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How can I make love when I can’t even make a living? Do you think I am just supposed to be able to forget everything else once we are in bed?

WIFE

“To hell with the whole damn government!” said the husband to the anchorman for the evening news. He used the remote control as if it were a small pistol and shot off the television. “New tax system, my foot. Get the little guy every time. Screw ‘em,” he finished as he turned his attention to the sports section of the newspaper that had actually been left in the family room for two days.

His wife sat alone at the dining-room table, four plates around her empty, but hers more than half full. The family dog looked up at her and, with a grunt and a long sigh, finally gave up his vigil and curled in the corner to sleep. Minutes before, the woman had been waitress, busboy, and encounter-group leader, refereeing several mini-conflicts between her three children while her husband talked at her about his day at work.

“Yes, thank you, my sore shoulder is feeling much better,” answered the deserted wife and mother to no one. “Oh yes, my day was very busy. No, that tooth did not need a cap. As a matter of fact, the dentist had sex with me three times. He drilled me, filled me, and thrilled me.”

“Did you say something, honey?” asked the husband without looking up from his newspaper. Of course, he knew she had said something, but he had learned that by asking this question, he would not have to listen to her response.

“No, not really” was the answer he had expected and received. “Bye, Mom!” she heard from one of her three children. Voice changes accompanying adolescence made identification of the exiting child almost impossible.

“Where are you going?” yelled the mother as rapidly as she could. It was too late; the side door slammed before the words were out of her mouth. Sometime ago, she would have run to the door and demanded an accounting, or an apology for rudeness. This time she remained seated. She folded her arms in front of her, rested her head on her arms, and began to cry.

She must have fallen asleep, because she was startled to awareness by two cold hands up her sweatshirt, one cupping each breast. “How ’bout some action, sweet cheeks. The kids out for a while?”

His erection pushed against her left arm through his jeans. She wondered if he had become aroused by his successful shooting of the anchorperson, the stimulation of days-old baseball scores, or the fact that he had a few minutes before his softball game with the guys.

“Maybe later. I’ve got to get this table cleared off,” she bargained.

“That’s just what I mean. We have no spontaneity in our sex life. You’re always so inhibited. Can’t you just let go? Every sex manual in the world tells you to let go.” The husband was angry, frustrated, and knew that he would be too tired later for sex after a night with the guys lying about work, sports, and their sex life.

The wife had learned that, for her husband, “to let go” meant to respond to his needs whenever they arose. His needs never seemed to arise in response to her, but had a life of their own. She unzipped his fly, rubbed his penis vigorously, and looked up at him standing beside her. She knew this would not take long.

As he finished, he asked her hurriedly, “Where did you put the tissues? The kids could come home any minute.”

“In the drawer by the knives,” she said, wondering why she was thinking of knives at this moment.

“Now, you see? We can have a quickie. We can let go. See what I mean?” he said as he prepared to ask his wife about the location of his baseball glove.

“It’s in the trunk of your car,” she said, using her well-developed one-directional family mental telepathy.

“Bye!” he said. As the door slammed, she looked at the remote-control device on the family-room floor and wondered if it worked on husbands as well as anchorpersons.

This scene and its finite variations were reported by the thousand couples. It is an explicit sex scene, containing every element necessary to understand the sexual problem that brought this couple to my clinic. The husband complained that his wife was “frigid, always distracted, and not orgasmic.” The wife reluctantly reported in confidence that her husband was a “premature ejaculator” and that she felt “totally asexual.” They had read the sex manuals, had been to two sex therapists over the past three years, and, by the husband’s report, “even tried one of those adult hotels with the mirrors, but it wasn’t much.”

The couple had been taught postures and techniques. They had been shown films. They were given some special cream to numb the husband’s penis so he could “last longer.” They had been taught to look for the wife’s “G spot,” in hopes that its discovery would free her for sexual bliss. They had not been taught that it was their system, not their sex, that was their problem.

Take the following sexual system test with your partner. Make time to discuss each issue. Sexual problems are disorders of a system, a disruption of natural flow between marital partners, and between the marriage and the rest of the world. The Chinese refer to the natural flow of life as the Tao, and there is a Tao of marital sex. When our major reproductive organ, our brain, does not function with the “sexual Tao” of the marriage, we experience sexual disease. Super marital sex depends upon establishing a flow, an ease within the system that the couple I am describing has lost.

The test you are about to take is based on what we know about natural systems. Worry less about your actual score on this test and focus instead on the interaction with your partner as you examine each item. Before you put away the dishes or go to the Softball game, sit down and see what is meant by “going with the flow.”

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