Friday 14 December 2018

How to build a successful couple relationship, by a long-term couples therapist


*Comfort and passion in sex-love relationships*:

I have heard it said that happy relationships consists of a good balance of ‘comfort’ and ‘passion’.  Of course, we then need to look at what produces ‘comfort’, and I think the answer is that given by Erich Fromm, in defining love as ‘care, respect and responsibility (plus an interest in who your partner is, and how they feel, right now!)

What about the passion side?  Some people think that is straightforward.  Unfortunately, too many men still think that the definition of passion in romantic relationships is this: intercourse; penetration; ‘shafting’.

However, in my book on how to build a successful relationship, I include this alert by Daniel O’Beeve:



Appendix G: The importance of the clitoris

G1 The myth of the vaginal orgasm

In this appendix, I will write about Daniel O’Beeve’s first love affair:

His girlfriend, Belinda, informed him up front how bored she became with sex, when she had been involved with a new man for a few weeks!  He assumed (for a completely unknown reason), that this would not apply to him.

Six weeks later she had betrayed him with another man. 

He left, found a copy of a book entitled The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm on the railway platform, as he left town, and studied that book on the train.

What did he learn from that reading?

1. That the male theory of human sexual relations, which he had picked up from his culture by osmosis, was false.  It was not enough to insert one’s penis into a woman’s vagina, and to thrust it in and out, in order to produce mutual pleasure.  (It produced undoubted pleasure for the man, and most men failed to ask the woman: ‘How is this for you?’)

2. Sexual intercourse is the most enjoyable part of sexual relations for the man – but for the man only!  It does not produce an orgasmic experience for the woman - (or not reliably, in some cases; and not at all in perhaps most)! 

For example, in an article about her new book, Germaine Greer (2018) quotes the “statistics of sexologists” as showing that “46% of women fake orgasm every time they have sex”.  And they do this to bring the experience of intercourse to an end.

3. For most women, on most occasions, only direct stimulation of the clitoris[i], by digital (finger) or lingual (tongue) massage, will bring her to orgasm.  (And any man can ask his partner to teach him how to do that!) And just in case some readers insist that my data are not up to date, and that things must have improved in recent years, I offer you this extract from the Metro Newspaper of Thursday November 22nd 2018:

“...A study conducted by Durex in the Netherlands last your (2017) showed that almost 75% of women do not orgasm during sex, whereas only 28% of men don’t climax... And it’s getting no better: this month a study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine revealed that of 1,700 US newlyweds, 43 per cent of husbands had no idea how often their wives orgasm. So, in straight sex, there does seem to be an Orgasm Gap.”  (Page 39)[ii].

Part of the problem may be... For more, please go here: https://abc-counselling.org/happy-marriage-or-couple-relationships/






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