Wise Readers, did we evolve to masturbate? Why are we so uptight about this, anyway? Can you become vibrator-dependent? How do we change our own feelings about The M-Word—and how do we tell our kids about it? And how much self-love is too much?
Read on!
—And Now, Extra M-Word Bennies—
From SPC Horrigan:
At the moment I reserve there will be many further comments to come (come, let it be noted this is a hard one to reflect on with words). Getting off ;) to a start, I wonder if fiancées should be happier with a future groom who masturbates rather than having a non-sexual male who’s out-of-touch with himself and can’t perhaps jump into gear bringing a little more rhythm and excitement into the sack if I’m making any sense here? When dating, aren’t women supposed to look for men who can dance and are more in control of their equipment - if one of the perks they are looking for IS better coordination?
From Sylvia:
I don’t have a question, just a comment I want to toss out there because I missed the survey and I think masturbation serves one more purpose. It keeps sex from turning into a chore. If my man expected every orgasm to come from me (loving the puns, incidentally), that would make sex into work in my opinion. I like my man to masturbate when I’m not in the mood. I encourage it. He pleases himself when he only needs his penis touched, and when we are together we touch each other’s emotions and bodies all over in an earth shaking way. It’s a win-win and he loves it, too. So three cheers, masturbation!
Duana’s response:
Dear Mr. Horrigan and Sylvia,
Thank you for the punny introduction to this Q&A. I was relieved to publish the national and Love Science data, let me tell you. And yes, I agree with your general point:
Masturbation is among the things we probably ought to *value* in a mate, whether we are male or female and regardless of sexual orientation. (Sylvia, thanks for one more reason…I had not read that one, specifically, in the research, but it makes sense.)
I had no idea there were so many benefits to autoeroticism before I began researching the answers to Albert’s questions. It really does appear that getting into our own rhythm helps us get into someone else’s, too.
Speaking of which:
—Did We Evolve To Touch Ourselves? And Why Are We So Uptight? A Brief History Of Masturbation, Shaming & Where The Vibrator Came From—
From Gillian:
Oh me, oh my!
Are we just that uptight as a nation? Europe and other countries seem much more relaxed about all this. And from whence came the notion that M. is wrong/dirty/bad/evil/makes you go blind/grow horns, etc.? (I must be American … I can’t even type out all the letters following “M”…)
Did it somehow serve our evolutionary psychology not to M? I can’t image how.
On another note: I was a little taken aback when the book I purchased recently for my daughter about growing up, adolescence, etc. (titled “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health (The Family Library)
While I’m fully AGAINST our young girls having early sex with their boyfriends, the hormones do surge, and when I think it through, M does seem to be a reasonable alternative …. because that abstinence thing, well, a lot of us have a lot of trouble with that. .
Duana’s response: Why we evolved to masturbate
Dear Gillian,
Write it with me: Masturbation. lol
Yes, Americans are still uptight about the topic. To wit, note the dearth of comments here so far, compared to other titillating entries such as penis size or do-it-yourself sex therapy; I can just about hear the crickets, can’t you?
And I’ll get into why in just a moment.
But first, let’s handle the evolutionary issue. Anytime there’s a worldwide behavior that is near-universal —such as masturbation— the scientific idea is that it’s somehow to our survival/thrival advantage.
Far from evolving to avoid masturbation, actually, we evolved to touch ourselves. It may have a procreative purpose, according to this link a Wise Reader sent me:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/07/why-masturbation-helps-procreation.html?obref=obinsite
Apparently, master-baters in the animal kingdom, including humans, often have *more* offspring…not less. And their offspring may survive and thrive more…leading the way to more offspring that create babies in their turn.
(Please allow me to pause and reflect on various cultural teachings that seem obsessed with the idea that masturbating will undermine procreation and ruin families. There is *no evidence* that that is true. Quite the contrary.)
Maybe the masturbation = more/better progeny boost occurs because the sperm of self-pleasuring males are less defective and more fleet of tail—the defective or slow ones having been tossed away. Maybe masturbation helps procreation by cleaning out any nasty STD’s lurking in a guy’s reproductive tract.
And (my thought) because masturbation in men *and women* definitely leads to greater pleasure, it may also help The Bond between two people sustain long enough to raise their kids…resulting in more surviving offspring. After all, there are studies showing that if a couple has great sex, they’re likely to be pretty happy *even if their communication is otherwise bad!* And clearly, it’s the unhappy couples who part, not the ones who think things are dandy.
Who knows? Nobody for certain…not yet. But I’m sure more science is coming.
Duana’s response: Wherefore the taboo? (And Whencefrom the vibrator?)
Now to your query: Whence and whyfore the masturbation taboo?
With everything of supreme survival value—such as eating and sex—people have created rules. Historians and social scientists agree that the taboo regarding masturbation began because of religion and a *misunderstanding* of certain religious tomes.
In ancient Hebrew writings, Onan was killed by God for “spilling his seed”. However, while many Jews and Christians misinterpreted that to mean Onan was slain for masturbating, he actually was killed for refusing to ejaculate into his dead brother’s wife; he would have sex with her per God’s commandment to provide children for his deceased sibling, but Onan would pull out before coming. The Bible actually is silent on the topic of self-pleasure.
Clearly, the Bible pre-dates the USA by several thousand years. And though you’re correct that the anti-masturbatory sentiments here are stronger than those in Europe now, Europe is largely where Americans got the “it’s dirty and dangerous” idea.
To wit, from the mid-1700’s, European doc Samuel Tissot publicized his beliefs that “self-abuse” would lead to physical and even moral debilitation in men, because he thought semen was made of blood and that its loss would sap the life force.
This inspired American opinion leaders like Sylvester Graham (yes, of the crackers) and John Harvey Kellogg (yes, of the cornflake) to decide that loss of semen from *any* method (yes, including intercourse) was disabling to men.
[Aside: I agree with Paul Joannides of The Guide To Getting It On that the evidence suggests people masturbated just as much as ever—they just felt guiltier. I also agree with The Guide that an appropriate response to Graham and Kellogg might include masturbating while eating corn flakes and/or graham crackers.]
By 1918, a medical encyclopedia reported the following outcomes of masturbation: “The health soon becomes noticeably impaired; there will be general debility…Next come sore eyes, blindness, stupidity, consumption, spinal affliction, emaciation, involuntary seminal emissions, loss of all energy or spirit, insanity and idiocy—the hopeless ruin of both body and mind.” (See Wood & Ruddock, 1918, p. 812; as seen in Crooks & Baur
Around this same time, 1913, Drs. Schofield and Vaughan-Jackson wrote in “What A Boy Should Know” that “The effect of self-abuse on a boy’s character always tends to weaken it, and in fact, to make him untrustworthy, unrealiable, untruthful, and probably even dishonest.” (Italics added. Redundancy, anyone?) (As quoted in Hyde & Delamater
Returning to Europe for a moment, let’s not ignore Sigmund Freud. He thought masturbation was normal among children—which is correct—, but that it was aberrant and a sign of mental illness in adulthood—which is incorrect.
Ironically, the Freudian diagnosis of hysteria was treated with what? Doctors using vibrators to get women off! Vibrators were invented to keep docs’ hands from getting tired when whacking off women. No, I’m not capable of making that up. Apparently, Freud thought it was abnormal for women to masturbate…but it was totally okay to pay a doc to do it.
Moving along to the (relative) present, as recently as 1976, the Vatican declared masturbation an “intrinsically and seriously disordered act”—“a perspective maintained in 1993 by Pope John Paul II’s condemnation of masturbation as morally unacceptable. Many fundamentalist Christians share this view” today. (See p. 232 in Crooks & Baur
And as I mentioned in the article, devices are still sold to prevent male masturbation—devices which bite into the penis if it hardens—just as they were in the Victorian era.
Which brings us to the present. Today, much science including Love Science shows that Americans usually feel okay about *doing* masturbation, but not so okay talking about or admitting to doing it. They wonder if maybe they’re kind of freaky. To the extent that they have been worried about that, I hope this article and the reader responses to the survey have helped. A lot.
Duana’s response: Sexuality books for kids and teens (Self-Love, Not Other-Love!)
Moving along to the book you bought your child, and the fact it showed a cartoon image of a boy masturbating: Ironically, my own children have that book and I felt ambivalent and a bit jarred by that image, too.
That said, I recommend the entire series, provided parents have previewed it to make sure it conforms to their values. The series includes these three books:
It’s Not the Stork
It’s So Amazing
It’s Perfectly Normal
Gillian, in short, science and I agree with you that self-love is far preferable to sexual intercourse with other people as children grow up; waiting for intercourse at least until one’s late teens is immensely helpful to human development in many, many ways. In our house, everyone knows that before high school graduation, the only sex permitted is sex with oneself. (I may or may not have said something along the lines of: “You can have all the sex you want—with yourself, in your room…”)
I’m not suggesting that all parents should convey my value system, but as a former LS article showed, it’s important for parents to communicate *their* value system and expectations early and often to their children about many kinds of sexual activities.
And I encourage parents to consider the many advantages of giving their kids permission to masturbate rather than to know their offspring may be engaging in procreative actions with others.
That brings us to how to assist kids’ attitudes…I’m going to take a break now and see if that’s something anybody wants to know more about!
—What We Grew Up Hearing About The M-Word, How To Overcome Our Own Guilt, And How To Tell Our Kids—
From Vincent: Dad said I’d go crazy:
Wow. What a touching article!
I can relate to Gillian on the fear of saying, especially discussing, the “M” word. I remember as a young teenager asking my father what it meant. He became a little hostile explaining how bad it is and how it would make me go blind or crazy!!!
Maybe he was right as I need bifocals to see and have been told how loony I am. Maybe I can start using masturbation as my excuse now, if I can get past the idea of verbalizing it.
I want to thank you for making a difficult subject more palatable to accept. Hopefully the fear or embarrassment can stop so people like myself can accept masturbation for themselves and their partner and have more pleasurable life experiences. And maybe, not pass onto our children the false beliefs we had to grow up with!
Duana’s response: How to overcome guilt about masturbation as adults:
Dear Vincent, thank you for writing. Unfortunately, many of us were told either explicitly or implicitly that masturbation is dirty and dangerous. Many of today’s guys, for instance, were raised by a dad who had read those Boys’ Guides specifying calamity for masturbating boys. That dad may have responded as yours did—passing inaccurate information and hurtful feelings forward because they didn’t know better. Or the parents said nothing, but conveyed shame and guilt via actions such as slapping a young child’s hand away from his genitals.
Your note reminds me of another one I received yesterday from a woman who wanted to know how to overcome the guilt now that she’s an adult. Sexuality is a process of becoming; we can change and grow all our lives in terms of our sexual attitudes just as we can about everything else.
How to overcome the guilt? By noticing when we’re having a guilty thought about masturbation, we can gently redirect our thinking: “Actually, it’s a perfectly okay thing to do. I am not hurting anyone by it, and may even be helping my relationship.”
And as you expressed, we can also interact with accurate information that helps us change our perspective. I’m glad this article and the survey responses were a good resource for you!
From Gillian: My parents told me almost nothing. What do I say to my own child?
Yes! I would like to know more about assisting our kids’ attitudes regarding M…a…s…t.. (well, at least I’m trying :-) What is the best way to introduce and discuss this subject with our pre-teens and teens?
At some point in my 1970’s childhood, I received the basic talk about “The Birds and The Bees.” But it was brief —very brief— and given purely out of a sense of duty. My mom just blurted out the Tab A, Slot B thing … nothing else … and then wasn’t open to questions.
So I am at a loss how to approach this with my own pre-teen to complete our discussion. I did not sufficiently preview the book, “It’s Perfectly Normal” (which contains the cartoon image of the boy Mmmmm -ing along) so I was surprised, embarrassed, and taken aback when my daughter tore into the box from Amazon.com and dove right into the book. I didn’t know how to address the M-thing and was relieved when my daughter simply turned the page.
What does science say about helping our children’s attitudes? And if there’s no science on it, what does Duana say …?
Thanks for a great article! I admire your fearlessness in writing about topics that make us … squirm.
Duana’s response: How/when kids learn to masturbate; and what to say when you don’t know what to say
Dear Gillian, that’s the spirit! You’re almost there…
Actually, it took me a while to be comfortable typing the word myself. But this article pretty much removed that hesitation. Writing “masturbation” many dozens of times will do that.
Thank God we’re not reliant only on Duana; there is science, and here ‘tis:
1. How do most kids learn to masturbate—and when?
Nearly every man and most of the women in the USA masturbate to orgasm at least a few times during their lives…but touching oneself (with or without orgasm) commonly begins in infancy.
One of our LS survey respondents noted that she’d had orgasms from masturbation all her life, beginning before she could remember. Scientific surveys agree that children are sexual beings and that they do touch themselves for pleasure almost as soon as they can reach their tiny parts. However, the intentional, rhythmic motions that are intended to create sexual release are more often found sometime during childhood to early adulthood—not in infancy.
And there are sex differences here: It’s mainly the women who begin masturbating to orgasm in adulthood—typically the early 20s—, whereas almost all boys have orgasmed from intentional masturbation by age 12.
That’s probably due in part to the different ways boys and girls learn about orgasmic masturbation:
Boys usually learn by being told or shown by another boy.
[Parents, if you find out your son whacked off with another boy, please try not to freak out. I could go on about the fact that this behavior is normal in most mammal species including ours; the possibility that men are showing their sexual fitness and/or intimidating other guys this way; the idea that most boys are trying to discern what’s normal and what their bodies will do, and that they often are driven by mere curiosity; etc. For now let’s leave it at this: When boys masturbate together, it’s normal, it will not hurt your kid’s psyche or body, and it has nothing to do with his sexual orientation one way or the other.]
On the other hand, girls usually don’t have anyone to learn from. Like you, Gillian, most of us are raised in almost utter darkness when it comes to our own bodies. I’ve even had clients tell me that they’d had intercourse a number of times, or orgasmed from oral sex before figuring out: Hey, maybe I don’t have to wait for a partner to do this for me! Maybe I could do it myself! At any rate, girls often figure out masturbation accidentally—or don’t figure it out at all.
2. How can parents be helpful about not passing the shame and guilt along to our kids? What can we do to teach them about this aspect of their sexuality?
Gillian, this has also been addressed by science. Studies have asked mothers about what sexual behaviors they’ve observed in babies-to-teens. These studies show that little kids will often touch themselves in the parent’s presence. As kids grow up, they develop self-awareness and an awareness of others’ attitudes, and they become secretive about touching their bodies.
What this means is that the best time to talk to kids about masturbation is not in the pre-teens or teens, but as the opportunity naturally presents itself during early childhood when toddlers commonly and openly reach for their genitals. Then, respond in the way that suits your values.
Most of today’s parents, while feeling some ambivalence about masturbation from their own upbringing, want their kids to know two things: There’s nothing to feel guilty about in masturbation, but it should be done in private (as a youngster I know put it, “You wouldn’t do it at the airport.” Indeed not.).
To convey both of those ideas, next time you see your child touching him/herself, say, “Touching yourself there feels good, but it’s important to do it in private, in your room.”
(Swatting the child’s hands away, making a grossed-out face, or saying “No!” will effectively convey the opposite…)
But if early childhood came and went without comment, the next-best time to discuss many aspects of sexuality—including masturbation—is now.
Gillian, in your case, your daughter is older and very likely has been maintaining privacy about her body for a long time. In that circumstance, you’re on track. You’re understandably uncomfortable broaching the topic, so you’ve gotten her a book that does it, and you’re open to discussing the book with her.
Your action in giving her the book and in being open when opportunities for any sexuality-based discussion arises conveys a powerful message kids need and want to hear: “Mom wants to help me grow up in this way, too, just as she helps me with everything else. I can trust her.”
Additionally, I would suggest proactively bringing up a topic of sexuality from time to time, since sex talks are not a one-time deal but should happen early and often if you want to prevent her from having sex with anyone but herself anytime soon. As an earlier Love Science showed, it’s the kids whose parents convey their values and expectations through a series of discussions all along the way whose kids wait the longest and have the fewest partners!
You might want to use a script, since this is uncomfortable. You could try saying this:
“Nobody really talked about sex with me when I was growing up. So I felt kind of ashamed of my sexual feelings, kind of confused. I want to help you not be ashamed or confused. I saw that your book discusses masturbation. That’s touching your private parts because it feels good. Masturbation is normal and totally okay. I wish someone had told me that. Is there anything you want to say about it?”
In short, thanks for great questions, Gillian. And—that’s a lucky kid you’ve got.
—What?! Boys Learn From Other Boys?!—
From Tom:
Dr. Duana said: “Boys usually learn by being told or shown by another boy.”
Okay, I finally have something to contribute. Thank heavens for single-name semi-anonymity.
And you know the above … how, exactly? Another survey, I hope?
I am not that strange a specimen, I don’t think. But I never self-pleasured as a child, nor as a teenager. Never, that’s right. Never.
What I did do, though, was have nocturnal emissions and very realistic dreams about cute women. So I knew what an orgasm was supposed to feel like and what would cause it. Namely, sex with a woman … not with my hand.
And holy crap. Having another boy *show me* how to wrangle my wiener? Are you kidding? I was thankfully not exposed to that embarrassment (there were plenty of opportunities in school gym locker rooms and sports teams, true).
The Boy Scouts Official Handbook (unfortunate title, that one) also had a chapter entitled “From Boy to Man” and it very politely discouraged us from wiener-wrangling: “You don’t want to do things that make you feel ashamed and less of a man … “, words to that effect. And that made sense to me. So I didn’t bother.
And how did I discover real sex? Well, it was a long time later … kinda like how you described it for women. In my 20s. But I felt like I was making up for lost time by that point. So when a girlfriend had pleasured me and I had my first orgasm for reals, I went home that night and thought “Damn, if *she* can get me off … *I* can get me off!” And the rest is history.
Other than that minor detail, I concur with the science as written ;-)
I only write this stuff because I am continually left shaking my head at what I read about how men are supposed to be thinking and what we are supposed to be doing. I think we’re a bit more complex and a bit higher-potential than what I see in the media.
Duana’s response:
Dear Tom,
Thank you for being so candid about your own experiences. It is natural to want to know about others’ sexuality, and I suspect that this article and survey’s appeal derived in part from that curiosity.
At bottom, most of us are seeking answers to a question some readers have asked outright: “Am I a freak?” Many people find it comforting to learn that they are similar to others, and I’ve heard from a lot of them privately that this article was especially helpful.
On the other hand, it can be rather unsettling to discover that one’s own experience isn’t the usual. But just because a particular sexual phenom happens a particular way for most men (or women) most of the time does not mean it occurred that way for you. Or that it *should* have. Or that you *should* masturbate at all, ever. It’s a choice, not a mandate; and the research is a description, not a prescription!
That said, the research is accurate. Indeed, the lack of scientific controversy about when/whether/how kids discover self-pleasure is a bit boring. No matter how you look at it, you pretty much get the results I reported.
So, to answer your query about whether I got the info from science: Yes, clearly! The data are diverse and plentiful, arising from research as old as Kinsey’s and as recent as the 2000s—and the studies agree with one another in almost every point—with the exception of onset of male masturbation. In Kinsey’s data, males reported masturbating to orgasm for the first time around age 12; today’s researchers find this age is likelier to be 10 or 11.
Other than that, diverse research methods are revealing similar outcomes. For instance, whether the research involves interviews with mothers observing their own children at a given time, or whether the studies are based on retrospectives from now-adults, or whether they were collected cross-culturally, the most common way for boys to learn about masturbation is from other boys telling or showing them. The second most-common way for boys to learn is from reading about it, or seeing masturbation in a magazine or a movie.
And whether or not people recall it themselves, mothers commonly witness boys and girls playing with themselves as infants and young children. These studies include mothers’ witnessing of children behaving in a way that indicates that even infants sometimes experience what looks very like an orgasm (sorry if this freaks anyone out).
But some people do remember, at Love Science and in better science, their own self-discovery of masturbation in childhood. To wit, some of the survey respondents here at Love Science told me about their discovery of orgasm or masturbation when they were kids (on the playground, in the tub, just by touching themselves, etc.), although it was not a question the survey specifically asked.
As a final point, in my opinion, it’s just plain sad that the Boy Scout manual of your childhood insinuated that you would “feel ashamed and less of a man” if you had masturbated. *You* didn’t masturbate consequent to that shaming message, but a whole lot of the boys who read that manual? Did. I hope they’re now past the feelings that such manuals used to tell them they *should* have…just as it’s your right to touch yourself, or not, as you will—and always has been.
—Can You Become Vibrator-Dependent?—
From Mona Lisa Smiling:
Thank you for this article. I’m one of the women who accidentally discovered I could give myself pleasure rather than waiting for another person to do it. I like not having to depend on anyone else, but I worry about becoming too independent. My problem is, I use a vibrator and I am afraid I will make it where that’s the only way I will have an orgasm. Or maybe that nobody else will be able to give me an orgasm if I get too good at doing it myself. Is my worry realistic?
Duana’s response:
Dear Mona Lisa :)
Your question is my fave—hands down!
When women are not orgasmic, the common helpful therapy is masturbation with a vibrator. Once the woman comes that way a few times, she’s then asked to masturbate by hand sometimes, since it will be tough for a partner to replicate the motions of a vibrator.
What this means: Yes, using a vibrator *every* time, *exactly the same way* each time you masturbate could cause you some trouble with a partner later on. And orgasming by your own hand the same way each and every time, even without the vibrator, can make it tougher to come with a partner, too.
Solution? Change it up. When you’re with yourself, sometimes use the vibe, sometimes your hand, and practice with different techniques.
Also, consider bringing the vibrator and Miss Hand into your partnered interactions. Then you can teach your partner how to please you, too.
Of course, I did hear from Wise Survey Respondents that some men are insecure about vibrators (and occasionally, about the woman’s own hand), viewing their use as a criticism of the guy’s prowess in bed. That’s really unfortunate—as one reader said, this is “just what my body needs”. It’s about *her* orgasm—not *his* ineptitude! Men seriously need to quit taking that personally.
Sociologist Pepper Schwartz said it best: “Gentlemen, this is not your competition, it’s your colleague.”
(If you’re lesbian, you probably won’t have any such attitude issue…science has long shown that women with women tend to have more of an ‘anything goes as long as it gets you off’ mindset.)
Another reader wrote me privately that a male sex partner indicated she must have a problem because she touched herself during sex…he claimed he had “been with 25 women before, and they all came just from penetration.” She said he was kind of taken aback when she replied, “And a lot of those women faked orgasm with you. The odds you found 25 women who come without a rub are zero. Even if you did find 25 magically orgasmic women, though, I note you are not dating them now. So let’s get back to what works for us.”
Brilliant!
Upshot? Touch yourself freely with various items and in various ways so you don’t accustom yourself to just one method. And when you do find a partner, try to get the partner accustomed to the attitude that always works: Whatever Makes You Happy.
Keep on smiling.
—How Much Masturbation Is Too Much?—
From SPC Horrigan:
Mine’s long, but let’s move on shall we. Funny how there’s so many gaffes with this one, I couldn’t resist…
Starting out, remember the golden rule about relationships, that like attracts like
and opposites repel. Couples can always stay together that share like-minded minded interests, similar tolerances, and match in their pursuit to remain committed and on the same page or map with one another.
Masturbation is important to sync up with if you truly feel you’re with your kindred spirit and you want agree on what it takes to stay together. If a couple is sacredly in love then it won’t be a long term issue to embrace the hurdle of what to do about masturbation and find sacredness with this also.
Matching and being aligned is key. This will help the two of you to communicate and stay on the same wavelength together.
There will be growing-pains as there always are in the YEARS to develop relationships, but with dignity, respect, and a desire to fill the relationship with as much pleasure that can be achieved it will resolve itself. I really think this is a transitionally newlywed adjustment to make for the most part….
If there is apprehension in one’s mind or too much repression then I think it will perpetuate into a bigger interruption than it needs to be. Look more on the inside when adjusting tolerance for this rather than looking to fix something else on the outside.
Be open towards possibility, this doesn’t have to be a discouragement, it can actually be an integral part of the pleasure experience in a loving and soulful relationship.
This isn’t about being right or wrong in a moral, religious, or ethical manner, it’s just about agreeing on how to share unending mutual fulfillment without it becoming a detriment to staying committed.
Final verdict: After thinking over Dr. Welch’s suggested advice, I think sharing masturbation intimately can deepen an interpersonal connection in a relationship.
Plus are you watching what they do? If they are pleasuring themself in front of you they’re showing exactly where they enjoy the best sensation.
The last issue to address is when a man might form an addiction with masturbation. I think of this as something similar to cheating, and reasons for cheating have to do with escape, or escaping from pain.
Speaking on the males behalf, men need to comfort themselves sometimes when they don’t feel appreciated for their abilities in this world. If a man hasn’t defined his own terms as a man and hasn’t yet risen to the ideals he has set out for to feel a man, then I can see he’d be hurting. Affairs, addictions and distractions are always quick fixes to temporarily alleviate feelings of inadequacy and displacement in not providing for what they enjoy doing with their work and their life’s vocation. For longer based couples with males who might be overindulging with their time perhaps masturbating at the computer; I’d say to make sure he hasn’t given up hope on fulfilling his goals and make sure he still feels a sense of promise in regards to accomplishing the milestones he wishes to accomplish.
Duana’s response: Sexuality’s journey; And how much masturbation is too much?
Dear Mr. Horrigan, thank you for an in-depth response. I’d like to elaborate on two of your ideas here:
1. Transitioning to a healthy couples sexuality takes time
I like your statement that ” I really think this is a transitionally newlywed adjustment to make for the most part.”
It occurred to me that the advice I gave Albert—to try to change his attitudes rather than his actions—is going to seem overwhelming at first given his heavy guilt about masturbation.
Few people would feel perfectly at ease masturbating in front of a new partner, especially if they were relatively sexually inexperienced prior, or had high guilt. I’m hopeful that Albert now has a new window onto some sexual possibilities that can assist him and his wife-to-be, but sexual union is an unfolding that can take many years—a lifelong journey, not a destination.
So Albert, if you’re reading this, it’s more than okay to *not* be okay with all this right now…or ever, if it really affronts you. (And if you do want to lay down the burden of guilt, please see my response to Vincent, above).
2. How much masturbation is too much?
This question arose in your comments, and also with a couple of our Wise Survey Respondents. I’ve even read other advice columns that warned against masturbating too much.
There are two problems with that warning, though:
a) I’ve never yet found a clear definition of what “too much” constitutes; and
b) daily masturbation—up to several times a day— is normal for many guys who manifest no psych disorders and who have good adjustment in their relationships!
So what’s too much? I think a useful criterion is whether the man is using masturbation to avoid partnered intimacy or if it’s causing dysfunction and distress in his life otherwise.
If a guy flogs the dolphin a couple times every day, but it does not keep him from wanting his partner and it does not interfere with his work, for instance—it’s not a problem. But if a man masturbates only once per week yet refuses intercourse with his partner, or if he touches himself so much he can’t stop when in public, or it takes all the time he would need for his job—it’s a problem.
Thank you all for great insights and questions when you could’ve just told me to talk to the hand.
Cheers,
Duana
If this article surprised, enlightened, or made you squirm, please click “share article” below to distribute to your favorite social media.
Do you have a question for Duana? Contact her atDuana@lovesciencemedia.com.
Related Love Science articles:
Masturbation in relationships, plus results from The Masturbation Survey: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/masturbation-marriage.html
Talking to kids about sexuality (why and how): http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/sex-kids-have-questionsyouve-got-answers.html
Using Touch To Enhance Partner Sex: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/sos-save-our-sexlife-or-do-it-yourself-sex-therapy-when-your.html
Q&A For DIY Sex Therapy: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/qa-for-save-our-sexlife-diy-sex-therapy-when-your-guy-has-ed.html
Using Masturbation To Lift Female Libido: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/what-to-do-when-shes-not-ever-in-the-mood.html
The author wishes to thank the following scientists and sources:
—Edward O. Laumann and his colleagues on the foremost modern sexuality survey in America, the NHSLS (National Health And Social Life Survey).
—Janet Shibley Hyde and John D. Delamater, for Understanding Human Sexuality . Also Robert Crooks and Karla Baur, for Our Sexuality. Everyone with a body needs a human sexuality textbook; these are my favorites, and provided the starting place for much research in this article.
—Paul Joannides’ The Guide to Getting It On! It’s the most fun you can have with a layman’s how-to.
—John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman, for presenting information on how couples use masturbation to even out common sexual-desire differences after the birth of a child, in their book “And Baby Makes Three: Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives ”.
—And if the relief you seek is comic, here’s an article from The Onion to tell what is/isn’t an acceptable masturbation fantasy.
All material copyrighted by Duana C. Welch, Ph.D. and Love Science Media, 2011.