Using Cosmopolitan for sex therapy is like trying to learn how to drive a car by reading the owner’s manual. Cosmo seems to think it’s all about pushing the right buttons. 75 Ways to Make Him Cum Through His Nostrils, 12 Sure Fire Techniques for Finding Your G-Spot in a Dark Closet, 45 Sex Tricks of the Himalayan Mongoose—it’s as if Cosmo thinks great lovers are double-jointed, ambidextrous plumbers wielding socket wrenches with 93 attachments. Magic numbers, elaborate maneuvers, hidden secrets that everyone knows but you—in the Cosmopolitan boudoir, that’s what it’s all about.
Above all, the Holy Grail at Cosmo is GREAT SEX!!! If you aren’t having it, did you know the girl down the street is? If you aren’t having it, why not, it’s easy! If you aren’t having it, here’s how to get it. Certainly this approach has been successful for Cosmopolitan; it’s the women’s magazine with the highest single-copy circulation. It makes you suspect that maybe a lot of women out there aren’t having great sex.
Well, if you’ve continued your sex life past the age of 22, you probably have noticed that sex is complicated. If you’re a 19-year-old male with enough testosterone surging through your body to overrule whatever good sense you possess and enough money to rent someone’s service, sex is very simple. If, however, you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, and get up and be able to look a significant someone else in the eyes, and you want to have sex, then things get complicated.
Great sex every time long term with the same person must happen somewhere. It hasn’t happened to me. But somehow in America that’s the expectation. We’re all going to win the lottery, we’re going to vote once for hope and change and it will happen, we’re going to make love like pornstars.
Intellectually we all know that even pornstars (particularly pornstars) aren’t making love like pornstars, but we still buy the Cosmopolitans and deodorant and hairpieces and cosmetic surgery to make it happen. If you’re not getting great sex with your partner there could be five to 15 or 16 factors at work, none of which have anything to do with how you look or smell.
He could need Viagra, she could need a lubricant, he could be emotionally withdrawn, she could have been abused as a child, he could have been abused as a child, she could be scared of performing poorly, he could be scared of performing poorly, she could have a cold, he could have gas, they could be scared that if they perform poorly their marriage could be over, they could be scared that if they perform well their marriage will keep going, she could be worried about money, he could be worried their son on drugs, she could be worried about their daughter’s marriage, he could be mad about Obama, she could be mad about Palin, they could be mad about the oil in the Gulf, the terrorists in our midst, the Mexicans at the border, the politicians in Washington. They could be mad about not getting the GREAT SEX THAT IS PROMISED THEM IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS!!!!
OK. He and she and we should all stop and take a deep breath. Maybe great sex will happen sometime and then another sometime, but isn’t it possible that we could make do from peak to peak with some pleasantly rolling plains? Do we really need to blow each others’ heads off every single time? What if GREAT SEX is happening but we haven’t achieved GREATER SEX?
If we’re going to have sex at all, maybe it would help if we were willing to make do with good sex, OK sex, even falling asleep in each others’ arms—just once in awhile.
