[Two Pronged] I want my girlfriend to be hornier

Rappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr Margarita Holmes. Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in 3 continents, he has been training with Dr Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives. Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer: 

Just call me Mr. E.  I’m 25 years old, working in a government unit. I just want to ask for advice regarding sexual matters. I have a girlfriend and we’re almost 7 years in this relationship, and having sex.

Doc, at my age, I want to make it more exciting because I’ve noticed it’s getting boring whenever we do that…and she’s not that sexually active.

 I just want to ask if there’s anything I can do so that my girlfriend will enjoy it very much. Or is there any supplement that will help us that suits our age. As I observed, those supplements are for ages 40 and up, and only for males. 

Are there also supplements for our age that can also be used by my girlfriend? 

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Dear E,

Thank you for your email. 

Your account of your situation leaves me uncertain as to your motivation: is your concern for your girlfriend (let’s call her Emma) genuine or are you looking for a shortcut to greater sexual gratification for yourself (and if she also benefits, that is just a bonus)?

You say that you, not Emma, find sex boring and that Emma, not you, is not sexually active yet you want Emma to enjoy sex more. There is a definite dissonance there. 

Yet frankly, when it comes to supplements and other so-called aids, it doesn’t really matter whether you are selfless or selfish in your aims – because none has been scientifically proven to be of much use, except psychosomatically as a placebo. 

Instead, perhaps you should concentrate on something that can really make a difference: communication. It is not a coincidence that better communication figures so often as a recommendation in advice columns and perhaps not a coincidence either that you make no mention of it in your email.

So I would suggest that instead of looking for external support to prop up your shaky sex life, you turn inward and have a healthy discussion with your girlfriend.

If you can work on improving your communication with Emma, chances are that you will strengthen the ties of trust and thus love. This in turn will lead to a more receptive environment for reinvigorating your sex lives.

At the same time you can also work on your sexual technique. Have you considered that perhaps Emma’s lack of interest is because she is as bored as, or even more bored than, you with your bedroom antics?

There is an old Australian joke (actually, it’s probably an English joke about Australians) which goes: Why do Australian women fake orgasm? Because Australian men fake foreplay! Like most good jokes, its humor lies partly in its closeness to the truth for most people.

Sex offers a wonderful multiplicity of choices and if boredom has set in, it is more likely to be a result of the limited vision of the participants than their exhaustion of its myriad options.

Compare it to food. Most people will eventually become jaded if constantly confronted by the same boring series of dishes. If however their palates can be titillated with new dishes or variations on familiar ones, eating can become as great a pleasure as before, if not even greater.

So, if you truly want Emma to change, make sure you offer her a good reason for doing so – better communication and selfless generosity of spirit are good places to start. Best of luck, 

JAF Baer

Dear E: 

Thank you very much for your letter.  I am in complete agreement with Mr Baer’s answer to you. Perhaps this is best shown by my also sharing a joke about lovemaking the Aussie way: 

What is an Aussie’s concept of foreplay?

(with accompanying nudge of the elbow) “You awake?” 

I hope everyone, especially Australian readers, knows I am merely joking.  Being a bad (or a good lover, for that matter) is not the monopoly of any nationality.

But I digress.

Before you asked about supplements for Emma, you asked “(Is there) anything i can do so that my girlfriend will enjoy it very much?” 

Actually, there is.

For starters, you can stop believing Masters and Johnsons (M and J), specifically most of what they wrote in Human Sexual Inadequacy (1970).

You see, M and J wrote that male and female sexual responses were similar and analogous. They looked at sexual problems through the prism of anxiety. M and J believed that removing the anxiety around sex would result in “natural” unfolding of satisfactory sexual relations.

As you can see in your own situation, that is not necessarily the case.  My feeling is that Emma is more bored (like you) than anxious, uninterested, or “frigid.”    

You see, E, men tend to start their response cycle with desire, which then goes on to arousal, orgasm, resolution…exactly the way M and J described the “human” sexual response cycle. In reality, this “straight line approach” [desire  arousal orgasm  resolution ] is true only for men, not for women.

The response cycle in women tends to be more circular, rather than straight as an arrow. It is also more ”interactive.”  

For example, if Emma is like most women, she needs to first be aroused  before she desires sex.  Her arousal triggers her desire. Her arousal is triggered by your desire to have sex with her (hopefully manifested in foreplay). This will then trigger and be further triggered by more arousal and more desire within her.   

As Sandra Leiblum says in the Principles and Practice of Sex Therapy, Fourth Edition.  New York: Guilford Press. (2006)  “For many women in fact, sexual arousal precedes conscious feelings of sexual desire.”

That is one reason foreplay is very important for and to women.

Most women need to first be aroused (the best, most straightforward way is via foreplay) before they want (desire) sex. 

I will be the first to admit that I do not know Emma. The best I can do is share what my training, research and clinical experience informs me. If I were to be asked to summarize the most straightforward reply to your question on how to revitalize your sex lives, I would encourage you to invest your time and energy first in communication and second in foreplay. This is far more important and effective than spending money and hope on supplements.  

All the best,

MG Holmes

Need advice from our Two Pronged duo? Email twopronged@rappler.com with subject heading TWO PRONGED. Unfortunately the volume of correspondence precludes a personal response.

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