Be a Better Lover

This line always makes me laugh:  “The reason that so many women fake orgasm is that so many men fake foreplay.”

Yep, it’s both funny and true—and now there is proof.

I’m reading the book, “The Normal Bar” which is an “improve your relationship” book, which is completely based on scientific study and longitudinal research. It’s no one’s theory—rather everything the authors address from marital money to the impact of weight gain in marriage is evidence based.

Since I am super curious about all things sexual I was happy to read the chapter called, “Keeping the Flame Alive” in which the authors report on the results of research about what we really want—“we” meaning men and women. What do women want (besides that perfect black skirt)? And what do men want (other than to be left peacefully alone with the remote on the day of the Masters Golf Tournament)?

Well, here’s what years of couples research has to tell us:

What men want most from their partners:

#1 Sexual diversity (new sexual acts)

#2 Less passivity (more passion)

#3 Sexual noises (more feedback)

and….

What women want from their partners:

#1 Foreplay (more touching)

#2 Romance (more loving passion)

#3 Less predictability (more spontaneity and fun)

Isn’t it helpful to know this stuff? Each of those things can be tried, practiced and learned—and talked about. I’m a believer that sensuality and great sex can be learned and yes, re-learned. Even if it’s been a really long time and even if you are hanging out in CancerLand.

Here's a link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Normal-Bar-Surprising-Relationship/dp/0307951634

Caregiving Your Marriage--Rosalyn Carter

I began this blog years ago because I was in a new, wonderfully romantic relationship and then a great marriage when we began to deal with cancer. I had had cancer years before but it hadn’t effected me the way that having a partner with cancer did.

This was a hard won relationship and while I was worried about John’s diagnosis it was the lack of concern for couples and their relationships that got me writing “Love in the Time of Cancer.” Everyone had ideas about how to get a body to survive colon cancer but no one—not a doctor, nurse, or oncologist—was interested in helping to ensure that the marriage would have equally good health.

Now, years later, I’ve been writing, speaking and teaching about couples and cancer care for a long time, and I no longer blush when I say, “swallow”. But I still try to read everything I can find about caregiving. So how humbling it was this week to pick up one of the first (and best) books on how to be a good caregiver and find a whole chapter called, “Maintaining Your Marriage.”

The book is, “Helping Yourself Help Others” by Rosalynn Carter. Yes, she is former first lady and wife of President Jimmy Carter. Her book was published in 1994—long before anyone was talking about the Boomer Bump or caregiving support groups, or “navigation”. But in a sense it’s no surprise that she was so far ahead of the curve. You may also remember that Rosalynn Carter chose to focus her term in office as first lady on the diagnosis, care and treatment of people with serious mental illness. (To recall the seriousness of bringing a public focus to serious mental illness you must remember that Jackie Kennedy’s focus was on beautifying the White House and Lady Bird Johnson used her national resources to highlight gardening.)

In her book, Carter writes from personal experience as a family caregiver and she also highlights all that she learned in her work before and after The White House. The Table of Contents lists sections that address: isolation, burnout, family dynamics, dealing with doctors and the chapter on maintaining your marriage.

In that chapter she directly addresses the harm to “intimate relations” and a couple’s physical relationship and while she does not specifically answer the, “Can I swallow?” question that I asked professionals she doesn’t not hide behind the “be sure to cuddle” advice that is the coward’s fall back for a couple that really wants answers.

Carter talks about what may be the hardest step of all: Giving each other breathing room—allowing others into the hard won intimacy of a good marriage to lessen the emotional strain of cancer.

Rosalyn Carter’s book from 1994 is the perfect partner for the more recent and also excellent book about being a caregiving spouse: Gail Sheehy’s “Passages for Caregivers.”

We will all need these books sooner or later so buy yours now. Because as Rosalynn Carter said so wisely in 1993:

“There are only four kinds of people in the world:

*Those who have been caregivers

*Those who are currently caregivers

*Those who will be caregivers
*Those will need caregivers.”

Love, Sex, Intimacy and Affairs

In most literature about cancer and couples you see the words, “love”, “sex” and “intimacy”. Those topics get some attention and ink even though the word intimacy is often used euphemistically for the word, “sex”. And of course you know by now how I feel about “cuddle” as a euphemism for sex or intimacy.

But there is a nodding awareness that a couple dealing with cancer is going to have issues around their intimate lives. What is often not acknowledged is that it’s no so easy to predict where the pressure or initiation for the issue will begin.

The common stereotype is of a woman with breast or gynecological cancer becoming reluctant to have sex with her husband and so the “work” is coaxing her back to the bed and to intercourse. Because of that stereotype a lot of the literature is addressed to men with the admonition to “be patient and to engage in non-sexual intimacy”. Hence the cuddle messages.

But that is not the whole story. And this is why it is crucial for healthcare professionals in Cancer Land to talk openly about sex. In many cases the person with cancer is the one who wants the direct sexual contact but the caregiving partner (male or female) is the reluctant one. And it’s also true that while chemo and repeated surgeries can diminish a patient’s libido, in many cases the stress of caregiving diminishes the libido of the “healthy” partner.

So if you look at those combined dynamics and the unpredictable nature of who wants what when—then you realize that you cannot assume that the “patient” wants less sex and the caregiver wants more. That is also why the word “affair” also has to be included in the “What about our sex life? conversation for the couple.

But I’ve never seen a piece of cancer care literature include a discussion of affairs or “sex outside marriage” –well, until I read “The Caregiving Wife’s Handbook” by Diana Denholm.

The whole book is a breath of fresh air and Denholm can be thanked for her stunning honesty. She writes about all aspects of caregiving and the mostly unmentioned parts like resentment, codependence, finances and sex. Bless her. And she adds a section on affairs to say that sometimes the caregiver is the one who has an affair because their needs are not being met (physical or emotional) but that it is equally true that the person with cancer can be the one who has an affair in order to feel masculine again or feminine again and to have the validation of a new partner—or to play out the anger they feel at having cancer. We know that affairs meet more needs than just the physical and so a couple dealing with cancer has to face the long list of needs being deferred or delayed or lost for both partners.

The subject of adultery or infidelity is so taboo in our society that coupled with the still taboo subject of cancer it’s understandable that no oncologist is saying, “Hey folks, we need to affair-proof your marriage.” But wouldn’t that be a wonderful and compassionate and healthy conversation to begin? 

The Normal Bar as a Book for Two

It’s President’s Day weekend, and I am so grateful to have this long weekend with John. We have both been so busy with work, family, sports and community. We have not had much “couple time” in the last month, so this weekend we went to our favorite B&B in the Berkshires to read, sleep and make love.

For fun we took the new book, “The Normal Bar” with us and we took turns reading it and asking each other the questions about our relationship. One of the things that works well with this book is that it is well documented and based on thorough research so it seems to work for both men and women. There are enough facts to assure the suggestions are valid, and there are enough stories and anecdotes to engage a less literal reader. Hence both boys and girls can enjoy!

The tagline on the book says, “Surprising secrets of happy couples…” and there are some big surprises. Like what men want more of is: communication. And the authors mean hands-free communicationJ. Really. Of course they also document the correlation between better communication and better sex so bring on the talking!

But there is more than juicy sex tips in this book. Of course, sex sells so you have to mention sex and romance to sell a book, But how about this tip for a great marriage: comb your hair, put on a nice shirt and lose five pounds. Yes, according to the authors’ research with thousands of couples, letting yourself go--which starts in years six to 9—does big damage to marriages. And the remedies are simple; no plastic surgery needed: change clothes, add lipstick and shave on weekends.

Rest assured that there is plenty of good stuff on sex in this book. Want to know if your fantasies are normal? If his are? How important is oral sex? And how important is it to your partner if you have an orgasm? That’s here too. Just reading the book together turned up the heat on our winter weekend. Let’s just say we were a little bit normal and a little bit not.

As usual, we came away from the weekend touching more and laughing more and yes, reading together a whole lot more.