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The Joys that Vibrators Can Bring to Your Sex Life
(05/04/2004) by Sex Over 40, DKT International
Is there such a thing as having too much fun?
Would looking for ways to
have better sex after years of good sex with your partner be sinfully
greedy? From the averted gazes, blushes, and giggles that so many people
produce when sex toys are mentioned, you would think increasing sexual joy
past some legal limit truly breaks a law.
Not so. By nature, human beings are game players and tool users. We enjoy
inventing recreational activities that enhance our abilities to do required
tasks: accurate javelin throwing and bringing down dinner-on-the-hoof have
something important in common. So, too, game-like sexual fantasies, whether
all in the mind or role-played with costumes and props, "tools" if you
will, are natural extensions of a healthy desire to heighten pleasure and
enrich sexual relationships.
Vibrators have a place among the tools that people use to improve their
sexual skills, increase their own and their partners' pleasure, and add joy
to their sex lives.
Near the end of the 1960's, vibrators came to market as a way to provide
women, especially non-orgasmic women, a new kind of intense sexual
stimulation whether or not they had a sex partner. Whether hand-held or
designed to fasten over the hand, a vibrator is simply an appliance that
produces a steady, rapid rhythm - at about 2,000 vibes or oscillations a
minute, far steadier and faster than the human hand. Most female orgasms
depend on clitoral stimulation, and vibrators provide the most intense
clitoral stimulation possible. Sex therapists continue to recommend them
for the not-yet-orgasmic.
In lovemaking with a partner or as an aid to masturbation, vibrators work
best as a complement to other sexual stimuli. Using a vibrator doesn't
reduce the sensual pleasure of direct body contact, of skin on skin, of
mouths and tongues, of hands or genitals.
However, repeating the same
sexual behavior can put you and your partner in a rut. If you rely for a
long time on a vibrator to reach orgasm, you can become fixated on the
vibrator's predictable stimulation, making it difficult - if not impossible
- to find satisfaction any other way. Even worse, should your pattern of
vibrator use cease to work for you, you could face a difficult process or
relearning how to be orgasmic.
The best advice: vary your sexual routine,
for variety is the spice of satisfaction.
Couples often integrate vibrators into their lovemaking to enhance sex
play, with the emphasis on play. "The point is not to have a relationship
with the vibrator but to use the vibrator to help create a sexual
experience," notes Julia Heiman, PhD, co-author of Becoming Orgasmic, in
the March 1996 issue of Sex Over Forty.
Experience It For Yourself
So what's it really like? Imagine yourself in the following erotic
situations, and if that deep-down flutter response is triggered, give
yourself permission to pick up a vibrator and go for more joy.
Bob and Laurie like to set a sensual mood every night at bedtime with
scented candles, massage oil, soft jazz, perhaps showering or bathing
together. They don't expect to have intercourse every night, but they do
count on their private time to give them a chance to feel physically close
and sexually intimate. One of their favorite sex toys is The Deluxe
Foreplay to Love System, a vibrator with various attachments, some of them
textured for all-over body massage, some of them for stroking her labia and
clitoris or for stimulating his penis.
Just knowing their evening ritual might include a muscle-relaxing massage,
along with intercourse or a vibrator-induced orgasm for one or both of
them, keeps the aggravations of the day in perspective and reinforces the
emotional closeness of their marriage.
"Vibrators are so perfect for orgasms that it's easy to forget how
wonderful they are for massage," writes Betty Dodson, PhD in Sex for One:
The Joy of Selfloving . "Whenever you vibrate, you are stimulating the flow
of blood to that area, a marvelous health and beauty treatment for the
entire body."
"Many of the products sold as toys are actually therapeutic for many men
suffering from decreased penile sensation and/or erection difficulties,"
said Barbara Keesling, PhD, sex therapist and author of Sexual Healing. For
this reason, Margie and Sid ordered their first "plain vanilla"
bullet-shaped vibrator from a catalog. Sid had found himself distracted by
how much longer it was taking him to become aroused. Worry that he had lost
the seemingly automatic hard-ons of his youth was making him avoid sex - a
sure way to make it even more difficult to get an erection.
It only took Margie a few tries to discover what Sid finds most arousing.
In between stroking, kissing, and gently sucking his genitals, she eases
the vibrator up and down the underside and around the coronal ridge (the
ridge below the tip) of his hardening penis. Margie always combines the
vibrator's rapid stimulation with caresses from her mouth and hands, and
sometimes when she and Sid proceed to intercourse she presses the vibrator
against the exquisitely sensitive spot between Sid's scrotum and anus (the
perineum). Other times, when Margie sits on top of Sid with his penis
inside her, he brings her to orgasm by stimulating her clitoris with the
vibrator. After she comes, she boosts his orgasm by touching his penis with
the vibrator as she moves over him. Even more surprising to them both, the
vibrator sometimes helps Sid enjoy a second orgasm with a soft-on!
Aiming For The G-Spot
One of the many specialty G-spot vibrators now available is designed to stimulate
what has been described as the G-spot located on the upper wall of many
women's vaginas - a controversial subject. (See the June 1998 issue of Sex
Over Forty.) The surface of the G-spot tends to feel rough to the touch
and, like erectile tissue in the penis, it may become firm and swell when
stimulated. Until Daron introduced a G-Spot vibrator into their lovemaking,
Sheila didn't know exactly where her G-Spot was or if she even had one. The
discovery brought her to a new level of sexual excitement and to entirely
different-feeling orgasmic experiences than she was used to from clitoral
stimulation. With the help of the vibrator, Daron learned how to find
Sheila's G-Spot on his own, and now he takes great pleasure in sharing this
new erotic joy with his lover.
These days, if Sheila feels more like having sex than he does, Daron
doesn't worry about performing. Cradling, nuzzling, kissing, and caressing
Sheila as she relaxes back into his arms, Daron watches as she uses first
her fingers and then the vibrator to arouse herself. As her vagina
moistens, Sheila spreads her labia and slowly inserts the vibrator inside
until she finds her G-Spot. Once in a while, the explosive orgasm that
Sheila experiences in this position, with Daron's loving hands on her
breasts, is just stimulus enough to arouse Daron, and he then masturbates
to climax or they go on to enjoy unexpected intercourse.
Try It For Yourself
The ways that vibrators can raise the joy factor in your lovemaking are
limited only by your imagination. You can play the watching game and, like
Sheila and Daron, find erotic pleasure in seeing your partner climax; you
can play fantasy games, with the vibrator a "stand-in" for an imaginary
extra player; you can experiment with perineal or anal stimulation. For
virtually any sort of stimulation you can imagine, there is a vibrator on
the market. If you and your partner explore the possibilities in a loving,
trusting, mutually understanding way, there's no downside - just more joy
in your sex play.
Marty Klein, PhD, a psychotherapist, Certified Sex Educator, and author of
Ask Me Anything: A Sex Therapist Answers the Most Important Questions for
the Nineties, urges us not to distrust sex toys just because they are
designed exclusively for pleasure. Klein reminds committed couples seeking
increased joy and intimacy in their sex lives that "it's good to consider
being creative. . . . Relax," he said, "keep your sense of humor, use your
experience, and enjoy the results. . . . Don't try to do it perfectly, just
do it!"
Product links: You can find more vibrators and vibrator information at www.Libida.com.
Reprinted from Vol. XVII, No. 6 (c) 1999 DKT International, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. All Rights Reserved. November, 1998
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