“Alone? What are you suggesting? That we old people touch

ourselves? That’s sick.”

It isn’t sick and it has nothing to do with mental or physical illness. You might—and many people do—think that it is wrong to masturbate, to stimulate yourself sexually. If you feel it is wrong, then it would not be something enjoyable, and doing things which are not enjoyable is not good for your overall health. But let’s not stop being honest here. The older you get, the less easy it may be to find partners to hold, to kiss, to cuddle, to have sex with if you want. One important option is to maintain sexual self-stimulation if you want to. It is something that people do, children and babies do. It is part of sexual living.

    ”I just can’t see having intercourse at my age.”

Who said anything about having intercourse? That, too, is an option. We should not just equate sex with intercourse. Touching, holding hands, being close, kissing are important sexual behaviors. All life is a cycle. Our teenagers should learn that all sex is not intercourse. They should be able to touch, to hold, and so should you if you want to. I’m just talking about your rights, not a list of sex assignments.

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    The Misunderstood

If I say faster, he goes so fast it burns. If I say slower, it’s like no movement at all. If I say stop, he keeps going too long or stops too fast. If I say go, he goes wrong. I don’t know. I’m just too fussy I guess.

WIFE

This is the wife who seldom feels understood in her expressions of sexual need. If she wants to be touched faster, she ends up being touched slower. If she wants soft, she gets hard. She feels that “if he really loved me he would know what to do” instead of “if I really love him I will teach and teach until he learns.” It sometimes surprised me how patient couples would be with their children and how impatient they would be with each other. All learning takes time, and sexual learning takes about seventy-five years. Even then, you are just beginning.

The Target

I feel like one of those blow-up dolls. He moves me around like a pillow, does it to me. Next time he wants to do it doggy style, I’ll just bark. Maybe I’ll sit up and beg. Maybe that will please him.

WIFE

This is the wife who feels that her husband’s pelvic thrusts are “aimed” at her rather than “shared” with her. Wives in this category reported being trapped under their husbands, propped up on top of them, or “attacked” from behind. They did not feel that intercourse was a dance, but more of a sparring match with her being the sparring partner. There was little sense of identity, even in the limited sense of “The Piece” who felt she was just “any woman.” “The Target” feels a loss of personhood.

The Caretaker

I’m the dorm mother—three kids, one husband, two dogs, one gerbil. I like the gerbil best. He puts out less crap than all the rest put together, literally.

WIFE

This wife has abandoned her sexual role and identity in favor of providing what she perceives to be “the rest” of her husband’s needs. She picks up after him, cleans for him, takes his messages, and sees to it that he enjoys his life. She may attempt to provide him with sex as just another of his daily living needs, but primarily she has infantilized her husband to such an extent that she feels she is parenting an adult child.

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I help my couples calculate a percentage so they can see what could be compared to what actually is. Watch out for the argument that “it is not how much time but quality time that counts.” That argument has never been a valid one, either in raising a marriage or in raising children. Both quality and quantity are required to nurture a marriage to super marital sex.

Divide your total MIMs by the 1,800 weekly available MIMs. For example, if you estimated a total of 180 MIMs for your marriage, after subtraction of the TV penalty factor, you would divide the 180 minutes by 1,800 for a “Marital Investment Quotient” of Þ percent. By the way, if you were near 10 percent, congratulations! The average MIQ of my thousand couples was less than 1 percent!

Actually, only 732 couples provided data for their MIMs, because I did not start using this test until some months into the program. Now that I have used this test with more than 5,000 couples in the clinic, the average is still less than 1 percent.

How do you and your partner compare? Take a look at each item of the test, including the penalty factor for TV, and discuss where MIMs are lost or gained. Does your investment of time reflect your priority for this marriage, or some out-of-control obligatory life-style robbing your marriage of its potential intimacy?

One last point about MIMs. There were thirty-five couples seen in the clinic program who were having affairs with one another. That is, they came to the clinic and, while married to someone else, wanted help with a sexual problem they were having in their affair. While there are several issues to examine in such cases, it is interesting to note that the average Affair Investment Quotient was 83 percent, based on the average available time of 120 minutes together per week. When these people were together, they were together! Being together was their whole purpose. One percent vs. 83 percent. And we wonder why extramarital sex (Type I) is so popular? Of course, I am using these numbers in exaggerated fashion and the mathematics are far from statistically valid. The point is clear, however, that time put in to the American marriage may be far less than needed for fulfilling intimacy.

Bonus: You deserve credit for purchasing this book and reading this far. Add into your calculations any minutes you are spending discussing with your spouse the issues raised. Did your spouse respond when you called to discuss the couple given the second chance? Add that time in, too. Minutes spent in therapy for your marriage do not count as bonus time, but any time spent implementing the suggestions or ideas coming from your therapy sessions give you extra bonus minutes.

You will have to make choices, not just lists. You will have to choose intimacy and super marital sex, because our society places marital time at the bottom of our priority list. You will never find the time. You must make it.

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