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Mr. B.’s present lifestyle shows him comfortable with his feminine side. He does not have to be ‘macho’, to prove his masculinity, but now regrets he has taken so long to want children for himself. In his youth his fear of being trapped made him extremely nervous about leaving contraception to the other party, but also somewhat guilty about his behaviour, with a degree of insight into the problems of his victims.

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The rhythm method-This essentially consists of trying to predict when ovulation occurs from a study of the woman’s menstrual cycle. To do this properly she has to have an accurate record of her periods over the preceding year. Only then can she see a reliable time pattern. Going by what has happened over a few months is simply not accurate enough. The first day of the cycle is taken as being the day menstruation starts and the last day is the day menstruation next commences. The life of the egg is thought to be one to two days (although it may be as short as twelve hours) and that of the sperms in the tubes two to three days. Adding a day either side for safety means that intercourse has to be avoided for seven days around ovulation. This means that you cannot have intercourse between the eighteenth and eleventh days before your next period starts. To allow for variations in cycle length, the first unsafe day is calculated by deducting eleven from the number of days in the longest cycle. After every cycle the numbers should be worked out again so as to cover the last twelve cycles. This is important because very few women are regular as clockwork and many things, such as stress and illness, can alter cycle length. If you work on the assumption that your cycle is twenty-eight days long all the time you will definitely expose yourself to getting pregnant.

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It is not only an absence of hard biological evidence that leads us to say that most sex problems originate in the mind; there are other reasons too. First, when investigated, most people’s sex problems show sufficient evidence of a psychosexual origin-to make it worth considering this as a serious possibility. Second, psychotherapeutic techniques (talk therapy) perhaps combined with other techniques that do not involve drugs or surgery, often relieve the problem. Clearly most sexual problems have little or nothing to do with the body’s basic plumbing. Evidence for this is seen in many cases. For example, the man who cannot erect for intercourse but wakes with an erection in the morning and, judged by the stains on his sheets, has night emissions too. Many people with problems are reluctant to consult a doctor, sometimes because they feel that he or she will think badly of them or does not have the time to treat them, whilst others put off seeking help because they do not believe help is available or effective.

At the heart of the psychological factors that prevent sexual success and produce sexual casualties is the anti-sexual nature of our culture. As we have mentioned elsewhere, conservatism on the subject of sex in child rearing leads to the unconscious transmission of sexual suppression from one generation to the next and sex education, at least as it is practised at present, does little to redress the balance.

Normal religious beliefs affect the situation very little except that children brought up in religiously extreme homes have more than their fair share of sexual problems as adults. As we have already explained, in the chapter on childhood sexuality, problems arising from the Oedipal complex can also disrupt sexuality in later life and result in sex difficulties. A false perception of the partner, as in the case of, for example, a man who unconsciously identifies his partner too much with his mother, may result in rare or unenjoyable intercourse.

Avoidance of intercourse, making it brief as in premature ejaculation or reducing the full pleasure by not reaching orgasm, since, unconsciously, he perceives the woman as his mother, also leads to anxiety. Along the same lines, a woman having a baby can change in her husband’s eyes from a lover to a mother and he may well then see her as relatively (or totally) undesirable. He may even become impotent if they do try to have intercourse.

A loss of sex drive, or even completely going off sex, after the birth of a baby is common in women too, for reasons which include pain from an episiotomy, a birth injury, hormonal disturbances, postnatal depression, fear of a further pregnancy, tiredness, over-preoccupation with the new baby, or an unconscious identification with the woman’s own mother, now that she has become a mother. Many, if not most, women perceive mothers in general as sexless.

Increasingly today, drugs, pharmaceutical preparations and chemicals also interfere with sexual performance. More subtly, unconsciously perceived chemical messengers called pheromones may also be involved. Psychological ‘messages’ can also be transmitted by one partner and picked up unconsciously and yet still influence sexual behaviour. Body language is one example. It is quite possible that such psychological and pheromonal messages, if negative and transmitted over a long period of time, might adversely affect the sexual capacity of one’s partner.

The emotional relationship between a couple can express itself as a sexual problem – indeed most so-called sexual problems are probably the result of emotional and relationship problems. A failure to erect or lubricate, premature ejaculation, or failure to have an orgasm can be expressions of resentment, anger and many other emotions, as can the rejection of advances.

There are men and women who see themselves as sexual enthusiasts but who, when the subject is examined more deeply in therapy, are found continuously to be putting sex last on their list of priorities in life. It is not, they say, that they don’t want to have intercourse but there is ‘just no time for it’ and in any case they are ‘always too tired’. Also, they often add, ’sex isn’t everything’. Where both of the partners want to avoid sex such a situation is satisfactory. If a woman places a low priority on sex, or at least continuously finds other things she would rather do, her man sees this as rejection and loses interest or performs badly when she does agree. Many women too measure their attractiveness, and therefore their value, by the ardour shown by their partner. If he puts everything else first she may respond by getting angry, becoming sexually uninterested or performing badly. Believing herself to be unwanted she may even fall out of love with him. A sign that this is occurring is a sudden loss of her ability to have orgasms.

Stereotyped, habit-ridden copulation and insensitivity to the needs of the other partner both sow the seeds of sexual difficulties, as do relatively minor problems such as bad breath and, for many women, the man being unshaven. Sometimes just even loving the partner can produce problems. As mentioned already, some men perceive the woman they love as sexless and put her on a pedestal. They are impotent with her but not with others. Some women are inhibited with the man they love, having been reared in childhood to believe that sexual activity leads to a loss of love (in that case from their parents) but can perform with efficiency and abandon with a stranger. Other women may overcome this by fantasising about other men when having intercourse with their partner. In any case, for reasons which are largely unknown, everyone finds certain members of the opposite sex infinitely more desirable, arousing and exciting than others. Some men and women can perform perfectly well with certain members of the opposite sex but not with others.

Many people who talk continually about how much they want intercourse are unconsciously trying to avoid it. Such people may fix on a physical event such as having a baby, a sterilisation operation or the onset of some disability as an excuse to avoid intercourse, sometimes permanently. For women who see sex as being mainly for reproduction, sterilisation can disturb them anyway. Disturbances of body-image also affect sexual performance. Women who have not accepted their vagina as part of their body psychologically do not to all intents and purposes have a vagina. Attempts at intercourse are experienced as being like a knife being pushed through an intact body surface, and they suffer from a condition known as vaginismus. These are the virgin wives mentioned earlier. A man who has fear-inspiring images of the female body can, unconsciously, think of the vagina as a whirlpool or a mouth with biting teeth. Placing his penis inside it is like putting his head in a lion’s mouth, so it is avoided by failing to erect or by ejaculating before entry or soon afterwards.

So the background to sexual problems is very varied and is often time-consuming to sort out, if only because basic causes are often overlaid with conscious excuses and explanations that first have to be stripped away. Some problems are the direct result of upbringing and the potential problem existed long before that person met his or her partner. It was lying dormant but ready to bloom. In some cases an apparently normal sex life may be sustained for months or even years before a ’sexual breakdown’ occurs. This happens because at the time the person’s sexual desires exceed his underlying fears and he can function fairly well. Once desire wanes even a little all the inhibitory forces take over and the person develops a frank sexual problem. An unhappy example is seen in those women who have been brought up with the ’sex is naughty’ view of sexuality. They function well before marriage and enjoy sex but lose orgasmic capacity and interest in sex afterwards, when it is legitimate. In other cases the problem reflects a difficulty within the relationship. Sex itself may be the primary cause of the problem or it may, so to speak, simply be knocked down as an innocent bystander.

Psychological illness, personality factors and problems with religious beliefs may or may not contribute to sexual problems. For example, a person who is prone to excessive anxiety about life generally may or may not be anxious about intercourse: sex can provide a refuge for such people. Conversely, someone who displays low levels of anxiety in the rest of his life can show signs of alarm, muscle tension and sweating as sexual contact becomes imminent. Men and women with personality disorders run the risk of retaliation through a sex problem in their partner. For example, a critical, domineering or excessively maternal woman may come to be seen by her partner as an unpleasant mother figure.

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In a man-A man usually starts to become sexually aroused in his head. He is ‘turned on’ by something erotic (either in reality or fantasy) and this mental change sends nervous impulses down his spinal cord to his genitals. In response the spongy tissue of his penis becomes filled with blood, causing the organ to stiffen and change from the limp, downward-hanging organ it usually is to a protruding, rod-like one. This is called an erection. During these changes the man’s heartbeat quickens, his pupils enlarge, his blood pressure rises, his breathing quickens, his nostrils flare, his muscles tense, he sweats a little and he feels sexually excited. This is called the excitement phase of his sexual response. His scrotum becomes tenser and thicker and the testes themselves are drawn up tightly against the body.

It is possible for all these changes to occur and the man then to go back to his normal

pre-excitement phase. Apart perhaps from feeling somewhat let-down, he will return to normal within minutes. Most often though, having got this far, he will go further either by masturbating or by copulating.

The penis now swells even more and its tip (the glans) becomes purplish blue and the contents of the scrotum increase in size. This is the plateau phase and it is more difficult to return to normal from this than from the earlier excitement phase.

The next stage is the orgasm itself. The intensity of sexual arousal is now so high that the man has to ejaculate. Surges of nervous impulses now run back and forth from his nervous system to his genitals and the passages that run from the testes to the penis’ contract (along with local muscles) to squirt semen out of the end of his penis. Once an orgasm is near there is nothing a man can do to stop it — it takes him over. At ejaculation a small quantity of semen shoots out of the penis, often for some distance, and is associated with a wonderful sensation deep in the pelvis as the prostate gland (previously swollen with fluid) discharges its contents. A series of four or five contractions follows at a rate of about one every 0.8 of a second, each producing a smaller volume of semen than before until the tubes carrying the semen are empty. Eventually the contractions cease and the man relaxes. His erect penis returns to its normal size and he feels relaxed and even sleepy. The colour and consistency of semen varies a lot with how long he has been continent. There is no way of judging the quality of semen by its appearance or its volume. Each ejaculation (about a teaspoonful) contains millions of sperms, any one of which could make a woman pregnant.

Once the man has ejaculated, he may take several hours to become arousable again. Younger men have a shorter refractory period and are arousable again sooner than older men. Some boys can have repeated orgasms just like most women. There is absolutely no harm or danger in ejaculating several times a day but it can be tiring. There is no truth at all in the notion that men have only a certain fixed amount of semen which can be ejaculated — every healthy man can ejaculate semen many times a day for the whole of his life and still suffer no adverse

side-effects.

The whole male cycle can be achieved very quickly, especially in teenagers and young men who become aroused and ejaculate in a few minutes. Things are rather different in women.

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However, it appears that about half of divorced people find their second partner through informal sources (friends and relatives) and half through formal ones. The sex lives of the divorced vary greatly — some abstaining because they feel so wretched about it all (though their feelings change over the months and a normal sex drive returns in most people) and others for religious and moral reasons. Those who can have sex only in the context of romantic love often remarry very quickly to legitimise their need for sex.

About 60 per cent of remarriages are to other divorced and separateds. This is probably no bad thing since they recognise the problems and pitfalls and can understand each other’s situation better. They reassure each other that they are not unique in their problems, or unstable, and a bond is more likely to form as a result. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the real reasons for their marriage failure and so make exactly the same mistakes again. Nearly half of all remarriages fail, mainly because people choose those who are similar to their first spouse (although this may not necessarily be obvious to those involved). Those who have been married twice have a divorce rate five times the norm.

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Women also tend to link problems to the whole relationship. For example, a woman may say that if her husband loved her he would not do or say a certain thing. It may be a simple misunderstanding of the ways in which he believes he should demonstrate his love, and once again this is usually conditioned by what he learned in childhood.

In such rows the woman, because she feels hurt or neglected may, because of her greater verbal skills, say more wounding things than she really feels simply to provoke a serious response from her husband. Such over-dramatising of the argument would not be necessary if men were more sensitive to their wives’ needs.

Many a man reverts to childhood when his wife becomes aggressive or seems to be provoking a row and responds as if she were a hostile mother. He sulks, mooches around the house, or goes out to escape. This does nothing to help because the woman still has not had her say and still feels scorned, overlooked, unloved, treated as worthless or whatever sparked off the row in the first place. She needs loving care and understanding but her husband, by behaving like a young boy, cannot hope to provide it. The underlying problem is thus not resolved. The next time a problem area is aired the couple, already on a plateau of tension, spark each other off more readily.

Often such hostility arises over ‘no-go’ areas within the marriage. Subjects as diverse as children’s schooling, the woman’s weight, his drinking friends, religion, oral sex and so on are out of bounds, skirted round and never actually discussed. One partner (or both) harbours strongly-held views, yet cannot get the other to discuss them or come to an agreement at all. Slowly these ‘no-go’ areas within the marriage grow in size and number until the couple are relating only in the most superficial way, skimming over the surface of life. As soon as any discussion gets valuable it hits a ‘no-go’ area and hostility or silence breaks out. Eventually such a couple end up saying little to each other.

Clearly no two people will agree on everything, but a loving friendship can withstand a fair amount of disagreement. There are usually no absolute answers to the problems being discussed and one person’s views are worth about as much as another’s. Many ‘no-go’ areas are not really serious anyway.

Once ‘no-go’ areas begin to intrude on a couple’s life, sex often is the first casualty. Professionals working with marital problems never accept sexual problems at face value because they are so rarely the cause of marital disharmony. Sex is usually the injured bystander as the marriage crashes but in a society so over-concerned with sex it is understandable that people who go for professional help often complain of a sexual problem first.

Rows and an extension of ‘no-go’ areas within the marriage reduce the tenderness each feels for the other, and usually a woman is the first to go off sex. As a consequence the man progressively withdraws from the relationship, ‘deloves’ his wife and escapes into gardening, ‘the boys’, a time-consuming hobby away from home, or a considerable increase in work. The woman’s fears that she is no longer loved, appreciated and wanted are confirmed for her too and the marriage spirals downwards.

By understanding how things can go wrong one can more easily find answers to prevent and cure the problems. At the first sign of emotional disease within a marriage the ‘unaffected’ partner should say, ‘Let’s sit down and you tell me about it. You’re obviously upset, I’ll try to help.’ The listener then allows the ‘complainer’ to get the problem off his or her chest without interruption and then negotiations start with real care and warmth. Such behaviour tackles troublesome situations early and major ‘no-go’ areas never get a chance to take root. Each person sees the other behaving in a way that is compatible with the way they think someone who ‘really loves me’ ought to behave, and such tolerance breeds tolerance in return. Quite quickly in a marriage run along the lines just described a fund of goodwill builds up and the couple can make concessions to each other on certain matters (that could easily have become ‘no-go’ areas), can overlook peccadilloes and can even delight in each other’s shortcomings. In general, women are better able (or perhaps more prepared) to adapt to men in this way than vice versa but obviously there are exceptions.

If this course of action is not followed another category of rows may then emerge which is not primarily brought about by the apparent cause, which in turn becomes concealed and unresolved. It is at this stage that many couples seek professional help or see a solicitor about divorce. It takes a really skilled professional to find where the problems lie in such cases and all too often couples have the wrong (more superficial) problem treated only to return home to continue their unhappy lives. Often such professionals attach blame to one of the partners involved, but this can be very unfair because the answers are rarely clear-cut and the obvious ‘offender’ in the marriage is often the weaker and needs help more than (even implicit) condemnation.

Men and women have very different ideas as to which faults are killers of marriages. One survey found that women thought that selfishness and inconsiderate behaviour were the most important faults in their husbands and that men rated nagging and moaning top of the list. The old fears of sexual incompatibility, too many or no children, drunkenness and lack of trust, so commonly found to be problems in the past, have now virtually disappeared in favour of selfishness, money problems, conflicting personalities and jealousy among wives of husbands paying attention to things other than them.

But rather than simply rowing about these areas couples can use the technique known as ’shaping-up’. The idea behind this concept is that rather than falling out over minor areas of disagreement one makes a conscious effort deliberately to ignore them or to treat them neutrally. When the ‘offending’ partner behaves in a way which the other wants to encourage he or she is rewarded by signs of pleasure, affection, flattering comments and even sexual favours. This

technique can also be used to modify sexual behaviour which a partner does not like.

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