photo by Helga Weber

Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex. Each week, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg tells one lucky reader what their dirty dream means. This week, a reader asks Lauri:

I had this dream twice in one week and I would like to know what it means. I am not the sort of person to remember my dreams each night, so initially when this one was vivid in my mind in the morning I attributed it to stress at work or with my boyfriend. When I had the exact same dream a few days later I wrote it down because it made no sense to me. Here goes…

I was traveling at night in the rain to a baseball game in Oakland (I do not live there, but my boyfriend loves the A’s). On the way I stopped at an apartment I was unfamiliar with. I knocked on the door and was greeted by a beautiful man I did not recognize. I was immediately attracted to him and I tried to leave but a bright silver cord connected us from my chest to his. I gave up fighting and followed the cord until we were in a passionate embrace. I kissed the stranger like he was a long lost lover! We ran to his bedroom and made love, and afterward I went to his closet for a robe. I found women’s clothing and put on a light blue kimono. Then his live-in girlfriend came home! We hid in the closet, terrified. He went out to distract her but she found me. I felt terrible for hurting her but not sorry — I was in love. Then I woke up.

It is not my style to cheat or be a home wrecker, so I have no idea where these images came from in my brain!

Lauri: Your instinct that this dream was triggered by stress with your boyfriend is probably spot on. Your dream starts where you are driving in the rain, which is a good indication you have been traveling through life with a bit of sorrow lately as that is what the rain is, your tears (even if you only shed them on the inside). Your destination is Oakland, which you connected to something your boyfriend loves. Good job making that connection! This suggests that you are trying to reach a place in your relationship where your boyfriend will love you the way he loves the Oakland A’s.

You make a stop in the dream before you reach your destination because in waking life you need to stop and gather yourself because something is not going so well. The man in your dream is a part of you, he is a part of your self that you need to be attracted to and that you need to unite with (hence the sex) and utilize in your life right now. This is why you were connected to him in your dream… he is you, your male energy, the part of you that can be “ballsy” and stand up for what is right and handle the situation. Read the rest of this entry »

photo by Bogdan Suditu

Dear Em & Lo.

I’m a 48-year-old female and I can’t seem to achieve an orgasm during oral sex. It all seems too intense. However, I don’t have any problems when masturbating. I feel it is like… someone else scratching your feet… it tickles. If I do it myself, it doesn’t tickle. Is there anything I can do so that my man can achieve this wonderful thing for me?

– Don’t Tickle Me Elmo

What should D.T.M.E. do? Share your advice and experience below…

photo by gniliep

Dr. Kate is an OB/GYN at one of the largest teaching hospitals in New York City and she answers your medical questions here once a week. To ask her your own question, click here.

Dear Dr. Kate,

When trying to conceive, are there things you can do to try to tip the scales in the direction of one sex or the other, i.e. so if you wanted a baby girl you could increase your odds and vice versa?

– Gender Bender

Dear GB,

There are some theories about trying for a girl or a boy, famously laid out in Dr. Shettles’ book, How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby. These ideas haven’t been tested in large-scale studies (though that would be interesting!), so I’d file this advice in your doesn’t-hurt-to-try-it folder.

Male sperm are thought to be faster but weaker swimmers, so to try for a boy, you want to have sex as close to the time of ovulation as possible. Have sex the day before and the day of ovulation, if you can. And the best positions are ones that get the deepest penetration—him entering her from behind, or on her back with her legs pulled back—to deliver the sperm closest to the uterus. Best of all, female orgasm helps move those little guy swimmers towards the egg, so she should try to climax around the time that he does.

Female sperm, on the other hand, are slower but heartier, so to try for a girl, you want the male sperm to have swum off (or died off!), leaving only the female ones behind. The best times to have sex are two or three days before you ovulate. Your guy should pull out slightly when he comes; this makes the sperm have to travel the length of the vagina, increasing the chances that the stronger female sperm will make it. And the woman should try not to have an orgasm when trying for a girl (oh, the irony).

– Dr. Kate
Gynotalk

Dr. Kate is an OB/GYN at one of the largest teaching hospitals in New York City. She also lectures nationally on women’s health issues and conducts research on reproductive health. Check out more of her advice and ask her a question at Gynotalk.com.

photo by Gil Searcy

Advice from three of our guy friends. This week they answer the following: “What is the connection between sports and sex with guys? For instance, why were certain World Cup teams prevented from having sex while others are given the green light? Is there a connection between testosterone and the thrill of sports?” To ask the guys your own question, click here.

Straight Single Guy (Tom Miller): I was probably 13 the last time I participated in a sporting event of any importance and my parents really frowned upon prepubescent sex, but I’m a huge fan of sports, so here goes. Some old school coaches and trainers maintain a Samsonian belief that a guy takes his eyes off the prize when sex is involved. Seeking any kind of edge, they think that a “backed up” athlete will play with a chip on his shoulder. There’s actually a football player who puts Tiger Balm on his junk to get angry before games. The irony is that a guy gets a jolt of testosterone after he B’s his L (ejaculates). Suffice it to say, there is a huge connection between sports and testosterone. Competition and us-vs-them, especially when “us” wins, really gets the old Adrenal gland secreting. In other words, if a guy wins, he’s going to be really in the mood to have sex.

Straight Married Guy (Matt): The notion that abstinence before a sporting event gives you an edge — whether it’s a wives’ tale or not — runs very deep. In boxing and kickboxing it’s pretty much an accepted fact, and many people abstain for 4-6 weeks before a fight. My coach claimed that the concept was “scientifically proven with racehorses,” but I never bothered to confirm this with a more reliable source. The thing is, if winning’s important to you (and never is it more important than when losing means having your head kicked in), you will do anything to get an edge. I personally felt like I had an edge when I abstained. I’m not sure if it was psychological, but I wasn’t about to test the theory and risk losing that edge, imagined or not.

In any case, sometimes it was actually a little bit nice to be in a bar and not to have to even think about hooking up. Lots of fighters talked about the fact that women seemed more attracted to them when they were abstaining. Some claimed it was pheromones or some such thing, but I think it was just the dialed-back level of desperation to hook up that made them seem more attractive and approachable.

Gay Committed Guy (Terence): I’m no “sporty spice” so my views should be taken as whimsical conjecture at best. There is indeed a connection between sports and sex with guys — particularly in gay porn, but I believe that’s another topic. In the sports world they keep a certain amount of tension between desire and abstinence which seems to promote a testosterone-driven focus which is then richly rewarded after the victory with “babes” and booze. A kinky carrot-on-a-stick approach to be sure, but call it what you will, I’m not convinced women as rewards for the victors is the right road to be going down.

Our “guys” are a rotating group of contributors. Tom Miller writes the Tomfoolery blog for YourTango; Terence is an American living in Sydney; Matt is a little shy. To ask the guys your own question, click here.

photo by DVIDSHUB

Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex. Each week, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg tells one lucky reader what their dirty dream means. This week, a reader asks Lauri:

My husband has been gone getting ready to deploy for Afghanistan and there have been some issues with us thinking about the other cheating. We both trust each other more than anything and know that neither one of us would do that, but the other night I was the one to have an intense dream about cheating:

I was at a hotel with my sister and she walked over to a group of good looking young people. While she was conversing, one of the young men came up and sat next to me and started talking like he knew me. The next thing I knew he was touching me and trying to kiss me. I never kissed him but his touch was very erotic to me, and it made me want to go all the way. He took off my clothes and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to or not. He was on top of me and I kept thinking about how my husband would feel and how I would feel if he was doing this. Before he went all the way I checked my phone and it wasn’t working. Then I woke up.

What could this mean because I really don’t think I would ever take a chance like that even if it came to me?

Lauri: First of all, please thank your husband for his service.  He’s very brave and his efforts are very much appreciated!  Second, don’t worry.  Yes, cheating dreams – no matter who is the culprit in the dream – are always unnerving.  But rest assured it rarely means an actual affair is going on OR that you are hankerin’ for a hunk of “strange,” as they say on Two and A Half Men!  What it does mean is that a very common issue is causing a very common dream.  One of the most common reasons we get a cheating dream is when there is a physical separation between the couple.  When one of the spouses travels a lot, when you are in a long distance relationship, even when you sleep in separate bedrooms, the cheating dream will raise its ugly head. Why? Because of the separation, whether it’s distance or circumstances, the inner mind feels “cheated” out of its time with your mate.

Yes, that underlying worry that one of you may get lonesome enough to cheat certainly does play into the dream, but there is always more to a dream than what it seems so let’s look at some of the specifics of yours.  The hotel is a temporary place of residence so that means, deep down, you know your separation from hubby is a temporary place to be in life.  The man in your dream is talking to you like he knows you because you two are indeed familiar with each other.  He is a part of you!  He’s your inner male, the part of you that can man up when you need to, be assertive, independent, etc.  You must have had to put your male energy to use some time before in life, and now it seems you are going to need to utilize it again so that old familiar male part of you is back and ready to get busy with you!  With hubby away, you’ll be taking on more so-called male roles. If you have kids, you’ll have to play Mom and Dad for a while. When something in the house breaks, you’ll have to fix it. You’ll have to manage the bills and squash the spiders and so on.  Your dream is telling you it’s time to unite those old familiar male qualities into your life now, just as you would accept a man into your body.

What is also interesting is where the dream ends…  the phone not working. That’s a good indication that there is a lack of communication somewhere.  Have you not communicated all your thoughts and concerns to your husband?  Or do you feel there are certain things he may not be communicating to you?  Be sure to get it all out and on the table before he leaves so that nothing is left hanging and you two can have peace of mind… or at least as much as you can have in this crazy world right now.

Got a dream you want Lauri to analyze? Click here to submit it. Anonymity guaranteed! And don’t forget: you can get access to Lauri’s free Dream Dictionary on her site.

Media Bistro recently asked for our input on their advice piece, “How to Tell Sex Stories” — it’s part of their “How to Pitch” series (pretty handy for freelance writers who sign up for membership). They talked to many sex and relationship writers and editors, so there just wasn’t room for a lot of our responses in this particular piece. Below is our unabridged advice.

Given your experience contributing to the likes of Glamour, New York Magazine, Marie Claire and so on, plus your books, what is the key to successfully pitching an article/book about sex-related content to a magazine or website, even a publisher?

The hardest thing about pitching a story about sex to a magazine is trying to come up with something new to say about sex, or at least coming up with a new WAY to say it. That’s what everyone wants — even the women’s magazines that seem to run the same articles about sex just with different titles. We hear the words “fresh” and “not cliche” a lot.  The key is not necessarily coming up with a new erogenous zone or position or technique — good luck with that! — but just finding a new way to package/present the material so it makes sense to people in a way it never has before. For example, we recently wrote a piece on male and female sexual anatomy, and there wasn’t really any new information in there about anatomy itself — it was more the way we made comparisons between the various man and lady parts. It helped readers think about anatomy in a different way.

How should writers go about doing research, and in general, coming up with good, fresh ideas for their pitches so they don’t end up in the editor’s trash/spam folder?

Keeping up with the latest scientific and academic research on sexual topics is always a good place to start. And make sure you follow a piece of research all the way to its source, to get the real story, rather than just relying its write-up in a newspaper or magazine. Sex studies are particularly prone to being twisted into catchy headlines that promise more than the actual research found. (But the good flip side of that is that it’s *really* easy to find sex research online, because reporters love writing about it — and just because something has already been covered somewhere in a 300-word superficial news piece, doesn’t mean you can’t turn it into a longer feature or advice article.) We have a few student interns each semester who help us keep on top of sex news, trends, and research, from pop culture to literature to science. But there’s no reason why a writer can’t do that research on their own — we just need a high volume of research because we have two daily blogs (EMandLO.com and Naked Love on the Sundance Channel’s Sunfiltered blog). The important thing is to keep on top of the research on a regular basis — not just when you need to come up with a pitch — so you can start making your own calls about trends, etc.

What is one of the biggest mistakes you can make and should avoid when pitching an article about sex-related content?
Read the rest of this entry »

photo by foxtongue

If you’re planning on having a new guest over to “look at your etchings” for the first time, follow these 10 rules to ensure there’s a next time:

1. Only invite a guest over when you won’t have to rush out the door the next morning.
2. Warn any roommates that you will be entertaining that evening.
3. Remove all dirty laundry & dishes, any evidence of prior partners, and anything age-inappropriate (like dolls or teddy bears) from your bedroom and hide them. In fact, we’d recommend selling all but your most favorite cuddly toy on eBay.
4. Turn off your cell phone and your land-line answering machine — especially if you expect your recent ex to call at 4am asking to be taken back for the 25th time.
5. Take a tip from Hollywood movies and use dramatic, flattering lighting wherever you think you might end up doing it. Kill all fluorescents and any overhead lamps that have harsh, bright bulbs. Instead, use low-wattage bulbs in lamps tucked away in corners. Install dimmer switches for adjustable brightness. And light a few candles (no more than three, though—you don’t want to overdo it).
6. Have an extra toothbrush on hand, still in its packaging, and a fresh towel for them to use.
7. Have a sexy music mix ready to go on your stereo or iPod, making sure that what you think is sexy isn’t too too overplayed and cheesy (anything by Marvin Gaye or Al Green).
8. If you have a beloved pet who usually bunks with you, don’t assume your partner is an animal lover, too. They want to sleep with you, not Fluffy and Muffin. And letting your pets watch the two of you do it may creep them out. Banish all wildlife from your bedroom until you’re sure an ill-timed bark won’t kill the mood.
9. In your bedside drawer, have ready a) quality condoms, b) a box of tissues for quick clean up, and c) a good brand of personal lubricant. The lube will make a nice addition to any handwork you two engage in, and will help you go long for any marathon sessions. The smaller the container the better, to help keep their insecure thoughts about previous partners at bay. Individual packets are ideal.
10. Cook them breakfast in the morning if it’s the weekend; toast and coffee will do if it’s a work day.

This is our bi-weekly column in Metro; read it in print here

photo by Evil Erin

Please welcome Dr. Joe to our site! Once a month, Dr. Joe DeOrio, a urologist in Chicago, will be answering your questions on male sexual health. To ask him your own question, click here.

Dear Dr. Joe,

To circumcise or not to circumcise — what’s your medical take on the matter?

– Parent-to-Be

Dear PTB,

To snip or not to snip? That is the question. And, oh, what a question it is. While this is not the most difficult topic to discuss with a parent, it is one heck of a controversial topic to debate on the internet. There is an overwhelming abundance of information on the web, and like all information on the net, it’s confusing and difficult to navigate. Just googling circumcision returns over 11 million results. Is there a right answer? Well, I guess that depends on your point of view.

Circumcision started as a religious practice, well-known today in Jewish and Muslim culture, but it also occurred ritually in ancient Egypt and in many other cultures all over the world. In the United States, doctors began performing circumcisions as a way to discourage young boys from masturbating (it’s true!). Though its roots remain religious and cultural, the medical community has found health benefits to circumcision, thus justifying its non-religious practice. These proven health benefits, however, are not overly dramatic when you actually look at absolute improvements. For example, a 10-fold decrease in urinary tract infections seems pretty impressive, but you’d have to circumcise 100 boys to prevent just 1 infection.

If you believe that circumcision is proper from a religious or cultural viewpoint, far be it from me, or any doctor, to tell you differently. It is a relatively simple procedure, and has a very low complication rate. Complications, when they do occur, are almost always minor, and soon to resolve. Can bad things happen? Sure. Bad things can happen during any medical procedure, no matter how minor. Avoiding risk, however, is not always a strong argument against action. Fact is, bad things happen everywhere in life, yet we take the risk of living. And for those that refer to the procedure as “mutilation,” I can understand your argument, but it is nonetheless an accepted practice within our culture, just like body piercing and tattoos.

So let’s get to the skin of the matter, the medical pros and cons, so to speak. On the pro side, circumcision does decrease the risk for urinary tract infections in the newborn male (10-fold in the first 3-6 months of age), as well as decrease the risk for HIV transmission in the sexually active adult (>50% in men studied in sub-Saharan Africa). Circumcision has also been shown to decrease the risk for penile cancer. This finding, however, is likely more closely related to improved penile hygiene after foreskin removal. Finally, it also eliminates potential future problems arising from the foreskin itself, such as phimosis, which is scarring of the foreskin preventing retraction. Read the rest of this entry »

photo by batega

Dear Em & Lo,

First off, I will say that I love my boyfriend. We are extremely compatible in almost every way. Except sex, and here’s why. About two years ago my boyfriend ruptured a testicle. Sex is now extremely painful for him and he has difficulty reaching orgasm. As a result we rarely have sex. We have talked about it a lot and there seems to be no easy solution. He encourages me to have other sexual partners but I am worried doing so will make him feel inadequate. We do a lot of S&M in and outside of the bedroom and I don’t want him to feel replaced. He insists that it is ok with him and that he wants me to be happy, but im not sure if i can. I almost feel like if he can’t have sex than i shouldn’t be able to either. I know its messed up, but im not sure what to do.

– To Screw or Not to Screw?

What should “Screw” do? Advise her below…

photo by Brujita

Advice from three of our guy friends. This week they answer the following: ” What’s the best way to turn down a guy who you’ve been on a date or two with, but don’t want to go on any others?” To ask the guys your own question, click here.

Gay Engaged Guy (Joel Derfner, author of Swish): Tell him you and your ex-boyfriend have decided to get back together.  This way you’ll get rid of him without making him feel bad about himself.

Straight Single Guy (L.A. Chris): Be honest, open, and direct, for the love of god. Girls are always afraid of hurting guys’ feelings, so instead they torture us with hints and clues. Ladies: we won’t get the message unless you come right out and say it. Don’t be subtle, don’t send signals, and don’t leave the door open a crack. You don’t have to be insulting or degrading, just be clear. What does a man say when his doctor returns with bad test results? “Just give it to me straight, doc.”

Straight Married Guy (Figleaf): The most gracious way is also maybe the most practical. You want to say some variation on “I wouldn’t have gone out with you the first time if I didn’t like you. I wouldn’t be saying no now [i.e. instead of just disappearing] if I didn’t respect you.” The point being to make it clear it you didn’t make a mistake saying yes the first time, and that not being a perfect match for you doesn’t make him a loser. That’s the gracious part.

The practical part is that men start learning as early as fairy tales that we have to be persistent, to never take no for an answer, to strive and achieve, and if we just work at it long and hard enough we’ll always “win over” the reluctant girl in the end. Letting him down with ego intact makes it less likely that he’ll try redoubling his effort to win you over. If he can walk away feeling respected he’ll be more likely to respect both you and your decision.

Our “wise guys” are a rotating group of contributors, some of whom wish to remain anonymous and some of whom like the attention. This week’s Gay Engaged Guy is Joel Derfner, author of Swish, and our Straight Married Guy is Figleaf, the guy behind RealAdultSex.com. To ask the guys your own question, click here.