Q: How can I take charge in bed without bruising his ego and wrecking our sex life?
A: Make
your comments about the present and not the past. You'll get a better
response from "Let's start doing fresh new things, so we don't get stuck
in a routine," than from "What you've been doing isn't working."
Realize sometimes saying something isn't enough. When it comes to men,
you need to demonstrate. Could that mean pulling out a vibrator,
grabbing his hand, and showing him just where to put it? Definitely.
Or, you can take the approach of one woman I know. She had a hard time
telling her boyfriend that she wanted him to spend more time on oral sex
and that she wanted him to be gentler about it. So she woke up one
morning and told him, "I had a sexy dream about you." He was like, "You
did?" and she said, "Yeah, but I'm a little shy about telling you." Of
course, he was really interested, so she described a whole dream in
which he was doing exactly what she wanted him to do. It got the message
across.
—Ian Kerner, Ph.D.
Q: My guy and I spend lots of time away from each other. How can we keep things hot?
A:
Internet sex can keep you primed for each other. It can be as simple as
IM'ing and creating sexual fantasies together to masturbating together.
Now there's even "tele-dildonics": You plug your sex toy into your
computer, and your boyfriend can log on to the Internet and control it
for you remotely (or you can control his).
To make Internet sex
work, you have to find the mode of communication you're both comfortable
with. If you're visual, that might be a Webcam; if you're not, try
audio (Yahoo! IM has an audio and video component). If you prefer
writing, think about whether you'd rather flirt back and forth, build
fantasies with IMs, or trade stories via e-mail.
One of the reasons
Internet sex is great is that most people take more risks online. Once
you can talk about sex on the Internet, you become better at bringing
things up offline. Say you send an IM saying, "I've always had this
fantasy about balloons in the bedroom." Your man might be thrilled his
girlfriend is kinky. So the next time you bring up your fantasy in
person, instead of giving you a strange look, he'll simply ask, "What
color?"
—Regina Lynn, sex columnist
Q: How do I make anal sex more comfortable?
A:
Anal sex isn't pleasurable for everybody. Most women I hear from who
want to make it more comfortable are having anal sex just to make their
boyfriends happy. Are you kidding? If it hurts and it's awful, the
answer should be, "Hey, dickhead, we're not doing this anymore." I'm
telling you: Stop it, ladies!
If you have pain, your body is telling
you something. There will be medical consequences. In the short term,
there's the risk of tears, fissures, and fistulas. But I'm much more
concerned about the long term. Go talk to a 75-year-old woman sometime
who hasn't had anal sex, and you'll see that as you age, the rectal area
has tons of problems associated with it anyway. You can get hemorrhoids
and abscesses, and the rectum can prolapse into the vagina or out of
the anus — and that's without ever having anal sex. Yet you're setting
yourself up for these things with this behavior! If you don't have pain
with anal sex, then your body may be tolerating it, although you still
run the risk of problems. I shudder to think what's going to happen to
young women later on when they continue to have painful anal sex.
—Drew Pinsky, M.D.
Q: My guy either can't get it up or orgasms too fast. How can I get some satisfaction?
A:
You don't have to suffer just because your guy is having performance
problems. As long as he's got fingers and a tongue, he can still make
you happy. He should be using them anyway: 87 percent of women can reach
orgasm by clitoral stimulation, while very few women are able to reach
orgasm by traditional intercourse.
Never blame yourself for your
partner's performance problems or think that you're not sexy enough.
It's his problem, not yours. Let him deal with it, honey. You can
absolutely talk about it, and very gently suggest that he go see a
doctor and get it checked out. But you cannot be his sex therapist.
—Sue Johanson, R.N..
Q: If I go home with a guy from a bar or a club, especially if I go to his home, is the expectation that we'll have sex?
A:
About 90 percent of the time he hopes so, yes. And his expectation
doesn't change whether you go to his place or to yours. Does it mean
that you have to have sex with him? Absolutely not. Once you have an
inkling that the two of you are going to do something physical, decide
how far you're willing to go and stick to it.
And try to go to your
place. I think it's easier for a man to insist on going further sexually
on his own turf. If things get weird, you can kick him out. If that
doesn't work, you know exactly where the telephone or baseball bat can
be found. But most of all, you'll feel more comfortable at home, and, as
a result, more confident and sexy.