Wives Denying Sex and The Porn Firewall

Here’s the situation…
After several months or a few years of his wife denying sex, the husband ends up seeking some kind of sexual solace in using porn to masturbate to. Typically he carefully hides this activity from his wife, because he knows the reaction it will get.
Sure enough though, eventually he slips up and she discovers the porn. Whereupon she reacts just the way he knew she would – with a huge explosion of rage. Porn, it will be explained to him, is demeaning to women, disgusting, immoral, wrong, disappointing, revolting and hurtful. It’s also very likely to be explained to him that his use of porn has now put the relationship back several steps, just as she was starting to feel like she could open up to him, but of course now she can’t, and it’s all his fault.
Thus The Porn Firewall is created.
Now I’m not mindlessly for or against porn. I can see benefits and concerns about it, and I do understand that many people have acute moral and religious concerns about it. But lets’ save the debate on the ethics of porn for another day and focus strictly on the direct effect The Porn Firewall has on the sexless relationship.
In a sexless relationship where the wife denies the husband, she’s reneging on the core agreement of the relationship and thus defrauding her husband. The defrauded relationship will only continue for as long as the husband allows himself to tolerate the situation. The primary unmet need of the husband is for sex, and this is typically drip fed to him by the wife with the express minimum to keep him engaged in a relationship with her. In short, he acts like a drug addict, and she acts like his supplier.
The unmet need for sex is a powerful impulse, and to keep a physically healthy male in an intimate relationship, but deny him sex, requires a heavy hand of control. Him actually sleeping with another woman and ending the relationship is a serious concern, but it’s also a big bold step for him to take. When he uses porn though, it’s a smaller less serious event, but it’s easily seen as a stepping stone to ending his sexual reliance on her, so she smacks it down as hard as she can. After all, if she lets him get away with using porn now, maybe in a few months he’ll be bold enough to push the limits a little further and visit a strip club, or meet someone for coffee, or start fantasizing about kissing someone else. After that it’s all a slippery slope to him meeting someone really serious and an affair starting, or him just leaving and filing for divorce.
It’s an old behavioral technique to smack down hard on a person making a minor infraction, to intimidate then into never even considering a major infraction. It’s exactly why when I went to high school most teachers would routinely yell at you to tuck your shirt in and straighten up your uniform. Late to class wasn’t even really an option, let alone talking back to a teacher.
Thus while The Porn Firewall will be framed as a moral issue, but the purpose of the Porn Firewall is to control the partner that wants to have sex through shame and intimidation.
So the question becomes what do you do when faced with with a screaming ball of feminine rage over possession of a small supply of rather vanilla boy-girl porn. I’m thinking something along the lines of “Take your pants off or shut up.” about sums it up the response. That will of course make her go absolutely ballistic, but then that’s what people do when you start breaking free of their control. So mission accomplished.
But importantly, before you push something like this to a showdown, make sure you’ve started the process of making yourself the best version of you possible. Ideally your Sex Rank should be higher than hers to do anything like this. If you’re a 5 and she’s a 7, the lack of sex is directly related to your lack of hotness relative to hers. A 5 husband sparking a porn showdown with a sexually denying 7 wife is going to end up a loser in the debate every time. Work your way up to a 7 or an 8 and it’s a much different set of outcomes you’re looking at.
If you don’t think “Take your pants off or shut up.” is going to work for you, try this one. “No.“  Then just let that hang in the air like a zeppelin of awkward.

Delayed Ejaculation: When He Just Can’t Orgasm With You

I had a long email from a woman who has what she believed was a unique problem. Her boyfriend couldn’t orgasm with her. He could orgasm normally while masturbating, and he was very clearly interested in her sexually, and in fact he was very pleasing to her sexually. The best lover she ever had… just no orgasm for him… nor anyone else in his sexual history. There was an obvious smoking gun in his history though – at age 13, he learned that he was the product of a rape. Which I think has to have been a bit of a mindfuck….
Hi there,
it’s called Delayed Ejaculation and you are not alone. I’ve had another woman write to me with the same issue, so it’s not unheard of to me and I’m sure if you start searching online with “delayed ejaculation” as search terms, you’ll find a ton more information.
I think in your boyfriend’s case the explanation is simple, at age 13  he learned about him being a product of rape and that scarred him psychologically. He’s physically fine if he can masturbate to orgasm several times a week, but he’s made this mental block of something along the lines of “I’ll never get a woman pregnant, and I can do that by not ejaculating with her.”
What he’s essentially done is “toilet trained” himself to “hold it” until he can get to an appropriate place to masturbate. It’s exactly the same thing as people who can’t use public bathrooms to poop, and they just hold it until they get home. They say they “just can’t” and have no real explanation for it beyond that.
So my suggestion is to is to have your boyfriend stop masturbating. The purpose of this is to build up semen inside him and make him increasingly trigger happy when he has sex with you. At some point, his physical need for release will just become too great and he won’t be able to hold it any longer. Male sexuality is a plumbing problem as much as anything; the more pressure built up the harder it wants to blow something out and ruin the carpet.
It’s essentially the same idea of denying someone a bathroom and telling them they have to pee on themselves. The will hold out for a long time, but if they keep taking in fluids, eventually they just have to break their conditioning and pee on themselves.
If this behavior of losing control with you and having an orgasm is repeated enough, it should become the new conditioning he becomes used to. Over time it should get easier and easier for him to orgasm with you.
This approach did prove effective with my other reader. Though I caution you that it did take around nine months before they had success. Mostly because they didn’t both buy into the idea fully at first, and because he repeatedly masturbated without her knowledge and lied to her about it. He was extremely avoidant about dealing with the issue and from the beginning I suggested getting a male chasity device for him, but neither one wanted to try it.
A few weeks back she wrote to me at her wits end and I again painstakingly explained to her he was lying to her about not masturbating. Once I convinced her she was actually heartbroken about it all and I believe she gave him a “short sharp directive” after that email. Eight or nine days after that I received a quite pornographic email in return describing a blowjob that resulted in the mother of all cumshots. Still trying to be avoidant, he actually tried stopping the blowjob twice, but she forced the issue and got covered in goo as she desired.
So anyway, that’s just one idea of the few that are out there for trying to fix Delayed Ejaculation. If it works great, if not, try something else. Do expect a little bit of a bumpy road, but it is possible to change this. Ironically, what we’re actually trying to do is teach him that you’re his cum-dumpster. Though I mean that in the sweetest way.
 

Testosterone Drop With Marriage And Fatherhood

I’ve been sent this link by half a dozen people, so I’m raising the white flag and posting it lol. Fatherhood Leads to Drop in Testosterone
Some selected bits…
Testosterone that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the boy or girl on his knee, reading “Goodnight Moon” for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops.
Scientists say this suggests a biological trade-off, with high testosterone helping secure a mate, but reduced testosterone better for sustaining family life.
The lowering of their testosterone did not prevent the men in the study from having more children. “You don’t need a lot of testosterone to have libido,” Dr. Kuzawa said.
“If guys are worried about basically, ‘Am I going to remain a guy?’ ” Dr. Worthman said, “we’re not talking about changes that are going to take testosterone outside the range of having hairy chests, deep voices and big muscles and sperm counts. These are more subtle effects.”
Testosterone does a boat-load of different things for males, so a drop in testosterone doesn’t automatically mean your penis suddenly turns into a vagina. It can simply cut back on a few areas that testosterone was used for.
There’s also a step down in testosterone after getting married as well. So marriage and then fatherhood is two steps down in testosterone.
My hunch is that a lot of the risk-taking and aggression elements in men reduce on getting married and then becoming fathers. Essentially risky behavior is aimed at finding and winning a mate, and then once you have a mate, you body plays a more conservative strategy and calms you down and makes you more responsible. It’s one thing to do some exciting dangerous crap to make the girls squeal and pay attention to you. It’s another thing to do that when you have pussy waiting at home.
However I would tag testosterone as far more associated with the Alpha Traits than the Beta Traits. So a drop in testosterone can indeed lead to an unconscious drop in Alpha behavior. Then once you add kids into the mix, you tend to need to play more of a comfort role and thus you natural attend to the Beta Traits. Along the way that Alpha drop and Beta gain turns into full fledged Betaization.
The solution is to be conscious of what is happening. You don’t need to have an overload of testosterone to consciously pay attention to doing some Alpha stuff. If you find yourself hooked on watching the Knitting Channel, maybe it’s time to break it up a little and find a channel with monster trucks, naked tits and needlessly large explosions with minimal plot development.
By all means do the Beta Traits, you have to if she is going to be comfortable with being in a relationship with you. Just pay conscious attention to having some male interests and not folding up and bowing to her every whim.
However if you do have very low testosterone, read over Hypogonadism and see if that’s you. If so, off to the doctor, you can’t game a medical condition away.
 

What Medications Is She Taking?

When I end up talking to people about the whole sex and marriage deal, I usually ask about any medical issues or medications – especially the birth control ones.
The husbands never seem to know what their wives are taking for medication.
Well maybe that’s an overstatement. I think I’m running at about 80% for knowing she takes medication. About 30-40% knowing what type of medication and maybe 5% actually knowing the name of the drug. 10 points to Gryffindor if you can get the dosage right.
Anyway…
The problem tonight was that the wife was what amounts to a total bitch. Via chat…
Athol: “What meds is she on?”
Husband: “Don’t know, it’s an anti-depressant.”
Athol: “What’s the name of it.”
Husband: “Don’t know. Let me go look.”
/cue elevator music
Husband: “It’s Demerol”
Athol: “Ah… that’s a pain medication. One of the stronger ones. What’s she taking it for?”
Husband: “I think it’s for her neck.”
ORLY?? She’s taking a Schedule II control med for pain and you think it’s for her neck? You think?? Maybe she’s a total bitch because her neck hurts and you don’t have a clue about anything!
Sorry about that, my nipples are a little sensitive today…
/activate Zen-like calm
Athol: “Yeah it’s a serious med. We would have to count every pill at change of shift for that one. Either she is in serious pain, or she’s faking it to get a serious pain med. Either way it’s pretty bad.”
Husband: “Okay, I’ll look into it.”
Seriously, just look in the bathroom cabinet and read the names on bottles if you don’t know. Then Google the names of the medications. You’d be surprised how much your will learn. Wikipedia is usually the best starting point for accessible information though there are other places online too.
Or you could just ask her. Or pay attention or something.
Anyway, not a bad guy by any means, just finding things getting out of control on the homefront. My suggestions for self improvement sifted down to the golden oldies. (1) Get in shape. (2 ) Rewarding positive behavior and reducing attention to negative behavior  (3) Make more money. I’ll hit on those three points over the next few days.
 

Morning Wood But Penis Won’t Deploy As Intended

I had a question about erectile dysfunction recently. It got somewhat long and involved but basically broke down into three pieces. (1) He still gets good morning wood, (2) a lot of medical issues and medications, and (3) awkward loss of erection when she was good to go, and she wasn’t wet enough when he was good to go. All very stressful and after a few failures, you start panicking that the damn thing is going to fail again.
The good news is (1), morning wood. That is a great sign that your penis is physically functional and capable of getting hard and being usable. You aren’t quite dead yet. Woo-hoo!
The bad news was (2), lots of medical issues and medications. There are a ton of medical issues and meds that will start hampering you from being the man of steel. I’m not going to spell out the issues for this particular reader because in the end we had about six different things that might be causing a negative effect. So in the end it’s really a case of heading back to your primary MD and spelling out that you are having trouble down there. Sometimes it’s possible to switch medications around and fix the problem early.
The trouble is most doctors don’t tend to ask as many questions as they could – they are all swamped beyond all reason these days. So if you’re in there for say a blood pressure issue and they juggle a blood pressure med around for a couple months and your blood pressure is in the good range they think they have solved the problem. If they ask you how you are doing in general, and you say “good”… well they think you are doing good. You have to say what’s really bothering you. If you say “actually since starting medication X, my dick doesn’t work so well“, they will immediately start problem solving that. Maybe it’s a switch to medication Y. Or just stopping medication X. Or whatever. But you have to advocate for yourself or you will waste the appointment time.
So what I can suggest a fix for though, is (3) the awkward despair that nothing will work as intended and no one goes to sleep happy. Because you have (1) morning wood, my hunch is with a little planning, it’s going to work just fine.
So…
She lies on her back and you lie next to her. Use a little lube to smooth things over at the start, and begin fingering her toward orgasm. While you are fingering her, she holds your penis in her hand and as much as she can, gently jerks and rubs you while you finger her. She’s probably not going to have a great deal of range of motion, but that’s fine. You just want her holding you and providing a little stimulation, she’s not actually going to be able to make you orgasm this way. Plus as she approaches her orgasm she’ll likely stop paying direct conscious attention to stroking you and instead turn into a slightly more erratic shaking and clutching.
The whole time this is going on, your attention will be focused on getting her off… and not on your dick. Once she orgasms she will be very wet, and you should be quite hard. You should be able to take it from there!
If it’s all in your head, then having this as a backup plan should take all the pressure off. There’s been plenty of times Jennifer and I have started in this position with me not even being hard, but by the time she is orgasming, I’m totally into it. It’s completely normal to need a little help getting warmed up once in a while.
The other option of course is something like Viagra. But before adding another medication, I’d be keen to see how the position above works, and if other medical or medication issues can be resolved first.
And the response via email…
You are truly a giant among men. Tried your starting position, solved a lot of my distraction problems. Wife sends her thank you’s, as do I. Still going to follow up about my meds though, spooky crap when you wonder if your penis is going to work, and more so when it starts failing.

Thanks again, Athol.
Well how good do I feel? I feel like I got the power!

Oh seriously WTF was that. Totally wrong video sorry. Crap.

Hang on.

I’ve Got The Power!

Phew. I hope no one saw that stupid Jem video. Though she is outrageous. Truly, truly truly outrageous.
Anyway…
I haz duh powah. Unwimited powah.
Low blood sugar. It happens.
These aren’t the droids you are looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.

Jennifer: LOL do you have a fever?

Athol: I do. And there’s only one prescription for it. More Cowbell.

Jennifer: It’s going to be a long night isn’t it.

Athol: Resistance is futile.

Repeat UTI Issue (You’re Welcome Baby)

Athol,

I found your website a while back and it changed my life. You have given me insights into how my wife thinks and using your advice has improved our relationship in ways I could have never imagined. We have been doing it like rabbits for several months now.

However, every couple of months my wife is getting urinary tract infections from all the sex we’re having. And to be clear, she’s loving all the sex like I would have never imagined. But I think she just came down with the 4th one this year. Its painful for her and she has to go to the doctor to get antibiotics. And the last couple of times, she has said that she doesn’t think we can ever have sex again because its so painful. Warranted or not, she also doesn’t want to become immune to antibiotics due to having to take them all the time.

I can understand her concerns, but I can’t live without sex for the rest of my life. I’d like some advice on how to handle this without damaging our sex life AND some practical medical advice on how she can prevent them from ever coming back because going to the doctor when they appear and getting antibiotics every time is wearing her thin.

HELP!
Hi there
(1) I would look into cranberry juice extract pills. They help prevent UTIs from even starting. You can google that and there’s plenty of evidence out there for it. You can buy them in most supermarkets.
(2) It may be a lubrication to roughness ratio issue. Chaffing can lead to increased chances of a UTI.
(3) I don’t mean to be rude here at all, but I have to mention it. There may be a personal hygiene issue there for either/both of you. Good handwashing and you doing the wash-your-cock thing before sex may make her more comfortable with the idea of having sex again.
(4) Jen adds…peeing after intercourse can also help to prevent UTI’s…you are cleaning out the works, so to speak.  No really…
(5) and Jen thinks of one more…does she take a lot of baths or use a hot tub/spa pool frequently?  This in combination with the increase in sexual activity can lead to more UTI’s.
Hope that fixes the problem!

Vasectomy Question

Reader email…
“You put some emphasis on ejaculating into the womb so that nutrients contained in seminal fluid can be absorbed by your female partner.

We all know that the primary purpose of the vasectomy is to eliminate semen from the ejaculate. But does the vasectomy also eliminate/reduce these other nutrients?

Coitus-interruptus has been our/my preferred choice of BC (and have been really successful over my 31 year LTR – only 2 kids, youngest is now 22) and had been considering getting snipped recently – if only for the benefits to the wife. Was not cognizant that semen absorption could be so critical to a LTR – but I wasn’t aware of a lot of relationship dynamics till I stumbled upon your MMSL blog (By the way – love the Primer!)….

Of course, now that she’s 50 (I’m 52), menopause is ‘just around the corner’. So soon, she’ll be ‘sterile’. So should I hold off on the operation? No, don’t expect you to answer the question (though your opinion is welcome). But I don’t want to ‘screw the pooch’ if the operation does more than eliminate semen from the ejaculate….”
Minor correction of terms first. The ejaculate is about 5% sperm, and 95% semen. So the idea of the vasectomy is to stop the sperm ever getting mixed in with the semen. So after a vasectomy you should ejaculate nothing but the semen with just a minor loss of total ejaculate volume.
What’s in the semen should remain fairly unchanged, though there’s also some testosterone in semen – the purpose being to trigger her sex drive further. Considering the primary production location for testosterone in your body is in your testicles, blocking the most obvious route for testosterone to get into her vagina by the vasectomy, I would assume it quite possibly reduces the testosterone that goes from you to her via the semen.
However, please read these posts…
And…
What you are rolling the dice on is… a handful of years until she hits menopause vs. the remainder of your sexual life. Having gone this far successfully as you have, I would beg you not to have a vasectomy at this point. You’re gambling two or three years vs. hopefully twenty to thirty years.
A vasectomy may very well turn out 100% perfect for you, but I simply see no reason to risk permanent pain or worse, when you could simply use what you have done until now or condoms for a couple more years.  Surgical is always the last option.
As I say in those posts – there is so little science on the aftermath of vasectomy that all I can offer is a hunch that it isn’t safe as they say it is. Many couples do just fine with vasectomy and love it. My worry is that if you don’t love it, well… you’re pretty much having to go back under the knife to fix it.  Even then you may be hosed…  (Wikipedia)

“One study found that epididymectomy provided relief for 50% of patients with post-vasectomy pain syndrome.

Orchiectomy is recommended usually only after other surgeries have failed.”
So… please don’t do it without extreme thought and your own research.
 

Husband Just Doesn’t Have A Sex Drive

I keep getting questions from women about why their husband just doesn’t seem to have a sex drive anymore. It may be something as simple as a testosterone deficiency.
See if any of this link makes any sense for your man.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypogonadism
If you both suspect it’s a possibility, then off to the doctor to get orders for a lab draw. A patch or a pill may change things a great deal. Even if your labs are in the lower normal range, you still may be symptomatic and can probably trial medication to see how it works. You never know until you go get checked out.
And yeah I know, guys hate going to the doctor…

Of course if he won’t go do this simple thing… well I’ve got a whole blog about not tolerating relationship choking nonsense. Works both ways, boys and girls. Works both ways.

Mirena IUD Side Effects Ended Sex Life?

I’ve had a reasonably long email back and forth with a reader. The key points being:
They are both physically healthy and he works out.
He’s been doing the Alpha Beta thing and it all seems fine on the that front.
There was a prior sexual assault of some sort in her history before him. She says this is why she doesn’t want sex sometimes.
She gets wound up by stress. Money-job-her mom issues.
The sex was really good up until their son was born five years ago. Both frequent and exciting.
After the son was born she got a Mirena IUD.
They have only had sex 30 times in the last five years.
They had a night out drinking together recently and the sex was amazing.
Spock: “An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
So we have a puzzle my friends, a puzzle.
It sounds like you are all good on the fitness and Alpha / Beta fronts. Just keep doing what you have been doing.
I think the prior sexual assault is just being used as an excuse – she’s clearly had an excellent sex life with you at some point, so if the assault didn’t matter then, why should it matter now? I don’t mean to stay that it wasn’t traumatic for her, just that it’s just being used as a red herring to justify why she isn’t having sex with you now. If she’s still having an issue with it, she needs to address that in counseling or something, rather than not ever have sex with you.
The money / school / mom issues, are all just general life stress. Stress may reduce sexual frequency, but it doesn’t stop it completely overnight for years on end. So we can discount stress as the primary cause of the issue. You can try a few drinks on the weekend to unwind, but a bodywork approach may be more helpful. She needs to make exercise a priority and you could also massage her. Basically get her out of her head and into her body more. She’d probably feel less stressed if she actually let herself get laid properly - but that’s all a chicken or the egg thing.
All that leaves are the two big changes that happened around the time your sex life ended which were, (1) the birth of your son and (2) going on the Mirena. Obviously we can’t trial the removal of your son to see if that has an effect (!), so I think you have to trial the removal of the Mirena.
Mirena is flagged as causing a loss of libido as “common” on a number of websites. eMedTV pg3 and Drugs.com. Plus hormonal birth control can change the type of man that she is attracted to through the alterations in her sense of smell for finding genetically matched partners.  So prior to the hormones, you = smell sexy… but on the hormones, you = smell unsexy. So her libido could in theory still be reasonably active, she’s just not turned on by you so much because of the hormonal birth control. There’s a 5% chance of lowered libido with Mirena as the FDA warning letter to Bayer states.
The Mirena lasts for five years anyway, so she’s about due to have it removed. You could try a copper IUD if she still likes an IUD as an option, though 30 instances of sex for one medical procedure is a bit of crappy cost/benefit outcome. You might almost be better off without hormonal birth control and trying condoms for six months and then see how things stand. (I am very much against vasectomy by the way, not a good option for you.)
Start with the Mirena as the key problem for now. It seems to fit the data and it’s the only thing you can test for. I’m not saying Mirena needs to be yanked from the market or anything like that, but if she’s in the 5% that get their libido turned off, obviously she’s got to get it out of her body. You have to be very firm with having that addressed, because if it is the cause of all this and she puts another one in…
…it’s five more years like the last.

Why a Male Sense of Humor Triggers Sexual Interest in Women

Athol,
Could you address what the attraction factor is in making a girl laugh? I become totally turned on by a man who makes me laugh and who laughs at what I say,too. Is this an Alpha trait? He is able to control and push my buttons in making me laugh? All of a sudden the guy actually looks more attractive to me physically! And when he goes from funny to seriously sexy with me I am a goner. Even watching the two recent videos (I Had Sex and It’s Business Time) I felt turned on while laughing!By the way,I noticed that many famous comedians have happy and long lasting marriages (Bob Hope,Jerry Seinfeld,Brian Regan,Don Rickles,etc.)
Humor is a very positive trait in that it demonstrates a high intelligence in the man. Almost everyone can get a joke when told to them, but the really funny guys are usually very bright. I forget where I read it but the average IQ of a successful stand up comedian is supposedly around the 140 mark. Also this explains why there are so many more male comedians than female ones as the IQ distribution for men is far wider than for women. There are more male geniuses, but also more male idiots, while female IQ tends to clump around the median more heavily.
High intelligence is also linked to high sperm counts and sperm motility which is of course a very positive thing from a Body Agenda perspective for a woman. It also demonstrates a lifetime of good nutrition and basic health as poor nutrition and health can eat away at the potential intelligence a man could have reached. So on a very basic level, a guy showing a superior sense of humor is advertising he probably has excellent sperm and semen and that sparks female interest.
Of course humor is just one facet of what makes up a man’s Sex Rank. I do remember in High School being fairly funny, but girls wouldn’t touch me with a ten foot pole due to my being painfully thin and without a car.
And in terms of comedians there are many that have happy and long lasting marriages. But there are also a very large number of comedians that developed their humor as a defense mechanism for harsh childhoods. Many die young and by their own hand.
But overall humor is an extremely positive trait. It seems to bridge both Alpha and Beta in that it’s comfort bulding in that most men that are making women laugh are relaxing them at the same time as they display their good mating potential.
So anyway Anon lady that gets all wet watching my video selections of sexy humor…. watch this and I’ll be right with you in a minute or two.