The Times, 4th March, 2006

Body&Soul

Agony and ecstasy: sex advice
by Dr Thomas Stuttaford and Suzi Godson

Q: I stopped the Pill three months ago but I have problems with lubrication and achieving orgasm. My partner thinks it's his fault; I feel defective

Suzi Godson: Though there is evidence that the Pill can decrease libido in some women, the majority of the 100 million women who use it worldwide don’t register a noticeably negative impact on their sex lives.

Since you had no sexual difficulties while you were on the Pill, I suspect that something else is interfering with your ability to relax. The brain is the most important sex organ in the female body, but if it is too busy worrying about the size of your assets, or even the size of your ass, it will ignore less important stuff like sex.

Anxiety is to arousal like wind to a flame and although I couldn’t begin to guess what is going on in your head, I do know that, for many women, the decision to go off the Pill often coincides with a growing awareness of the biological clock and a more relaxed attitude towards the idea of pregnancy. As if that’s not challenging enough, there’s the fact that, although most women are sure about wanting a baby at some point, they are not always sure about who to have it with or when. It’s a can of worms, but whatever is going on a little more conversation and a little less action will alleviate the friction this is causing between you and your boyfriend. As will a good commercial lubricant.

When it comes to sex, dryness is a self-fulling prophecy. You worry about not lubricating, so you don’t lubricate and, needless to say, you don’t reach orgasm either. In this situation the best thing to do is cut out the cause for concern completely and slather yourself in something slippy.

There seems to be two views on lube in this country. There are those, like me, who think it is the most fun you can have in a tube. And there are those who feel that using lube is an admission of failure, that additional slip and slide means your partner hasn’t aroused you enough, or you are in some way sexually dysfunctional. Total rubbish. Although commercial lubes are no substitute for real desire, they take the pressure off women (and men) who feel “less than” if natural lubrication is insufficient. And let’s face it, natural lubrication often is. It can be negatively affected by ill-health, medications, alcohol, smoking, tiredness, stress, childbirth, breast-feeding, menopause and old age. Sometimes it doesn’t descend beyond the vaginal canal and once exposed to air it can dry out quickly, so a woman can be wet one minute and dry the next, especially after an orgasm.

If you are planning to have sex and your genitals feel very dry, it is quite likely that you need more manual or oral stimulation, but foreplay feels better with lube anyway so there’s no reason why it can’t be incorporated into sex from the get-go. A squirt of the smooth stuff can transform clammy hands and dry genitals into wetter sexual contact and the sexy feel of lubricant being massaged on to your bits often gets the juices flowing anyway. You can pick up a tube of KY in any supermarket, but ... at the more expensive end of the market you could try Myla’s Tempt Me Exciting Jelly (www.myla.com) and, while there, check out its new vibrator, the C-Shell. If your boyfriend doesn’t get you going, that certainly will.

Take a closer look at C-Shell.