Wifey Wednesday: When Sex Doesn’t Feel That Great

Last week on Wifey Wednesday I encouraged you all to have more sex! Use it or lose it, I said. When you have sex more, you actually charge your libido!

But then some of you commented, what do you do when it just doesn’t feel good at all?

First, for many women sex doesn’t feel good at the beginning of their marriages.

In fact, based on the surveys I did for my upcoming book, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, it looks like most women have rather ho hum sex in their first few years of marriage. They don’t reach orgasm. They don’t like it that much.

That’s because, as much as we may talk about sex being “totally natural”, we don’t just figure out how to do it easily. So many things are tied up in sex that making it work like clockwork isn’t actually that easy. You have to feel safe. You have to feel relaxed. You have to feel willing and not ashamed. And that takes time to build up trust.

So just know that if you’re in the first, let’s say, 7 years of your marriage, and it still isn’t working, it likely still will! Hold on to that! Consider this a fun research project you get to do together, and get a book, like The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, which tells you in detail how to make it feel good.

The second thing is that I am totally convinced that most women do not know their own bodies.

And men certainly don’t! Men may “know”, at a head level, that women need to be touched longer before they’re ready for actual sex, but they don’t necessarily know how to do that touching. Men and women like to be touched in entirely different ways. Men like it rougher; women like to be touched much more gently. Most men, then, when they do try to touch, do it completely wrong.

And what’s our response? We often don’t tell them. We put up with it, because to ask for something else seems embarrassing, and if we’re not getting aroused with what he’s doing, then we figure there’s something wrong with us.

But there’s not! It’s probably just that he doesn’t know what to do, and he’d really, really like to learn. He may be rushing through it, so you may get the impression that “he really doesn’t want to do this”, but he’s probably rushing through it because he doesn’t understand the importance of foreplay and he doesn’t understand how to touch you anyway, so what he’s doing doesn’t seem to be having much effect.

So, ladies, here’s what it comes down to: if you are going to have a good time in the bedroom, you are going to have to be an active participant.

Tell him what you want! He wants to make you feel good; for most men, that’s the ultimate prize. When they know that they can make you feel good, they feel like real men. They feel wanted and desired. So he wants it to work, even if he’s rushing through it. He just doesn’t get it.

Here’s a good way to make him get it:

Suggest that you play a game where all you do is touch for 15 minutes. Just have him touch you, and when he does something right, tell him. When it’s not quite right, move his hand or lead him to some place better. You don’t even need to use words if you don’t want to. But show him what feels good, and in the process you’ll probably learn yourself!

Believe that it can better, and take control of it. If you’re one of those women who has just never felt that aroused, you probably have to do this a whole bunch of times to learn how to relax and just feel pleasure. But you can do it! So dare yourself, and maybe you’ll find that you’re one of those women who finally figures out what all the fuss is about–even if you’re seven years into your marriage!

This exercise is just one from the 29 days to great sex series, available on the web for women, or in expanded form (written for couples) as the 31 Days to Great Sex!