Why women lie about sex

Since the story of Adam and Eve, women have been stereotyped as the inherently deceptive sex, particularly when it comes to matters involving sex. Obviously, that image of women is both false and damaging, but author Lux Alptraum argues in her new book, "Faking It: The Lies Women Tell about Sex — And the Truths They Reveal," that it's equally simplistic to deny that women do tell lies about sex.
Instead, Alptraum analyzes the way women lie about everything from the orgasms they're having and the number of sex partners they've had. She explores the way women tend to have very good reasons for the lies they tell and asks readers to think beyond snap moral judgments and take a look at the larger social traps women are put in that make them feel lying is necessary at all.I spoke with Alptraum recently about our gendered assumptions about truth and lies, the paradox of sexually experienced purity, and, of course, faking it in bed.
I remember you telling me about this book proposal at a party a couple years ago, and I thought it was fascinating. Why did you want to focus on the topic of stereotypes about women being liars or fakes?
I was really starting to notice this pattern of women being called liars, usually when it had to do with their sex or dating lives. When I first started thinking about this topic, I was really convinced that women probably weren't lying. We were just getting a bad rap.
As I investigated it, I found that it was a lot more complicated. What was actually happening was not that women were never lying — which is a really overly general and broad statement that kind of robs women of our humanity — but rather that women were often put in positions where we had no choice but to lie, either because we weren't being believed or lying was necessary for our safety.
Then because we were being forced to lie, those lies have been used to fuel this falsehood that women are inherently untrustworthy.

Although I was working on this before the election, I was wrapping up a proposal right before the actual election. When Donald Trump won, it just really hit home how much people have bought into this idea that women can't be trusted.
Because that was so close to when I actually started writing the book, Hillary Clinton was really top of mind. This is what happens when we believe that women are lying. Women who are fundamentally honest get slapped with this.
With men, it's usually the opposite, like you see with Brett Kavanaugh, where he absolutely lied. But then we want to believe men, so he gets put on the Supreme Court. Now that he's on the Supreme Court we hear, “Oh well, he can't be a liar because he's on the Supreme Court.”
With men, their lies are ignored, because we want to believe them. They’re put in positions where we just reaffirm their trustworthiness, because of the positions that we put them in. Women are put in positions where we are forced to lie, and then that is used against us to confirm this idea that we can't be trusted and should never be believed.
This idea that women are basically forced to lie is certainly going to challenge a lot of readers, but I think it's well-argued. For instance, you have a couple of chapters, one about virginity and one about sexual experience generally, about the lies women tell about their sexual histories. Why do women feel like they have to lie about their sexual histories?
The standard, in relationships especially, is this expectation that you simultaneously be amazing at sex, but also never have had sex. That's not feasible. Generally speaking, you only get good at something with practice, and sex is one of those things.
Women who want to be good at sex will go out and get practice, and then kind of hedge about how they happen to get their sexual skills, because they don't want to be the undateable woman. That's part of why you have these hedges, like technical virginity or this idea that oral sex doesn't count. Women want this freedom to get some experience, to be this supposed “ideal partner,” but then they want to also have a way of still presenting their identities as dateable or marriageable or not a slut.
With virginity, it's even more punishing, especially in cultures where purity is often violently enforced. Sometimes, if you look at places like Egypt, and having your virginity or at least the appearance of your virginity is literally a life or death matter for some women.
That one can also be even more fraught, because virginity is so often “proven” by the hymen. Not only can the hymen be destroyed by activities that have nothing to do with sex, but some people just don't even have a hymen that conforms to the expectations to begin with.
I'm very sympathetic to someone who is in a relationship, and it's a great relationship. Both people love each other. Everything that's going in the current relationship is ideal, but they know that if they happen to say,“I had a threesome ten years ago that meant nothing to me but I did it,” then that might end the relationship. I can understand that person not wanting to disclose that, and perhaps even lying about it, because it's irrelevant information that they're still being judged by.
In the book, you actually mentioned the movie "Chasing Amy," which is about exactly that. Kevin Smith is not the greatest director, but I was thrilled to see the mention of that movie, which I really like.


I think that movie gets a bad rap. People think it's a movie about queer women's experiences. Really what it’s about is straight male insecurity. It's a movie that smartly condemns the protagonist Holden for holding his partner to these ridiculous standards, for thinking not only does she have to be the “perfect girl” for him, but he also has to somehow be her first and that if she has a complicated past and still decides that he is the person she wants to be with, that's not enough.
It's just really insightful about the ways that male insecurity punishes women and often sabotages male happiness as well. Just this idea that we have that you have to be the best sex your partner has, which doesn't even mean anything, and really ignores the fact that wild and crazy sex doesn't necessarily make for a relationship that you want to be in.
You interviewed a lot of women for this book. They were really honest with you about the lies they've told. Did women seem to feel that lies were more justifiable if they were under this kind of just no-win pressure?
Nobody that I spoke to was like, “I love lying. I really want to trick people.”
I spoke to a young woman who was just talking about how she'll pretend that she forgot to take her birth control, to encourage men she's having one-night stands or casual sex with to use condoms. She had some hesitation around it, where she's just like, “Well, look, this is how I get to have the casual sex that I want, where I'm still being taken care of and I'm having the safe sex that I want to have.”
She was doing it to ensure her own physical safety. The one time she didn't do something like this, she had sex without a condom, and she got chlamydia. For her, it was literally her safety or her honesty. Her safety matters more.
She wasn't like, “Oh, I'm getting one over on these dudes.” Nobody really seemed to take some joy in lying the way that you will see on these alt-right, Reddit pickup artist boards, where there will be this idea of like, “Oh, I lied to this woman to master her.”
I saw people who really wish they could be honest, but were in a situation where it wasn't necessarily feasible.
I can tell you I have told that lie, that I'm not on the pill when I am, because I didn't want to deal with the condom whining. Do you think that that's common? That was the first time I've ever seen that in print.

I suspect it is very common. I suspect it is not discussed at all.
When I was younger and having more casual sex, I know that was something that I felt really ashamed about. I think there's a lot of shame and a lot of pressure on women, and especially women who have sex with men, to make the “right choice” and gate-keep appropriately.
You see these messages that are like, “Well, if he doesn't want to use a condom, then you shouldn't have sex with him.” That makes women uncomfortable about speaking about this, even with other women.
But I know that every conversation that I've had where I've mentioned this, people will be like, “Oh yeah, I know what it's like to lie to some Tinder hookup about being on the pill because I don't want to have that conversation.”
You have three choices: Throwing them out, which means you don't get sex, which you might really want. Not using a condom, which a lot of people are not comfortable with. Or this trickery, which basically gets you what you want, but with a little bit of strategy involved.
Women in that situation, for better or for worse, are embracing their apparent duty to control men's behavior. They're just using effective techniques and then everyone gets mad at them for it.
Somebody asked me at one point about what can women do to get out of this. A lot of it's going to have to be on men.
Women are in this bind, where if men persist in behaving badly, then women are expected to stop interacting with men entirely, which is not feasible. I think this kind of lying to subtly get men who act badly to act in the way that you want, for many women, that is the best option.
If we want to get out of that trap, women can raise awareness about this, which is obviously what I'm trying to do with the book.
It's not really on women to stop lying. It's not really on women to announce, “I'm going to stop saying that I have a boyfriend to every guy who comes up to me at a bar.” While maybe that’s some moral high ground, you have to get to a point where men are going to listen to, “I don't want to talk to you.”
There's so much anger at women who employ the “I have a boyfriend” lie in bars. I always thought of that as a social lie. When somebody calls you and asks you to go out for drinks, and you don't want to go, you tell them, “I have a prior engagement.” We all accept that that's OK, but if a woman tells a guy she has a boyfriend to let him down gently, we get all in our feelings about it. Why do you think we have this double standard?
There’s anger from women, where it's like you're betraying us. You're reinforcing the idea that our boundaries only matter if we’re taken.
I think you see this anger from men, because men don't want to feel like they cannot have a single woman. Obviously, #NotAllMen, but the men who get very angry about this really want to feel like they have access to any woman who is not already spoken for. A woman then making up an imaginary boyfriend is a woman who is rejecting them, which they then feel is a betrayal.
Let's talk about the thing that comes to mind when people hear the title of your book, "Faking It," which is orgasms. The fake orgasm. Everybody says it's wrong. Women do it anyway. Why?
I'm a defender of the fake orgasm. Certainly, the best scenario is to be in a situation where you don't feel like you have to fake. That situation is one where you have a partner who can hear that maybe you don't need an orgasm, can hear that you're enjoying sex that doesn't always end an orgasm, can hear that they are doing something that you don't like and not lose their mind over it. It requires it being in a much more generous sexual situation than many people find themselves in.
Some of this is perversely comes from feminists too, which is weird to say. I think you had decades, probably centuries or maybe even millennia, of nobody really caring about female sexual pleasure. With the rise of feminism, you have this awareness that female sexual pleasure matters as well.
But because female pleasure is this very nebulous concept, you end up getting all of this importance attached to orgasm. Suddenly, whether or not your orgasm becomes the measure of whether or not you enjoy sex.
Sexual pleasure for everybody is way more complicated than orgasm. An orgasm doesn't necessarily mean that you're enjoying sex. Lack of orgasm doesn't necessarily mean that you're not enjoying sex. When you reduce what is an admirable goal, which is people enjoying the sex they have, to this one very specific and very small part of sexual pleasure, you create this new trap, where women should have pleasure in this very specific way.
Some people, sex is very pleasurable, but masturbation is where they get their orgasms. Maybe their orgasms are so intense that they don't always want to have them. Maybe they're anorgasmic and fine with that. There’re many scenarios where orgasm is not going to happen or not desired. Because we've created this idea of like orgasm as the standard, you often see straight men now pitting their ego on whether or not their partner has an orgasm.
If you don't want to have this conversation, it's like, “Oh baby, I really like it. I promise,” etc., faking it just becomes a way to keep everybody happy.
Of course, there are the situations where you're faking it because the sex is bad and you want it to end. Even that, if that gets you out, then great.
If you're in an ongoing relationship, where you plan to continue having sex with that person, and you're faking it, even though you're not getting any pleasure,  that's not a great relationship. If  you're having like a one-night stand and you just don't want to see that person again, faking it seems like a really great way to exert some agency over the situation and end it and not have to go into a deep conversation that you don't want to have.
The argument against faking it that I hate the most is this responsibility-to-the-sisterhood argument. I’ve seen people say like, “Oh, but if you fake it, then you're teaching this guy to do things that other women don't like.”
That assumes this universal female sexual experience of sexual pleasure, which is bizarre to me. There's a lot of things that are really uncomfortable [to me] that other people love. There are things that I love that other women hate.
If somebody seeing my sexual pleasure or my orgasm believes that move is the thing that they should do with everyone else, they're already starting from a position of being a s**tty person to have sex with.
What did you learn about women and lies in the course of writing this book?
Women tend to lie for a reason.
It reaffirmed my belief that people are always willing to believe the worst thing about women, and never really interested in digging deeper and figuring out a little bit more, about what the situation is, and why things might be that way. I think even more so for women of color or for trans women, people are more interested in this convenient story that doesn't necessarily make any sense, but they aren’t actually understanding what women's motivations are for our actions.

First wave of 2020 panic: Is Biden vs. Bernie really the best Democrats can do?

Ln case you thought the Democrats’ big win in the midterms — a pickup of 40 House seats, and counting — meant that the weirdness and bitterness of the 2016 primary was behind us, and that the party is ready to come together and banish the Twitter-troll-in-chief to the doghouse (or to prison) two years hence, you have a number of other thinks coming. Consider this: The leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination, by far, are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
Speaking as a friend, kind of: That should be avoided at all costs. It's a tragicomic farce waiting to happen, one that threatens to undermine much of what the Democrats have apparently accomplished over the last two years. Both of them are profoundly decent men who have done a lot for this country. But, just, please no.
Presumably a large proportion of Demo-friendly apparatchiks, pundits, activists and regular people will disagree with this diagnosis. I think that’s a problem too.
OK, yeah: It’s much too early to start talking confidently about frontrunners and contenders or defaulting to inane horse-race coverage. (Not like that will stop anybody.) Anything could happen. There at least 12 to 15 other Democrats we could name who are pondering having a go in 2020, and the eventual nominee could well be someone who isn’t seen as a serious prospect at the moment. At this point in 2006, Barack Obama was a first-term senator from Illinois virtually unknown to the wider public. In 1990, Bill Clinton was the unctuous governor of Arkansas who had given an especially long and boring speech at the 1988 convention.
But right now we’ve got Joe and Bernie, who both look extremely likely to run and could easily end up as the principal antagonists. What in hell did we do to deserve this? I take no position on which of them is most likely to win, or even which of them should win — as Bill Moyers told me years ago, those are always the least interesting questions in politics. I do know that this could be disastrous for the Democratic Party, and not just because it opens the door for the re-election of What’s His Name. (Although that too.)

A Sanders-Biden throwdown would rip the scabs off old wounds, inflame entrenched divisions and cast the party in the worst possible light, making clear on a bunch of levels that it doesn’t know who it represents or what principles it stands for. At a moment when Democrats finally seem to be moving toward the future, this would make them appear stuck in the past.
I suspect that many political pros in and around the party feel similarly, which is why they keep trying to construct alternate scenarios that will make this one go away. So we have had the Oprah Winfrey boomlet (do you remember it fondly?), the Kirsten Gillibrand ponder, the Michael Avenatti moment, the Michael Bloomberg trial balloon, the Elizabeth Warren mini-wave and most recently Betomania, in which a guy who lost a Senate race in Texas has abruptly been inflated into the latest liberal dreamboat messiah.
Based on this hilarious article by Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley, it would seem that Neera Tanden, the uber-Clintonista who leads the centrist think tank Center for American Progress, has glommed onto Beto O’Rourke, at least for the moment, as the Democratic establishment’s best weapon against Bernie Sanders. It’s a quasi-viable theory, I guess, and one that speaks to the complete vagueness of O’Rourke’s ideology.
This has led to Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept mockingly accusing Tanden of being an anti-Semite. (They clearly dislike each other, but Greenwald insists he wasn't serious and it was an overly complicated joke about knee-jerk identity politics). Meanwhile, commentator Leah McElrath, in a tweet I will not quote verbatim, compared O’Rourke to "the sweet, nerdy guy" who is capable of inducing multiple mind-blowing orgasms in his female partners. Which would be an endorsement, I take it!
Maybe lover-man Beto or one of those other people I mentioned will be elected president two years from now, and we’ll all look back and say, Of course! We should have seen it coming. But also maybe not. At the moment, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are starting out amid a crowded field of unknowns and semi-knowns, with huge advantages in terms of name recognition, fundraising ability and being generally liked more than the incumbent. (Which is admittedly not difficult.)
I think those two face a version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma: It would be better for the country, arguably, if both of them concluded they’d had their shots and run their races and done their part, and it was time to let a scrum of younger Democrats fight it out, with unpredictable results. But if only one of them runs, he becomes the prohibitive favorite and a central focus of media attention — and each has concluded that he’ll be damned if he lets the other guy be the hero who un-Trumps America. So we lurch toward a battle of the dinosaurs that’s a bad idea to start with, and likely to get worse.
There are reasons why these two guys are the biggest fish in the hypothetical 2020 pond, to be sure. One is the standard-bearer for the resurgent progressive movement, who galvanized a rising generation and almost single-handedly pushed Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, free college and other issues of economic justice to the forefront of the party’s agenda after 30 years of managerial neoliberalism. The other is the paradigmatic blue-collar Democrat, an Irish Catholic Rust Belt native with presumptive appeal to the much-fetishized white working class, but who is largely untainted by racism, thanks to his eight years as sidekick and alcohol-free drinking buddy to our First Black President.

They both believe they are real-life populists who could have saved us from Donald Trump in the first place. We don’t get to run that experiment over again, so they could be right. Their formulas for defanging fascism are different, to be sure: Sanders casts himself as the firebrand who will reinvent the Democratic Party as an activist tribune for the voiceless and dispossessed, rebuilding the public sphere; Biden is the great middle-ground unifier who will speak of consensus and decency and shared American values, and won’t scare  off Joe the Plumber with tax increases or whopping new social programs.
They are formidable candidates. But both of them running against each other is kind of a disaster. Coming on the heels of the Democrats’ biggest midterm victory in 40 years — a victory fueled by youth, by people of color and most of all by women — it verges on farce, or deliberate self-sabotage.
You know where I’m going with this next, so let’s be clear that age is the least important factor in this equation, at least in itself. America’s attitude on aging and older people is changing rapidly, and most of us would agree that no one should be excluded from the presidency or anything else purely because they were born before “Star Wars” or the Beatles or Elvis’ first Ed Sullivan appearance. (Or, in this case, before the release of “Casablanca.”)
Indeed, the United States lags behind on this issue, as usual: Winston Churchill began his second stint as prime minister in 1951, at age 76. He left office at 80, but served another nine years in Parliament. India has had several prime ministers serve into their 80s. The current Malaysian prime minister and Tunisian president are both over 90. Nicolò da Ponte was an esteemed Doge of Venice until his death at age 94 — and that was in 1585.
So we can stipulate that we are eager to resist ageism, and then we can consider the facts — and their symbolic meaning, which is all that matters in politics anyway. Biden and Sanders are a pair of white men born during World War II, who at this point, shall we say, both come with problematic histories and considerable negatives. Either of them would be the oldest president in American history as soon as he was sworn in. (Ronald Reagan left office just short of his 78th birthday in 1989. Biden would be 78 in January 2021; Sanders would be 79.)
But the issue here is not whether those two individuals are too old to be competent leaders; nobody thinks that. But a Sanders-Biden struggle would only support the widespread impression, which is not false, that the Democratic Party represents a diverse and disproportionately young coalition of voters but is led by a largely white gerontocracy.
As was widely noted during the brief furor around Nancy Pelosi’s speakership campaign, the leaders of the incoming House Democratic majority are all over 75, with the solitary exception of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, newly elected to the No. 4 position. At age 68, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is a veritable towheaded youngster; do Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn steal his lunch money, give him noogies and address him as Squirt?
Furthermore, a Joe vs. Bernie battle will be depicted, fairly or not, as a continuation of the 2016 Democratic civil war by other means — or, wait, pretty much by the same means. It might sound ludicrous to say that Joe Biden is a male cognate to Hillary Clinton with fewer (or at least different) electoral negatives, but that’s approximately true. In fact, whatever populist, mid-Atlantic street cred he may possess, Biden is almost certainly less progressive than Clinton on core economic issues, and not much different in terms of hawkish foreign policy.
Biden is the only prominent figure in the prospective 2020 field to flat-out oppose Medicare for All, aka single-payer health insurance. He is lukewarm at best on other structural and economic reforms favored by progressives, and has long been a supporter of Clintonite 1990s-style financial deregulation and free-trade policies. (He’s from Delaware, a state whose economy is largely driven by quasi-predatory lenders perched in sinister office parks.) As a matter of dogma and doctrine he is certain to stake out a range of non-confrontational, "moderate" positions aimed at luring in repentant conservatives and not alienating the donor class. I mean, that worked out great for Hillary, so why not?

I make no judgment on the philosophical merits of the pro-Biden case, which is more or less that after the Trumpian trauma, America will require a national reconciliation led by an avuncular senior statesman at the head of a “coalition of normals” that spans the ideological spectrum. That has more appeal than usual under the given circumstances – but it’s also the exact same argument used by Democratic centrists to squash the left in every election since at least 1984. For Democrats to retreat on social and economic issues across the board in 2020, as Biden would clearly do, could be catastrophic for the party’s future.
Perhaps the clearest way to summarize all this is that a Biden-Sanders clash risks rehashing all the bitterness and division of 2016 in unnecessary and entirely avoidable fashion, with a pair of damaged protagonists, lower enthusiasm and a lot less upside. As you may have noticed, neither of those two will ever be our first female president.
Joe Biden actually isn’t Hillary Clinton, despite my earlier comparison. He’s a multiply-failed presidential candidate with a history of dubious comments, who to his everlasting shame presided over the Anita Hill hearings in 1991. For that matter, Bernie Sanders in 2020 cannot possibly be Bernie Sanders of 2016. That kind of lightning doesn’t strike twice.
While Sanders’ legislative record on issues of gender and racial justice speaks for itself, he unquestionably has a tin ear when it comes to public dialogue in the era of intersectionality. Fairly or otherwise, many feminists now view him with suspicion as the Man Who Sank Hillary, and who tolerated too much boorish, sexist behavior among his supporters. Neither Biden nor Sanders, in fact, is the kind of candidate who can handle every offhand comment being finely parsed for signs of insensitivity or micro-aggression. They say dumb things sometimes, and unless you're a blaze-orange Republican president, the political realm doesn't tolerate that well these days.
I’ve barely mentioned the question of gender up to now. Joe and Bernie can’t help being guys, after all. But for the two leading Democratic presidential contenders to be gray-haired white dudes, at this historical moment above all others, feels like a cruel joke.
Of course it’s not mandatory for the Democrats to nominate a woman, although in the immediate aftermath of 2016, many of us assumed that would be the likely outcome. When you consider who the current president is and how he got there, and all the things he has said and done — and then factor in #MeToo and Christine Blasey Ford and the hundreds of women elected to office this year across the country by a massive wave of angry and activated female voters — it would seem deeply bizarre for the idea not to be taken seriously.


Presumably it will. Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris are all thinking about it over the holidays, and all three have made conscious efforts to bridge the gap between Sanders-style progressives and Biden-style establishmentarians. If you were trying to grow a 2020 Democratic nominee in the lab, all three of those would be better options than the old guys. But in ways both subtle and obvious, fair and unfair, all three have already been undermined to some extent.
Warren is the likeliest to give it a whirl, but a Harvard professor from a deep blue state was always a reach. She did herself no favors with her ill-considered DNA reveal, which concluded that she has roughly the same amount of Native American ancestry as most white people whose European forebears got here in the 19th century or earlier. Gillibrand was badly damaged among many Democratic loyalists for her takedown of Al Franken, and promised during her re-election campaign in New York to serve her full term in the Senate. (Such promises are breakable, of course.)
Harris has lower negatives than the other two, and is a tremendous public speaker. Every time she gets a moment on TV — grilling Jeff Sessions or Brett Kavanaugh, for instance — she sparks a wave of social media passion. Northern California lefties may dislike her for her prosecutor past, but speaking as a native, I can assure you that doesn’t matter. But let’s get real: A black woman from the West Coast, with minimal political experience and little or no national profile, has a huge hill to climb, especially against a pair of gruff and grumbly daddy-types recognized by 100 percent of everybody. It could happen. But it probably won’t.
In this context, with Democrats apparently heading toward a campaign collision that seems both unavoidable and profoundly undesirable, you really can’t blame Hillary Clinton for flirting with the idea of running for president one more time, after repeatedly saying she wouldn’t. Don’t get me wrong: That’s a terrible idea. But is it actually worse than what lies ahead?

What Women Secretly Think About During Sex

Our bodies may be in the sheets, but our minds can wander off to other places.
Women try to stay focused during sex. We really do! Some nights our minds wander to more mundane things in life; other nights we get a little existential. Can you really blame us for not being fully present every second? We're busy women with work, friends, a softball league, and seven seasons of The West Wing to watch! After the jump, 30 things women think about during sex ... you know, other than how your big boy is rocking our world right now. The Frisky: 25 Approved Nicknames For Our Genital Organs

1. I wonder who is on "The Daily Show" tonight?
2. I can't do this with my dog watching.
3. Yes! Yes! Yes! Right there! The Frisky: Crying After Sex, Really?
4. Ow! Slow the hell down! What the hell are you doing?

5. It's cold in here.
6. What am I going to wear tomorrow?
7. I should not have had so much to drink.
8. Did he hear me just queef?
9. Ugh, I hate condoms. The Frisky: 7 Condoms Stronger Than The Rest
10. Was I wearing lipstick? Is there red lipstick all over everything? F**k, there's probably red lipstick all over everything.
11. His roommate totally heard that. The Frisky: MERRIMe, A New Web Comedy About Online Dating
Our bodies may be in the sheets, but our minds can wander off to other places.

12. That's not the clitoris, darlin'.
13. This reminds me of that time I slept with Brian ...
14. Was it really necessary to wipe the excess lube on your hands on the pillowcase where I was going to lay my head?
15. Crap, I have to wash some laundry.
16. I wonder if this makes me your girlfriend?
17. I'm Belle from "Secret Diary Of A Call Girl," you're one of my clients, we're in a lush luxury hotel, we just sipped the finest champagne and now I've shown you my thigh-highs ...
18. Do I look cute from this position?
19. Maybe I should use my vibrator. Would that freak him out?
20. I hope he does that thing again where he ...
21. Do I even know this guy's middle name?
22. I wonder if I can have more earth-shattering orgasms than this?

23. God, why hasn't he come yet? I'm bored.
24. I remembered to take the Pill this morning, right?
25. Wow, $78 spent at Victoria's Secret and it's in a pile on the floor in less than 60 seconds.
26. Is that my G-spot? Is that my G-spot?
27. I hope we can get this over with so I can go to sleep.
28. Hey, you didn't pay for dinner and I still f**ked you.
29. You have a completely ridiculous O-face.
30. I'm cooooooooooming!

What Counts As Sex?

How to distinguish between having sex and messing around. Definitions vary.
What constitutes sex and what doesn't? Fifteen years after Lewinskygate you'd think we'd all have it figured out, but it seems we don't. Teenagers who haven't had intercourse are having oral sex and calling themselves virgins. Heterosexual couples who are in the early throes of a relationship say they still haven't gone all the way even if they've heavily petted. And average Americans are still writing letters like this one to Savage Love:
My wife and I were recently regaling each other with anecdotes from our past, and she easily had the most interesting story: It seems that when she was a young woman in college a fellow student invited her over for lunch. He quickly had her clothes off and was kissing her, although he was still dressed. Then he brought out a vibrator. He applied the vibrator, she had an orgasm, and then she called a halt to the proceedings. Did she have sex? Now, I think anytime you've had an orgasm you've had sex. My wife's view is since he never got his clothes off and she never saw his cock, she didn't really have sex.


Dan Savage, in his Savage Love way, said that, yes indeedee, the wife had had sex as surely as the writer would have had sex if Dan had jerked him off while stimulating his prostate. Why? Because if such an act was videotaped and then played back for one's partner, the partner would never say: "At least you didn't have sex with him!" Oral Sex: Love It or Hate It?
In an amusing sort of way, we like Dan's answer, but we still don't think it's as simple as all that. After all, we've been told for years that sex is something you can get pregnant from (and last we checked, you could not get pregnant from a vibrator or oral sex or anal sex for that matter). We've also been told that gay people have sex, but we also know darn well that gay sex does not involve any risk of pregnancy. And then there is the whole orgasm argument (made by the writer above), which states that if you've had an orgasm, you've had sex. But if that was the case, millions of women around the world who've had babies would still be virgins. Does The Venus Butterfly Guarantee An Orgasm?
A grittier definition of sex might be any activity from which you might contract an STD. Of course, that doesn't exactly fly either, considering you can get HPV and herpes from genital-to-genital contact, without any penetration or oral sex.

And then there's the active participant thing: If the other person does all the work (as in Lewinskygate and the vibrator story above), is the recipient actually partaking in sex, or just receiving a nice, pleasurable present? Or is it the other way around: is the service provider just a provider, and not in fact partaking in sex?
We don't want to tell you what is sex and what isn't. But we do know this: sexual activity includes pretty much everything laid out here, and a lot more. And maybe, the best way of settling this whole argument of what constitutes sex and what doesn't would be for us to start using the term sexual activity instead of sex. Everyone, after all, knows what that is. And they know if they've partaken in it themselves.

Your Brain On Sex: 4 Ways To Use Human Physiology In Your Bedroom

Learn how to use your most powerful organ — your brain — to have smarter sex.
Consider this scenario: You and your man have been looking forward to this moment all week. Flirty emails at work, emoticon-laced texts at 1 a.m., and finally, on Friday night, a long boozy dinner followed by a makeout session on the way back to his place.
But, when you're finally in bed, (more than) ready to get it started, you get distracted. "Oh no! I forgot to send that email for work!" Suddenly, all the foreplay in the world can't seem to connect your brain with your vagina.
It's happened to the best of us. And according to the latest brain science, it's no surprise. In the past ten years, advances in brain-imaging technology have allowed scientists to see first-hand the avalanche of chemical activity in the brain during sex. The brain truly is the the center of desire. So what exactly have they learned? And how can you use it to avoid the situation above? YourTango reports.

Look To Buddha For Better Orgasms
In 2003, Dutch neuroscientist Gert Holstege measured brain activity in women while their partners stimulated them to orgasm. He found that key parts of their brains went "silent" during the big "O," specifically, the parts of the prefrontal cortex involved in self-control and social judgment. For anyone who's had an orgasm — or been mentally distracted so that they can't have an orgasm — this makes sense. "If you're thinking, 'I look fat,''‘Is that mole in my leg gross?' or 'Am I making a weird face?!' you might have trouble 

reaching orgasm," says Kayt Sukel, author of This Is Your Brain on Sex. Dr. Kristin Mark, Ph.D., a sex and relationships researcher at the University of Kentucky, agrees: "There is a connection between inability to orgasm and inability to give up control. Practicing mindfulness, being in the moment, is something that can vastly improve ability to orgasm. When individuals have trouble orgasming, it is often a mental block, and much more rarely something physiological going on. So by giving up control of the situation, being present in the moment and really focusing on the arousing sensations, an orgasm is much more likely to occur."
Break Free Of The Big O

When you have an orgasm, your dopamine levels soar — producing the full-body euphoria that causes humans to seek out sex again and again. To wit, brain scan studies show that the brain during orgasm is 95 percent the same as the brain on heroin. But after orgasm, dopamine levels fall dramatically, and this change in brain chemistry can last for up to two weeks. "During this slow, somewhat erratic, return to neurochemical homeostasis after orgasm, it's not unusual to experience intermittent sensations of neediness, irritability, intense horniness and so forth," says Marnia Robinson, the author of Cupid's Poison Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships. For some people, that means dopamine-seeking behaviors, such as overeating or compulsive shopping. The fluctuations in dopamine have also been blamed for our tendency to seek out new and novel sexual partners when things have cooled off in the bedroom with a long-term mate. Keep reading...

HOT SEX TIP - Warm feet and orgasms

Did you know… Women are more likely to orgasm if their feet are warm. Scientists from the University of Groningen say that a woman will be 30% more likely to have an orgasm if her feet are warm. As a woman I can attest: Cold feet in bed are a distraction and warmed feet are a luxury.
So men, think about -
• massaging your partner’s feet with warm oil as part of your foreplay
• cozying her feet in a heated microwaveable massage wrap
• pre-heat her foot of the bed with the heating pad.
• or surprise her with a new ’sex toy’ – a pair of those soft and warm microfiber fuzzy socks.

There’s another aspect that’s even more significant than any of these suggestions: When you pamper your lover it opens her heart deepening the emotional intimacy, which allows her to relax more into her sexuality. But, here’s the thing: When you routinely pamper her in the same ways, it becomes more ‘routine’ and less ‘pampering.’

So, get creative. Think about what else would add to her comfort and enjoyment: a new scented massage lotion, fur mitten, relaxing music, a fuzzy throw, warmed room, decadent chocolate snack… And, when you routinely pamper her in new, innovative ways, anticipation is added to the mix – a super aphrodisiac!

Are You Having Great Sex Or Maintenance Sex?

Great sex is different from what might be called maintenance sex. Both are important and necessary.
For some people, just being able to have any sex at all is considered "great." For others, great sex must transport the partners to a state of blissful oneness of body, mind, and spirit. For most people, great sex is any sex that brings a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment to both partners. What does great sex mean to you?
Why Can't Sex Be Simple?
Why all the fussing and fretting about sex? Why can't sex be simple? Well, it could be, if the human mind didn't have the tendency to want to be in control of the human body. Most people have been taught to trust their minds and to ignore the messages from their bodies. All the major institutions of socialization—churches, schools, businesses, and even the family—teach you to control your impulses so you don't get into trouble or embarrass yourself or someone else.

As you get older, the mind begins to exert yet another type of control. You learn that it's not safe to do things that might offend or upset people. So you learn how to behave to get other peoples' approval. By the time you have your first adult sexual experience, the whole area of sexual relationships has gotten pretty complicated. You have learned numerous strategies for controlling yourself and for manipulating the opinions and feelings of others. This situation does not bode well for enjoying a lifetime of great sex.
In spite of this early conditioning, the life force remains strong. It just needs to be encouraged, and it will bounce back like those punching bag dolls with weight at their base. This article can help you get back into harmony with your own essential nature and reclaim your own life force. With a little patience and practice, your sex life can be transformed from something mundane or problematic to something wonderful and fun.
Not Just Maintenance Sex

Great sex is not just any sex at all. It is not what might be called "maintenance sex." Maintenance sex is what most people do most of the time when having sex—where partners perform sex more as a routine than as a conscious, intentional celebration of their love.
Maintenance sex is entirely acceptable, but it is not to be confused with sex that is really great. Maintenance sex generally involves some degree of compromise—a step or two down from one's ideal. Perhaps only one partner is in the mood, and the other complies. One of the partners may be trying to appease the other. Or maybe, at times, one or both partners simply want to do the minimum to maintain their sense of being sexually connected.

By contrast, great sex is usually transformative and healing for the partners. Partners feel loved and cherished, and all seems right with the world. Great sex can help us transcend our separateness from one another. We both become part of something larger—a spiritual connection that puts us in touch with the oneness of all creation. Great sex may not happen automatically, but it can be learned. To have great sex requires knowledge, skill, patience, time—and practice!

And Much, Much More
After having great sex, people often report that petty ego concerns and personality conflicts seem unimportant. Competitive ideas about feminine and masculine roles or responsibilities tend to fade. The stresses of "looking good," being in control, feeling separate or being "on guard" disappear. Great sex involves honesty, trust, letting go, merging, and just "being."
Great sex is not so much about technique as it is about presence. The most technically skilled lover is nothing without an open, trusting presence and attention to one's partner. Learning new positions, techniques, and tricks is only a vehicle for experiencing each other's presence in new ways.
Great sex is a type of intimate communication. It is one of the most important ways in which you, as a human being, share who you are with your partner. Really great sex is like melting or dissolving into the Divine, that universal state of oneness—with the lover and the universe—that gets you in touch with the sacredness of life.

Sex As a Metaphor For Life
One could say that how you "do" sex is a metaphor for how you "do" life. Your sexual relationships reflect the same habitual patterns and survival strategies, learned as a child, that you exhibit in other areas of your life—except these patterns are often even more pronounced in the sexual arena. If you want to change one or more of the habitual ways you react to things, sex is a good place to start.
If you have trouble asking for what you want, for example, sex is a good learning laboratory. It's an area of life that is so concrete. The feedback you get from your actions is clear: you either ask or you don't, and you either get what you asked for or you don't. With such clear and unequivocal feedback, learning is more likely to occur. And when you learn a basic life skill such as self-expression, this learning will easily transfer to the other areas of your life. It is the premise of my book that a life of consistently great sex is possible and that it can be fun to "train" your self to get there.
Beyond Your Wildest Dreams
Learning new sexual and sensual techniques can bring you more than simple physical pleasure. You may also find yourself feeling a sense of ongoing unity with your lover. Healing can occur not only with respect to your sexuality, but also in your faith and trust in life, your emotions, and your health. Your overall self-confidence will grow as you learn to communicate and understand one another better.
Sexual healing has vast ramifications. Whenever you experience healing of past blocks or inhibitions, you tend to become happier, more generous and more self-trusting. And you tend to pass this happiness on to those around you. When you feel loved, understood, orgasmically fulfilled, and connected, you become much more powerful as a human being. This is especially important for those women and men who were taught to suppress or deny their natural sexuality.

Open, honest intimacy is a key to great sex.
Relating, Not Controlling
Great sex cannot be controlled. You cannot manipulate yourself to want it. You cannot manipulate yourself to not want it. And you certainly cannot manipulate someone else to want it with you! If you are willing to be open about what you do want, without attempting to control the outcome, then you may just get it. If you want to have great sex, don't have sex out of obligation, and don't ever force it upon your partner.
There is a basic principle governing intimate relationships that most people are just beginning to discover: when you try to make something happen the way your mind thinks it should happen, things rarely work out exactly as planned. The issue of "getting it up" or "getting it wet" are two good examples. The more you think and plan and strategize, the less "in your body" you are. You are in your head, or your mind. And when you are in your head, you're not very sexy.
Here's another way to say this: in any given moment, you can relate to the person you are with or you can try to control that person. You can be with what is actually going on—feeling what you feel and sharing this energy with your partner. That's relating. Or you can try to make yourself or your partner feel something that you don't, or maybe hide what you are feeling in the interest of creating a particular impression or getting a particular outcome. That's controlling.

In sex, as in other forms of human communion, relating works best. Controlling usually backfires. As you read my book, you will encounter numerous examples of how this principle works. The goal here is to help you enjoy great sex by learning to let down your guard, trust yourself, and, ultimately, trust life. Then, the need to control things that are not in your control anyway will fall away.
Honesty Is A Prerequisite For Intimacy
If you want to have an intimate relationship, not a superficial one, complete honesty is necessary. If you keep secrets from your partner, you are affirming that you cannot trust that this person has your best interests at heart. If you do not trust a person in this way, ask yourself, "Why would I want to have sex with this person?" If mistrust is present, it's a good idea to be honest about this. Often, honest communication reveals your own projections, baggage, or recurrent fears held over from childhood. Expressing them honestly can allow you get over them.
Your feelings of mistrust may reveal more about you than about your partner. This is one reason why it's good to share what you feel and think—so you can discover the hidden layers of truth about yourself that may lie underneath your feelings about your partner. Sometimes fears about telling the truth are based on false beliefs learned in childhood. Now that you are an adult, it's time to update your beliefs about what is really safe and what is really dangerous.
Risk-Taking Leads To Confidence
If you fear doing something that you really want to do, it may be usually a good idea to go ahead and take the risk. You may want to pause and honestly assess the risk before doing so, but more often than not, the risk will turn out to be more about damage to your ego than to your essential being. Most interpersonal risks are not life-threatening. Remember that fear is not a sign to turn back but rather a sign that you are moving into unknown territory. If you take the risk and survive, which you probably will even if it doesn't turn out as you'd hoped, your confidence will grow.

You Are Responsible
You are responsible for your own experience. Whatever you feel or think about another person is a mirror of where you are. If someone does something that upsets you, you are responsible for your feelings of being upset. Likewise, when you feel satisfied with something your partner did, you are responsible for that too. The other person does not "make" you happy. Likewise, he or she does not "make" you upset.
Your lover or partner is not responsible for your pleasure. You are. Learning about your own body—what you like, how you respond, and how to ask for what you want—are essential skills for great sex. Blaming your lover for not giving you orgasms or not doing it "right" will get you nowhere. Empower yourself to learn the skills to ask for what you want in a straightforward, loving, and truthful way.
Presence Is The Prize
The only time a relationship really works is when both people are in the here and now. This principle shows up most dramatically in sex and lovemaking. If your mind is on something else, you cannot make authentic contact. Presence is a prerequisite for great sex. And great sex is a pathway to greater presence. Practicing the exercises and suggestions in the e-book I'm introducing here will give you the tools you need to be more present during lovemaking and in each and every moment of your life.
Pleasure Is Your Birthright
Our bodies are pleasure instruments that need to be played to stay in tune. Why would nature have given you erogenous zones, if you weren't meant to do something with them? By learning to play that instrument, with all the skill you can develop, you train your body to receive great amounts of pleasure. When you know how to receive, your view of the world changes. You begin to see the world as benevolent and trustworthy. Then you give that energy back to the people in your life.

The Adventure Before You
The e-book I'm about to introduce (below) has been designed to be both a resource guide and an inspiration to you. It covers a vast array of information on anatomy, intimacy, relationship, latest discoveries, and fun sexual and sensual techniques. Good relationships and great sex go together, so you'll find both topics covered here.
You'll see how old attitudes from your past can block pleasure and honest self-expression. You'll have the opportunity for self-assessment so you can get up-to-date with yourself instead of operating from an outdated self-image. You will be guided to understand where you are now and to develop a plan for where you want to go. You'll have better tools to decide what you want out of life.
Sex is one of life's most wonderful gifts—whether, at any given moment, it is wonderful for you or not. It can be a great teacher. Although it can be fraught with anxiety and stress, it can also be easy, fun and relaxing. If you want to discover your highest potential for great sex, trust yourself and don't be afraid to try something new. If you do, one thing is for sure—your capacity for aliveness and pleasure will grow. To order my new e-book, Revitalizing Sexual Intimacy ($15US), contact me at my email address.

Top Aphrodisiacs For Him & Her: Part 3

Herbal aphrodisiacs are fun and effective ways of improving overall health....
c. 2012 Susun S Weed (Expert)
Author: Down There: Sexual & Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way
Herbal aphrodisiacs are fun and effective ways of improving overall health in addition to amping up sexual health and vigor. In the past few installments, we have dabbled with potions of ginkgo, ginseng, ginger, guarana, damiana, potency wood, and yohimbe. Does this exhaust the list? Are there any interesting herbs left to go to bed with?

Yes, indeed. Many more. To start with, let’s get it on with two of the sexiest herbs I’ve ever met: oatstraw and marijuana. Post-menopausal women and mid-life men will find these two green allies of special interest to them.

Oatstraw (Avena sativa) is the grass of the plant that gives us oats. Oatstraw is only the stalks; it is free of grain and totally gluten free. We speak of people “sowing their wild oats” and “feeling their oats.” And when we drink oatstraw infusion, we are the ones sowing and feeling! Whoopee!

Oatstraw infusion is my favorite sexual tonic for both men and women, especially those older than fifty. Regular use of as little as 2 quarts a week for several weeks, improves blood flow to the genitals (and the heart), increases engorgement, amps up interest, rekindles desire, turns on the faucets of lubrication, counters environmental estrogens, and helps lower cholesterol, too 

Oatstraw infusion dependably increases testosterone, thus increasing libido and enjoyment for both men and women. As a nutritive nervine, oatstraw nourishes the nervous system, allowing it to carrying a greater charge of energy, which translates into stronger orgasms.

The minerals so lavishly present in oatstraw also build strong bones, stabilize blood sugar, and moderate mood swings. Oats and oatstraw are valued highly as heart tonics. Drink the infusion to reduce bad cholesterol, maintain good blood pressure, and improve circulation. And don’t forget that a healthy heart and healthy blood vessels are necessary for more pleasurable and longer orgasms.

Soothing, calming oatstraw is a boon companion for the grandparents and parents of newborns, as well as for the baby. Infusion of oatstraw improves digestion (happy baby), deepens sleep (happy parents), counters fatigue and muscle pain (happy grandpa), and even reduces headaches and hot flashes (happy grandma). There’s nothing quite like a glass of iced oatstraw infusion to bring a satisfied smile to the face, a blessed coolness to the heart, and a naughty thought to mind.

From China to South Africa, from the plains of North American to the steppes of Russia, wild oats is a common weed in all grain fields. If you give her a chance, Madame oatstraw would like to turn the desert between your legs into an oasis, with date palms and dancing girls.

Herbal aphrodisiacs are fun and effective ways of improving overall health....

Marijuana is a controversial herbal ally. Since being in jail is no so sexy, please be exceedingly careful if it is not yet legal in your state.

Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica, like oats, grow wild wherever people cultivate crops. The mind-altering effects of smoking marijuana are quickly induced and rather quickly over as well, making it an ideal way to quiet the neocortex and make way for meditation, artistic expression, and sexual intimacy.

Smoking offers the most precise controls over the dose. Eating the herb or taking the tincture may result in inability to move, let alone have sex. And less is usually more when it comes to dose. Just enough to heighten the senses and quicken the impulses, but not so much as to make one lethargic, inattentive, or unresponsive. Stop after one toke, wait five minutes, and assess if more is needed.

Combining one toke of great smoke with tantric exercises heightens brain chemicals that make us feel very very good.  Try this one if you wish: Sit facing your lover, unclad or lightly clad. Look into each other’s eyes for a minute or two. Then each one place the palm of the right hand on the other’s heart. Begin to focus the breath through the hand. Become aware of the energy. Put your left hand on your lover’s right hand, which is on your heart. Keep breathing and looking into each other’s eyes. Stop when you wish, or move into more active lovemaking.

Coming up next, cunning commentary and penetrating penile insights on three herbs with funny-sounding names: fenugreek, schizandra, and tribulus.

3 Reasons Why Faking Orgasms Is RUINING Your Love Life (And His!)

"Fake it 'till you make it" does NOT apply here, ladies.
Let gets straight to the point — Faking an orgasm is one of THE most destructive things you can do in your relationship.
According to a recent Cosmo survey, 67 percent of women between the ages 19-40 have faked orgasms. Meaning that even the younger generation of so-called 'liberated' women are still sexually disempowered.
The survey also revealed that these orgasm deprived women are having sex with men who do orgasm 95 percent of the time. What?!!
Clearly, somewhere along the way there has truly been a major break down in communication between males and females!
Thankfully, there is a way to solve this problem — EDUCATION!
The media today objectifies women by creating a fantasy of the "ideal woman." That woman has big breasts, a tiny waist, long perfectly-shaped legs. This "ideal" (and feeling they fall short of it) creates performance anxiety in women, something that we once believed only existed in men.

Adding to this anxiety, many women hear their friends describe "mind-blowing" orgasms and never stop to question if their friends truthfully experience them or are faking it, too. Instead they believe their friends tales of wild sex and immediately assume that they've doing something wrong!
With the constant flood of pressuring external influences, I'm surprised the percentage of woman who fake orgasm isn't actually higher than 67 percent!
We need to know that the media is wrong about "the ideal woman" and that our sexiness derives from our energy, attitude and self-esteem. Often times our minds are too busy comparing ourselves to the common fantasy to truly relax and find comfort in our real bodies. Only when you're relaxed can you truly and fully experience arousal and pleasure.
When a woman becomes authentically aroused, she is the most appealing she can possibly be to her man — and everybody wins!

Therefore, women must master being fully present in their bodies, in order to experience the REAL orgasm(s) they desire.
It's no secret that there is a difference in timing, between men and women, during sex. Men can ignite their libido with their minds, their thoughts create an instant reaction in their genitals and they're ready to go. While, his lady may just be warming up. This means that unless they're paying attention to the state of the woman's arousal, they will reach orgasm without her. And often, as those surveys show, they don't make sure she gets there too.
My tantric teacher used to say, "men are like toasters, and women are like ovens" — women might take longer to cook, but they can keep cooking for a long time once they're hot!

This difference in timing requires clear communication. If a woman tells her lover what feels good during lovemaking and he's willing to listen, then this challenge is fixable. However, some women find it very difficult to vocalize their needs during sex because they don't want to offend their lover or come across as too demanding (plus society shames women who express their sexuality openly). So instead women "fake it."

But truthfully asking for what you want builds trust in the relationship.
Meanwhile, faking orgasms does a disservice to both women and men, in three critical ways:
It creates a pattern of dishonesty between the couple.
By never learning what his woman needs to reach real orgasm, the man is set up to fail.
Neither partner experiences the deep sexual and relational satisfaction they deserve because they're always wondering what is true in their most intimate encounters.
It's actually understandable why women fake orgasms. But understandable and healthy are not the same thing. Some women afraid they might never have one and others decide to make him feel like a winner by "coming" quickly … so he can boast, "I'm so good I made a woman come in 10 minutes."
The problem is, this gives the man the wrong information about how to please his partner in a way that brings her to a REAL orgasm. And this is actually more damaging to your man in the long run. (How embarrassed do you think he'll feel when he finds out you've faked it all along?)

The best sex tends to happen when both partners feel relaxed and are paying attention to each other's body language. Looking into each other's eyes helps too, allowing you to tune into one another deeply. This real heart-to-heart connection nourishes your love making.
So where do you begin shifting away from faking it to receiving pleasure for real?
Remember, you're making love, not "racing to orgasm." Teach your man to focus on the present and match your pace, slowing down and just concentrating on your breath. (Men, here's a hint: When she starts breathing deeply she's very relaxed and turned on.)
Love making should never feel heavy — it's light, so don't forget to have fun. When you try something new, if it doesn't work, laugh, be playful and move on to the next thing.

Remember to reassure each other afterwards, this helps to build trust. After the lovemaking is over, talk about what was especially pleasurable.
It's important that when making love both partners feel free to express their desires. If you love someone, you want them to experience an orgasm; communicate with one another, in order to give each other the pleasure you both deserve.

I Went To School To Learn How To Orgasm Better

Could a six-week course help me achieve a bigger O? Only one way to find out.
I'm lying down on the floor, trying to make my hooha "dance". I'm not sure if she's really dancing but she is grinding to Nine Inch Nails' "Closer". No, I am not in some new age dance class. I'm in search of a better orgasm.
While I can come without fail, thanks to the help of my favorite hot pink Rabbit vibrator, sex-induced orgasms are a little trickier to achieve. Maybe it's because I've had a lifetime of Jacuzzi and vibrator-induced orgasms. Maybe it's because with my vibrator I can choose to use it when I'm in the mood. With my boyfriend, it's a little different. I do it when I'm tired, annoyed at him, or not feeling it. But no matter how a session in the sack starts, I always want to come. Which presents me with a serious predicament: blue vagina.

So I was intrigued when I heard about OrgasmicBliss.com. It's a six-week online course that teaches women how to excel at the art of climaxing. Tantra practitioner and orgasm whisperer Layla Martin hopes to strip away the layers of repression keeping us from experiencing our full orgasmic pleasure. In the course women learn how to use their body chemistry, pelvic floor and breathing to enhance their orgasms. The end result? Sexual goddess. The only catch? It's a whopping $180. Is it worth dropping the dough for a lifetime of orgasmic bliss? Only one way to find out.
Somewhat skeptical, but intrigued, I signed myself up.
I've always been pretty in touch with my body. Besides my early forays into masturbation, I was a dancer in high school and I've practiced yoga for years. Even on my most bloated, fat-feeling days, I've never been self-conscious when it comes to having sex. Not even periods have stopped me. Like the mailman, nothing stops me, not rain, snow, or rivers of blood. My need to get off has always taken priority over everything else short of nuclear war. So I wasn't quite sure if Orgasmic Bliss could really take me to the next level, but in the name of more orgasms I was willing to try it out.
First stop: The Honey Pot. In doing the exercise, I was instructed to visualize what I wanted what I wanted to bring to my sexual center; love, health, or confidence for example. The only thing I've ever thought of bringing to my sexual center was a vibrator. Or a penis. Realizing perhaps I've been too literal in my approach, I welcomed a new way of looking at nether regions. I decided I wanted to bring vulnerability and sensuality.

A strange choice, you might say but I figured if I was ever going to come on the reg without the intense vibes of a Rabbit I needed to open myself to a softer approach.

I wanted to be less Sasha Fierce and more Beyonce with no makeup. After a few minutes, I was done thinking about my vagina and on to emptying the dishwasher. I didn't feel any different yet, but I also didn't have sex yet. I couldn't wait to explore all my new found experiences with my boyfriend.
In the coming lessons, I would explore "Pussy Breathing" ("breathing" from my vagina), the "Sexy Squeeze" (Kegels), "Inner Smiling" (smiling to myself), and "Emotional Theater" (releasing negative emotions) among many others. My favorites were the more physical activities like breast massage, mostly because it felt pretty good, which left me thinking I should do it more often.
On the other hand, "Pelvic Streaming" left me bored and asleep. I lay there waiting for my pelvis to feel something; fireworks, tingles, anything. But unfortunately my pelvis was dead silent. She wasn't even whispering. Before I knew it I was asleep on my yoga mat with drool dripping out the right side of my mouth. 

During "Alchemical Love" I couldn't help but think, what the hell am I doing?
I was trying to envision my goddess energy pulsating through my veins while simultaneously trying not to feel like a whacked out hippie searching for make believe mysticism. Next thing you know I'd be using crystals to clear my chakras and sage to get rid of the negative energy. But in spite of my reservations, I was curious to see how all this would pan out with my boyfriend. He had been out of town when I started my orgasmic adventure, which allowed me enough time to fully absorb all of my lessons. So now that he was back would I be able to come more easily?
Eager to participate, M threw me on my back, pulled my legs above his shoulders, and went it for it. I was shocked and surprised to realize how intense it felt. Normally it's a position I can get into right away (unlike the sideways straddle, now that is intense) but this time it felt like going from 0 to 60.
Like when I accidentally turn up my vibrator to high instead of starting slow. I made him stop and switch to missionary so I could ease into it. Even oral sex felt intensified. I felt myself getting aroused in half the time; a plus for me since I'm used to the almighty Rabbit.

Could it be that the course had worked?
I realized that for years I had been zoning out during sex. I don't find myself worrying about waking up early or meeting that deadline when I'm doing it. I'm fully in the moment, but that doesn't mean I’m focused. I had been kind of lazy when it came to the big O. Stick a vibrator in and let it work its magic. Or just push a guy south and see what happens. If I could get off great, if not then I assumed it was them not me.
I had put little effort into doing my daily Kegels or fantasizing on how much I was enjoying the sensations. This time as M went downtown I actually focused on each flick of the tongue relishing in how good it felt. Let's just say my clitoris was happier than she had been in a long time.
Maybe Orgasmic Bliss did improve my orgasmic potential by bringing a new level of awareness to my body. Or maybe it was those daily Kegels. One thing is for sure: Next time I need a little orgasmic pick-me-up I won't be fantasizing about my inner goddess. I'll be squeezing those muscles instead.