Читать книгу The Truth About Sex A Sex Primer for the 21st Century Volume I: Sex and the Self - Gloria G. Brame - Страница 8
ОглавлениеThe Trouble with Masturbation
The most fundamental sexual behavior known to humans has been shrouded by so many myths and dogma over time that most adults have no idea what’s normal. Even people who are reasonably open-minded about the topic still suspect that, at heart, masturbation is dangerous or unhealthy, particularly if you “do it too much.”
“Too much” is not an objective standard. There is no such thing as “too much sex” if the person having that sex is enjoying it, remains healthy, and continues to derive pleasure from other aspects of life (career, family, spirituality, etc.). Equally important, what is too much for one person isn’t enough for another. Yet I’ve spoken to hundreds of men and women over the years who believed that something was wrong with them simply because they liked to masturbate.
Rodger M. walked into my office, head down, jaw set. A tall serious man in his 20s, he glanced around nervously, as if checking for hidden cameras, then sank into a chair. I wondered what grim tale he would reveal — was he a rapist? A convicted child molester? I began asking basic questions while he shifted and avoided my eyes.
He interrupted me, “Look Doc. Here’s the problem. I jerk off too much. I’m an addict.”
Rodger had visited a website where he took an “Are you a sex addict?” quiz prepared by someone who bills himself as the preeminent expert in sex addiction, and with every answer, Rodger sank into deeper gloom. Yes, he looked at porn. Yes, he jerked off. He even looked at porn while he jerked off. According to the site, Rodger was a sex addict.
“Really?” I asked. I ran through a series of basic questions: Was he functioning at work? Did he have a decent social life? Stable relationships? Stable finances? Did masturbation interfere with any of those? Was anyone being hurt by his behavior? At the end I said, “You’re doing great at work, you have an active social life, and you make good choices. I don’t think you’re an addict.”
“So why do I jerk off so much?”
“Perhaps you like it,” I smiled. “I know I do.”
He blushed. “Yeah, yeah, I do. At least until I start worrying about it.”
This, of course, is the biggest problem with masturbation; not the masturbation itself, which is without doubt the single most ubiquitous, universal behavior, but the guilt, the shame, the anxiety, even the despair that people suffer over it.
I asked him how often he masturbated for it to cause him enough concern to visit a sex therapist. Rodger told me once or twice a day. I told him that I recommend that male clients have a sexual release once a day for health reasons, he laughed in surprise.
“Medical studies have proven that men who masturbate five times a week reduce their risk of prostate cancer by up to 60%. You can confirm that with your urologist,” I said. “Orgasm plays a vital role in male sexual health. So I think you’re in good shape. In fact, I’d be concerned if you only masturbated a few times a month. Daily orgasms are one of the best things you can do for yourself.”
Rodger told me that since his teens he had been tormented with anxiety because he was told that jerking off was wrong. He worried that if he did it every day, he’d turn into a “pathetic freak” or that he wouldn’t be able to get it up anymore. I gently let him know that his constant worrying and guilt trips were more likely to damage his health than masturbation.
I take a holistic approach in therapy. I believe that sex always spills into daily life and vice versa; if Rodger was shirking responsibilities or fleeing intimacy to escape into masturbation, I would consider it problematic. Simply to enjoy yourself with something that harms no one (including yourself) is not a problem.
I continued asking him questions about his life and habits. Other than his anxieties about masturbation he was fairly happy, upbeat, and high-functioning. Looking at the whole of Rodger’s life, it was also obvious that he had much more control over his impulses than he’d credited himself for having. We talked about his personal history and background. He was raised in a conservative household where sex was never discussed. When the subject arose, the message from his parents was clear: sex was dirty, undignified, taboo. The only acceptable sex occurred between husband and wife. In Rodger’s mind, by masturbating he was, in effect, disappointing his family and at risk of disgrace should anyone ever find out.
I gave him all the latest and greatest information culled from studies on the voluminous benefits of masturbation. When I informed him that having an orgasm daily is physically healthier than not having one, he was at first stunned, then palpably relieved.
The man who came to my office afraid that his daily masturbation meant he was an addict was transformed by that conversation. It alleviated a burden of shame he had carried since he was twelve. More often than not, clients like Rodger don’t need to see a sex therapist more than once or twice. Sometimes, once they finally admit what they always considered a “terrible secret,” they already feel better and more in control. Putting voice to their fears and then realizing that they are just fears, not realities, is in itself deeply therapeutic.
What Is Masturbation?
Masturbation is the fundamental building block of adult sexual performance. It is the first step we take towards defining what we like sexually and learning how our bodies respond to sexual stimulation. Consciously, we may be driven by nothing more than the fact that it feels good but, developmentally, masturbation teaches us how to elicit and control our sexual responses and, most importantly, to achieve the all-important sexual release.
Margo L. was a 50-something woman, married to Jim, her high school sweetheart. They had several children but Margo had never had an orgasm with Jim and now, facing menopause, was frightened she never would. She was angry and blamed Jim for being cold and selfish. Jim wanted sex almost every night, had his orgasm, and turned over to go to sleep, leaving her awake and frustrated. He didn’t seem to care how she felt. Early on, he tried harder and did some foreplay, she said, but he’d long since given up and only focused on his own needs. She was hurt to the point of rage about Jim’s attitudes. He made her feel unloved and unappreciated. She had packed her bags more than once. Sex was all about him and she just didn’t want to do it anymore. Having sex with Jim only served as a grim reminder of how empty it made her feel. At the same time, she really didn’t want a divorce — he was a good husband and great father — so she continued to engage in sex that she found joyless.
In the course of taking her sexual history, I asked her at what age she had started masturbating. There was a long pause. She never masturbated. She was raised in a different time, she said, a time when women didn’t do that sort of thing. So it wasn’t just that she didn’t have orgasms with her husband. She said she’d never had an orgasm at all. She was raised to believe that sex was reserved for marriage, and so she waited to be married, with the expectation that once they began having sex, she would learn to enjoy it. Instead, she had been waiting all those years for Jim to figure out what would work and then do it to her. As she saw it, her sexual pleasure was entirely in his hands — and he had failed her as a husband by refusing to provide it.
She was first hostile, then humbled, when I told her that if you don’t know how to give yourself an orgasm, chances of someone else knowing how to do it are slim to nil. Two sexually healthy adults can have orgasms together if both of them want the experience and each of them knows what it takes to achieve that climax. Exactly how they get there varies enormously but the better you know how to achieve your own orgasm, the greater your chances of having one with someone else. There are always marvelous exceptions — the magical lover who seems to know exactly how to touch you and where and in what way and at what moment. Sadly, such serendipitous occasions are rare. Infinitely more common are adults who suffer for years because they don’t know how to give themselves orgasms or how to be orgasmic with partners.
Margo’s belief that her orgasm was entirely up to her husband virtually guaranteed that she would never climax. She didn’t understand her own sexual anatomy or response. She assumed that because she couldn’t climax from five minutes of thrusting after perfunctory, almost non-existent foreplay, something was wrong with her. She should have known better; she’d read enough on the subject to understand the importance of foreplay for women. But she was so hurt and embarrassed by what she viewed as her own inadequacy, that she didn’t know how to ask for more and immediately backed down when her husband didn’t show an interest in giving her more.
Margo’s problems were deeper than orgasmic capability, beginning with her passivity and low self-esteem. In addition to talking through all her deeper issues, I gave her assignments to begin the process of learning how to give herself pleasure, including gentle exploration of her genitals in the shower, and the purchase of a simple vibrator. A few months into therapy, Margo excitedly reported that she had finally achieved the orgasm which had eluded her for 50 years. She now understood that the key for her was a long slow build-up, with a lot of caressing and kissing to tease her into readiness. I could see the positive changes in her mood, body, language, and eyes. Margo looked as happy as a kid with a new toy.
How Do People Masturbate?
While the act of masturbation is universal — most sexually healthy people engage in it — there are numerous variables that account for differences in the hows, whys, and wherefores of solo sex. Not all masturbation leads to orgasm. In people with orgasmic dysfunctions or organic health issues, orgasm may be elusive or weak. Some forms of masturbation are focused on the feelings of arousal and excitement: orgasm may be deferred for another time.
The range of ways adults may experience arousal and satisfaction from solo sex are ultimately an aggregate of biology, environment, and opportunity. Even when two people use the same exact techniques in masturbating, one should assume that they still don’t “feel” it the same way. Some people become giddily overwhelmed by pleasurable sensations to their erotic spots, and others maintain a relaxed, somewhat unchanged affect during the act. Typical or normal responses are somewhere in the middle range: a feeling of anticipation and excitement, coupled with deep pleasure, completed with a powerful experience of relief.
Masturbation in men typically means manual stimulation of the penis, usually rubbing it up and down. In women, it typically involves manual stimulation of the clitoris or pressure applied to the genital region. It’s also typical for adults to enhance the sensuality of masturbation using vibrators, dildos, jack-off devices, bondage toys, lotions, lubes, and a range of other genital-centric appliances and stimulants.
Commonly, people give themselves sensations in other parts of their bodies before and during masturbation. Garden-variety adjuncts include self-stimulation of vagina, nipples and anus, often using sex toys such as dildos, butt plugs, vibrators, or anal probes. Probably even more common are the “sex toys of opportunity,” or random objects that you adapt to sexual purposes. When I was 15, I “borrowed” a friend’s electric shaver for a quick orgasmic romp before cleaning it and returning it to her drawer. I felt ashamed of myself, but not so ashamed that I didn’t continue to have casual sex with common objects in my parents’ home throughout my randy teens, always tidying up the crime scenes so no one ever found out.
Sexual self-experiments are entirely normal. They go along with our innate curiosity about our bodies’ reactions to stimulants and our inborn cravings for variety. It’s typical for us to experiment with soft sensations, such as the way rose petals or silks feel on our skin. It’s also typical to experiment with intense sensations, such as pinching or slapping ourselves during masturbation. All such experiments are natural impulses to explore the boundaries of our innate sensuality, and determine which sets of sensations give us the most pleasure. Individual biology accounts for what places will feel best, while hormones, aging, emotional issues, and physical illness all alter sensitivity and sexual responsiveness throughout our lives.
Carl P. started masturbating when he was about fourteen, and engaged in the typical stroking behavior. But even at that young age, he didn’t find the stroking to be enough sensation for him. His masturbation always involved some other sensual element: either he handled his penis roughly, or pinched his own nipples, or he attached clothespins to his scrotum or all of the above. As enjoyable as he found the stroking, he needed the additional stimuli to climax. Some might call Carl a sensation junkie; others might call him a masochist. As a sexologist, I just consider Carl to be a guy who has a high natural drive for intense sensation. When I asked Carl about his other interests I learned he was passionate about extreme sports. He was also the guy who ordered the spiciest dish on the menu when he went out with friends. He proudly admitted he’d won a few “bet that’s too hot for you to eat” wagers in his time. I wasn’t surprised to discover that his social identity mirrored his sexual identity.
From a sexological point of view, the sexually healthiest person is the one who enjoys exploring his or her full potential for pleasure. Culturally, we poke fun at masturbation and mock those who invest in a lot of sex toys or, worse, question their character, as if the pursuit of sexual ecstasy is, in itself, morally degrading.
To a sexologist, it’s the opposite: the most sexually balanced people are the ones who are least confined by assumptions and expectations about what they “should” like and, instead, take the organic approach by simply testing themselves to see what they actually do like. I’ve occasionally remarked that the most perverse type of sexuality is when someone believes they have to perform a particular act that turns them off again, or when they settle on one method of giving or receiving pleasure and never again vary from it.
People who masturbate in only one specific way for their entire lives — never varying the routine, never discovering whether another spot on his or her body could be a source of sensuality — miss out on the greatest part of sexuality: the delight of variety. If you think about every other area of human life — music, food, beverages — variety is the rule. How often do you find yourself at a stranger’s house and discover they use your favorite brands of shampoo, toothpaste and soap? To believe in one monolithic model of how, when and how often to masturbate is as irrational as believing everyone is morally obligated to use Crest toothpaste on their teeth and Ivory soap in the shower.
Indeed, the person far most likely to develop problems with masturbation is the one who (a) does it the least and (b) does it the same exact way every time. Some adults have to retrain themselves when their masturbatory pattern has been so fixed for so long that they cannot get the kind of sensation they need from penetrative or other types of partnered sex. If you spend twenty years of your life only succeeding in climaxing from one single method of masturbation, your likelihood of making an easy shift to a partner-based sex life may be challenging because unless your partner can reproduce that exact same sensation, you may find it hard to come.
In nature — without inhibitions, taboos, traumas, and the collective weight of civilization — there is no doubt that nearly all human beings would experiment with every possible variety of self-pleasure. We want to feel good. We love things that taste good, smell good, look good, sound good, and feel good. If we were not raised to separate our pelvic region from the rest of our bodies, we would explore liberally, front and back, until we found exactly the right set of sensations that brought us the greatest level of sexual satisfaction. But we do not live in nature, so it is the rare individual who feels empowered to strive for enhanced sexual pleasure.
While circumstances can alter or deform the natural development of masturbatory instincts, the good news is that behaviors you learn can be unlearned. However, retraining yourself to orgasm from different stimuli requires a serious commitment to behavior modification. As I frequently remind clients, if you keep doing the same things, you’re going to get the same results. There are no absolute guarantees that behavioral modification will work, but I’ve yet to see a truly motivated client fail to make positive changes in his or her sex life.
Frank Z., a handsome man in his late 30s, grew up in a large family with virtually no privacy. As a teen, he developed a furtive method of masturbation, stroking quickly, trying to bring himself to climax as fast as he could. He became expert at sliding his hand into his pants to rub himself off discreetly and tested himself a few times as a teen by doing so in public places, unnoticed. He’d long since given up the habit of public masturbation but still had a taste for fast sex — something which his lovers routinely complained about. Frank was a pragmatic, stoic guy: to him, orgasm was the only goal of sex. Privately, he sneered at “too much fooling around,” which he viewed as somewhat effeminate. He believed every man just wanted to get their rocks off with the least amount of bother and fuss.
In order for Frank to achieve a healthier, and more mutually satisfying sex life, he was going to have to slow down and learn to enjoy the journey. The challenge was to move him off his life-long habit of goal-oriented sex and focus on pleasure-oriented sex. Since he was neither shy nor inhibited about his body, I suggested that he relearn its possibilities by exploring sensations in every area except his penis. I told him to start with his toes and work his way up, inch by inch, front and back. He could do it with a partner or solo, in bed or in a relaxing bath. I encouraged him to give himself challenges: other than his penis, what was the most sensitive spot on his body? Although he found the exercises frustrating and even annoying at the beginning, he agreed to abstain from direct stimulation to his genitals for a week. During that time, his job was to figure out what other types of stimulation aroused him and whether any other sensations could bring him to climax. Since Frank worked in a hospital and was all too familiar with patients who were unable to give themselves direct stimulation, I suggested he imagine what it would be like if he was in their position: how would he go about deriving sexual pleasure if he could not quickly, effectively masturbate with his hand?
By refreshing his palette and directing him away from instant gratification, Frank discovered a world of new sensation he had not previously considered. It took only a few weeks before he was eager to explore these new understandings of his body with his lover, Don, who was stunned when Frank offered to turn the tables, and see which spots made him extra happy as well. Of course, there were still times when Frank liked to get off in a hurry but the better he became in bed, the more patient he grew and the more willing he was to let orgasm take a backseat to sensuality. When Don told him he had turned into a wonderfully versatile and skilled lover, Frank felt like a completely new, and much happier, man.
Another patient, John R., a newlywed in his mid 20s, was having difficulty adjusting to married sex because he kept expecting to feel all the same things he felt during masturbation when he made love to his wife, Kendra. Since boyhood, John had masturbated in one specific way and had inadvertently conditioned himself to climax from that one method — which involved a lot of tugging and rough sensation to his penis. After only six months of marriage, he was already locking himself in the bathroom to relieve his sexual tension. Although he was very attracted to Kendra, he was too embarrassed to admit what he liked and couldn’t bring himself to tell his beloved that their sex life didn’t satisfy him. Happily for him, Kendra was willing and eager to make changes and, at my recommendation, came with him to his next session. I recommended that they start out by simply exploring mutual masturbation — with him coaching her on the sensations he liked the most. Kendra wasn’t just a loving woman, she was a smart one with a strong dominant streak. She took to rough play like a duck to water, and quickly figured out the kinds of sensations that sent him through the roof. They were both shocked to realize how intense their chemistry could be once they gave themselves permission to reveal ALL their secrets. The more he told his wife about his hot buttons and fantasies, the more she confessed her own. In just two months, they began a truly adult, mature, loving model of sex, based on what made them happiest.
A meaningful consideration in figuring out what you, personally, need from sex is that innumerable physical variables make one person’s sexual response different from another’s. Human genitals are as different in their minutiae as hands or feet. Size and color are the most apparent differences but subtle variations, internal and external, are the rule. Not all genitals are positioned exactly the same: your parts may be slightly higher or lower, further up front or further back, than the next person’s. The distance between genitals and anus vary. Some of your genital aspects may be more prominent or less prominent. You may have hair where someone else is (naturally) bare. You may have a curve where someone else is straight, or wrinkles where the next person is smooth. Your veins may be closer to the surface, and your nerves may cluster in slightly higher concentrations. Your overall skin sensitivity may be low, medium or high. Such normal physical variations contribute to differences in sensitivity and response; the same caress or stroke that feels fantastic to one person could feel painful to another and won’t feel like anything at all to a third.
Lena R. was a vibrant, optimistic woman in her late 20s. She had freely explored her body and her sensuality since childhood. Her favorite activity was pulling the bed-sheets tight between her legs and riding them until “the oooh feeling,” as she described it. Sometimes she added other things — a shampoo bottle, a bar of soap — to increase the intensity of the pressure against her vulva. In her college years, she’d sown all her wild oats and then some, but one thing still eluded her: being able to climax during intercourse. Now in a happy marriage, she still couldn’t orgasm unless something was pressed tight against her labia over the clitoral hood. As we talked, it struck me that Lena wasn’t “stuck” on any one type of masturbatory habit. She had experimented with dozens of different ways of reaching climax. But in every case, the method that put her over the top invariably involved pressure on the outside of the vulva. She volunteered that once, by accident, her husband pressed down hard on her pelvis during sex and she “almost” came. She was frustrated by her lifelong inability to climax from penetration and wondered if she’d “masturbated too much” as a girl and ruined her chances of being able to enjoy “normal” sex.
Contrary to the popular image of women masturbating in ways that mimic the pleasures of intercourse — an image belabored in pornography for men — in my clinical experience, female orgasm commonly derives from pressure, friction, and other sensation either to the outside or visible aspects of female genitals (such as the clitoris, labia, and pubic mound). Vaginal penetration is wildly exciting to some women, but for many others, it is primarily an adjunct to their pleasures (or fantasies), not the mechanism for their orgasm. This is, indeed, one of the reasons why foreplay is so important. Stroking, caressing and other manipulations to female genitalia prepare a woman for orgasm.
Getting to understand your individual anatomy is a vital piece of the puzzle in successful masturbation and climax. Endocrinologists use a term I love: genital congestion. It may sound as if you have a cold in your groin but it’s the opposite: it’s a measure of blood-flow (and subsequent warmth), based on the amount of swelling that occurs. Depending on your sexual health, genetic traits, and vascular fitness, swelling in the genitals (penis, clitoris, vagina, and testicles) can range from truly impressive to barely noticeable. Some men find that their penis in repose is small but that they grow surprisingly large when fully erect; others may seem well-endowed, but do not see significant lengthening during erection; and most men fall between the two ends of the spectrum. Similar variations are common in women in as well. Some are endowed with a clitoris that swells significantly and protrudes from the labia; others show little or limited clitoral growth during arousal.
Some people experience genital congestion as a light, tingling pleasure; some as a swooningly sharp pang; some as a desperate clawing need for relief. All of these little (or not so little) variations impinge on what kind of pressure you need on your genitals as well.
Many of the women I’ve worked with admit that they still masturbate as they did as little girls, only in place of blankets or objects, they now use vibrators. Indeed, one of the most popular vibrators ever sold — the “Magic Wand,” manufactured by Hitachi — is a non-penetrative toy. As sex toys for women become more sophisticated, the emphasis has trended away from penetrative toys. The most upscale new tinglers focus on stimulating the clitoris and external genital region. Abundant anecdotal material proves again and again that, in private, for many different reasons, women opt for non-penetrative masturbation. Wishing you were built slightly differently, or could climax from things that biologically don’t work for you, is, in my opinion, a recipe for dysfunction. Far better for every woman to accept that her body is unique, to map its sweetest spots, and then to exploit her natural sensuality.
I suggested to Lena that instead of reaching for a goal that may never be possible, we assume it was natural for her to need pressure to climax. It was entirely possible that the location of her clit, or the sensitive nerves concentrated behind the clit, meant that her body simply responded best when stimulation was applied from the outside, not the inside. If this was how she was anatomically geared, she could fight and ultimately lose, or work with her body to find new pathways to coupled orgasm. We reviewed different sex positions and movements that could increase pressure on her pelvic region — from having him manually apply pressure during sex (placing his hand over her mound and pushing down), to doggie-style sex with something under her pelvis that she could grind against. Knowing they were very creative and open-minded, I requested that she allow him to watch her masturbate so he could better understand what she did to climax. It might give him ideas about what he could add to the mix. They agreed to try a range of new techniques and were thrilled with the results. They found one sure-fire method that worked for them — he entered her from behind and clamped his hand over her genitals, squeezing and rubbing as he moved in and out of her. It worked so well they had their first-ever simultaneous orgasm.
The last variable in how people masturbate depends on how much time and effort they invest in learning their own bodies’ responses and how good they get at giving themselves pleasure. In the pursuit of more intensely arousing masturbation, males have been known to penetrate an impressive range of bizarre objects. My personal favorite was in the novel Portnoy’s Complaint where the eponymous protagonist masturbated in a hunk of raw meat slated to be cooked for dinner that night. Gross, perhaps, but honest. Virtually anything which can be penetrated has been penetrated by men in search of satisfaction.
Women are also known to be curiously incautious in their choices of inanimate partners. I once advised some lawyers who were trying to analyze the legality of images appearing on their site. We all gained an education in the possibilities for creative excess some people bring to solo sex. I will never forget the lady who made an art of inserting wooden chair legs into her vagina. I was seriously concerned about splinters.
Insertions are a fairly common act during masturbation as an adjunct to pleasure. In addition to the most common practice (using a specialized sex toy in the vagina or the anus), people find unusual applications for other things. Some people enjoy inserting catheters and other narrow items into the urethra. Emergency room doctors have removed everything from bottles and light bulbs to baked potatoes from colons. As radical or unusual as these masturbatory games may seem to some people, in fact, doctors and helping professionals are well aware that they occur throughout the mainstream population.
As a sex therapist, I have learned that just when you think you’ve heard it all, you discover that of course you haven’t. There are always new angles, new variations and new fantasies that make one person’s masturbation different from the next. For me, frankly, that is the joy of being a sex therapist in the first place. The diversity of human sexuality is a beautiful and spiritual spectacle to behold.
Why Do People Masturbate?
As will become increasingly, almost tediously, evident as you read this book, the honest simple answer to every question regarding “Why do people do X sex act?” is the remarkably dull response, “Because it feels right to them.” It feels right and it feels very good too.
I realize most of you are thinking you didn’t need me to tell you masturbation feels good but it is on the notion of “right” versus “wrong” that people go astray. People who believe that sex in general is dirty are always the first to say that an act like masturbation is “wrong.” They’ll use expressions like “it’s not healthy” or “it’s a selfish pleasure” or send other messages that something so biologically natural is physically, morally or spiritually degrading. And, since masturbation is the first sexual act most humans know, we usually learn very early in life that we shouldn’t do it. In truth, nothing could be more right or more natural. Our minds crave the chemicals that sex produces; our biology benefits by the catharsis of orgasm. Our bodies don’t care what makes us climax as long as we do. Moreover, manually stimulating your genitals is by far the single safest kind of sex available to humans.
Humans are hardly alone in the enjoyment of solo sex. Innumerable species, including primates and house pets, engage in self-stimulation for fun. We once had a bachelor Bichon Frise with a disturbing passion for sofa pillows. Being a sex therapist, I wanted to be clinically cool about it but I couldn’t help cringing when he humped the pillows like a coked-up hustler getting paid by the stroke. We ultimately broke his habit, though I admit I felt like a party-pooper for ending his happy time.
From my clinical point of view, we are hard-wired to masturbate. We don’t have a choice about the impulse. It comes with the human territory. Considering how much effort has historically been expended on trying to force people to stop masturbating, if we could stop or control it we would have by now. Nor does anyone teach kids how to masturbate; if anything, they are discouraged from it, even punished for it. Yet nothing can stop the human drive to explore self-pleasure.
How Often Do People Masturbate?
As much as people lie, fudge and fib about sex, when it comes to masturbation, they lie even more. Indeed, sometimes they kid themselves and don’t realize (or accept) that they are masturbating. So it is almost impossible to know for sure what people are actually doing in the privacy of their bedrooms.
When I ran a blind poll on my blog a few years ago, 75% of the 235 respondents (male and female) said they masturbated at least once a day. That number isn’t scientific, but based on clinical and anecdotal experience, I think once every day is a reasonable estimate for healthy adults. Commonly, adults do it at night, as a relaxing pre-sleep ritual. (The second most common time to do it is upon waking up — for some people, a morning orgasm gives a lift to the day.) Some people benefit from masturbating two or three times a day, others will never want more than two or three orgasms a week or month. It’s all normal.
That said, the number of times any given individual feels the urge to masturbate is influenced by a range of factors: opportunity, health, psychological state, even DNA may play a role. We already know that some of us are born with more vigorous libidos than others, and that some of us have higher levels of hormones than others. We also have early research demonstrating that sexual behaviors are inherited (for example, genetic testing has shown that premature ejaculation appears to be a paternal trait). But biology is not entirely destiny when it comes to sex. Environment and opportunity play mitigating roles in how often a person masturbates. Most importantly, your attitude about your genitals influences your comfort-level and the pleasure received from touching yourself.
Ed M. was a genuinely likeable, earnest, kind man in his early 30s. The only child of a religious single mother, Ed learned right from wrong early and in very black and white terms. He worshiped his mother as much as he feared her. At age 13, when Ed’s mother caught him masturbating, his world came crashing in. He told me he could feel her disgust and disappointment in the core of his own soul. From then on, he vowed he would never masturbate again. He and his mother prayed for him to develop the strength to resist his urges, although he confided that, on the inside, he really didn’t think he’d been doing anything wrong. He just wanted to “do the right thing” and he believed his mother knew what God expected of him.
Ever since leaving home, his old urges returned, seemingly twice as intensely. His old resolutions faded and he resumed masturbating. However, he never got over the shame and guilt of his youth. He had internalized his mother’s disapproval so deeply that he literally felt he should be punished every time he touched himself. He came to me hoping I would be able to “cure” his need to masturbate. He blamed masturbation for his inability to form successful relationships with women. He was dying to get married, have children, and lead a normal life. He was convinced that his interest in masturbation was an obstacle to all that.
Ed spent a couple of years working with me on what I quickly perceived to be the genuine issue behind his angst: as much as he loved his mother, she had been such a powerful and controlling influence in his life that he was actually afraid of women; afraid of their control and afraid that they would disapprove of him as much as his mother had. His natural impulse to give himself pleasure had become confused with this fear, so that each time he masturbated he saw himself slipping further away from any possibility of marriage; yet, the more he saw himself slipping away, the more he seemed to need to masturbate. Slowly it became clear to him that his masturbation was not the problem. The real problem was his profound guilt and his mixed feelings about allowing himself to feel vulnerable around a woman. The anxiety he felt over his “weakness” merely filled him with so much tension that the only way to relieve his mind was by masturbating which, of course, only made him feel worse, and more stressed out. The vicious cycle had consumed his life.
As Ed’s self-esteem improved in therapy, and as he sorted out his mother’s anti-sex attitudes from his own fairly open-minded attitudes, he developed the confidence to date more. He was amazed and grateful when one woman he began seeing told him that she loved giving hand-jobs, and encouraged him to explore creative sex with her. I can’t say that all of his emotional baggage from life with his mom vanished, but Ed’s contentment and optimism rose spectacularly, thanks to a good sex life with an understanding and caring girlfriend, and he stopped demonizing masturbation.
Considering that they are so often punished for it, sometimes by their mothers, wives or girlfriends, sometimes by clergy, sometimes by culture itself, it’s not surprising that many men struggle with emotional pain over masturbating. The culture accepts that men are highly sexed and jokes about masturbation are now as prevalent as condemnations and shaming about it. But if male masturbation gets the lion’s share of public attention, it’s because there is still an underlying belief in our culture that women aren’t fully sexual and therefore don’t need to masturbate. But we are and we do. Women just don’t seem to belabor their masturbation with the same negativity as men (and especially heterosexual men).
An interesting clinical tidbit to add some perspective: When women seek me out for help with masturbation issues, it’s usually because they want to have more or better orgasms. When men seek me out for advice about masturbation issues, they usually fear they are having too many orgasms.
I don’t believe in “too much” but I definitely believe in “using masturbation as an escape mechanism.” There is a significant difference between the two: a socially functional, healthy person may masturbate repeatedly through the day without problems. On the other hand, you could masturbate only once a day and it could still represent a problem. Sex can never be judged as an isolated event; its healthfulness is contingent on whether it fits into your life in a balanced and sane way.
Karl S., a single professional in his mid-30s, was worried that his interest in masturbation was unhealthy. After taking a full sexual history, I concurred. Karl was using masturbation as an escape from problems that were steadily looming larger, threatening his future both socially and professionally. In high school and college, Karl was a friendly, social guy who played sports with friends and went out regularly. Now he was living in an unfamiliar city and working at a high-stress job that required lots of overtime just to remain competitive. By the time he got home at night, he was worn out. He had developed a routine of logging onto the Internet while heating something for dinner, then eating while he browsed the Web for sexual entertainment. By the time he finished his meal, he was hot and bothered and completely obsessed with his on-line sexplay. When he got to a point where he needed relief, he masturbated and went to bed, only to wake up and repeat the cycle the next day. Because he was new in town and didn’t know anyone but his work colleagues, who were mostly married, on weekends he stayed in, sometimes spending all his free hours on porn and chat sites. He was spending hundreds of dollars a week on his habit, and beginning to accumulate debt paying for all the on-line sex-workers he chatted with. He was disgusted with himself — the more ashamed he felt, the more he withdrew from people. On a few occasions he got so down on himself, he called in sick to work rather than face the world — and, of course, ended up spending his days off glued to the screen, chatting with sex-workers.
The solution for Karl was to break what was becoming a very troubling and ultimately self-destructive cycle. The more he masturbated, the less he wanted to cope with the world; the poorer his skills at coping with the world, the more he wanted to masturbate to relieve the tension and numb his mind. I suggested that he revise his approach, not by going cold-turkey (which is only seldom effective) but by taking control over his behavioral patterns. As a first step, I recommended that he schedule his masturbation so that he felt he was doing it when he honestly wanted to, and not because he was avoiding his real-world responsibilities. To start, he had to budget his time and expenses for on-line adventure. To help him break the habit, he had to stop hitting the computer first thing when he got home. Going on-line would be a reward after he ate, did laundry, paid bills, or any other chores he typically avoided. Step by step, one small behavioral change at a time, Karl began to focus on the long-neglected parts of his life and imposed a schedule on his play-time, with a strict curfew every night. He began going to the gym regularly, accepted invitations from co-workers he would have blown off before, started going out on weekends, and slowly became the man he used to be. It took him almost a year, during which he backslid and broke his resolutions more than once, but gradually, he emerged from his obsessive sexual fugue and regained his self-respect.
If Karl had come to me saying he masturbated five times a day but was happy, adjusted, functioning, my approach would have been completely different. I would have told him he didn’t need therapy. It’s a myth that frequent masturbation is a gateway to sexual addiction or psychological problems. There is no evidence whatsoever that people who masturbate regularly become obsessed with it, or need more and crazier masturbation to feel satisfied. Those who have positive sexual self-esteem generally experience masturbation as a warm, fun experience and feel satisfied and complete afterwards. They can repeat the experience as often as they wish, with positive results.
On the other hand, people who are sexually conflicted are the ones at greatest risk of becoming obsessive or compulsive about masturbation. Sometimes they are simply so nervous and overwrought about their sexuality (or sexual identity) that their sexual impulses are neurotic and malformed. They may lead secret lives in which they indulge in every guilty pleasure they can imagine. They may go on binges — during which they lose all self-control — followed by purges during which they deny and punish themselves. They may have underlying stresses or compulsive tendencies that express themselves sexually (for example, my clinical experience has shown that people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Attention Deficit Disorder often are OCD or ADD in their sexual behaviors as well).
In all cases, when someone spirals out of control it isn’t the fault of the masturbation itself. My clinical experience has repeatedly shown that people who feel comfortable and relaxed about touching themselves are more likely to exert sexual moderation than people who think genitals are dirty or that sexual pleasure is a sin. The more deeply sexually inhibited the client, the more likely he or she is to be compulsive and self-destructive in their sexual behaviors and fantasies.
Alfred M., a man in his mid-40s, told me he occasionally wept after masturbation because he was so disappointed in himself for giving in to his urges. Masturbation had ruined his life. To him, sex was one of life’s dirty necessities, like evacuating the bowels. He hated himself for needing to do it but grudgingly accepted that, without it, his internal tension was unbearable. Although heterosexual, he stopped dating seriously years earlier and, on the whole, avoided any form of intimacy with women. Because Alfred never got the satisfaction he needed, he lived in a near-constant state of frustration and mental anguish. By the time he finally saw a sex therapist, Alfred had grown to hate his genitals for causing him so much grief. He was contemplating castration to bring a final end to all his problems. He had found a disreputable doctor on the Internet who was willing to perform the procedure in secret. He just wanted a one-time session with me to hear my opinion.
My opinion was that he had to deal with his low self-esteem before he made the final decision to irreversibly change his life. The larger the picture I was able to develop of Alfred’s life, the more I understood the scope of his problems. His mother had been a deeply religious, stern matron, also cold, narcissistic, and verbally abusive. She punished him severely for small infractions, including whipping him with a belt and locking him in a closet. His father was a hollow shell of a man, too intimidated by his wife to help his son. When he was in high school Alfred lost control of the car he was driving, killing his high school sweetheart, a guilt he always still carried with him. Alfred grew up to be a classic underachiever, an overly polite man who was much smarter and better educated than his position in life suggested. Deep down, he was an angry, frightened, deeply wounded man, and perhaps the most difficult and challenging client I’ve worked with. I acknowledged that he was in pain, and for good reasons, but I didn’t think self-mutilation would make him feel any better about himself.
Alfred worked with me, on and off, for almost four years. At times he would vanish and I’d fear the worst but he would return again, ready to push a little further. Working at his pace, I helped him to see that disfigurement was not the solution to emotional conflicts about sex. There were no miracles for Alfred but after three years, he was finally able to find some good things in his life and in himself. Most importantly, he had stopped blaming all his miseries in life on his masturbation and genitals and was now trying to improve himself on several fronts: going to the gym, tentatively dating, and going back to school so he could get a better job.
Anxiety about sex can radically influence a person’s life. Exactly how it will play out varies according to individual psychology and circumstances. I’ve seen a thousand permutations in my practice. I’ve worked with troubled people who became compulsively promiscuous or led secret double lives — one in which they act and appear completely ordinary, and another where they engage in risky sexual adventures with strangers. I’ve seen the other extreme, where someone vows to be abstinent because sex feels too complicated and not satisfying enough to make it worth the anguish.
As I occasionally tell clients, “Anxiety is the opposite of sexy.” Emotional conflicts thwart a range of sexual responses, from blocking our ability to get aroused to impacting our performance with partners. I believe this concept reaches right into our biology. I think of negative emotions — guilt, fear, shame, disgust, internal conflict — as a massive organic filter through which sexual responses must pass. The more intense those feelings, the more difficult it is for the body and brain to function in harmony. The “happy” brain chemistry of sex is fighting the chemicals released by stress. Muscles which should be relaxing are tensing. Whereas people who are relaxed are assisting their brain in doing its sexual business, people who can’t relax are ultimately most likely to be left feeling unsatisfied. It may even cause some of them to crave more and more intensity or experiences just to achieve a simulacrum of the pleasure that balanced people derive from sex. It has been the rule, not the exception, in my clinical practice that the people who make the most disturbingly risky, unhealthy behavioral choices are invariably the ones who are at psychological war in their minds over their sexual identity. They are also the ones who seem to have the most issues and complexes about masturbation, and similarly seem to get the least pleasure out of the act.
In emotionally balanced, socially-adjusted and reasonably physically healthy people, there really is no upper limit on the number of times a day one may safely masturbate. The time to stop is when it stops feeling good; if your genitals start to feel raw, if it’s exhausting you, it’s common sense to give yourself some time to recover before doing it again. Most typically, high frequency of masturbation simply means a strong sex drive and a robust appetite. On the other hand, if masturbation interferes with or diminishes the quality of your daily life — your ability to socialize, your ability to have intimacy, your ability to focus on work — then it stops being a harmless pleasure and becomes a potentially self-destructive behavior pattern. But the biggest health risk factor related to masturbation seems to be when you do NOT masturbate. Given all the proven benefits of orgasm, failure to masturbate during times when you don’t have a partner may reduce your lifespan, speed up your aging process, and contribute to a range of health problems, including heart conditions and immunological disorders.
Finally, as with all sexual behaviors, if you notice a significant change in your pattern of masturbation (if you suddenly start doing it much more than before, or find your interest dwindling to nothing), it is a red flag that something more serious may be going on inside. Ebbs and flows in desire are natural to the cycles of life, but rapid and unexplained (i.e., you aren’t pregnant, you aren’t in menopause, etc.) changes in sexual behavior are symptomatic of depression, hormonal imbalances, diabetes, and other conditions.
Is Masturbation Really Good For You?
Since masturbation and orgasm instantly stimulate positive change throughout the human organism, masturbating to climax is quite simply the best total wellness exercise one can perform. None of the daily grooming and health rituals we all are taught to do (brushing our teeth, combing our hair, showering) serve the vital purposes of the old-fashioned orgasm. I’ll discuss the numerous organic benefits in detail in the section on orgasm but suffice to say, as I so often do, an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away.
As noted earlier, masturbation is our biology’s way of preparing us for adult sexuality. It is also our testing ground for skills that will ultimately build to a satisfying sex life in adulthood.
We learn five critical sexual behavioral skills through masturbation:
1. How to produce a state of arousal
2. How to pace sexual pleasure
3. How to enhance sexual pleasure
4. How to delay orgasm
5. How to have an orgasm
Additionally, masturbation teaches us to be comfortable handling our genitals, a key ingredient in a complete sex life. Masturbation is useful in childhood as way of relearning our natural relationship with our bodies after potty training, a time when most parents impress on their children that, by association with urination and elimination, the genital and anal regions are offensive.
Since all of us are potty trained, it’s inevitable that many, if not most of us, grow up to believe the whole area is dirty; and since we are all subject to the advice and attitudes of authority figures who tell us that masturbation is bad and that genitals are shameful, forbidden zones, in response to these messages, masturbation often changes from an unselfconscious act to something a child is at least vaguely aware is bad or wrong. Depending on how intensely bad they believe it to be, they may delay or avoid masturbation into adulthood. In some rare cases, early childhood trauma (whether from potty training gone terribly wrong or from child abuse), can permanently damage sex drive and suppress all desire to masturbate.
People who are comfortable with their own genitals tend to be similarly relaxed with their partners’ genitals. Knowing that certain spots in and around your genitals are more sensitive than others; knowing what kind of a sensation you crave on your penis or clitoris; knowing which other parts of your body are sensitive to touch all promote an adult’s ability to receive and to give satisfying sex. In my practice, I’ve observed that adults who cannot bear to touch their own genitals, or who believe genitals are dirty, make a lot of excuses to rationalize what are irrational feelings. They set strict boundaries on what “should” or “should not” feel right and have a lot of rules about sex that they make their partners obey — whether it’s how often they believe one “should” have intimacy or the types of sexual intimacy one “should” indulge in.
Linda R., a slim, serious women in her early 40s, came to me out of sheer desperation. After thirteen years of marriage, her husband was threatening to leave because he couldn’t stand their sex life anymore. She had seen a range of doctors who had examined her and given her pills and patches and creams but nothing had worked. She didn’t think I could help her but she was at her wits end.
It took a while to win her trust but finally, through tears, she told me that she had been molested and digitally penetrated by her grandfather when she was five. When she first told her mother about it, she was called a liar and punished. A few months later, he was caught in another child’s room. Then all hell broke loose. Linda was dragged in and out of courts to testify against him. To this day, some of her relatives still accuse her of destroying the family.
