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Saturday, July 1, 2023

The Great Sex Rescue: More Foreplay

A car driving around in the desert. Image source.

Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"

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[content note: sex, sex toys, orgasms]

I have lots to say about chapter 3 of The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You've Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended [affiliate link], so this post will just be about the first part (pages 39-50). This chapter is called "Bridging the Orgasm Gap" and it starts out like this:

Which message have you heard more often in church, studies, or Christian books?

  • Do not deprive your husband.
  • Women's sexual pleasure matters.

When I read this, I was like LOLOLOLOL. Of course I've heard "Do not deprive your husband" and I don't know if I've ever heard Christian marriage advice that said "Women's sexual pleasure matters." ("Do not deprive" means you owe him sex, and if you don't have sex enough to meet his manly "needs", you are "depriving" him.) So yeah, this is a HUGE PROBLEM, and I'm glad Gregoire and her co-authors are pointing it out.

Let me explain what they mean by the "orgasm gap": In the authors' survey of 20,000 women, they found that 48% of women were having an orgasm always or almost always, when having sex. They found research papers that said the stat for men would be 90%. So, there is an "orgasm gap" of 42 percentage points. (Now, maybe we could ask some questions about whether it's reasonable to compare these 2 stats- Gregoire's survey respondents were mostly heterosexual married Christian women, and really the group they should be compared to is their husbands, or perhaps men from the same conservative Christian subculture. But anyway, the point is, there really is a gap, and it's a sign that women in this kind of conservative Christian subculture aren't getting what they want out of sex.) I wrote about this idea in this post last year: Here's an article about evangelical women and sex.

Before I get into all my opinions about this section (and I have many!) I want to highlight this part:

Instead of expecting that sex shouldn't take very long, we'd like to offer a new expectation: no man should be satisfied unless his wife is also satisfied. That doesn't mean a wife has to reach orgasm every single time, but the expectation should be that he does everything within his power to help her get there. Ephesians 5:28 says that husbands "ought to love their wives as their own bodies," meaning that her experience should matter to him as much as his own does.

Ooooh, what's this- taking Ephesians 5, the "wives submit to your husbands"/"husbands love your wives" passage, which has been used over and over to tell women they have to stay in abusive relationships- and interpreting it to mean a husband should make sure his wife has an orgasm? Feisty! I love it!!!!

Anyway. This chapter of the book... it keeps saying the answer is that husbands need to do more foreplay... and there's something about that that feels really off, to me. It talks about sex like it consists of "intercourse" and "foreplay", and I don't think the book ever defines "foreplay", but it seems to include: things that feel good sexually for women, things that get women aroused, things that get women ready physically so that PIV [penis-in-vagina sex] is not painful, and things that get women to have orgasms. It feels a bit odd to me that it talks about sex like "intercourse" is the part that men want, and "foreplay" is the part that women want. I don't know, maybe it's just the use of the word "foreplay" that's throwing me off here, because I certainly have things I want to do during sex but I don't conceptualize them as "foreplay". I conceptualize them as, asking for what I want. You know, because we're equals and we should both say what we want during sex, so we can make it a good experience for both of us. But perhaps if you have a husband and wife who think "sex" is just PIV, it can be helpful to introduce the concept of "foreplay" to them as a thing that is important and is separate from intercourse.

But anyway, this chapter kept saying the answer is that the husband needs to do more foreplay, and that feels to me like it misses the point. The way I see it, if they're having sex that doesn't feel good for the wife, and she's not having orgasms, there are 2 different problems it could be:

Problem 1: She has very little experience with masturbation, and little experience with orgasm (maybe she has never had an orgasm) and therefore she really has no idea about how she could go about getting an orgasm. Doesn't really even know where to start (and she believes masturbation is a sin, so she's not even allowed to "start" at all). If she doesn't even know how her own body works, then of course her husband doesn't know either. So both of them have no idea what to even do to make it feel good for her.

Problem 2: She has some ideas of things she would like to try together, but her husband doesn't want to do any of it. He says he's fine with the sex they're having, and he doesn't want to make any changes. Making sex feel good for her is just not a priority for him at all.

And my own experience (hi I'm asexual) is problem 1, so that's the lens I'm reading this through, and feeling like "he needs to do more foreplay" doesn't really address the problem at all. When I read the description of the problem, it reads to me like problem 1, but most of the concrete anecdotes in this chapter are more along the lines of problem 2- for example:

Charlotte from one of our focus groups told us something similar. When she started wondering if sex could feel good for her, too, she began to read some sex books about different techniques to try. When she talked to her husband about it, though, he shut down. He already knew how to have sex, he said. She just needed to catch up. 

Hey, Charlotte read some books and got some ideas of things to try! Good for her! (Though I'm sure that conservative Christians would say that reading such books is a sin- they are probably "secular" books which say that it's okay to have sex outside of marriage, OH THE HORROR- and honestly I don't know Gregoire's position on that, which worries me.) 

("OH THE HORROR" should be read with heavy sarcasm. I had sex before marriage and it was a good decision for me.)

I'm going to talk about problem 1 first. (I also don't think "he needs to do more foreplay" is really the solution to problem 2 either, but we'll get to that.) So. Problem 1. Well let me just come out and say it: The solution for problem 1 is that she needs to spend some time masturbating, so she can at least know what feels good, and what an orgasm is, and get some ideas of things that feel good. And then, she should instruct her husband about how specifically she prefers to have him involved in it.

Or, alternatively, since I'm asexual I'll say this... perhaps she realizes that she doesn't actually want sex at all. Which is totally a valid thing for her to feel, but it may mean she is not sexually compatible with her husband, which is a whole different problem, which aces talk about a lot but I personally can't speak to. Yeah my perspective here is a sex-favorable ace perspective. What if someone figures out they're a sex-repulsed ace, after they get married? That would be a completely different thing than what I'm writing about here. If any readers have experience along those lines and want to leave a comment, that would be great.

But anyway, my point is, if you want to have sex, you need to have experience masturbating. And it weirds me out SO MUCH that this chapter in the book doesn't say that- it just keeps saying the husband needs to do more foreplay. This book is for women coming from a conservative Christian background- they definitely were taught that masturbating is a sin/ masturbating is selfish and therefore bad/ masturbating is cheating. Yes, I really believed that masturbating was cheating on my husband, because all of my sexual experiences are supposed to belong to him, supposed to be centered on him, supposed to flow naturally from my love for him.

So... what is Gregoire's stance on masturbating? I can't figure it out, and it worries me SO MUCH. There's this bit on page 45- "Is this gap simply because women don't orgasm easily? Nope! Research shows that when masturbating, women can reach orgasm in under ten minutes." (They cite a research paper here- this is unrelated to their own survey of 20,000 women.) I don't know how to take that. Does it mean "masturbating is a normal thing that people (for example, married women) do" or does it mean "we're not saying you should actually do this, but it's useful as a data point to prove that it's at least theoretically possible for someone to bring a woman to orgasm in a reasonable amount of time, so your husband shouldn't use that as an excuse"?

All this talk about "he needs to do more foreplay" and not saying anything about a woman actually taking the time to figure out by herself what feels good/ leads to orgasm... it feels so wrong to me. It feels like these authors are saying *I'm* not allowed to figure out how my body works, I have to wait for *my husband* to figure out how my body works. There's something really passive about it that just feels totally wrong.

And, okay, let me tell you something else. I'm autistic. Autistic people often have sensory sensitivities- this means that there are certain sensory stimuli that we just CANNOT STAND, and other stimuli that we LOVE. And for each autistic person, the specific stimuli in each of these 2 categories will be different. It means autistic people can be very picky about how people touch us.

So, here's how it works, if the wife has no experience with masturbating and no clue what would feel good, and she's autistic: So, the husband tries touching "down there" with his fingers. It doesn't feel good for her, so she says "no." Then he tries touching in a different way. It doesn't feel good, so she says "no." And repeat. What if this happens 10 times, and none of them feel good for her? Then what? Does she tell him to just keep trying different things, with no real reason to believe that they're actually making any progress at all? Do they just give up and try again another night? Does she pick which of the 10 was the least bad, and tell him he can do that one?

There's just no way through it, if she's not allowed to masturbate.

It's like, when you're doing a group project, and you assign each person a task. Everyone is supposed to do their own task, and then come back to the next meeting, ready to collaborate and make progress on the next steps they need to do together. What if someone never does any tasks by themself, but only attends meetings? How is anything going to get done? You have to try things out yourself and come to the meeting prepared with some ideas of things that you and your partner can do together.

So when I read this section of the book throwing shade at the idea that "she needs to catch up"- hey, maybe she actually does need to "catch up." If it's problem 1, and if she's not allowed to masturbate, and it has to be her husband doing all the work to figure out how her body works, I just... I mean I'm sitting here writing this post just shaking my head because I can't put into words how much of a bad idea this is. It's just ... they're just never going to make any progress on this at all. If I hadn't masturbated, I would have had to just entirely give up on the whole idea of ever having PIV sex. It was just so unworkable for me back then. (I also had undiagnosed vaginismus, so, there's that.)

(If it's problem 2, on the other hand- if she comes to the meeting prepared with some ideas, and he refuses to work with her- that's an entirely different problem.)

And another thing I recommend: She should try using a sex toy. She can start with a magic wand vibrator for clitoral stimulation. (Disclaimer, different things work for different people- I know there are some people with vaginas who don't find this type of toy useful.) I know some people think there's something "wrong" about using sex toys, like you shouldn't do it because it's not the "right" way to have sex or something- okay, if you believe that, that's fine, but at least at the beginning, when you don't even know what orgasms are, a sex toy can help you at least figure out what you're even trying to do.

And also, if you don't want to use a sex toy because it's not "natural"... Honey, you've been married how many years and you're having sex with this guy and you've never had an orgasm? You need to realize that orgasms are not "natural" for you. If they were, then they would have happened already. It is not going to happen unless you deliberately set out to make it happen. Don't just sit there and wait and have faith in this ridiculous idea that sex is "natural" and orgasms are "natural." Seriously. When I realized I'm ace and therefore sex is not "natural" for me, that's when I was able to start actually doing the work of learning it. That's when I was able to start actually making progress.

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with using a sex toy. Use it every time if you want. Why make extra work for yourself?

It's like, if you're standing at Point A, in a large outdoor area, and you are supposed to walk to Point B. And you ask, "Where is Point B?" And someone tells you, "I don't know, but you'll know it when you see it." How are you ever going to find it? You don't even know what direction to go. If you had to find it just by walking, you'd have to walk all over the place. It would take forever. How about you drive a car? Just to figure out where Point B even is. You drive a car, you can cover a lot more ground and find Point B much faster. And then, once you know where Point B is, next time you may choose to walk from Point A to Point B.

Or, if she's not even allowed to masturbate, then in this metaphor she can't walk, she can just sit in a wagon and her husband can drag her around, asking her "Is this Point B? Is this Point B?" dragging her all over here and there, taking forever, and nothing looks like Point B to her.

Just drive the car!

So, my point is, first of all, she needs to masturbate. And then after that, the next step is she needs to instruct her husband on what she wants him to do. The way I see it, she wants him to participate, but that doesn't necessarily mean he has to be the one who actually directly stimulates her genitals. Imagine a spectrum: 

  • On one extreme end of the spectrum, you have the man doing all of the woman's genital stimulation, while she tells him what to do. 
  • On the other end of the spectrum, she does the genital stimulation herself- the whole process, all the way to orgasm, and he gives her encouragement/affection by cuddling her, complimenting her, etc- whatever way she tells him she wants him to show support for her.
  • And then in between, there are varying degrees of how much he is stimulating her genitals vs how much she is stimulating her own genitals. 
  • But the important thing is, the entire spectrum is about him participating and showing that he cares about her getting an orgasm- and it's about her telling him which forms of participation she wants from him.

The "he needs to do more foreplay" idea from Gregoire et al is just one endpoint of this spectrum. I guess? Well, maybe it's not even a point on this spectrum at all, because what I see from the book doesn't necessarily match my "she knows what she wants, and she tells him what to do" idea.

It suddenly occurs to me that maybe my model here does not really fit how other people think about sex? Maybe it only applies to me. I definitely view it as, like... here is a process, here are the steps in the process, some of these steps are interchangeable and we can decide which ones we want to include on any given night, and there are some overarching goals like "both of us have an orgasm" and some smaller concrete goals like "I want to do this position and that position." Kind of approaching it with a plan... I like to have a plan. I like to have control over things. (I'm really curious about if other aces who have sex also have this kind of view? Is it because I'm ace? Is it because I'm an engineer...?) Whereas, other people talk about sex like it's more... natural and spontaneous... and like you both are discovering it together, open to whatever surprises might come up... 

I'm asexual, so none of this was natural. It took a long time to figure out an overall framework for sex that works for us. So this is my advice for people who want to have sex but have no idea how to have sex.

All right, so that was my advice for problem 1. But what if it's problem 2- the husband just is not willing to do anything differently, and doesn't care that sex doesn't feel good for his wife? Well, I also don't think "he needs to do more foreplay" is the solution- I think she needs to sit him down for a serious talk and say "the way we have sex is just not working for me" and maybe bring in some sex-ed resources that say "sex is not just PIV, sex can be whatever you want- the important thing is that everybody is consenting!" and stats about how women often don't orgasm from PIV alone. The outcome really depends on whether he's willing to listen, and whether he cares about the things that are important to her. 

And if he still isn't willing to make any changes, it would be totally reasonable for her to just stop having sex with him. (Not sure if I should phrase this differently- it's always okay to choose not to have sex with someone. Consent can be withdrawn at any time.) Why should she have sex with him, if he's not willing to put in any effort to make it feel good for her? I'm saying this because Christian marriage advice is always saying that women have to have sex with their husband anyway, even if he's putting in no effort to meet her needs, because "men have needs" and that's non-negotiable. I'm saying, no, you don't have to have sex with someone who isn't willing to make it feel good for you. (Suddenly I am reminded of many a reddit post from men who say "my wife stopped having sex with me for no reason" and then when you dig deeper you find that he totally refused to listen to any of her ideas about the way she wanted to have sex, and that's why she stopped...)

So... I guess then if the conversation goes well, then they can move on to "he needs to do more foreplay", though again, to me something feels off about calling it "foreplay."

All right, so basically my big issue with this section of the book is I'm coming from a "problem 1" perspective, but the book is addressing problem 2. Or, actually, some of these anecdotes seem to be kind of a mix of problems 1 and 2. Some anecdotes in this section in the book are from women who don't really know what feels good, and they want their husband to participate in the process of figuring it out, but he doesn't want to.

So... then I wonder to myself, "maybe it's okay that the book is only talking about problem 2, because I'm the only person with problem 1. I'm the only person naive enough to not even know how to masturbate." But, that's also not right, because I read Gregoire's blog, and she often gets comments from women saying "I've been married for years and I've never had an orgasm" and she offers them advice. It seems that's one of the main groups that her blog is targeting. And she never seems to tell them "you need to masturbate."

Here's an example: In a November 9, 2022 post on Gregoire's blog, When He Deliberately Ignores Your Pleasure: What to Do When Sex Has Become One-Sided, Gregoire answers a reader's comment about how the reader and her husband just really don't know how to get her an orgasm, and her husband has lost the motivation to keep trying. Gregoire's answer is about how sex is supposed to be something that both people enjoy, and a man shouldn't expect his wife to be willing to keep having sex that doesn't feel good for her. So they should take a step back and really prioritize figuring out what works for her.

In the comment section, the first comment is from a reader named Chris, who says:

In the case of the original letter writer, this is one of the few times where I would advise her to get a vibrator and learn to have an orgasm through masturbation. It’s very clear that she has not had one. This makes it extremely difficult if not out right impossible for her husband to get her there. Since her husband doesn’t know what to do and she doesn’t know how to teach him. Because “there” isn’t defined. This is going to leave him wandering aimlessly around her body. Now, a man who had been married previously to someone else or a man who has had a lot of partners will have a better sense of how to guide her to this place she’s never been but not by a lot. In short, a skilled lover would struggle in this situation, and her husband is not a skilled lover. No doubt many women will respond with “oh no no, a skilled lover would have her at orgasm quickly”. No, womens bodies are all very, very, different in what brings them to orgasm. You can do something to one woman that gives her instant fireworks, but the next woman? Ya she doesn’t want to be touched that way at all. Each one is very different.

Yes! I agree with Chris! This is exactly what I've been trying to say in this post. 

But another commenter, Suzanne, replies to Chris to say "You are making this a her problem not a their problem." Uh... I think no progress can be made until she spends time masturbating... but that is a very different thing than saying he doesn't have any responsibility to care about if sex feels good for her.

And then later down the thread, Gregoire says:

Yes, we did talk to quite a few women who used toys to learn how to orgasm, but then their husbands insisted on keeping using them, because bringing their wives to orgasm themselves “was too hard” and “took too much time.” It’s one of the reasons I’m reluctant to advise using them, because I get so many women saying, “my husband prefers to just use technology rather than try to figure me out!”

I wasn't aware that this could be a pitfall of using sex toys. Gregoire has a lot of experience talking to married women about their sexual problems, so I guess it is a real thing.

But... in that kind of situation, the real problem is the man isn't willing to participate in things that are important to the woman during sex. Banning sex toys and masturbation doesn't really solve that problem, it just makes the wife's orgasms and knowledge of her own body dependent on how much effort the husband wants to put in, which seems like an even worse situation to be in, in my opinion.

And, I have some suggestions. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing with the sex toy. You could do any of the following things:

  • the husband does all of the wife's genital stimulation, without using a sex toy, all the way to orgasm (apparently this is how Gregoire and her co-authors think it should work)
  • the husband does things to her with his hands for a while, and then when they're ready to finish, he uses a sex toy on her, so that she can reliably get an orgasm and the stuff with his hands didn't have to have that "pressure" of whether or not it's leading to orgasm
  • the wife uses the sex toy on herself, while the husband cuddles her and encourages her. (Some anecdotes in the book or the blog were from women who were unhappy because her husband would just roll over and ignore her when he was finished, and she would just masturbate by herself. I agree that most people would want their partner to participate rather than ignore them, so if that's what she wants, then it's WRONG that her husband acts like he doesn't have to care about her orgasm. So my suggestion is, she can use the sex toy and masturbate while he still participates and shows he cares about her. Him participating doesn't mean he has to literally be the one who is directly stimulating her genitals.)

See? Many options! As an exercise for the reader, you can try brainstorming other variations to add to this list. Figure out what works for you and your partner! 

WAIT! I just thought of something! Here's a hypothesis to consider: Maybe there's some standard technique for using one's hands on one's partner's vulva/vagina/clit, and this Standard Technique works well for most people with vaginas, and that's what people are talking about when they say things like "he is a skilled lover." Hmm. Wow that would explain why people talk about things in this way. Like it just works right out off the shelf, if you have a partner who is a "good lover." Hmm. Fascinating hypothesis I have just come up with. And if Partner A is doing things with their fingers, and it's not working for Partner B, it might be because Partner A is bad at the Standard Technique, or it might be because the Standard Technique doesn't work on Partner B's body. Perhaps if either of them has experience having sex with someone else, they can have a point of comparison and they can figure out which of them is the problem, so to say. (Honestly I don't think either possibility is actually a "problem" they should feel bad about.) But don't do that, there's no need to figure out which side the problem is on, because the solution is the same either way: Partner B has to masturbate and figure out what works, and then teach Partner A the very detailed directions about how to do it. Or, alternatively, Partner B could just do it on themself, while Partner A shows affection in other ways.

All right, one more thing I want to say: A few of the anecdotes in this book are from women who say the husband loses interest in using his hands on her genitals, if he thinks it's taking too long. For example, she needs 15-20 minutes, and he complains that it's taking too long and his hands are tired. And basically, the authors' response to this is, if the husband (or wife) thinks, "this is taking too long, therefore we will just stop and the wife will just not have an orgasm" that's not okay. (I agree, this is not okay- I'm assuming that she wants to have an orgasm.) But... I kind of want to talk about how the husband feels... if he feels like it's taking too long, it's boring, he doesn't want to do it... I hope that the couple can find a way to have sex when nobody ends up feeling that way.

I really don't know how to talk about this, because the gendered double standard is so deeply internalized. Gregoire has a really good blog post about double standards here: The Double Standards of Sexual Expectations in Marriage. Every single one of them is spot-on. Conservative Christian women are taught that sex has to entirely revolve around the husband, and her job as a wife is to make every part of it a perfect experience for him. You have to have sex even if it's painful, even if you're tired, even if you've spent the entire day sitting there with a newborn baby biting your nipples- none of those are a good enough excuse to say "no", because "men need it." And you have to act like you're really enjoying it, and you can't tell him you don't like the way he's doing it, because that will ruin his manly self-confidence. And so on.

There's this double standard where women are supposed to go the extra mile and make sure the entire experience of sex is perfect for the man, even if the woman is in pain, while men aren't really expected to put any effort into caring about whether the woman is enjoying it. And so I feel like, in this context, we can't even have a productive conversation about "hey if the husband has to do things on her with his hands for 20 minutes and it's boring for him, shouldn't we come up with a solution so he doesn't have to feel that way?" I'm afraid if we even try to ask that question, it will immediately collapse into "anything that mildly inconveniences a man is not acceptable, and the wife will just have to accept that it won't be a good experience for her because that's just the way it is."

In an ideal world, it would work like this: You have 2 people, and they are equals. (Or if you're polyamorous, it could be more than 2.) Each person communicates about what things they want to do sexually. They discuss/negotiate, and come up with a basic outline that will work for both of them. This outline will include things that they both really enjoy, and might include some things that one person enjoys and the other doesn't like that much but is willing to do sometimes. But the non-negotiables are, it will NOT include anything that's painful (unless you're into BDSM and you want that), and it will not include anything that either of them hates. And, both partners will get an orgasm (unless they are not interested in getting an orgasm).

And, importantly, they should not take PIV as the "default" way to have sex. They should both say what they want, and make a plan based on that. They should NOT start out with, "well it has to be PIV, because that's what sex is, and then I guess we can add a few extra frills because the wife wants that, she's kinda needy." No. They are equals, and what matters is what they want, not anybody else's rules about how they're "supposed" to have sex. (Though yes, I do realize that I am also making rules here- nobody has to do anything that's painful, and both people get an orgasm. Hmm.)

So, for example, maybe the wife says it's important to her that they spend quality time with the husband doing things on her with his hands. And the husband says, he is okay with doing that sometimes, but not every time. So, the conclusion they reach is, sometimes he will do that, and sometimes they will use a sex toy to get her to orgasm faster. Or, maybe there is some way they could make the experience better for him, like maybe listening to music while he does it.

Plenty of options. 

What's NOT okay, though, is "the husband doesn't feel like doing this, therefore the wife is just not going to have an orgasm and that's that" or "the husband doesn't want to spend time on foreplay, so they will just do PIV when the wife is not aroused enough, and it will be painful for her." Like, the idea it's unreasonable for the wife to ask for these bare-minimum things (having an orgasm, and not being in pain)- NOT OKAY. Do cis straight men ever consent to sex where they know they might not have an orgasm, and might be in pain? Nobody expects cis straight men to do that. These are bare-minimum things. (The exception is, if they just have no idea how to get the wife to have an orgasm. It only makes sense as a "bare minimum" requirement if they have a reliable method that can get there.)

If you can have this conversation starting from a place of "we are equals", then it will work. But I worry that, for conservative Christian women, the double standard is so internalized, it's not even possible to have this "we both say what we want" conversation in a healthy way. Maybe if you're at that place, you do need to replace rules like "sex is PIV, and if the wife doesn't want to because it's painful, too bad, she has to do it anyway" with rules like "the husband has to spend as long as it takes, using his hands or mouth, to get her to orgasm." (Please note, I am NOT saying these rulesets are equally bad. The first is WAY WORSE than the second. No contest there.) But hopefully people will be able to move beyond that, to a place where they don't want to make their partner do things their partner is not into, AND they believe that- in the exact same way- they don't have to do things they're not into.

(It's like what I said in this post, about "hiding behind God" when making your arguments, because you don't have the self-confidence to argue from a place of "this is what I want, and that matters.")

I have no idea how this blog post got so long. [Editor's note: Actually she does.] I have a lot to say. See, this is why I divided this chapter into 2 parts.

Anyway, in conclusion: It feels weird to me that this chapter spends so much time talking about "he needs to do more foreplay" as the solution to the "orgasm gap." It really bothers me that I don't know Gregoire's and the other authors' beliefs about masturbation- maybe they think it's a sin? I know their audience was taught that it's a sin, and so I really think they need to address that. If masturbation is not an option, and the only solution is "he needs to do more foreplay", well first of all that would never have worked for me, and second, it feels like they're saying the wife is not allowed to figure out her own body, she has to just hope her husband will figure our her body. 

Instead, my advice is to take control, take deliberate steps to learn what feels good, and then instruct your partner about what role you would like them to play in it. It doesn't have to be that the husband is the one directly doing the wife's genital stimulation. There are other ways he can participate. Whatever works for her. 

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Links to all posts in this series can be found here: Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue"

Related:

Here's an article about evangelical women and sex

I Wanna Preach the Good News of Masturbation 

My Husband Is Not The Entire Focus Of My Sex Life 

Scripts

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