WHAT'S OK? WHAT'S NOT? Paul & Lori Byerly

Paul & Lori Byerly

We are often asked questions like "Is oral sex OK?" or "My husband wants to make a video of us in the bedroom. Is this a sin?" The reason we get so many of these questions probably has something to do with the fact that the Bible does not specifically speak to everything that a couple can do sexually. Many couples don’t talk about these things, and it’s not uncommon for both husband and wife to want to try something new, but each is afraid the other will be upset or offended. Our aim here is to provide a way for a couple to discuss these issues.

Where scripture is silent, we must look at Biblical principles to build outlines for what is, and is not, good for our marriage bed.

One More & I'll Go Insane!

The Snake Pit (1948)

That title should read "one more mention of high-drive husbands and I'll go insane!" A wife recently commented to me about her frustration that, while it's great that churches and ministries now discuss sexuality, it is painful at times for wives who don't experience the norm.

The most common scenario described here, and on other blogs, is that of the eager beaver hubby and the sexual sloth wife. To be fair, that is the typical make-up of many marriages: A husband with a higher sex drive than his wife. However, it hardly represents the whole of marriages.

Exploring Your Erotic Dreams

Posted by Tamar Love

It doesn't take much imagination to interpret the classic train-rushing-through-tunnel dream: It's about intercourse, folks. The train is the penis; the tunnel is the vagina. But really -- when is the last time you dreamed about rail travel? Our guess: a mighty long time.

But you've probably had dreams featuring water, houses, animals, or food, all in the context of sexual or erotic situations. For example, you may have experienced powerful erotic feelings while riding a powerful dream horse, or feeding a dream lover ripe peaches or mangoes. These images can be a little trickier to interpret -- but not altogether impossible

Men dream about sex

Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor


Credit: Phase4Photography | Shutterstock

No surprise here, men are more likely than women to dream about sex. And comparing notes in the morning may not be a turn on for either guys or gals, as women are more likely to have experienced nightmares, according to doctoral research reported in 2009 by psychologist Jennie Parker of the University of the West of England.

'The Joy Of Sex': The Original Hairy, Musky Edition

Nicole Cliffe

It came! It came! The original 1972 Joy of Sex. Thank you, Mohammed from Brookline, MA. May your positive Amazon ratings never go down. (Look at all the unintentional sexual innuendo we've already covered!) I especially would like to thank Mohammed for making my back-up plan obsolete: taking my mother up on her offer to "see if she can figure out what she did with her copy."

And now that it's here, and I'm looking at it, it's a little gross. But endearingly gross. For a much better and more exhaustive look at the merits and career of Alex Comfort, M.B., Ph.D., I would refer you to Ariel Levy's delightful New Yorker piece from 2009. For a wry fictional take on what it would be like to be the children of the book's authors, you should pick up Meg Wolitzer's The Position, in which the Comforts become the Mellows, and it does not go well for them.

Sizzler #12 Female Orgasms

I was kind of disappointed on my wedding night when I discovered that having intercourse with my husband didn’t give me an orgasm. I just thought that it would, why would intercourse only let him have the orgasm and not me, that didn’t make sense. But lucky for me, I had “accidentally” figured out how to have an orgasm by myself when I was a teenager and I just had to show my husband the techniques.

A lot of women figure out how to have an orgasm through masturbation (without their husbands around) and then they teach their husbands how to do it. This is not something to be ashamed of or to avoid. If you have been married awhile and still haven’t had an orgasm, then I highly recommend you masturbate and figure it out. Orgasms are totally worth it, sex is about BOTH of you receiving immense pleasure, not just him. He is going to like the fact that you can orgasm, it will help him to not feel like a failure and it really arouses him too when you start screaming and breathing heavily.

Is Sex Addiction a Real Disease?

Celebrities have made headlines in recent years citing "sex addiction" as a reason for their infidelity.

But is what's known to psychologists as "hypersexual disorder" a real pathology or just a lame excuse for bad behavior?

The issue is a real one, since there's been talk of including hypersexual disorder in the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), considered the "bible" for psychologists.

Do Priests Masturbate?

And more importantly, sin or not, does their job allow them to?
By Stacey Grenrock Woods

Giorgio Fochesato/iStock

Do priests masturbate?

Can birth control pills make orgasms more difficult to achieve?

Q: Can birth control pills make orgasms more difficult to achieve?I'm 16 and I’ve been on birth control for a long time. I recently started taking a certain brand, and all of a sudden my ability to orgasm went away...but I had been able to masturbate to orgasm before with no problems. So I decided to switch pills again to see if that would fix the problem...but nothing’s changed, even though I’ve been on it for almost a whole pack. Are birth control pills ruining my orgasms? Will I ever get my orgasms back?

Can women get a disease or get sick from masturbating?

I’m a teenager and I’ve never had sex...but ever since my health class, I’m afraid that if I touch myself I’ll contract a disease. I have masturbated, but that’s it. For the past three days, I’ve had a stomach virus and I started to feel better today...but then I found a small red bump on my vagina lips really close to my pubic hair. It hurts a little, but not bad. Should I be worried?

NCBI ROFL: Large penises and an evolutionary theory of vaginal orgasm.

Women Who Prefer Longer Penises Are More Likely to Have Vaginal Orgasms (but Not Clitoral Orgasms): Implications for an Evolutionary Theory of Vaginal Orgasm

“Introduction.  Research indicates that (i) women’s orgasm during penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI) is influenced by fitness-related male partner characteristics, (ii) penis size is important for many women, and (iii) preference for a longer penis is associated with greater vaginal orgasm consistency (triggered by PVI without concurrent clitoral masturbation). 

Everyday Sexual Assault

Laura Bates

Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project

Posted: 03/09/2012 00:00

Once, I was walking down the street when a group of men came up behind me. I didn't turn around. There was plenty of room on the pavement for them to pass by. But they didn't. They stopped behind me and one, suddenly, roughly and completely out of the blue, grabbed my jeans-clad bottom from behind and squeezed, pushing his fingers forwards and upwards towards my crotch.

I'd like to say that I screamed; that I put him in his place there and then and articulately delivered a cutting speech that shamed him into apologising. I'd like to say that I said anything at all. But I didn't. I gasped, I froze, and I felt the blood rush to my face in mortification. Then I stood there, silently, as they walked away laughing.

The Everyday Sexism Project was designed to document instances of normalised, everyday sexism experienced by women worldwide to prove the enormous scale of the problem. But since it launched five months ago, we have received hundreds of reports of women being groped, grabbed, manhandled, slapped, tweaked, pinched, stroked and smacked in public, usually by complete strangers. The area of focus is almost always the breasts, the bottom or the thighs - sensitive, sexual, intimate regions of the body. And the tone of the reports usually mirrors my own experience almost exactly in that the victim describes an overwhelming sense of powerlessness, fear, shame and embarrassment:

Your Sexual Legacy

Fathers are ultimately responsible for their sons' sexual development. It takes more than one talk--it takes honesty, courage and positive role-modeling.

Your son looks to you as a model in every area of his life. Have you ever considered whether or not you are modeling healthy sexuality for him?

I have spent countless hours counseling men whose fathers' sexual role-modeling was either absent or, worse still, destructive. The absent role model never discusses sexuality with his son. He doesn't know what to say about it, so he says nothing and hopes for the best.

This Christian role model has to be honest with other adult men about any lust issues in his life. He responsibly blocks the Internet, and he monitors TV and media intake for himself and his family. He is emotionally connected to his son enough so that they can talk about sex. This father is a good, general role model for male sexuality.

Men dream about sex

No surprise here, men are more likely than women to dream about sex. And comparing notes in the morning may not be a turn on for either guys or gals, as women are more likely to have experienced nightmares, according to doctoral research reported in 2009 by psychologist Jennie Parker of the University of the West of England.

In her study of nearly 200 men and women, ages 18 to 25, Parker found that women's nightmares could be broadly divided into three categories: fearful dreams (being chased or life threatened), dreams involving the loss of a loved one, or confused dreams.

"If women are asked to report the most significant dream they ever had, they are more likely than men to report a very disturbing nightmare," Parker said. "Women reported more nightmares, and their nightmares were more emotionally intense than men's."