› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I am writing to quibble with your response to Imagine ["You May Find Yourself …," 11/8/06], the fellow in college who complained that after "a couple of rounds a day for a few months," he had difficulty reaching orgasm without either fantasizing about another woman or taking matters into his own hands. You suggested that he might just be someone who needs a certain amount of novelty or fantasy to get up and over, and you left it at that.
The reason I felt driven to write is that he described exactly how I feel when I try to have sex too often. Even back in college, I was never voracious sexually — once a day is just dandy. If I try to have sex twice a day for several days in a row, I can still get erections but have difficulty achieving orgasm. The only way to get up and over is to introduce something novel or to switch to masturbation (because, like most men, I am the world’s foremost expert at getting myself off).
So, I would counsel Imagine to try going cold turkey for a day or two. If a sexual hiatus miraculously (but temporarily) cures the problem, then it’ll prove he may just be trying to have sex more often than his body really wants to.
Love,
Just Me
Dear Just:
Yeah, OK.
A few weeks ago I ran a column I called "The Corrections" [5/2/07], mostly because I’d finally got around to reading that book that everyone else in the universe read like five years ago. But I get as many suggestions as I do corrections, so what the heck? Here’s yours.
I agree with you actually. Dude was probably not only a little bored (yes, even college boys can get bored during sex!) but physiologically fatigued. I’m going to assume this is no longer a problem for that particular college boy, though, since it was a few months back and sadly (or happily, depending), "Help, we’re having too much sex!" tends to be one of those self-limiting relationship problems.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I have some advice for the guy who was too tall to do it doggy-style with his short partner [5/23/07]. Doggy-style is my favorite position also. I’m a tall guy, and one thing that works great is standing by the side of your bed while your woman presents to you near the edge. While it takes more energy since you’re vertical, you can bend your knees and her waist to make it a pleasurable experience for you both.
Love,
Tallboy
Dear Tall:
OK, then! Indeed, for lots of size-discordant couples a "he stands, she crouches" position will work handily. Not dignified, mind you, but any activity that allows your dangliest dangly bits to not only hang low but to wobble to and fro has little claim to dignity in the first place.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Readers:
The last thing I wanted to cover is not so much a suggestion as a follow-up, except insofar as I suggest that interested parties check it out ASAP: the Food and Drug Administration approved the "never have to have a period again" pill. The Red Tent is no more. We can have a female president now.
Well, let’s not get carried away.
While a large majority of women in a large number of recent studies (there’s a good run-down of recent research at the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals site, arhp.org) would like their menstrual cycles to be different, this includes women who’d merely like them to be less painful or more regular, and really, big duh. Still, it appears that most women asked have some interest in at least occasional menstrual suppression. Women surveyed at six sites across the United States seemed overwhelmingly, even shockingly eager to abandon the old moon goddess entirely. According to that poll, 59 percent said they "would be interested in not menstruating on a monthly basis," and one-third said they "would choose never to have a period." I don’t recall seeing them say that they’d choose never to have a baby, but presumably that exception was addressed somehow or other.
Unsurprisingly, women in the military seem most eager to jump. I was likewise unflabbergasted to see that Dutch and German women seemed a little less eager to embrace a novel, high-tech body-mod that’s radical and (perhaps excessively) clean-freakish — aren’t these the same women who were famously late (if ever) adopters of leg and pit shaving? — but even they were pretty intrigued by the possibility. And finally, just to prove menstruation’s ickiness and expendability is almost entirely a matter of cultural perspective, Nigerian women who were asked about menstrual suppression wanted nothing to do with it.
How about you?
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question!