Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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He's so right. It wasn't until 60 years ago that men were expected to be monogamous husbands. And I whole-heartedly agree - if your partner was married to you for a lifetime and cheated 2-3 times - they were good at monogamy:

My latest client wrote me an email the other day. It struck me, so I asked her permission to include excerpts in a blog post. She agreed, as long as we changed the names of her and her husband. Read on:

Hi there,

I'm a man, but a big fan of the work you do and your site. It's helped me greatly in my thinking and understanding. I've recently come across two articles on the Good Men Project that I'd love to see you address. True, these articles deal mostly with men, but there is at least one woman in the comment section who claims that using a vibrator deadened her sensitivity.

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/too-many-orgasms/

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/how-porn-can-ruin-your-sex-life-and-your-marriage/

This is so obvious but it's good to have the research.  Women cheat but they have more discretion and they don't need to assuage their guilt with a confession.  Who knew that Farrah Fawcett carried on an affair for 11 years?

Recent studies show that women are cheating as frequently as men - but we are a lot more likely to lie about it, and a lot less likely to get caught.  Simply put, it seems that women are better at having affairs than men.

The news that Farrah Fawcett had a secret affair for 11 years without telling a soul is a classic example of the way a woman cheats: discreetly, in secret, and while carrying on with the rest of her life as normal.

It has been met with hot denials by Ryan O'Neal, but - and I'm sorry to break it to you this way, Ryan - you'd be the last to know.

Christopher Ryan's piece below on hooking up begs the question, "why can't we have sex without intimacy"? Oh please! The word "intimacy" is so over used by therapists, authors and the society at large with no real under standing of what the word means. What is wrong with a sexual friendship? It sure as hell beats a committed monogamous marriage where the couple struggles to get it up for sex until they finally give up altogether. I'm so tired of all the cheap moralizing from people who's own sex lives are lived in shades of gray.

I played the commitment game until after I got divorced from a fairly sexless marriage. From the age of 36 on I indulged in delightful casual sex of America's Sexual Revolution. Today I look back on that period with love in my heart and gratitude for all the wonderful folks who shared sex with me. Those days were filled with some of the finest moments of intimacy I've every experienced.  Thank you Steve Otero for the link:

NPR (National Public Radio) recently joined the ever-growing list of media outlets and authors expressing confusion and poorly-veiled condemnation of what they call the "culture of hooking up" a.k.a. "sex without intimacy." According to these no-doubt middle-aged sources, intimacy-free sex is sweeping the nation.

I've now gotten several requests to respond to the Sanford affair. My friend Richard send copies of the emails between Sanford and Maria as proof this was more than sex. That it was the real thing with real feelings of love for one another. He's a hopeless romantic, and while I am too, I fight it.

I'm a tough ole army mule when it comes to discussing "true love" which
I think is based upon "true lust" and I see nothing wrong with that. Why do we have to denigrate the desire to have sex to uphold the myth that a monogamous marriage is more than a business arrangement sanctioned by society and granted special privileges by our government? We hear about politicians when this happens, but as a sexologist with a private practice, I know a large portion of our population is unable to sustain sexual fidelity as Amanda Marcotte explained in her piece For Many, Marriage is Sexless, Boring and Oppressive. People mostly rely on "don't ask, don't tell" which doesn't really work in the end because it requires the omission of truth which is kind of a sneaky lie.

Sure, the Times piece
on the sanctity of marriage spews positive PR to uphold the institution
because that keeps most of us in line so we can continue to be good
consumers. The big corps demand that from us. My question is: When are
we going to redefine marriage so that it becomes more sexually
realistic and practical? I'm thinking about making an effort to do just
that. When I can find time.

While I appreciate this woman's honesty and respect her feelings, her blog entry is a perfect example of a woman with a limited sexual script. Or call it "sex style." She was fortunate to get as far as she did on monogamous marital sex.

It's sad to hear anyone longing for something that is really quite available, if not in the flesh, in our minds at least. Nothing like a cyber affair to spice up your selfloving or delving into the darkest recesses of our minds for better masturbation fantasies with an array of fabulous sextoys.

I've spent my career separating partnersex from solosex from threewaysex from groupsex. They all have their time and place. I want to tell her to buy a massage. Consider one with "full release" or how about an escort service? Or any young man who delivers or fixes inside or outside the house. And why do so many women turn to other women for sexual pleasures when partnersex leaves a marriage? In the end, I felt her testimony represents so many women in the world who were raised to be dependent on one man for all of their sexual needs.

Esther's article below addresses my most frequently asked question. All married and committed couples need to read her book "Mating in Captivity." I solved the problem by moving along which is a luxury that most couples don't have, especially with children:

While the diversity in the couples I work with is infinite, one complaint rings true across all cultures: couples who describe themselves as loving, trusting and caring complain that their sex lives have become dull and devoid of eroticism.

Why is it that great sex so often fades for couples who claim to love each other as much as ever? Can we want what we already have? Why does good intimacy not guarantee great sex? Why is the forbidden erotic? Why does the transition to parenthood deliver such an erotic blow? And when we love what do we feel and when we desire how is it different?

These are some of the questions that occupied me when I set out to the nature of erotic desire in long-term relationships for my book Mating In Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic. I wanted to look at the obstacles and anxieties we experience when our quest for secure love clashes with our pursuit of passion.

Dear Eric,

Since you are considered an expert on these matters, i had wanted to
ask you whether or not, based on your own opinion, you thought love (or
being in a 'serious relationship') enhances sex...whether or not you
think it brings a heightened level to the experience, etc.

Because in my experience, it doesn't, and this runs counter to what society seems
to tell us. But hey, this is something i can ask you about another time perhaps, maybe over a drink one of these days.