Wednesday 5 March 2008

Dave: A little less conversation . . .


Timeless complaints over how oversexed the male brain is (probably ‘cos the other regions are so undersexed) are a little grating considering the effort women put in to discussing it. We in turn frequently grumble about how women don’t even possess libidos, in a vitriolic, I’m not getting any and there isn’t even a pub in the vicinity in which to drown my sorrows, manner. Well, I’m not surprised. Women burn themselves out. Right from the word go, ‘teen’ mags, and Judy Bloom books are instructing girls on sex. How to please their boyfs. How the dashing yet, untrustworthy rogue is the one to rescue them from the evils of a humdrum life. Christ, if I were raised on that I’d quickly learn to resent the opposite sex. However, I suppose as us guys are raised on porn, there’s enough disappointment to go round.

And it’s not that we’re too shy to talk about sex; it’s just that that’s all women do – talk about it; hold hilarious ceremonial evenings; lingerie sessions (whereby any rare purchases never see the light of day).

They appear to view sex as an ideal, a separate entity, a fantastical part of their psyche which should never be tarnished with the rather enjoyable reality of getting sweaty, fumbling awkwardly and then laying there in stained underpants enjoying a post-coital pizza.

Such is the case, they renounce any responsibility for quality. It’s invariably the man who’s at fault should the experience fail to be earth-shattering, for either of them. Always something the guy has or hasn’t done. If he struggles to rise to the occasion, it’s safely presumed he’s nervous, or under stress at work, or worried his wife might find out. It’s couldn’t possibly be that the woman he’s with is just crap in bed – regardless how attractive she is.

But, even we’ve adopted this self-flagellation. Should anything not feel quite right, we instinctively blame ourselves.

A group of us were enjoying a drink the other day, when one of our number announced he’d finally got it on with a woman he’d been pursuing for years. Feeling pleased for him we encouragingly enquired how it was (purely to show our emotional support and nothing whatsoever to do with extracting the sordid details). He hesitated before confessing how useless he’d been. Must have been nerves, he supposed. An embarrassing admission for any man – particularly around other men.

We did manage to raise his spirits however, when another member of the group casually piped up with his own experience of sleeping with the same woman. We hadn’t mentioned this to our friend before, not wishing to hurt his feelings – he’d had a thing for this woman for some time. Further validation concerning her shagging inadequacies was given by a third member of the table. And once the initial shock had subsided, our friend’s confidence in his own sexual prowess eventually returned. Even if his faith in humanity had been irrevocably damaged.

The point is, how can we attract women with our confident demeanour if we’re piling on the pressure over our own performance? We must remember there are two people involved. Three if your lucky. So if things don’t go according to plan don’t beat yourself up about it, so to speak.

In fact, the next time I pull, I’m going to employ a panel of ‘sexperts’ to sit at the end of the bed and issue scorecards after the strenuous 180 seconds workout. Then we’ll see who’s putting the effort in.

18 comments:

Burlesque Chic said...

heh, nothing raises confidence like knowing you've all done the same chick and she was equally rubbish for all of you :p ;)

A *whole* 180 seconds? Good man! ;)

Anonymous said...

Happened to me. A woman I'd been after for years and years finally deigned to go along with Plan A, and Mr Wibbly-Wobbly refused to report for duty. Plain went on strike. Wasn't a total wash-out, though, (other options are always available) and subsequent encounters fired on all cylinders.

Just wish the misbehaving organ could learn to repeat the trick when I'm about to shag someone deeply inappropriate and dangerous to long-term sanity. But no, that's when it decides to pull the full Saturn V.

Perverse beast.

Anonymous said...

Come on! Girls are trained to be super lovers by reading tons of "how to give great head" advice articles in magazines. And they are stressed as well when something goes wrong. I was involved with a guy who, as you put it, struggled to rise. My strategy over a couple of intimate encounters was:
step 1 don't pay attention, cuddle and show him you're not disappointed
or anything
step2 ask gently if he enjoys himself and if there is anything he doesn't like (the answer was not at all, you're great, he just needs more time)
step3 after a couple of meetings with mixed results I asked again if there was any special way I could please him and if everything was OK to what he again replied no special way, it's him rather than me.

In the end he accused me that I didn't pay enough attention to his dick and told me he doesn't want to meet me again and it's basically my negligence to his private parts that lead to it.

So guys, what did I do wrong? I don't want to attack the male race with this post and I don't claim he was completely rubbish in bed (he wasn't, despite this rather serious limitation). The only thing I can do is to ask my girlfriends during a ceremonial evening because I really don't get it. And just to clarify, I didn't have this problem with other men, so I guess I'm not so crap in bed as you probably assume.

To touch on another point, women rarely complain that men think only about sex. I think this view is popularized by stupid magazines but doesn't reflect reality. In fact, at least from my circle of friends, women are really obsessed with sex . And they think about it most of the time. At least I do. And since women can multitask, they can think about something else and sex at the same time, so effectively they think about sex more than men.
Wow, that's a long comment, I got carried away.

Sassy said...

Agree with Lotte on women thinking about sex. It's a myth that we don't. Also, we talk about it a lot because we talk about EVERYTHING a lot, that's just us. But obviously we prefer the DOING part. I think the women described in your article are just repressed, shallow, self-unaware women and, if that's the case, you're better off not shagging them. There are plenty of women out there who just enjoy sex, giving and receiving pleasure, and who wouldn't mind improving on their performance. I think this is the major difference between men and women: if a woman is told she's doing something wrong (or not right) she'll attempt to get better at it, but for a man it's just a critique of his whole sexual behaviour and therefore he is put off....

Unknown said...

erm, what? I have no complaints about how often men think about sex, they're quite welcome to, and I assure you that my imagination is fairly active too.

I've never been to any of these ceremonial evenings and have no interest in them.

I know that sex involves fumbling and accidents and basic sweaty human-ness.

If men have convinced themselves that they're crap in bed, I wouldn't place the blame on the worldwide secret society of womanhood. because there just isn't one! Or if there is I certainly don't get invited to the cocktail parties.

Boy said...

My god, if there's one thing that disappoints me about this blog (which, fyi, is probably the top of my 30+ blog reading list) is the fact that so few men comment on it, and it's all women. Jeeeeez.

But this post is actually fantastic, and quite re-assuring as I'm currently going through the sleepingWithSomeoneNew stage after a 3 Year relationship. In my years of sexual prowess I've always been very worried about being crap, particularly about my Stamina (180 seconds is re-assuring :) ). Never thought that it works both ways.

And to Lottes comment about women being trained to be good at head: Evidently I've been with the wrong type of woman. Whilst I've never really contemplated a woman might not be good in bed (the scale varied from good-AMAZING), I can safely say a lot of women aren't good at foreplay. Well, that's what I've found. Anyone else?

Anonymous said...

I just meant that if you analyze the articles from women magazines, there's a lot of emphasis put on how to be a great lover. With descriptions of techniques and how to please a guy. So theoretically girls should feel equally responsible for the performance. Or maybe they just think "I followed all the "10 steps to heaven" from Cosmo so it has to be his fault then!" :)

Anonymous said...

My comment would probably be a good question for Friday.....

What makes a woman not good in bed? After all movies like "American Pie" make it seem like all a man needs to make it good sex is a warm hole.

Trixie Firecracker said...

I blame myself if the guy doesn't perform as planned since I figured it might just have to do with me. Is that weird?

badgerdaddy said...

Surely it's not so much a question of good or bad, as it is one of compatibility?

I shagged a woman once who complained I took too bloody long - she said the harder and faster (and shorter) the better, and that was that; she really wanted the wham-bam-snore. And I wasn't really into that, so unlucky!

Some men like women who just lie there; some (most?) don't. Some men like lots of foreplay, some think it's something to do with golf. If you think someone's shite in bed, they're probably not; they might not want to be there as much as you do, or they might just be different to what you wanted or expected. If that's the case, chances are they're thinking the same as you.

Like the vending machines at the Bassetts factory, it takes all sorts.

L said...

I have to agree with lotte whole heartedly on this one. Many women are very sexual creatures! Scratch that. I think that the only women who aren't actively sexual are either repressed or unusual.
When I get together with my friends and talk about sex, I'm asking them how I can get more of it from my boyfriend! I love everything about sex (giving and recieving). Ironically I sent in a Friday question on this very topic yesterday, so I hope it makes the cut!

Dr Michael Anderson said...

This post strikes a bit of a chord. I remember having a conversation with a girl at uni which went something like this:

“I just don’t think guys try hard enough, you know. You just end up lying there waiting for it to end”
“You mean you’ve NEVER had a guy give you an orgasm?”
“No”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Have you ever given yourself an orgasm?”
“I don’t think I have actually.”
“Wow… Don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh on men for not giving you an orgasm when you haven’t given yourself one? I mean… no one knows your boy better than you do right?”
“I suppose so.”

On a personal note I think a poor libido or bad sex is a total deal-breaker when it comes to being in a relationship. I’ve been in a relationship like that in the past and having to persuade and cajole my girlfriend to have sex with me wore very thin. In the end, I just couldn’t be bothered and found someone else.

I agree with Boy to some extent as well. I think compatibility has a lot to do with things and this is why sex with a particular person gets better and better the more times you do it. At the end of the day, sex is a pretty simple thing, it’s not exactly rocket science, as long as your partner has a grasp of the basics, things should be fine

Monozygote said...

I just can't help thinking that if a woman was "crap in bed", the man would somehow notice, without having to refer to his cock.

I guess it must be nice to just blame the woman, but I don't buy it. It's a cop-out. Unless maybe he just didn't fancy her, or if she did something threatening. And even then, threatening can be in the eye of the beholder.

I think it's silly to blame anyone, but the reasons for it will be to do with an interaction between the situation and the man's psychological-goings-on.

On top of this, I really do think it's a shame to be thinking of sex as a performance. It goes against the whole ethos of the thing. No wonder people are having such crap sex if they're making it into some silly competition, and worrying about it. The worst sex I've ever had has been with men who were trying to "perform", instead of just enjoying themselves. Ghastly.

What's funny as well, is that part of the whole reason why a woman would worry if the man doesn't rise to the occasion, is because she's worried it means she's crap in bed. So by this post, you are kind of fuelling that, which I really don't think is productive.

Anonymous said...

I immediately felt reassured by the fact (fact?) that "men think about sex all the time", once my boyfriend had revealed that holy truth to me. Soon after that I had to give a dance class to teenagers - loud, aggressive, frightening -, but what I thought was "well, about half of them are boys. So they are thinking about sex - not about me being stupid or incompetent or ugly and that they would kill me for that reason." And I'm still alive, so there had to be some truth in it ;) Merry sex-thinking to everybody.

Anonymous said...

How nice of Elvis to pop by!

It is true that women do talk a lot about sex. But equally true that a lot of women have no idea how their own bodies work or what would feel good. I was astounded the other week when I read comments on another blog to find men (loads of them) saying that their wives refused to let them perform cunnilingus, that they thought it was disgusting or embarrassing.

It is more important that women learn to communicate what they like to a sexual partner, than chat about how he performed to their mates.

I have found that the best male lovers can be as good as female ones - just messier and smellier and sweatier and they always leave the loo seat up!

Anonymous said...

I have seen a comment from a girl who tried to give head to a bloke she had met at a party. The reaction was: "I will not give you any money! I never shag prostitutes! Get out of my bed".

Anonymous said...

Good sex is both parties' responsibility. Women shouldn't expect men to find their g-spot/give them loads of orgasms/whatever without help, and men shouldn't expect women to be experts at head/anal play/whatever without help.

The first sexual encounter is always fraught with nerves, and this can affect libido, performance and climaxing. This is why masturbation to find your own buttons is so important, and communication to help your partner push those buttons is essential.

It's not about blame, and it's not about rating every sexual encounter on a scale of one to ten. It's about having fun, play, and mutual exploration. If both parties have this attitude then it all works out fine.

After all, you can always schedule time for more 'practice' ;)

Bollocks to this bitterness, we don't need to tar everybpdy in one gender with the same brush due to the behaviour of a few representatives of that gender.

butterflywings said...

Agree with a lot of comments.
a. this post has shades of woman-blaming
b. sex is not a matter of either person being "good" or "bad" in bed, but the compatibility of two people. i.e. if guy can't perform, maybe it's not his fault but that doesn't automatically mean it's the woman's.
And discussing some poor woman's alleged crapness in bed behind her back is pretty childish and mean.

PS. Yeah, sigh, it's not about "scorecards".