“Warm apple pie”: wisdom from Paul Joannides, AASECT 2014 (part 1)
What do you imagine happens when a professional organization of sex therapists, educators, researchers, and professors spend a weekend together in Monterey, California? That’s right – they talk about sex, learn about the latest sex research, listen to presentations by masters in the field, network and share resources, and take copious notes.
I had the pleasure of being among them at the annual conference of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT), June 5-8, 2014. (This is the organization that gave Naked At Our Age the 2012 Book Award!) The weekend was packed with information.
One of my favorite presentations was a spirited and savvy slide-show illustrated talk by Paul Joannides, Psy.D, author of the excellent self-help guide for young people, Guide to Getting It On! A Book About the Wonders of Sex. His presentation — usually given to college students — was entitled “I Wish My Clitoris Was Bigger, So My Boyfriend Could Find It.”
The title is, of course, ironic. Young people exploring sex may have heard that the clitoris has thousands of nerve endings, but they (and we?) have little understanding of the structure of the clitoris. It’s not just the little nubbin that’s erect and usually visible when aroused.
The bigger issue, of course, is how, when, and where to give the clitoris the attention it needs. Since every clitoris owner gets pleasure in a different way, it’s up to her to discover what works for her and convey it to her confused but willing partner.
- “No matter how many women you’ve been with, the first time you’re between the legs of a new woman, it feels like warm apple pie.”
- “He thinks, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing.’ She thinks, ‘I can’t tell him because he’s a guy and he’s supposed to know.’”
- “Even the best partners are clueless about your amazing vagina. It’s your job to teach him and his job to learn.”
- “85% of the women who have orgasms during intercourse need a clitoral assist, not through thrusting alone.”
- “The single most damaging aspect of porn is the expectation that the guy is supposed to automatically know how to please a partner. That’s a toxic idea.”
- “Because she’s having intercourse [in porn], and that part’s real, you forget that she’s faking the pleasure.
- “For some reason, porn actors do not have a gag reflex. That must be what they go to porn school for.”
- “When it comes to sex, we’re always a work in progress. We’re changing from the day we’re born until we’re really old.”
10 Tips for Hot Solo Senior Sex
Senior sex isn’t just partner sex. Many of us don’t have partners, yet keeping our sexual selves vibrant and health is crucial for many reasons. It’s true that if we don’t use it, we lose it — and that’s true for both women and men.When we have less hormonal rush to stay sexual, especially if we’re without a partner and maybe blue about that, we can fall into a pattern where we don’t think as much about sexual pleasure, and we don’t give it to ourselves. Arousal and orgasms may feel second-rate and inconsequential, and sometimes just too much trouble.
Instead, let’s see our marvelous bodies as still capable of pleasure, and let’s nurture that. We have the capacity — and the responsibility! — to keep ourselves fully functioning by pleasuring ourselves, discovering what feels good (it may have changed, so don’t assume that of course you know) and what it takes to make our brains and body parts sing. Let’s celebrate that we don’t have to close down just because we’re older and partnerless. Indeed, let’s enjoy what we can offer ourselves.
Here are some tips for bringing the sizzle back to your sex life — on your own!
2. Enjoy solo sex during high energy times. When do you feel most sexually charged? When you first wake up? After morning coffee and a good poop? Mid-afternoon? That’s when to indulge in a solitary romp, rather than after a meal when you’re digesting or at night when your sensations are shutting down. When you feel the tingle, indulge it!
3. Create your own foreplay. Do sexy things that get you in the mood. Remember hot times with a special lover. Read erotica, play special songs, watch porn (or, if you prefer, a movie with a star who always turns you on), write sexy thoughts in your journal, take a waterproof vibrator into the bath or shower — whatever starts your path to arousal. Appreciate, decorate, and celebrate your body with lingerie, silk, velvet, massage oil, candlelight–whatever feels good and puts you in the mood.
4. Use a silky lubricant. Don’t just settle for the drugstore variety — there are many different varieties of lubricants for moisture and slickness that feel great and bring back the joy of friction, whether we’re using our hands or a toy. Experiment to find your favorites. Keep the lube within reach so you can reapply frequently.
5. Explore sex toys and other erotic helpers. Our hormonally challenged bodies may need extra help to reach orgasm these days, and our wrists may tire before we reach our goal. Women: try a clitoral vibrator, with or without a dildo, depending whether you like the feeling of a full vagina. (Read the many vibrator reviews on this blog to help you choose.) Men: try a sleeve, cock ring, or prostate stimulator. Lucky for us that sex toys for both genders are easy to find, fun to try, and wow, do they work!
6. Fantasize. Let yourself explore fantasy scenes and partners, no limits. Let your brain (your main sex organ!) indulge in whatever arouses you. Be open to whatever comes into your mind, even if it is something you would not do in real life or with someone you consider off limits. No fantasy is “wrong,” and no one has to know what images or scenarios turn you on. Just go with it.
7. Be physical in daily life. Walking, biking, dancing, yoga, Pilates, lifting weights, and other forms of exercise all enhance blood flow and get you in touch with your own physicality. This translates to your sexual arousal because the blood flows to your genitals as well as to your muscles, making arousal easier and faster. Plus you mentally feel “in your body.”
8. Realize that your solo practice not only gives you pleasure, it’s important for health. Experts recommend at least one orgasm a week for both men and women for genital health and for heart health as well. Weekly orgasms keep the pelvic floor strong and the nerves firing, boost the immune system, and reduce the risk of incontinence, depression, and heart disease. Men – regular orgasms are important for prostate health.
9. If you think you’re not in the mood, do it anyway. It’s too easy to put solo sex on the back burner, and once we’re out of the habit, it’s harder to get revved up again. This is especially true at our age, when our hormones are no longer screaming for release. So reread tips #1-8, and just do it. You’ll find that the physical arousal will happen, that that will trigger your emotional arousal, and that triggers more physical arousal, until it’s all working just right.
10. Don’t think of solo sex as “settling for” a substitute for partner sex. You’re celebrating your own sexuality, glorying in your body’s capability of pleasing you, and enjoying the journey. This is a gift you can give yourself whenever you want, and isn’t that wonderful?
(These tips are copyright 2010-2011 by Joan Price and may not be reprinted without permission from Joan Price. Thank you!)
Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex is available from www.joanprice.com (personally autographed) — be sure to let me know to whom to autograph it — and by clicking the PayPal button below…
May: Senior Sex Month + Masturbation month!
What a lovely coincidence! May is “International Masturbation Month,” according to Good Vibrations. It’s also “Senior Sex Month,” thanks to Senior Planet, the senior site that advocates “aging with attitude” and is launching my new “Sex at Our Age” column this month. In this column, I’ll answer reader questions about the realities and challenges of staying sexual in aging bodies.I love that International Masturbation Month and Senior Sex Month happen at the same time. I propose that we combine the two! We’re not all fortunate enough to be partnered at this time of our lives, and many of us who are in relationships are not having sex with our partners as much as we’d enjoy. Pleasuring ourselves is a way we can stay vigorously sexual, give ourselves wonderful jolts of joy, and enhance our health simultaneously.
Oh? You doubt that solo sex enhances health? Here are just a few of the benefits of sexual activity and orgasm with or without a partner that I list in The Ultimate Guide to Sex after Fifty: How to Maintain – or Regain! – a Spicy, Satisfying Sex Life, coming soon from Cleis Press:
• Reduces stress
• Enhances mood
• Strengthens the immune system
• Helps fight infection and disease
• Lowers diastolic blood pressure
• Keeps sex organs healthy
• Improves blood flow
• Helps with sleep
• Relieves headaches and other body aches
• Relieves depression
• Reduces risk of heart disease
• Reduces risk of prostate cancer
• Relieves chronic pain
• Increases blood flow to the brain, increasing mental acuity
• Makes your skin glow
• Relaxes you
• Makes you happier
• Feels really good
Reasons not to self-pleasure? Hmm… Can’t think of any.
And if you need an assist, check out the many dozens of sex toys I’ve reviewed from a senior perspective here — keep scrolling down to “older posts” because there are about a hundred reviews. (Don’t worry, you won’t end up with a list of 100 toys to buy — some of the products are horrid and you’ll just laugh at those reviews. But the wonderful ones? Ah, your body will thank you for adding these to your sexual repertoire!)
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| My current fave, Palm Power |
Miriam Kura’s Advice for Shy-When-Naked Women
Miriam Kura wrote me about her experience posing nude for photographs at age 60. Her experience was so empowering and delightfully sexy that I encouraged her to share it with you, along with the steps she followed to become comfortable enough to embrace this racy adventure.
I invite you to post your comments. Enjoy!
For my 60th birthday, I asked my sex friend if he would take nude photos of me — this was the youngest I was ever going to be again! We set a date to do it two weeks out.
During that time I looked on the Internet under “nude photos” and got ideas about props and poses, picking out what I thought fit my style – natural and elegant. I collected scarves, pearls, a white boa, a leather jacket, a man’s crisp white shirt, translucent white curtains, gold lace fabric.
When the day came, we had three hours of creative and collaborative fun. He took over 700 pictures! It was like adult arts and crafts. I felt beautiful, sensual, comfortable, sexy, at ease, and appreciated.
It was a gift I gave myself, and he gave to me. And we both enjoyed it immensely. I never could have pulled it off if I hadn’t prepared the year before to fully occupy my nude sexiness in these nine easy steps:
1. Believe your lover when he says that he loves the way your neck/ breasts/ waist/ legs/ butt/ hair/ face/ feet/ whatever looks.
2. Just do it. Look at yourself naked everyday, while you’re doing something else, like brushing your teeth. Get used to it. Blow-dry your hair while naked. Put on your makeup while naked. Make it part of your routine.
3. Go naked until it’s so normal that you don’t cringe any more.
4. Do it until you get curious about how you look at different angles.
5. Look at yourself in the mirror naked and try to see what he sees.
6. Do it until you sincerely enjoy looking at some part of yourself, with pleasure.
7. Walk naked around the house as you do some little chore, like put the wet towel from your shower into the dryer, or when you go to put some music on, or lay out your clothes. Work up to spending more time naked around the house.
8. Take time taking your clothes off when your lover sees you do it. Practice doing it in an unhurried manner. Then practice as though you enjoy him looking at you. Then start to actually enjoy it. Then flaunt it a little while he looks. Then give him a sly, proud, slow smile while you do it.
9. Ask him to take your clothes off – slowly.
This experience showed me that every body looks good from some angle. You just have to find it. Some pictures were totally not complimentary. But overall we found the angles that worked. It was surprisingly fun to see myself as the art subject.
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Miriam Kura, 61, is a business owner who lives in Portland, Oregon. She contributed to the anthology, Ageless Erotica, edited by Joan Price. She is delighted to learn that sex in late mid-life is a whole lot more fun and meaningful than it was in earlier decades.