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Jessica asks:


Heather Corinna replies:

Ten minutes is actually a longer time, not a shorter one, for an erection to last once intercourse begins, especially for younger men. But even if he lasted a half hour, it's unlikely that you'd feel satisfied with intercourse alone or reach orgasm that way, since the majority of women do not.

Your boyfriend needs to understand that while intercourse alone may work for him (though even for many men, while it may result in orgasm, that alone is not all that satisfying either, something he may be acknowledging by asking for oral sex), it's not working for you and won't for most women. And if he's unwilling to have any kind of contact with your clitoris with his hands, mouth or a sex toy, what he's basically doing is ignoring the part of your genitals which is really where most of your sexual sensation happens. Your vagina, for the most part, is a secondary sexual organ when it comes to pleasure, and once you get a couple inches inside the vagina, it's often not even that since there are very few nerve endings there. If he's going to have female sexual partners in his life, he's going to need to understand how our bodies work and that right now, his idea of what is sexually satisfying is more likely to be satisfying for him only than for her and his partners. He's also going to need to be sure that he actually enjoys women's real bodies, whole bodies, and that he has the emotional maturity to accept women's bodies and sexual response as they are, not as he'd like them to be.

Absolutely, plenty of people will have one or two sexual activities that just aren't their thing, and some may even have activities they just absolutely won't do or strongly dislike. We all have sexual preferences. But if those preferences exclude all activities which our partner finds satisfying, and only includes one which that partner does not, that's a real compatibility problem. And if those preferences tend to exclude all the things which stimulate all partners we'll have of the group of people we date, that's a pretty big problem, and one worth investigating to be sure, for instance, we really are attracted to that group of people and like being with them sexually, or that we're really ready to be a sexual partner to someone else, enjoying the whole of their bodies and their sexual pleasure as much as our own. When someone has a lot of strong preferences against many sexual activities their partner enjoys, they should also be investing a good deal of time and energy in asking that partner about what else they can do together so they feel satisfied, too: if he wants to really be a partner, finding out what he can do to make you feel as good as he does should be something critical for him which he has a strong interest in.

Sounds to me like the two of you need to have a talk about the reality of the female sexual anatomy, and also about double-standards. If it's not nasty for him to get oral sex, but it is for you, that's a double-standard. If his fluids are okay but yours are not, that's a double-standard. You both have genitals, they both have fluids, and neither of your genitals or your fluids are "nasty." Sex is often messy, wet, smelly and sweaty, for people of all genders. Both your genitals and fluids are natural and normal, just like his. How about asking him to talk about these double standards and where he got those ideas? How about asking what he thinks he can do to adjust them since he has a female partner? Mind, you can both use latex barriers for oral or manual sex if you like -- condoms for oral sex for him, dental dams for you, latex gloves for both of you for manual sex. Some people find that with manual sex, gloves used with lube even feel better than bare hands because it takes away the roughness we can get from fingertips and fingernails. Too, you can certainly use your own hands on your clitoris with any sex you're having. No matter what, if you're going to continue to have sex together, you're both going to need to find some middle ground where the sex truly includes and is about both of you.

I'll go ahead and be frank: sometimes, this is just an emotional maturity issue. Not everyone has it. Some people will get it in time, and some people never will. Sometimes, this is also an issue of someone not understanding the difference between earnestly partnered sex -- that is about shared, mutual pleasure -- and masturbating on another person's body. If all we do with a partner is just what feels good to us and what we want, and deny that partner everything which could feel good to them, we're not really having partnered sex: we're using that partner as a masturbation aid, and that's just not cool. It is actually usually very demeaning and dehumanizing for the partner being treated that way. You might want to ask him, to give him an idea, how he might feel if all you were willing to do when it came to sex with him was to straddle his arm and rub yourself on it. Would that be satisfying for him? Would he feel like he was really an equal part of the sex you were having?

Maybe your partner just needs for you to talk about this with him seriously, and make clear that for you two to have sex together -- for real -- he needs to examine his attitudes here and the two of you need to find a way for your body and your sexuality to be an equal part of the sex you're having. He may also just be ignorant about women's sexual anatomy and need some education in that regard. Maybe he needs a little more time to grow up before he's anyone's sexual partner.

In either case, if during these talks, he either remains unresponsive, or it just turns out that he just plain doesn't like anything but intercourse -- and you know that isn't going to work for you -- you may need to accept that the two of you are not sexually compatible, and this may not be someone who's a good choice of a sexual partner for you (or most women, for that matter). Just because we love someone and other aspects of our relationship are good doesn't mean a satisfying sexual relationship will necessarily follow. You may need to have a big think about if you want to continue a sexual relationship with him if it becomes clear that things aren't going to change much in this regard, which, if they've been going on like this for two years and you've already had these talks, they very well may not.

Here are a few links for you to read, some of which you can pass on to him, either directly or by explaining some of these things to him yourself in a talk about all of this. Hopefully, if you otherwise like being in this relationship, they, and the talks you have about these things, will help. But if none of this does, then I'd suggest that it's time to move on to a partner who can really be a partner to you.

written 27 Apr 2008 . updated 01 May 2008
