INTRODUCTION
THE SURPRISINGLY SIMPLE SECRET OF GREAT SEX
Would you like to be the great lover you’ve always dreamed
of being? Would you like women to sing your sexual praises?
Do you want your penis to be as large as it possibly can
be? Would you like the ejaculatory control to last as long
as you want? Are firmer, more reliable erections on your
wish list? And would you like your relationship to feel
more erotic, both in and out of bed? You can gain all these
sexual benefits--and more--without a great deal of effort.
Great Sex explains how.
Before I reveal the surprisingly simple secret of great
sex, I should mention that I’m not a doctor, psychologist,
or sex therapist. But for 30 years, I’ve been a sex
educator, counselor, and journalist specializing in men’s
sexuality. During that time I’ve interviewed the nation’s
leading sex researchers and therapists, and have written
extensively about sexuality, particularly about men’s
sexual issues. For five years, I answered the sex questions
submitted to the Playboy Advisor. For the past six years
Iíve answered the questions submitted to Xandria.com, the
Web site of the nationís largest marketer of sex toys.
The information in this book comes not only from my three
decades of research and writing, but also from the leading
resources in sexology and sex therapy. Central to this
volume are the two largest and most comprehensive American
sex surveys completed to date: the landmark 1994 “Sex in
America” survey from the University of Chicago, which
involved a representative sample of 3,150 men and women
aged 18 to 59, and the National Sexual Health Survey, a
1996 study from the University of California, San
Francisco, based on interviews with a representative sample
of 8,000 Americans ages 18 to 80. I also distilled
information from 51 books and 374 medical journal
articles--they’re listed on this site. Great Sex also
benefited from the assistance of four of the nation’s most
distinguished sex therapists, who are quoted throughout the
book.
With three decades of experience as a sex educator and all
these resources, I like to think I’ve learned a thing or
two about lovemaking, notably, the surprisingly simple
secret of great sex. This secret is the central message of
this book: Stop trying to imitate what you see in
pornography--the rushed, mechanical sex that’s entirely
focused on the genitals. Instead, cultivate the opposite of
porn: leisurely, playful, creative, whole-body,
massage-based lovemaking that includes the genitals, but is
not obsessed with them.
Porn is all-genital, all the time--and that badly messes
men up in bed. When you stop trying to imitate porn, most
of your sex problems disappear, notably, involuntary
ejaculation (coming too soon), erection difficulties, and
trouble ejaculating at all. The reason is that our bodies
evolved to work best sexually in the context of leisurely,
playful, whole-body sensuality. Unfortunately, the sex
model most accessible to most men is pornography, and
familiarity breeds imitation. Imitating porn hurts also men
another way: It makes them lousy lovers. With so many men
trying to imitate porn, it’s no wonder that according to
the “Sex in America” survey, one-quarter of women have
difficulty expressing orgasm during partner sex, or can’t
come at all.
The sexual approach I advocate happens to be the way the
vast majority of women prefer to make love. In every major
sex survey, women voice the same complaints: Men are too
rushed, too mechanical, and too narrowly focused on
T&A. In other words, men try to imitate porn. Every
major sex survey agrees that most women wish men would
expand their erotic horizons beyond the genitals and adopt
a lovestyle based on whole-body, massage-inspired
sensuality. Most women consider the entire body--every
square inch--one big erogenous zone, and can’t understand
why so many men explore only a few corners of this vast
erotic playground. Many women find it impossible to become
sexually aroused without whole-body sensuality.
When men give women the lovemaking they prefer, women
become more arousable, more responsive, and more
enthusiastic, complimentary lovers. They’re more likely to
have orgasms, and less likely to say “Not tonight.” In
other words, when men jettison porn-style sex and embrace a
sensual, creative, whole-body approach to lovemaking,
everybody wins. Both your and your lover have more fun in
bed and suffer fewer sex problems--not to mention that your
relationship is likely to feel more intimate and fulfilling
out of bed as well as between the sheets.
Impossible? Not at all. The simple secret of great sex can
transform your erotic life for the better--much
better--often in just a few weeks. All you have to do is
let go once and for all of the idea that sex should proceed
the way it does in adult entertainment. Don’t get me wrong.
I’m a regular guy just like you. I’ve seen a good deal of
porn, and I happen to be an enthusiastic admirer of womenís
breasts, butts, and genitals. These wonderful body parts
should certainly be included in lovemaking--but not to the
exclusion of what really excites her--sensual touch of
every other part of her. So from one regular guy to
another: Ditch porn-style sex and the many problems it
causes in favor of the lovestyle that turns her on, and
turns you into the confident, accomplished lover you want
to be.
Now about porn: Social liberals defend it as a form of free
speech, and some sexuality professionals recommend it to
pique erotic interest, or to familiarize people with sexual
techniques. Meanwhile, social conservatives excoriate porn
as debased, sinful, abusive of women, and evidence of moral
decay. Let me state at the outset that in the Great Porn
Debate, I side with the liberals. I have no problem with
pornography’s unprecedented availability in video shops, on
cable TV, and through the Internet, nor do I believe that
sexually explicit music lyrics should be restricted. I have
two teenagers at home, and I donít care if they listen to
songs with sex-drenched lyrics, or view the pornography
they can see for free on the Internet (though, when one
asked about using my credit card to subscribe to a porn
site, I said no).
But the bitter cultural debate about sexually explicit
media has missed two key points. First, porn has become the
single most important source of menís sex
education--actually, their miseducation. Second,
pornography is bad for sex. Very bad. It causes or
contributes to all of men’s major sex problems: hang-ups
about penis size, involuntary ejaculation, erection
impairment, and ejaculatory difficulties. It also
completely misrepresents how women become sexually aroused
and experience erotic fulfillment. Pornography is like the
chase scenes in action movies--exciting and fun to watch,
but definitely not the way to drive.
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not down on men. On the
contrary, my heart goes out to guys who try to be good
lovers but get no real coaching except from adult media. In
our society, girls are raised to be sexually passive,
despite women’s three-decade march to sexual equality. As a
result, young men feel tremendous pressure to know the ins
and outs, as it were, of sex, so they can lead their
presumably more naive girlfriends in intimate explorations.
Few parents discuss the fine points of sex with their sons.
At school, if a young man receives any sex education at
all, it is confined to sperm, eggs, sexually transmitted
infections, the importance of abstinence until marriage,
and possibly the various contraceptives. Faced with
woefully inadequate sex education at home and in school,
what do guys do? They fall back on the resources available
to them--other poorly informed young men, and pornography,
which ignores whole-body sensuality, and instead, features
men with elephantine penises and women who can never get
enough.
One phrase commonly used to describe the sexual divide
between men and women is The Battle of the Sexes. It’s time
to declare a truce. Since the mid-1960s when William
Masters, M.D., and Virginia Johnson developed modern sex
therapy, it has become abundantly clear why so many
couples’ sex lives have been agony instead of ecstasy. The
rushed, mechanical, all-genital lovestyle most men learn at
the curbside, in the locker room, and from pornography
causes men’s sex problems and ignores women’s erotic needs.
It’s possible that to resolve your sexual concerns, you
might require a prescription or several months of sex
therapy. But for all the anguish sexual difficulties cause,
sex is pretty straightforward, and many problems, perhaps
most, can be resolved with self-help.
Of course, there is no dearth of sexual self-help books.
But only Great Sex is organized around the simple secret of
great sex. In our sex-obsessed culture, it’s a sad
commentary that this simple secret remains such a mystery.
Men need to slow down, understand women’s real
sexuality--not the nonsense depicted in porn--and
appreciate leisurely, playful, whole-body sensuality. If
you do, here’s what I guarantee: You’ll suffer fewer sex
problems. The woman in your life will be more sexually
responsive. And both of you will feel happier with each
other and more erotically fulfilled.
Michael Castleman
San Francisco, 2003