Free The New Male Sexuality by Bernie Zilbergeld Page B

late? Chinese, Mexican, Italian, or what?”
    But because we still view sex, even in marriage, as not quite all right, we’d rather sneak our way into it—and call it spontaneity. Planning sex usually involves talking about it, something that makes most of us very uncomfortable. So the less we plan and the less we talk about it, the less real it seems and the less embarrassed we have to get.
    We pay heavily for our desire for spontaneity. Because of a lack of planning, we often have less sex than we want. Our spontaneous invitations often get rebuffed because of insufficient time or energy. Because we don’t want to plan and talk, we often fail to use necessary protections against disease and conception. Yet another price is that sex often isn’t as good as it could be if we were willing to plan for it (by making time, anticipating it, setting the appropriate mood, and so on).
    If you want more sex, safer sex, and better sex, you might want to rethink whether spontaneity is really crucial. And while you’re thinking, keep in mind that planning does not rule out spontaneity. Couples who have good sex talk about it and plan for it, and also take advantage of spontaneous opportunities.
    These and similar myths have made men and women anxious, created problems and dissatisfactions, and made resolution of existing problems more difficult. But we are not stuck with these destructive notions. We can reject them and put in their place more realistic and more constructive ideas. In the process, we can make our sex lives a true reflection of our values, feelings, thoughts, and the best interests of ourselves and our relationships, rather than trying to measure up to ridiculous standards set by others. In the rest of the book, you’ll have numerous opportunities to examine and modify beliefs that may be creating problems in your sex life.

SEXUAL REALITY

CHAPTER THREE
    What Is This Thing Called Sex?

Sex! Everything connected with it. People spend more time thinking, worrying, agonizing over it than all the rest of the woes of man put together. Nothing so drives people—men, women—off the rails. I sometimes think God had begun to doze, was excessively fatigued, hadn’t worked it out properly, when he put that part in place.— William Brinkley
I used to think I was a hot stud in college and knew everything about sex. Turned out that I knew very little: just get her hot, stick it in, hump away, and come. Took me a while to find out sex is a lot more than that . —Man, 31
    The main problem with the fantasy model of sex is that it holds up standards that are for the most part unattainable by human beings and probably not desirable even if they could be reached. But because people take the model as defining what’s normal, as a standard against which to measure their own behavior and feelings, they not only end up feeling inadequate but also miss the obvious. They don’t ask if they’re getting what they want and if their erotic activity in fact enhances their pleasure, self-esteem, and relationship.
    In many ways, the sex people actually have doesn’t differ that much from the sex animals have. And that’s depressing, to think that what you’re doing isn’t much different from what a mouse or chicken or monkey does. And in some ways, lower animals have it better. They may not have long-lasting intercourse, but at least they aren’t sneaky about their matings and apparently they don’t feel guilty about what they do, and I doubt they worry about their performance. In a reproductive sense, it doesn’t make much difference, of course—just whatever gets the job done. But humans are capable of so much more.
    The model of sex I discuss in this chapter and that will take me most of the rest of the book to illustrate is more distinctly human and moreintimate than what we’ve had before. It’s a sexuality in which people interact and relate, not just genitals; in which deceit and coercion play no part; in which what’s