The Power of Sexual Surrender

by Marie Nyswander Robinson

One method of preserving spontaneity is to prevent love-making from always occurring at the same time. Evenings in most homes tend to follow a pattern. Supper must be cooked, dishes must be done, children must be put to bed. And then there’s television or guests. I have had many men and women defend the proposition that, since love-making tends to make them sleepy when it is finished, the last moments of the day are by necessity the time for love.

But this is making convenience a necessity. And love is too beautiful, too centrally important to be domesticated so. If it can laugh at locksmiths, it can also, once every week or two, laugh behind locked bedroom doors. Children have homework to do or a television program to watch, and anyhow, it is good for them to realize that Mother and Father spend some time alone and love to.

Dishes can wait occasionally, too, at least in the name of love. And a television program is rarely so good or demanding that a delicious sleepiness won’t improve it.

Desire often arises unbidden and for no apparently rational reason. Men are more subject to outside stimuli than women and are perhaps more uninhibited, so the inception of love-making at unroutine times may most frequently originate with them. But women, too, when they feel the urge should realize that they can initiate a passionate interlude and should not prevent themselves from doing so. It is proper and good that a woman should do this. And her husband will love it.

I am assuming that the partners in such delightfully off-hour trysts are sensitive to each other’s responses. What every man and woman must realize is that it is perfectly all right to say no if one is fatigued or preoccupied. But the nay-saying must be gentle, and if it is so and the partner who makes the advance is hurt, he or she must examine the rejected feeling, take full responsibility for it, and dispose of it. Holding onto such feelings causes one to fear making advances, and this will deprive the relationship of one of the best techniques for maintaining spontaneity. It is insensitive and unloving to force a partner by sulking or other forms of psychological blackmail to satisfy a need. It is far easier for the ardent one to wait; the time will come soon enough; the fact that you have announced your desire has a delayed reaction on your loved one.

Waking in the middle of the night, many men find themselves prepared for love-making, the penis firmly erect. And many women love to be awakened from their sleep to find themselves mistily, dreamily in the embrace of love; the body on waking is often very sensual.

Changes on the time for love can be rung in a variety of ways, and it is advisable to see that they are. Not too much effort is necessary; the hour at the end of the day when one is preparing for sleep will still remain the basic time for intercourse. It will need but an occasional switch in time to keep this customary trysting hour from losing its quality of ever-renewed excitement.

Another and perhaps even more basic technique for preserving the spontaneity of sex is that of varying the position used during intercourse. In most relationships one preferred position generally evolves. If this position is always adopted, the feeling of a monotonous repetitiveness can enter the love situation, and this must be guarded against.

This fact has been recognized from earliest times, and efforts to combat it have given rise through the centuries to a vast number of books on the subject. Hindu, Greek, Roman, and Persian literature record hundreds of sexual positions and animadversions, and if one has a library of erotica available and is sufficiently curious these positions may be studied. However, such a proliferation of detail can become exhausting and even morbid and absurd—though perhaps gaily absurd. Most of the modern books which dispense direct sexual advice obtain their material from these ancient sources.

There are only five basic positions which have real relevance to most couples. I am going to describe them so that when you encounter them or wish yourself to change from your usual position you will not feel that they are strange, awkward, or so exotic as to cause you feelings of shyness, embarrassment, or guilt.