It’s About Making Babies!

NML writes on BaggageReclaim about When he is bad in bed.

NML posted a checklist of things to consider, ways to decide whether the problem can be fixed or not. Her remedies consist of communicating what you need better, reassess whether you got intimate too soon, or dump the guy. A reasonable assortment of the problems and what to do about them.

There are several factors that often get overlooked about going skin-to-skin (as Elizabeth Moon puts it, in ‘Once a Hero’. Good book.). The inter-related factors of experience, skill, and training/learning play a big part. Whether you are the first time for your partner or not, everyone brings baggage to their first time. Whether adult films, magazines, books, school classes, gossip in the restroom or study hall or outside of classes, popular novels and movies, TV — we all get some idea of what should happen, different positions. But we get precious little understanding about how show respect, affection, physical and emotional considerations, and what words our partners are comfortable with and what such words mean to them.

If you are not the first time for your partner, whether you were the earlier partners or not, we tend not to think of sex as a learning experience. We don’t clearly outline the process, we certainly don’t do a critical quality review. So there is precious little feedback beyond ‘This felt good to me’ and ‘I *think* my partner liked that’. Without feedback we have to assume that everything went OK, and we should do again what seemed to work before.

A critical, strict timeline review of a romantic interlude just doesn’t make sense. You can’t take apart the magic, the poetry, examine each move and motive, each sequence of motions and responses, and still have a ‘magic’ evening. Except — We do study poetry. We do study physical and emotional responses. And we take lessons all the time with respect to various activities, from drivers education and piano lessons to Tai Chi, Yoga, and Marriage Prep (ask your pastor!). The object is not to define a schedule of events that works best, but to identify a couple of weak spots, understand why they were unsatisfactory, and how to improve the experience in that area. To find out you mean different things when you use certain words. To understand that caring, bonding, shared excitement are attainable, how and when to experiment. To understand how the day before affects the intimacy and responses, and how to improve the sex beginning a few minutes or hours before, or maybe a day or more.

Such a review would need to be worked out, and never within an hour of intimacy. Ever. No note-taking during the act(s). But not weekly, either. You need a chance to consider how you acted and felt, but soon enough that you still remember the high and low spots. Remember the point is not to make everything great, but just to identify and improve a couple of the parts that don’t work for one or both partners. Maybe a journal, to keep a log of what gets better, what gets addressed in what order.

So the first thing is, a way to train for better sex. By feedback, using a review. With records that can be reviewed for ideas.

NML mentions that he might not find you ‘good in bed’, and that affects how you perceive him. We all have days that things work better than on other days. But some pairings of people will not enjoy each other between the sheets. Neither is ‘bad’ at sex (mostly). Whether because the couple don’t know each other well enough, or their body chemistry from acid balance to pheromones and smells conflict, there is a bar to enjoying each other in bed. Preferably this shows up during dating (early courtship), and never gets to the point of finding a boring partner at dinner is indifferent in bed. Some problems cannot be fixed.

But many problems can be fixed. The problem is — responsibility. A parent has a responsibility to grow and nurture their child’s character and behavior, to teach ethics, courtesy, and discipline. You cannot change, mold, grow, fix, beat, abuse, nag, or otherwise bully or terrorize your partner, and expect anything like joy or happiness, or anything else good to come of it. Just as a psychologist or psychiatrist cannot form a relationship with a client without causing harm, we cannot perform psych therapy without causing harm, for the same reason. We can seek therapy to address problems, or walk away from the relationship. We don’t have many good alternatives between those two extremes.

Which is one reason we date before dropping our drawers — to take the time to evaluate our prospective partner for suitability. Honesty, integrity, discipline. Adequate communication, affection, joy. Absence of obvious flaws — like hoodlum buddies, unexplained sources of income, violent temper or past, disrespect to former partners, parents, or you or your friends. Put it this way — would your father respect your prospective partner? He doesn’t need to like the person, but if he can respect them, that is good. Otherwise a real question exists, on why you are with this person. (If you don’t respect your father, you will want to look at your life and attitudes for undesirable expectations or problem, before hazarding an intimate partner.)

Everybody knows that there are places to touch that are part of having sex. But each one of us has to learn how to do each little part, and unless someone teaches us, shows us how, guides us, or lets us know how we did, we just have to .. grope .. and hope for the best.