Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/248

 acutely aware of every genital sensation that she has or every sensation that she does not have. Her chronic sense of failure is at the root of this hawk-like attention to her reactions. Often this self-concern has been encouraged by reading books that emphasize the mechanical aspects of sexual love, giving her false hopes that somehow she is going to be able to solve her orgastic problem if she can only get in the right position, make the right movement, contract the right muscles at the right time, or teach her husband the right techniques.

Under such circumstances it is impossible for a husband not to react to his wife's hyper-narcissism. He tends then to put his awareness of her experience ahead of his own enjoyment. This is one of the prime reasons why the sex act for both of them has become anxious and dull.

In sex one's body can feel only its own raptures. Even the exquisite sensation of giving the partner pleasure is psychological and, by definition, important only when it heightens one's pleasure, not when it decreases it.

It is very important, therefore, for the husband to drop his self-consciousness about his wife's pleasures or lack of them during intercourse. In fact, both must start with a clean slate on this score, take the healthy natural view that sexual sensation is a self-centered, even selfish, matter basically. Overconcern for the other can rob it of its lusty spontaneity entirely.

This may strike a man as a new conception. In most books on married sexuality the mutuality of the act is the point emphasized; such books always speak glowingly of the pleasure one experiences in the other's reactions. When frigidity is present this "mutuality" can become a mockery.

A woman suffering from frigidity will be very relieved if her husband will make a gentle but blanket announcement to her that she is to drop her entire concern with orgasm