Magnificent Sex

Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers

Peggy Kleinplatz, A. Ménard, Peggy J. Kleinplatz, A. Dana Ménard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367181376
• eBook ISBN: 9780429594946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Winner of the 2021 SSTAR Consumer Book Award!

What makes sex magnificent? What are the qualities of extraordinary erotic intimacy and what are the elements that help to bring it about? Is great sex the stuff that people remember nostalgically from the "honeymoon" phase of their relationships, or can sex improve over time?

Magnificent Sex is based on the largest, in-depth interview study ever conducted with people who are having extraordinary sex. It gathers the nuggets for remarkable sex from the "experts", distilling them into an attainable blueprint for ordinary lovers who want to make erotic intimacy grow over the course of a lifetime. Looking at factors including individual and relational qualities, empathic communication and the myths and realities of magnificent sex, this book offers accessible and evidence-based guidance for lovers and therapists alike.

It is replete with frank and often humorous interviews with straight and LGBTQ individuals and couples, those who are "vanilla" and "kinky", monogamous and consensually non-monogamous and healthy and chronically ill. This illuminating book explores the implications of the findings to develop a model that effectively tackles the common problems of low desire and frequency. The "cure" for low desire is to create desirable sex!

PART I

Introduction

How Did We Come to Be Studying Magnificent Sex?

I [P.J.K.] have been teaching human sexuality at the University of Ottawa and practising sex therapy for most of my life. One might think that sex therapists aim to improve patients’ sex lives. To a certain extent, that is precisely what we do. We see clients who have symptoms of sexual dysfunctions (e.g., erectile dysfunction, difficulties with orgasm or pain on intercourse) and we help to alleviate their difficulties. Sex therapists are reasonably good at it. Unfortunately, though, that is about the extent of what we aim to do. We take people who have bad sex or painful sex and help them to function normally – whatever that means – so that they might have tolerable sex. We are rather limited in our goals. What are we to do about that most vexing of sexual problems, that is, low desire or low frequency of sex? Low sexual desire/frequency is defined as engaging in sex less than 12 times per year (McCarthy & McCarthy, 2020). It is the most common of the problems encountered in sex therapy and conventional treatment approaches have generally not proven to be effective in dealing with it (Leiblum, 2010).

The state of the art in sex therapy stands in rather stark contrast to what our “competitors” in popular culture would have us believe about sex. The media are filled with images of “great sex”. Magazines and sex manuals are filled with tips, tricks and techniques for how to have mind-blowing sex. A quick google search will return millions of hits. Porn tends to make great sex look even easier. In fact, it looks utterly effortless. In the world of porn, all penises are hard; penetration requires no lube; a few thrusts are all a woman needs to be orgasmic; there are never interruptions, unless someone arrives for a threesome; and there is an absence of verbal communication, unless one counts moans and groans. Porn provides convincing and entertaining fiction, so captivating that it is easy to forget it is about as realistic as children’s fairy tales. And just like fairy tales, it leaves us with the message that dreams can come true. (I have no problem with porn, except in so far as my patients and students mistake it for reality and judge themselves as unable to measure up.)

Which Way to Erotic Intimacy?

The link between the vestiges of erotic potential harboured by clients and the anticipation engendered by desirable sex became apparent in my sex therapy practice in the 1980s. In late 1989, three clients were referred to me in the course of one week, each diagnosed with what was then called Inhibited Sexual Desire (or simply, low desire) subsequent to a history of childhood sexual abuse. I had learned by then to ask clients routinely about their best sexual experiences rather than focusing only on their current problems. This turns out to be a particularly advantageous inquiry in dealing with low sexual desire (Kleinplatz, 2010). I asked these three clients to describe the incidents in their pasts when they had been filled with intense sexual longings. For people who have no recollection of ever having wanted sex, such a question may at first seem puzzling. Yet all three of these individuals were able to identify memories of powerful erotic desires, of wanting more … though more of what was not clear. Each had been an adolescent, making out while fully dressed. Each conceded there had been no genital contact, let alone “sex”. If these individuals had felt their peak sexual desire had occurred while they were still virgins, it made me wonder what it means when we speak of “sexual” desire (Kleinplatz, 1992). In fact, it made me wonder what we mean by “sex”. Why do people settle for lacklustre sex lives when they have had a glimpse of their dreams? What would the “best sex” look like, if people actually had the opportunity to experience it? These musings changed my clinical career and led me to focus on helping my clients to develop optimal erotic intimacy, regardless of past experiences. More importantly, they led me to wonder about why so many people think they ought to feel “sexual” desire in the absence of sex worth wanting (Kleinplatz, 1992, 2006, 2016).

It was another series of events that changed the trajectory of my research career. In 2004, I was teaching Human Sexuality and one of the undergraduate students kept asking questions that came out of reading Glamour and Cosmo. She would compare and contrast messages put forth by women’s magazines with the studies she had heard about in my classes. She wanted data about “great sex”. That was how I came to meet A. Dana Ménard, then an undergraduate student, later to become A. Dana Ménard, Ph.D. She had a strong background in “hard” sciences and had already earned two scholarships to support her burgeoning career in bee research. It was perhaps her misfortune that one too many bee stings had led to an allergic reaction and my good fortune to begin working with her in studying optimal sexual experience.

In 2005, we began to study “great sex”. But where might we gather knowledge on the kinds of sex worth wanting? It was in 2005 that we and the Optimal Sexual Experiences Research Team of the University of Ottawa began our series of studies on extraordinary lovers and how their experiences might inform average people – and ordinary sex therapists – who might want to aim higher. It is these studies and their implications for couples, for therapists and for sex itself that we plan to share in this book. In parallel to the optimal sexual experience studies, Dr. Ménard, then a graduate student, began a program of research examining the portrayal of sex, sexuality and romance in the media, ranging from advice columns to romance novels to slasher movies. She was quickly amassing the data that demonstrated how badly the public was being misinformed about sex (Cabrera & Ménard, 2012; Ménard & Cabrera, 2011; Ménard & Kleinplatz, 2008; Ménard, Weaver & Cabrera, 2019).

What Is the Plan of This Book and for Whom Is It Intended?

This book begins with an overview of our studies and will provide some background as to why we undertook them (Chapter 1). Although the fields of sex research in general and sex therapy in particular have amassed a great deal of information on bad or “dysfunctional” sex and average or “functional” sex, the literature on “great sex” or magnificent sex is close to non-existent. Our empirical work, we hope, will begin to change that. We then describe precisely how we undertook the research, recruited participants and which questions we asked to help us find meaningful and clinically useful answers. In short, in order to study optimal sexual experience, we needed data as to what “great sex” really is and how it resembled or differed from media depictions. The components or building blocks of magnificent sex are described in Chapter 2. Once we had empirical findings as to what constituted real-life, optimal erotic experience, we wanted to know what lessons extraordinary lovers might have to offer the rest of us (Chapter 3). In Chapter 3, we will contrast the reality of extraordinary erotic intimacy with media-driven, misleading ideas about “great sex”. That is, we will expose and debunk the myths and expectations that so hamper attempts to improve sexual relations.

We then wanted to know what factors facilitate and help to bring about magnificent sex (Chapters 4-12). We defined contributing factors as widely as possible. We were interested in anything that might lead to magnificent sex across time, the qualities of the individuals and their relationships or some combinations. We inquired about everything from the distant past of the individual to recent personal and relational developments, as adult lovers become increasingly intimate (Chapter 4), to whatever partners might do immediately beforehand, in preparation for making sex extraordinary (Chapter 5). (No, it’s not about having the bed strewn with rose petals.) We studied the enduring qualities and skills of the individual (Chapter 6) and the relationship (Chapter 9) as compared to the contributors right then and there, during sexual activities which helped to make a particular encounter unforgettably erotic and fulfilling (Chapters 7 and 10). That is, whereas most sexual dysfunction/therapy research is concerned with the general factors that lead to sexual difficulties, we were interested in what makes sex magnificent. As such, chapter by chapter we will review the elements in the person, in the relationship both in general and specifically, while engaged in sex which contribute to optimizing erotic experience. We also sought to identify the skills required to make sex extraordinary (Chapter 8). In the course of our research, the roles of heightened empathy and superb communication stood out on multiple levels: as crucial building blocks of optimal sexual experiences; as facilitating factors that helped create anticipation and lead to magnificent sex; as an element that made the experience magnificent during sex. Therefore, we devote an entire chapter to empathic communication (Chapter 11). Surprisingly, although the view from the peaks of optimal sexual experiences is remarkably similar, whether from the vantage point of an older, monogamous, heterosexual couple after 50 years of marriage or a 22-year-old bisexual, polyamorous, BDSM aficionado, the paths towards the heights are quite distinctive. We will examine and consider the combinations of contributing factors which create multiple pathways towards more fulfilling sexual relations in Chapter 12.

We continue by discussing the implications and applications of our findings for lovers who want more out of their sex lives, as well as sex and couples therapists who might wish to help clients experience greater heights of erotic intimacy (Chapter 13). That is also where we will circle back to where we began: How can research on extraordinary lovers be of value to couples distressed over low to no sexual frequency/desire (and of course, to their therapists)?

Please note that at every step, we will be emphasizing the plurality of ways of being sexual and of discovering routes towards magnificent sex. It is no secret that the media portray “great sex” as the purview of the young, beautiful and able-bodied, in romantic, monogamous heterosexual relationships. We beg to differ. We have found optimal sexual experiences occur among the young and old, among the healthy as well as disabled or chronically ill and among people with every sexual orientation and proclivity, in monogamous and consensually non-monogamous relationships.

More importantly, this book will be descriptive rather than prescriptive. We will be describing what we have discovered and how our findings could be useful for those who are so inclined. We are not suggesting what anyone ought to do, let alone trying to raise the bar for people’s sex lives. For one thing, we promised one of the participants, an older gentleman, that we would honour his wishes (and besides, we agree with him strongly):

But in terms of how you go about doing it … I wouldn’t believe a cookbook. If you guys come up with a cookbook and you tell me to follow it, you would have to really convince me that there’s a cookbook approach where I can do this …

P.K.: Relax, we’re not planning a cookbook.

Thank heavens! My wife loves cooking. She follows lots of recipes exactly, often she doesn’t. But it turns out great lots of times. Some things can be done without fail. This isn’t one of those.

This book is intended for anyone who is interested in learning about truly extraordinary erotic intimacy and how it might be attained. There are too many people diagnosed with sexual desire disorders whose sex lives leave them feeling empty at best or alone and alienated, wondering what all the fuss is about. We are inclined to suggest that their low desire may be evidence of good judgment. We would not expect “normal” people to have strong desires for low quality sex. This book is for them. Their partners, who try and too often feel painfully frustrated and rejected might want to consider the possibility that higher levels of mutual erotic intimacy can be part of the solution to their problems. Or to put it another way, many patients diagnosed with low desire problems will comment, “If I never had sex again, I wouldn’t miss it.” We have yet to hear an individual who has had magnificent sex express such a sentiment.

Lots of individuals and couples in new relationships or who have been together for a while have a sense that although their sex lives are satisfactory, there might be something more out there. We are here to tell them that their intuitions are correct, to describe what magnificent sex looks like, and for those who wish to put in the time and energy – because it won’t just happen spontaneously – what some extraordinary lovers have done to improve their sex lives substantially.

The reader might be a person at midlife or older who is wondering if his or her sexual future is destined to be dismal or non-existent. The reader might be a virgin who is wondering what kinds of sex could be worth the wait. This book is for these people, too.

We are also reaching out to our colleagues in the fields of couples and sex therapy and education. The study of magnificent sex has important educational and clinical applications. Just as too much of what passes for “sex education” is really reproductive biology, too much sex therapy is oriented towards helping clients eliminate sexual dysfunctions so that “normal” sexual functioning can be attained. It is illuminating that after conventional sex therapy alleviates obstacles to sexual intercourse (e.g., erectile dysfunction; MacMahon, Smith & Shabsigh, 2006), patients still seem to maintain their low frequencies of sexual activity. Or they now report new problems, including difficulties with orgasm and low sexual desire. For the sex therapists, this can be conceptualized as symptom substitution, comparable to when a patient triumphantly quits smoking, only to begin eating excessively and gaining 30 lb. More to the point, sometimes the physical symptoms of sexual dysfunctions originate in the body’s understandable response to sex that is (or was) mechanically functional but otherwise uninspiring. Our bodies silently plead for sex that makes us feel alive and engaged in one another’s embrace; when that is not in reach, our spirits begin to decline, as does the desire for the type of sex that is available.

We are aiming to broaden the field of sexology by adding to our knowledge of the entire spectrum of sexualities, from dysfunctional to “normal” to optimal. We are especially hoping that a clear-eyed, empirically-based look at the farther reaches of human erotic potential can help to inform and expand our methods and goals in working in couples and sex therapy in general and with the most vexing of sexual problems i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Resources
• Bibliography for Relationships and Therapy
• References
• Index