I've been with my boyfriend for a year and a half and having sex with him for a year. I'm getting concerned. I haven't had an orgasm with him at all. He does please me and I've been so close to climaxing a few times but something always stops me.

I've had orgasms before but only by myself or in my dreams. The most troubling part is that I don't dream/fantasize about having sex with him. Or any straight guy for that matter.

I've had a few dreams where I orgasm in my sleep while fantasizing about gay men having sex. Even more disconcerting is that in one of those dreams I was a "bottom" gay man who had female parts. I've also had deviant dreams and fantasies where I orgasm and they also do not involve straight men. I don't fantasize about females either because it doesn't do anything for me.

I am very confused. Am I normal?

-- Confused Woman

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There is part of me that wishes that I was not tied to the relationship I have so that I could continue exploring. It is not that my wife is not interested in joining me so much as it is that we are at different stages. I have a firm grasp on what I want coupled with a bit of fearlessness while she is still coming to know her wants and desires and is not entirely comfortable with where they sometimes lead. What I have been struggling with is: a) Will we ever be at the same place and b) What I am supposed to do in the meantime?

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Let me put that another way. From watching porn you'd think this or something like it is the heart's desire of every straight man, indeed the natural culmination of the sex act.

Nothing wrong with people who do like it, men or women. But you'd think this is the norm in straight sex. Even the amateurs do it -- presumably because they think anything else is some sort of kinky perversion.

Aw, buddy. This is the second week in a row where I have to come straight out and say it: There's nothing wrong with you. Nothing. Not a thing. (OK, so there might be something wrong with you, seeing as you're human, but this isn't it.)

Porn represents a popular fantasy norm, but it doesn't necessarily reflect what people want to do, or are actually doing, in real life. Researcher Debby Herbenick, a sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, tells me, "There are probably many, many things that are shown in porn in our culture or other cultures that he or his partner don't have any interest in doing and that's OK," she says. "Having some sense of self-awareness about your sexual likes/dislikes is a far better place to be than being clueless as to your own boundaries. So, good for him for having some sense of this."

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You, friend, are normal. I usually build to such a proclamation, but in this case, it seems important to acknowledge right off the bat. Your reaction to what you’ve experienced is not only understandable but very common. It’s typical for survivors of sexual abuse to disassociate during sex -- in simple terms, to separate themselves from the physical act -- or avoid it entirely, and it sounds like both apply in your case. Therapist Wendy Maltz says your email makes it sound like you experience sex as something being done to you, “as opposed to really engaging fully as an equal and mutual partner in the experience.”

But pleasurable sex is possible for you.

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My husband had a stroke last summer (a brain hemorrhage) at 35 -- coincidentally, I noticed something was wrong right after we had sex. He survived with some relatively minor mobility problems and some issues with aphasia (speech problems) and we're attempting to get our lives back together after a week in the ICU, five weeks inpatient rehabilitation, and several months of outpatient rehabilitation.

I am certainly not blaming the stroke on sex (although the EMTs sure had a field day with the information!), but I am having trouble getting back into having a sex life. For so many weeks and months, I was solely in charge of everything: schedules, medication, work, food, finances -- the whole deal. Being sick, particularly with neurological deficits, unfortunately tends to infantilize a person to a certain degree, and I'm having some trouble coming away from the role as Sole Adult in Charge of Everything.

In addition, since he still has little feeling and some mobility problems on his right side, sex seems more like therapy than, well, just sex (that is, I sometimes come away with bruises since he doesn't realize he's elbowed me in the ribs or whatever).

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I don't think there's anything wrong with what I've said so far, except for the fact that I date and have sex with men who are significantly younger than me. I'm talking about ages 19 up to 35, more or less. I feel extremely conflicted about this. I realize that my chances of having a romantic relationship with younger men are not so simple, and the old adage that "age is just a number" may suit men more than women due to expiration date on beauty and fertility. However, I cannot get myself attracted to men my age or even slightly younger. I've tried dating some, but I can't get past that.

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After following this advice for months, I'm still having a burning pain around the vulva after sex, which lasts for a few hours. It has drastically diminished my sex drive and is driving a wedge between my partner and me. I'm also a young nonprofit professional on a limited budget, and can't afford many more $50 GYN visits to fix the problem. Help!

I'm afraid you’re not going to like the answers I got from my experts. In fact, their prescription may sound even worse to you than the prospect of "mismatched" genitals: You gotta spend that $50 to go to your doctor again -- or to a more affordable women's health clinic, if you can find one.

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So, my first concern is what happens to men as they age. I am not worried about performance -- I am wondering what my pleasure level will be like. In those five or six years I lived without a sex partner, I did masturbate and one time I hired a escort. Hiring the escort was the starting point for realizing that I want a sex life again. Anyway, it seems to be that when I have orgasms they’re not as powerful as they were when I was younger. There’s not that sudden release of tension that is so pleasurable. Is this part of the aging process? I am in good health and, I think, in good condition. I run five days a week and do weight training three days. I really like physical affection -- of course, I would still want powerful and pleasurable orgasms too!

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Then I started seeing someone new, stopped faking orgasms and tried to worry less. I started coming, and it became easier and more reliable. Now it happens every time, sometimes multiple times. While masturbating, I can orgasm within seconds, which was never, ever possible before. What's going on here?

"I wish I knew." That's Barry Komisaruk's matter-of-fact answer, and he's the leading expert on the science behind the female orgasm.

His lab at Rutgers University was the first to produce a video of the brain during climax in women -- just last November. "We're in the embryonic stage of understanding," he says. "It's not even in its infancy." That's in large part because it's tremendously difficult to get funding for sex research -- but that's a story for another day (and you can bet I will be telling it someday soon).

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I was with a girl once and she ended up cheating on me, so I ended things. That made her a little bent out of shape. She told her friends I was a manwhore, and even shared pictures we'd made together. Now, they were flattering, but I still felt that it was a) a total betrayal of trust, and b) even if complimentary, the implication given was still I was easily acquired and of loose moral standing.

I remember trying to voice my discontent about it to some female and male friends who said, basically, "That's terrible, but hey, she's making you look good!" Furthermore, there was an assumption (mainly by the girls, oddly) that being a "manwhore" was acceptable and brag-worthy whereas being a slut was not. I found that curious too.

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I know I'm not alone, since there are a number of fetish websites that cater to this attraction. Besides, why else would so many photographers, shooting everything from pinups to swimsuits to nudes, pose their models with their arms over their heads and their underarms exposed?

I'd be interested in knowing two things: First, how common do you think this is? Equally important, do most women know about this attraction, or do they simply think "yuck" when they think about their underarms?

Underarm Fetishist

My first question about armpit attraction -- and I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt, how serendipitous!

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When we first started seeing each other, she was married, I was married and we were both having affairs with other people. She told me in very exquisite detail about many -- if not all -- of her sexual adventures (many of them extramarital with married men). She went into great detail about how affairs started, when, where, the type of sex performed (oral/anal) with each man. Her sexual experience was far greater than mine.

I have asked her in recent months to recount what she told me 25 years ago about her sexual experiences. Not only will she not discuss it and gets angry about it, she now claims that she never did any of those things. Well, of course, I have some proof that she did many.

My question is why can't I stop obsessing over her past sexual conquests (and that's what they were -- she seduced primarily married men), and why is she now denying and refusing to discuss her past?

I feel for your wife, man. You're interrogating her about her sexual past after a quarter-century of marriage. There should be a statute of limitations on such things.

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I have no idea why I feel this way. When I see their hands come together in applause, a smile on their faces and one or two bloodied, fallen men, I feel like I am speaking to God. I am filled with wild emotions of shame. My body shakes, and I feel a very deep burning in my stomach. This burning can be debilitating, almost like it consumes me, but it feels so good. Sometimes I can't control myself. I don't understand any of this. The burning feelings, the fetish itself, it's all a mystery to me.

I've known about this since I was 8 years old. I know I'm not alone with this, I know there are other people with the same feelings, but never anyone I've encountered personally. Thanks and much love/respect.

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I love that you start out coy about your, er, um, "intense play" and then come right out with a question about fisting and inflatable toys. I imagine there would be even greater hemming and hawing if you were to try to broach the subject face-to-face (or face-to-cervix, as it were) with your OB-GYN, which is surely why you're coming to me instead. It seems to me that most of us treat medical professionals with kid gloves when it comes to our sexual health, as though we'll shock them if we reveal what we really get into behind closed doors (maybe because we're privately shocked by, and embarrassed of, our sexual selves). There's this sense that introducing a kinky topic like inflatable vaginal toys in their staid, erudite sanctum is downright improper -- but it's not. I encourage you to press through the fear and ask away!

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I have a question from a conversation I had with a bunch of gay men. There were six of us, and a friend said that he had a doctor who'd warned him that continued anal sex (as the bottom) over time could permanently "wear out" his sphincter and create all sorts of incontinence problems for him as he grew older. Half of us thought it was crazed right-wing propaganda (I was in that camp). The others had heard similar things!

I CANNOT BELIEVE I'M TYPING THIS INTO A GCHAT MESSAGE.

There haven’t been any large-scale, long-term incontinence studies done on gay men who bottom. (It’s hard enough to get funding for studies generally relating to sex, let alone gay sex -- so just imagine the challenge of adding in that favorite topic of toddlers everywhere: poop.) I can tell you, however, that the consensus among sex educators is that anal sex does not carry a high risk of fecal incontinence. In other words: Your friend’s doctor is full of crap.

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I have been visiting Asian "spas" now a couple of times a week, and in the morning when I should be working, I'm instead surfing the Web trying to find a way to meet Asian women. It's to the point where I'm acting like a teenager again around any type of Asian woman.

What the "f" is wrong with me? Why can't I just go back to being the stable family guy I was, interested in work, family and screwing my wife 4-5 times a week?

Help.

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Ever since then, I feel like I've been chasing after alcoholics/codependents or broken women who fall apart at the first sign of something real, or they play games with me and perhaps several other men. Most of these women I probably wouldn't end up with for the long term, and I know that. I almost never have any sexual contact with them, but we tend to get close, intimate, almost like we're in a relationship, just without the physical aspect. These women then tend to sleep with losers, old men and assholes while they reserve their tender feelings for me.

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I am a gay man, 24 years old. I have a slightly above average penis and have never had a single complaint -- in fact, I've always been complimented, if anything -- but, still, I feel small and insecure. At 14, I met an online friend of a similar age, who lived on the other side of the country. We used to have "cam sex" together as it was our only way at that time of exploring our sexuality. This e-friend had an 8-inch penis and I remember when I saw it for the first time, I felt extremely insecure and self-conscious. I would measure mine constantly, every day, hoping I would increase in size. I then began to think everybody but me was hung, and for years I just assumed, for some bizarre reason, that I should be ashamed or whatever for not being horse-hung. I became so obsessed that I even stole money from my parents at one time to gain membership access to online websites about how to increase your penis size and also buy penis enlargement pills.

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Over the last few years I have had a couple of same-sex experiences and a dominatrix that specialized in forced fem. It was all good, but the dominatrix was best. In all of those cases it felt good to be accepted with my secret and not to feel like a freak.

I have tried to share this side of me with my wife a couple of times over the years, but she is not having any of it. The last time I slipped on her thong, she got mad and said, "Never do that again, I don't want you to stretch them out." I then went on a two-month drought before she let me touch her again. She never mentioned it, but it was chilly. She is a great mother and wife, and I do love her, but I can't repress my fetish despite trying several things.

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