Advice to Women
--By Robert Chartham

         The days are past when the woman could lay on her back & just let things happen. Women are equal partners in lovemaking, but if they are equal partners, they must also accept equal responsibilities for seeing that their men receive as much satisfaction as they give.
         What is the object of physical lovemaking, apart from procreation? Merely to respond physically to our sex-urge is to indulge in what is described by that good old-fashioned word, not much heard nowadays--lust.
         Because we humans are thinking creatures, we are also subject to emotions, & the strongest emotion we are capable of is love. Some of the other emotions--hate, for example--can be expressed in such ways that there can be no mistaking that it exists. Love, on the other hand, is much more difficult, because there are various categories of it--love for the marriage partner, love for parents & siblings, love for home, etc.
         But it is not enough for a wife to just attend to her husband's physical comforts, to mother his children, to greet him with a kiss & embrace; nor is it enough for a husband to protect his wife, see that she wants for nothing that he can supply, & to be her affectionate companion. These are all ways of expressing love, but they do not express the closeness of spirit which emotional love involves. So how can we express our emotional love; how can we express it in a way that the partner cannot misunderstand the oneness of mind & heart which the couple truly in love represents?
         Fortunately, there is a way: When the man puts his penis into his partner's vagina & buries it deep in her body, reaching towards her heart with it, as though he would pierce it, the two bodies become joined as they can become joined in no other way; & in no other way can they so closely represent with their bodies the union of their minds in love.
         Because of this, I believe that men & women in love should use their physical lovemaking to express their emotional love for one another.

Frigidity & Pseudo-frigidity
         True frigidity is when a woman has never in her life felt any sexual drive, & has never in her life been stimulated to orgasm. Such cases, like male organically-caused impotence, are very very rare indeed.
         Pseudo-frigidity is the inability to reach orgasm during intercourse resulting from psychological causes (or perhaps "spiritual" causes would be a better term). The first reaction of most women who come to me for help because they are unable to reach orgasm during lovemaking is to deny that they have any reason at all, & certainly not a psychological reason, for withholding their orgasm, although that is what is basically happening. Some become quite worked up about it & protest that they are surprised that I can suggest any such thing.
         The layman, &, indeed, a good many doctors who do not specialise in sexual problems, have no idea of the power that the mind exerts over our physical sexual functioning. Men are as much at the mercy of their minds as women are. For example, fewer than 5% of all cases of total impotence (i.e. when the man cannot get an erection at all) have organic causes; the remainder of the cases have psychological causes.
         All cases of partial impotence--when the man can get an erection, but the reaction subsides during love-play, or just as he is about to put the penis in the vagina, or within seconds of getting it in the vagina, or, in a few cases where the penis will only become semi-stiff, not stiff enough to get into the vagina--all these cases have psychological causes. So have 98% of all cases of premature ejaculation--when the man reaches orgasm before he can get the penis into the vagina--& 90% of all cases of retarded ejaculation (when the man can obtain an erection & hold it for an hour or more, but no matter how long he stimulates his penis, he cannot ejaculate).
         Let me give an example of the ease with which the mind affects the physical functioning of a man. Ethel & George were not lucky enough to get a house before they married, & as Ethel's parents had a spare room, it was decided that the couple should live there for a few months while they continued their search.
         One Sunday, after they had been married for two or three weeks, while having a sleep-in they began to make love. Eventually they coupled, & George had not been in operation more than two or three minutes, when both of them were startled to hear a boyish voice near them, demanding, "Hi, George, what are you doing to our Ethel?" George reared off Ethel like a horse stung by a hornet, & they looked round to see Ethel's 8-year-old brother, Freddie, standing by the bed. They had been so engrossed in their lovemaking that they had not heard the boy come into the room.
         They shooed him away & tried to restart their lovemaking, having first made sure that the door of their room was locked. Fortunately they were young & they soon began to respond to one another's caresses. Unfortunately, within seconds of coupling, however, George lost what had been a very presentable erection before he could come off himself or bring Ethel off. No matter how hard they tried George could not sustain his rigidity once he had coupled. And so it happened every time they made love, though they took good care always to lock their bedroom door, & knew they could not possibly be interrupted. (Happily they were able to relieve each other's tensions by masturbating.) Not until they moved into their own flat five months later was George able to function normally again.
         So now, what about psychologically caused pseudo-frigidity?
         There are so many different causes, I can only list the most common ones. First, there is the woman who fears unwanted pregnancy. Though she may be roused & be brought to the threshold of the point-of-no-return, as soon as the penis is put into her she goes tense, & no amount of stimulation while the penis is in the vagina will give her an orgasm.
         Then there is the woman who has thoroughly enjoyed sex & may even have multiple orgasms, & who then has a difficult time during the birth of her first child. She would like to opt out of sex altogether if she could, but she realises she must keep her husband happy sexually, so lets him make love to her. But just because she takes part in lovemaking, that doesn't mean that she enjoys it. In fact, to prove to herself that she does not, she denies herself the experience of orgasm.
         Another quite common psychological cause for pseudo-frigidity is the wife's resentment of her husband. This resentment generally lies very deep in the subconscious, & when faced with it the woman will honestly, sincerely & quite fiercely deny it. But take the case of Maureen.
         Before she married Peter, Maureen had a very responsible job as a personal assistant to a very prominent industrialist. Peter also worked in downtown London, was more than likely to make his mark & was ambitious. He had been brought up to believe that wives should not have an outside job, that a man should be able to support a wife or not marry. Because she loved him, Maureen happily gave up her job.
         For the first 18 months, their sex lives were happy & satisfying. Then she developed pseudo-frigidity. Their doctor told them this happened sometimes, & that she would be all right again if she had a baby. She said she did not want a baby yet, but Peter insisted. After it was born, the pseudo-frigidity did not disappear.
         When they seemed to be on the point of breaking up, they came to me. I sensed at once Maureen's resentment of Peter, & when I put it to her she hotly denied it. But when I insisted that I was right & explained why, she agreed.
         What had happened was that after some months of marriage, Maureen had begun to be bored at home & wished she was back at her job. No sooner did she wish so, than she began telling herself that if Peter hadn't been so old-fashioned & forbidden her to work, she might now be a junior executive herself, with a bright future before her. This sparked off her resentment which grew stronger the more successful in business Peter became. It increased even more after the baby was born, because she felt trapped.
         In her resentment, she decided to punish Peter by preventing him from satisfying her sexually. She determined to make him feel sexually inadequate.
         Taking Peter to one side I explained all this to him, & he was horrified.
         "But if I'd known she was as keen on her job as all that, I wouldn't have asked her to give it up," he exclaimed. "What's to be done?"
         "I suggest you tell her now that if she wants to go back to work, as soon as the baby is weaned you'll engage a nanny," I said.
         He did so, & the effect was dramatic. Within a day or two Maureen's pseudo-frigidity had disappeared. But she never did return to work. Just the knowledge that she could do so if she wished was enough to remove her resentment & her desire to punish Peter.
         The chief thing to remember is that all pseudo-frigidity can be "cured" if the victim is herself patient & her partner is sympathetic & fully cooperative.

"My Husband Doesn't Know How to Rouse Me!"
         It may strike the more sophisticated as odd that nowadays there should still be young men who have no idea about loveplay & loveplay techniques. Mind you, there are equally many, if not more, girls who are just as ignorant, & far too many who are married to ignorant husbands & who go through life wondering what all this excitement about sex is all about.
         If the girl is more experienced in lovemaking than her husband, which is sometimes the case in this day & age, then she can gently, very lovingly lead her husband along the path until he does know how to make her happy. Every woman is different in her preferences, & there are almost as many feminine preferences as there are women.
         No man, however expert he may be, can possibly be aware of a woman's preferences, & goodness knows how many women are sexually unhappy & unsatisfied simply because they will not tell or show their partners what they would like to have done. If only they realised how grateful their partners would be for the opportunity to make themselves even better lovers than they already are, they would not hesitate for a moment!
         There is rarely any need for a woman to be sexually frustrated because of her partner's faulty techniques, or techniques that do not do anything for her. There is need for a certain amount of intelligent guile to be used, so as not to offend her partner's masculine pride, but if the woman is at all experienced she should be able to sum up pretty well how to handle her problem.
         The main thing, in problems such as this, is to avoid wounding the partner's self-respect. Of course, all this could be avoided if only couples were frank with one another from the start, & I am quite sure that most such difficulties would disappear once both women & men accept the fact that they have equal responsibilities when making love, to see that the partner is both satisfying & satisfied.

Communicate, Communicate!
         A couple making love should be alive, with a quality of aliveness that they display in no other activity.
         Talking during lovemaking should not just be confined to putting the partner right about how he is doing, it should also include appreciation for the sensation he is producing in you & that you are producing in him. I think there must be very few indeed who do express their appreciation during lovemaking, who do not find it extremely stimulating. There is no need to go into long & flowing compliments, nor to keep up a constant flow, but a fairly often repeated, "Yes, yes!" or "That's terrific", or "Go on doing that", or "You're wonderful" is quite sufficient to add many degrees of physical pleasure through the mental stimulus they provide.
         Don't confine your words of appreciation to his techniques: Admire his body, too. He will gratefully respond because you have admired his manhood, & made him feel really good by flattering his sexual ego, & he will reciprocate in kind, & you will feel good, too.
         But while, in my view, it is essential that a couple should talk while having sex & about sex, it is most essential when they run into sexual difficulties. This can happen occasionally even in the happiest relationships. It is surprising, however, even when a couple have been used to talking about their lovemaking, how they are somehow inhibited from discussing their own or their partner's little problems. As a consequence, the longer they hesitate to bring what is worrying them out into the open, the more difficult it is to reach the ultimate solution.
         Nearly all sexual difficulties can be dispelled by the cooperation of a patient & understanding partner. But no partner can cooperate if the one with the difficulty will not talk about it. And when they do talk, it must be as fully & as frankly as possible. The couple who do not customarily talk about sex must make a real effort to do so if they do run up against a problem, & this applies especially to the late middle-aged because they can more easily drop out of sex than younger couples, & blight what should be the happy evening of their lives.
         May I beg you, then, never to refuse to talk to your husband about any aspect of sex? May I beg you, equally earnestly, to make him talk to you if he shows no signs of doing so himself? Get into the habit of doing this from the first moment that your relationship looks like it's becoming a permanent one; don't put it off until you are married; because the younger you are the easier it is.
         If you are already clocking up several years of married life & have not yet begun to talk, please don't hesitate a moment longer. Please believe me, it is merely a matter of overcoming initial embarrassment, of taking the plunge. Once you have jumped in, you will be wondering whatever it was that held you back!
         Remember the slogan for all couples with regard to sex: Communicate, communicate, communicate! God bless you with happy, inspired communication in all areas of your life!