Intercourse Technique

The most effective intercourse technique probably is the teasing approach of light-touch moving at random from the breasts to the abdomen to the thighs to the labia to the thighs and back to the abdomen and breasts without concentrating specifically on pelvic manipulation early in the stimulative episode.

Particularly should direct approach to the clitoral area be avoided initially in this process. This “exercise” becomes even more effective as a means of female sex-tension increment when interlaced with sensate-focus, stroking techniques introduced after the roundtable discussion.

The male partner must be careful not to inject any personal demand for sexual performance into his female partner’s pattern of response.

The husband must not set goals for his wife. He must not try to force responsivity His role is that of accommodation, warmth, understanding, and holding, but he should not be so pacific that his own sexual pleasure is negated for either himself or his partner.

Through total cooperation he allows his wife to drift with sensate pleasure and provides her with sensual stimulation without forcing her to contend with an accompanying sense of goal-oriented demand to respond to a forcing form of manipulation.

The co-therapists must make it quite clear to the husband that orgasmic release is not the focus of this sexual interaction. Manipulation of breast, pelvis, and other body areas varying from the lightest touch to an increase in pressure only at partner direction, should provide the wife with the opportunity to express her sexual responsivity freely, but without any concept of demand for an endpoint (orgasmic) goal.

It must be emphasized that the effectiveness of a stimulative session is not lost to the woman simply because the session is terminated without orgasmic experience.

Sexual Interest

There is a tremendous accrual of sexual facility and interest for any woman when she knows that there will be a repeat opportunity for further sexual expression in the immediate future.

Thus, the husband’s light, teasing, non-demanding approach to touch and manipulation allows the female partner full freedom to express her interests, her demands, her sexual tensions. This sequence of opportunities permits the accumulation of stimulative effects which will provide the source of her ultimate release of maximum sex-tension increment at some future point.

All specific exercises aimed toward the wife’s fulfillment of her orgasmic capacity always are introduced by the direction of the co-therapists on the basis of the marital-couple reports. When husband and wife describe the fact that previous directions have produced a positive return of stimulative pleasure, their next level of sexual involvement is approached. This treatment concept means, of course, that a steady progression of exercises does not necessarily take place on a daily schedule.

For instance, marital partners who never have verbally shared sexual reactions or expressed sexual preferences to each other usually take longer to appreciate a positive level of sexual-tension return than less restrained, more communicative husbands and wives.

Yet another example of delayed reactive potential centers upon marital couples that have coped with functional distress for extended periods of time. These husbands and wives usually require longer to adapt to and become comfortable with their revised patterns of sexual behavior than those whose sexual dysfunction has been relatively brief.

It has been further observed that successful marital-couple adaptation to a state of sexual dysfunction, in itself a possible indication of individual and marital-couple strengths, may present a higher level of inherent resistance to reversal of the stated inadequacy than more dissident, fragmented marital relationships.

Cotherapists must constantly bear in mind during the rapid-treatment program that the authoritative introduction of specific exercises represents a deliberate breakdown of a woman’s sexual responsivity into its natural components.

Each exercise is introduced singly and continued until appreciated. All exercises are accrued one after another in a natural building process until they have been reassembled into the whole of an established sexual response pattern.

For descriptive purposes, the directive pattern might be likened to the song Partridge in a Pear Tree, in which each item is repeated as a new one is added in each successive verse until all items are assembled.

Therefore, the marital couple must be reminded quietly each time a new direction for specific sexual activity is introduced that this introduction of new material is not an indication that previous exercises and their concomitant pleasures must be relinquished in order to enjoy the new experience.

Rather, as each new psychophysiological concept is provided for marital partner assimilation, older exercises are constantly restated until the whole reactive process is assembled.

At this point, marital partners frequently may have acquired a gavotte-like approach to sexual expression when employing the directive suggestions rather than spontaneously incorporating each new physical approach or stimulative concept into their own style or pattern of behavior.

The marital couple will need reminding that on a long-range basis there is little return from clocking each component of the therapeutic pattern for a specific length of time or introducing each new exercise into their sexual interaction in a purely mechanical manner, solely because it has been suggested by impersonal authority rather than mutually evolved.