CHANGING SEXUAL RESPONSES
Applied to sexual matters, numbers have caused much needless misery. Most of us are familiar with the statistics which show that the male attains his sexual peak at eighteen, and declines steadily thereafter. But does this mean that a man’s sexual functioning is really impaired by the time he is in his forties?
The answer is No. This somber emphasis continually placed on the male’s inevitable “decline” has been extremely misleading. It is more accurate to talk about the sexual changes that occur with aging, and it is vital that they not be misinterpreted.
What are these changes? First, a man’s energy and vigor normally diminish as he ages. Therefore just as he does not expect to run as fast now, so he should not expect his sexual performance to be characterized by the same physical energy as it was earlier. Once a man is past forty his erection will take longer to achieve—minutes perhaps, as compared to seconds in his youth. It may not be as full or firm as when he was younger, and at the end of intercourse his penis will return to a relaxed state much more quickly than it used to. Also, it will probably take him considerably longer than in the past to obtain another erection. There will be a reduction in seminal fluid, and some men may notice that they ejaculate with less force.
All these changes are quite natural, and none should be cause for concern. True, the force and frequency of the male orgasm is affected by aging, but the erective response is not. A man should know that he need never lose his ability to attain an erection. Equally important, he must understand that his responses now resemble those traditionally considered feminine: After forty his sexual pleasure changes from a strongly genital sensation to a more sensuously diffused experience, and he will require greater and more prolonged stimulation to achieve an erection.
Kaplan points out that cultural conditioning plays a role in the way both male and female sexual patterns shift over time. A woman’s responses have generally been determined primarily by psychic factors, a man’s by physical ones. Thus, while the double standard victimizes both sexes, it does so at different times of life. Women are scarred most severely in their youth, when they are more strongly prohibited than men from obtaining sexual satisfaction. Their apparent sexual flowering around forty merely reflects a long process of shaking off old inhibitions. Men, on the other hand, were allowed more sexual freedom in their youth—but only on the condition that they regard sex as a strictly physical urge.
Therefore, just when women are recuperating from the double standard, men begin to feel its devastating effects: At mid-life they must adjust to the fact that their sexuality is becoming more dependent on psychic factors and that they now need more erotic stimulation, more emotional reassurance.
If a man suffers from penis angst when he can no longer perform like “an all-time fucking machine,” it is not because aging has destroyed his sexual ability or caused a “decline.” It is because he has been taught to value performance over pleasure and to detach sexuality from self—which handicaps him severely at this stage of life when he must rely increasingly on fantasy and feelings to excite his sexual desire.
Ask an American male what turns him on, and he might say, “big tits, long legs, a well-rounded ass.” Or “a fresh young face, a firm body, a braless bounce.” But unguarded emotions? Few men would cali that sexy. At mid-life, however, adjustments should be made. Those men who continue to regard sex as genital combat will be grief-stricken by their physical losses. They may even arrange their own erotic death, by gradually withdrawing from sex or retreating into impotence. Others, even those determined to enjoy their sexuality in full, must learn to break down the barrier of emotional constriction. One man candidly describes the difficulties:
I think in our day we have promoted fucking from a dirty and sort of secret pastime to a publicly endorsed indoor sport or health exercise, but we haven’t accompanied this with any particular release to the fantasies.
Most men are just too embarrassed to do it. To take out your cock and stick it in somebody, that’s not too hard to do. But to go through this whole thing where you insist the girl has a blindfold on, you tie her up, put her in weird clothes, or whatever the fantasy demands, it’s embarrassing. It’s idiotic. It’s crazy. See, it doesn’t belong to this sophisticated, conscious, moral good guy. You feel vulnerable. You don’t want to expose it.
That’s typically what they did in whorehouses. They went in and made all these crazy demands, right? Because you couldn’t face it with anybody you “respected.” In quotes. It’s that whole thing of the girl you respect and the girl you want to fuck. The girl you respect, you can’t imagine putting her through the paces of your fantasy life—that’s all. In a whorehouse you never see them again, and even if they didn’t like it, who the hell are they to complain?
Anyway, a fantasy doesn’t want simply to be Indulged, because that’s childish—which is why a whorehouse wouldn’t appeal to me. The goal is to find someone who wants the same thing you want. It’s the locking together of these mutually entertained fantasies where the real satisfaction and excitement lies, I think. It isn’t in frequency or technique. What’s that? Nonsense. I think it’s the image. And when you hit that erotic image, just thinking about it can get you excited.
Like when women lose control and go completely out of their head, it’s very exciting to a man because he feels he’s produced that effect in her—and it can also help release some of his inhibitions. But men don’t lose control like that very often. It’s happened to me very rarely, and it’s frightening. Definitely frightening.
I remember one time I was with a girl who said, “Well, what do you want?” And I said, “Well, I guess what I really want you to do is suck me off.” And she said, “That’s the simplest thing in the world,” and she got down and put her mouth on my penis and started sucking me. And suddenly I began to feel this unprecedented sexual sensation. Like a tremendous stirring that started down in my feet, and it seemed to be rising up my legs, up my diaphragm, up my whole body. Like a tremendous foree, a tremendous energy. It was just . . . it was alarming. It was loss of control, and I remem ber I began screaming. I was just panicking.
It only happens, I think, when defenses aren’t up. Like with this girl the fact that we hadn’t taken our clothes off was very significant. I’m much more relaxed in my clothes, and when I get naked I get clothed on an emotionally defensive level. So it was a combination of being dressed, and it was in the morning—which is the “wrong” time!—and there was no preparation. It was to- j tally spontaneous. There hadn’t been a chance to get the whole context of “Now we’re going to screw” into play. And so before I could get all my emotional rivets in the holes, the sensation got too strong for the restraints. It was a fantastic thing, a very strong sensation. But it was also a fantasy. An image. Here was this girl kneeling down sucking me off!
There’s no question that women are much more abandoned than men. That’s the most impressive thing, sexually, about women. They get much more out of screwing than men do. I believe that. They experience it deeper, longer, and are much better able to deal with it. You don’t see a lot of men moaning and raving and flailing, you know what I mean? I know a lot of guys who have tapes of women they’re screwing, and the women are screaming and talking and babbling, but you don’t hear one word from the guy. You don’t hear one sound. They’re just busy grinding away there—the little pile-drivers at work!
My feeling about most men is that they have a very impoverished emotional life. And their sexual life is basically a lot of physical rubbing and grunting and fucking away—but they’re not getting off at all. On the intellectual and achievement level, I think they’re quite formidable. But when it comes to the sensual and the emotional, they’re cripples.
People confuse the fact that most men can easily attain an orgasm with potency. But just being able to ejaculate—that’s no measure of any emotional thing, you know? You can pop off and hardly feel anything.
A carry-over from the work ethic, the idea of the sex act as a disciplined performance is destructive. Controlled efficiency in corporate boardrooms produces cold-blooded fucking in suburban bedrooms. It can even lead to impotence.
Despite some liberating changes in our society, Masters and Johnson confirm that our sex lives remain contaminated by the principle that work is virtuous, whereas play is wasteful and sinful. The consequences vary. Religious persons tend to view work as redemptive while regarding sex as intended more for procreation than pleasure. Others, less religious, may claim to value sex as an important dimension of their life, but actually treat it like work—as a task in which performance can be measured and mastered.
Contrary to popular belief, these researchers claim that a couple’s sex life improves during vacations not simply because they have more time and energy, or are less distracted by routine worries, but because they are freed temporarily from our culture’s demand to put productivity before pleasure. It is the spontaneous expression of feelings—doing whatever they feel like at any given moment—that dramatically changes the erotic atmosphere.
The toll taken by excessive self-discipline is “the most insidious element carried over from the work ethic to the sexual relationship,” say Masters and Johnson: “Let a man at the office keep his emotions under tight rein eight hours a day while he concentrates on getting his work done . . . and the transition to becoming an individual who acts according to spontaneous and authentic feeling becomes difficult. For some persons it becomes impossible.”
But in their view it is precisely the part of themselves that men are conditioned to control at work—”their true emotions at any given moment”—which must be free of discipline for a sexual relationship to flourish. This conviction is shared by other authorities, Kaplan among them. Speaking of her work as a sex therapist, she comments, “It is heartbreaking to see the unnecessary pain and constriction suffered by couples who cannot shed their defensive armors.”
Although it is true that the quanity of a man’s orgasms is somewhat reduced by aging, it is also true that the quality of his sexual pleasure can be increased. Shedding his defensive armor is the most important task facing the mid-life male struggling to adjust to his changing sexuality. Now he must reclaim both the fantasies and the feelings that society has taught him to deny, and summon the courage to become emotionally vulnerable—for this is the key to his enriching his sexuality as he ages.
In other words, the way for a man to stop feeling penis angst is to start feeling other things. Sexual potency after forty depends on renouncing the need for conquest and surrendering the heart.
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