SI 2

• “I want spontaneity.” • “I don’t want to communicate—I just want to do it and have everything work fine.” • “Why can’t sex just be natural? I hate the way it’s all complicated now.” • “Thinking too much about sex takes away the romance, the mystery.” • “Talking too much about sex makes it mechanical.”

Listening to feelings like these, anyone would think that eroticism is so delicate and ephemeral that it disappears if we shine any light on it, or mention it above a whisper. And yet I understand people’s anxiety, frustration, and resentment about this. For many men and women, sex seemed so easy when they were younger, and it seems so much more complicated now. Early adulthood (roughly age eighteen to twenty-five) is the time when most people are settling into their sexual identities

Logically, as both our bodies and lifestyles change, our sexual vision needs to change too. After all, most of us tend to change our vision and self-image about other important things, such as work, food, family, and health. But many people, misled by the media, the fashion industry, “successful aging” psychologists, and others, don’t change their sexual vision over time—and that means trouble.

There’s no lack of therapists (or TV commercials for drugs, cosmetics, and alcohol) who agree that such people have a “dysfunction.” But pursuing a sexual vision that’s decades out of date (and performing poorly at it!) isn’t a “dysfunction.” It’s a culturally and psychologically driven mistake.

No, sex isn’t going to be like it was when you were young—if by “when I was young” you mean endless physical energy, hormone-crazed lust, all the time in the world, self-indulgent impulsivity with no sense of the consequences, and a partner who’s young and also wild with hormones. No, sex is not going to be like that regularly ever again.

Of course, there are exceptions

- partners are really efficient at sex (they studied it, they performed it, they mastered it) - starting to be more and more prevalent

- partners have high real intimacy, and are madly attracted to one another , while also being fit - rarely

- partners have the illusion of intimacy, idealizing each other and converting all the missing pieces into adoration. - default cultural flaw at the start of the road

All of this being said, sex can be deeply satisfying—pleasurable, fun, intimate—if you want. But you may have to change your ideas about satisfaction. You need to either want different things, or to redefine the things you continue to want.

You can, for example, feel graceful, youthful, competent, timeless, and un-self-conscious during sex. All you have to do is make room in this definition for imperfect bodies and imperfect “function” (unlike when you were younger). If your back hurts, you go slow instead of pounding your partner and hurting yourself. If you tend to wet the bed, you put a towel down instead of distracting yourself by thinking about wetting the bed. If you like lots of kissing, you ask for (and you do) lots of kissing, rather than wishing for it. If a spanking is more exciting than kissing, you ask for that instead. If you’re taking a medication that makes your mouth dry, you put a glass of water on the night table and you use it during sex. Ditto lube.

So that’s it: Sexual Intelligence means dealing with sexuality in a straightforward way, rather than hiding it, denying it, or blaming it. You talk about it. You don’t put your energy into pretending that sex isn’t the way it is.

I taught a sexuality seminar for student therapists at a fancy southern university. When they couldn’t quite understand this idea, I used the analogy of having people over to your home for dinner. I said that, when inviting someone, a good host asks, “Is there anything you don’t eat?” A good guest tells the truth, responding that he or she is allergic to shellfish or almonds or whatever. Then the host can cook something the guest will like, and neither guest nor cook will be disappointed or embarrassed. One of the students scoffed at my vision. “If I invite you to dinner, I don’t ask any questions,” she said. “I make what I want, and you eat it or not!” Well, I don’t want to unfairly generalize as to sex—but I certainly wouldn’t want to go to that young woman’s house for dinner—would you?