.
About the Illustrations
Copyright
For all the gentle men who have enriched my life without coercion, abuse, or a drop of sexual violence. Like most women, I’ve had my periods of hating men. But once I understood the follies of my romantic love addiction, I was able to look back and appreciate my high school crushes, romantic lovers, two fiancés, a husband, and an abundance of postmarital sex partners both casual and profound.
Acknowledgments
When my editor, Shaye Areheart, called and proposed I write the sequel to Sex for One, without hesitation I declined. No more frustrations working with a big corporation for me, thank you. She reminded me that a big publisher could also be a formidable partner. As we talked, I admitted that in spite of my reputation for being a career masturbator and a dyke, I’d been living with a young man for the past couple of years. And while I’d found our partner sex to be quite enjoyable, I still wasn’t what I’d call a big fan of coupledom. Her enthusiasm and persistence finally seduced me into agreeing to write this book. My heartfelt thanks to her for making our collaboration so thoroughly enjoyable.
I want to thank my three brothers, Rowan, Bill, and Dick. Growing up with them allowed me to interact with the opposite sex as an equal. Otherwise I might have remained a closeted heterosexual.
My writing mentor, Grant Taylor, dropped out so I could do this book on my own and I thank him for that. Oh how I’d hated but then missed his incessant, literary nit-picking.
My two girlfriends who are both authors made some good suggestions. Marianna Beck of Libido.com thought I could let go of an entire chapter and I did. Maryann Macy covered the manuscript with a lot of helpful comments. My professional friends who are clinical psychologists and psychoanalysts working with clients asked me some hard questions about relationships that I couldn’t really answer except to say my specialty is sexual skills. Still, their input was invaluable. My thanks go to Joanna Whitcup, Cathie Ragovin, Derek Polonsky, and Suzanne Iazensa.
I also want to thank my monthly women’s group of Ph.D. therapists and sex educators who gave me feedback on the chapters I presented during our meetings. Although I nearly abandoned them during this project, my dear friends Mary Guarino and Joan McElroy cheered me on. The many phone conversations with Richard Lamparski kept my sense of humor intact.
Oh, I almost forgot. Without my new hip joints, I could never have experienced such fabulous partner sex again. Thanks to Dr. Robert Buly, my orthopedic surgeon, I’m still rocking and rolling.
Finally, I want to thank my roommate, Eric, who was my muse for this book. Besides putting in many hours reading and improving the manuscript, he was always there to calm me down or cheer me up with happy orgasms, lots of hugs, and sweet puppy kisses. When Eric’s mother, Bonnie, read the book, I held my breath, expecting her to be shocked or upset by all the explicit sexual details about her son. Instead she said, “Everything you’ve written is true.” Then she grinned and suggested I dedicate the book to her! It sounded just like a comment my own mother would have made. So I dedicate this book to my mother, Eric’s mother, and to all mothers who are raising sweet, gentle sons.
ORGAMS
FOR TWO
Preface
When the title of my book Sex for One was announced at my forty-fifth high school reunion in Wichita, Kansas, most people thought it was about sex for one at a time. In New York City, when I tell my friends the title of my next book is Orgasms for Two, they break out into a big grin and ask if I’m going to write Orgasms for Three or More. The answer is no, but now that I’m a senior citizen living with a young man, I am considering writing a book titled Orgasms for Oldsters: Too Sexy for Their Rockers.
After three decades of teaching women about orgasm through the practice of masturbation, I never envisioned writing a book about sex for couples. By the time I reached forty, I knew romantic love was a myth, relationships and marriages didn’t last for me, and life wasn’t fair. In spite of my vow to never fall in love or live with another man or woman again, my prized independence dissolved in 1999 when Eric Wilkinson moved in with me. After thirty years of living alone and enjoying the life of a bisexual bachelor, I was inspired by this young man to revisit heterosexuality. Only this time around I have the unique perspective of a financially and sexually empowered wise woman.
Sex for One was the result of the orgasmic sex I shared with my first postmarital lover, Grant Taylor. During the first year of our affair, in 1965, we discussed the important role that masturbation had played in our respective lives before we met. Once we included masturbation in our sexual repertoire, we also discovered that it enhanced partner sex. Since then we have continued our ongoing dialogue about the politics of masturbation. Today he is my trusted friend and brilliant Webmaster of www.bettydodson.com.
Orgasms for Two is a continuation of my erotic journey, sharing a positive message about how masturbation can liberate partner sex between gay male, lesbian, bisexual, and gender-blended couples. Because women are the ones who buy the most sex books, I offer a word of caution: This is not a book about how to get a man, how to keep him, or how to get rid of him or kill him after the relationship is over. I have no idea how to sustain hot monogamy or a passionate marriage. My personal record with both is dismal.
However, I do believe couples can be more realistic and down-to-earth by letting go of those sickly romantic expectations that drive us toward inevitable disappointments, insane jealousies, and murderous rages. After more than thirty years of teaching, I’ve got some practical ideas about how to improve sexual skills so men and women can share mutual orgasms. It is my firm belief that enjoying more sexual pleasure with ourselves as well as each other will make us all a little bit nicer, less violent, and more creative.
1
LIBERATING PARTNERSEX
The Myth of Foreplay
It’s totally understandable why heterosexual men and women want to climax from penis/vagina sex—how convenient, how easy, and how wonderful to have partner sex be consistently and mutually orgasmic. However, if Romeo’s firm penis moving sweetly inside Juliet’s wet vagina provides
orgasms for nearly every man and a mere handful of women, what are we going to do about the majority of women who cannot climax from vaginal penetration alone? We can broaden our definition of partner sex to include some form of direct stimulation of a woman’s clitoris either manually or with a vibrator during heterosexual lovemaking.
Let’s start with the concept of foreplay. Women’s magazines as well as many sex books emphasize the importance of “foreplay” for couples. We are told that women want more of it and men don’t do enough of it. It’s been my observation that a little appetizer of kissing, breast fondling, and clitoral touching before the main course of penetration is seldom enough to satisfy the sexual appetite of most red-blooded women. Just as she is getting excited from some form of direct clitoral contact, he stops and penetrates her vagina. While he is enjoying his ideal erotic sensation with his penis moving inside her, she is now struggling to get a little indirect clitoral contact, which for most women can’t compare to consistent clitoral stimulation all the way to orgasm.
Imagine a man being told he can rub his penis inside a woman’s vagina as foreplay, but when it’s time for his orgasm, she must be sitting on his face penetrating his mouth with her clitoris. This will give him a “mature oral orgasm.” He must not reach down and touch his penis while she’s fucking him in the mouth or she’ll think her clitoris isn’t big enough to provide his orgasm. To protect her female ego, he ends up faking orgasm, but he figures it’s worth it to keep the peace. Later on he can masturbate in the bathroom, or if she’s a sound sleeper, he can finish himself off in bed providing he can come while holding his breath and not moving so as not to wake her.
Instead of using the word “foreplay,” we need to think of a new term to use, such as “sexplay.” Most women desire clitoral pleasure in the beginning of, during, and sometimes even after partner sex, if she wants to come again.
As I enter the fourth decade of teaching women how to have orgasms, I’ve come to the conclusion that just as a man’s penis gets consistent contact during penis/vagina sex, many women also want consistent clitoral contact throughout the entire act. Any man who is considerate will add direct clitoral stimulation with his fingers or a confident woman will stimulate her own clitoris with her hand, a little battery-operated vibrator, or an electric vibrator. Once the clitoris and the head of the penis are engaged, every thrust of his penis and contraction of her vaginal muscle becomes mutually pleasurable. They can share the ecstasy of orgasm during intercourse with few exceptions.
One of my basic principles for sharing mutual orgasms is: How we make love to ourselves is what we bring to partner sex. New designs for partner sex require a man who has learned ejaculatory control through the practice of masturbation and a woman who’s learned her orgasmic response the same way. If he occasionally comes before she does or she feels like having another orgasm after he’s been satisfied, there is nothing to prevent her from continuing. He can add sensuous touching or slow finger or dildo penetration while she continues clitoral contact with either her finger or a vibrator.
Another creative way for couples to share orgasms during partner sex is by taking turns. If she prefers oral sex for her orgasm, then after she has her climax they can go on to intercourse for his orgasm. If he prefers oral sex, too, they can flip a coin to see who goes first. Instead of seeing penis/vagina sex as the only thing on the menu, they can treat fucking as her appetizer and his main course. After he comes, she can have her orgasm with direct clitoral stimulation from a number of ways. For variety, lovers might choose to masturbate together and give themselves their own orgasm.
Over the years, my approach to teaching sex has been criticized by some and applauded by others. Some accuse me of being too focused on the body and orgasms. They believe love and relationships are far more important than cocks, clits, and sexual technique. Others are convinced that until we deal with the cultural, social, and economic inequalities in women’s lives, sexual pleasure is a luxury most of us cannot afford. Some feminists believe we must end all forms of violence against women before we will feel safe enough to enjoy sexual pleasure. I disagree. One important avenue to improve women’s lives and begin to end violence would be to defuse the war between the sexes.
In my opinion, experiencing consistent orgasms is essential in developing self-esteem and sustaining a loving relationship. During the twenty-five years I ran my masturbation workshops, the opening question, “How do you feel about your body and your orgasm?” made us realize how much confusion, pain, and unnecessary suffering sexual ignorance had caused us. We all agreed that both women and men would be happier and society less violent if everyone took a course in Orgasm 101.
When I was studying at the Art Students League in New York City, both teachers and students agreed that the creative process required complete freedom to explore our deepest feelings and convictions. Now, in my second career as a clinical sexologist, I feel the same way about human sexuality. Creative lovemaking also requires the complete freedom to explore our sexual bodies and our erotic minds. No religious organization or government agency has the right to tell us with whom, or under what circumstances, we can share our sexuality with other consenting adults. In any country that upholds the ideals of the democratic process, artistic and sexual freedoms go hand in hand.
Sex and art share other commonalities. Being a world-class lover or a first-rate artist requires skills that must be learned and practiced. Unfortunately, many people continue to believe that good sex comes naturally, as a result of an emotionally sound relationship. This idea has kept heterosexuality imprisoned for hundreds of years. Yet where do we go to learn the basics of how to erotically please ourselves, let alone another person? This is the challenge facing sex educators today, especially in America, where sex is a political battlefield as the boundaries between church and state continue to blur. The question is: Who owns our bodies, minds, and sexuality? Most would answer: Each individual does.
On the one hand, America flaunts sex in the media and entertainment fields, yet on the other, our Puritan underpinnings show through when we avoid the most fundamental, real-life aspects of sexual pleasure. Congress struggles with laws to restrict adult entertainment industries and ways to censor the Internet. Religious groups impose their beliefs on all students in public schools with government-funded, abstinence-only sex education that limits sexual expression to monogamous heterosexual marriage. Our teenagers are being told that birth control usually fails and abortion and homosexuality are morally wrong, and masturbation is never mentioned as a safe alternative to penis/vagina sex. Until America accepts sexual diversity as the law of the land, to include gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and intersexuals, we will remain in the dark ages of human sexual expression.
The religious and politically conservative people who are trying to control the dissemination of sex information claim it to be the domain of parents to teach their children. However, not all parents are in a position to teach sexual skills because many have never learned themselves. And by the time kids reach their teens, they don’t want to discuss sex with their parents—it’s too embarrassing. Those parents who enjoy their own sexuality will pass on positive nonverbal messages, and the clever ones will have a few good informational sex books on the family’s bookshelves.
The next big chunk of sex information comes from children’s peers, and it’s often incorrect or distorted. I was six or seven years old the day my girlfriend Mimi told me that a baby would come out of a hole between my legs. I was horrified. No babies for me, thank you. Later, when I asked Mother if it was true, she said yes, but that having a baby was a beautiful thing. She explained that when I grew up and got married, my husband would put his penis inside my vagina and that’s how a woman got pregnant and had a baby. She also said that having sex with a man I loved would be wonderful. From that day on I played with my nameless clitoris while dreaming of the moment my faceless husband would put his penis inside my vagina. What’s wrong with this picture?
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My first erotic drawing remains vivid in my memory. I was the best artist in school, so one afternoon at my friend Diane’s house, several of my girlfriends asked me to draw a picture of sex. The image I created was a man on top of a woman. His arms were as stiff as the polelike penis disappearing between her thighs. I drew a small puddle of blood alongside her body to show she’d been a virgin. We were all heated up by my twelve-year-old rendition of sex—something we longed for and feared in equal measure. We talked about sex while ceremoniously sharing a few puffs on a cigarette that Diane had stolen from her mom’s purse. Then I tore the drawing into little pieces and flushed them down the toilet.
Many people continue to believe that the man-on-top intercourse depicted in my first “dirty picture” is the preferred form of sexual expression. They say it’s natural—God ordained it. But it is man, not God, who advocates the “missionary position,” since it serves most men’s need to control the action that leads to male ejaculation. In spite of the fact that this seldom provides orgasms for the majority of women, each new generation believes women should be able to climax from “normal” heterosexual intercourse.
I’ll never forget the day, at age thirty-five, when I realized the awful truth about my own sexual ignorance. Despite all my years of childhood masturbation, teenage hand jobs, and seven years of sneaky marital masturbation, when it came to partner sex, it never dawned on me to make direct clitoral contact while having sexual intercourse. When I had an orgasm with myself I stimulated my clitoris, but when I had sex with a boyfriend, my clitoris became nonexistent. I was outraged to think it had taken so long to understand that my clitoris was my sex organ, and my vagina was the birth canal.
