Dear Playboy Advisor: Questions From Men and Women to the Advice Column of Playboy Magazine (46 page)

Twenty years later I am still having dreams about my first love. She broke up with me, and I reacted badly. Eventually I recovered and am now happily married. But every few months she shows up in my dreams, in which I usually apologize to her. I wake up feeling bad. Then I feel worse because I wonder why the hell I’m still anxious about someone I knew in high school. Can you provide any insight?—L.T., Miami, Florida

Paging Dr. Freud! As many people have found, your first love lingers as a symbol of the perfect relationship. At the time, your brain was flush with the chemicals that accompany romance, but the relationship didn’t last long enough for them to wear off. You also didn’t live with her, so you saw each other only in prepared moments. Twenty years later she is truly a ghost—the 17-year-old girl you dated no longer exists (nor, for that matter, does the 17-year-old boy who loved her). The next time you have one of these unsettling dreams, recognize that your mind is putting into a familiar form the anxiety we all have about being rejected. We all have regrets about our behavior, but it’s difficult to regret being young. If you knew then what you know now, you would have been dating older women.

As a psychology professor at California State University who since 1993 has studied lost loves and their effect on relationships, I feel you may have underestimated the power of his teenage attraction. In a survey I conducted of more than 1,000 people who had rekindled relationships after at least five years of separation, two thirds had reunited with loves they’d lost when they were 17 years old or younger. More than 70 percent stayed together after reuniting. In a more recent survey of 1,300 adults who never tried to reunite with a lost love, 30 percent said they would like to and 18 percent said they would leave their spouse if their lost love showed up. In general, men express much stronger emotions about these relationships than women. I would advise anyone who wants to see a lost love again for “closure” or to “catch up” to be careful. What seems innocent can destroy even a strong marriage. This is not a fantasy, as an affair with a relative stranger or even a co-worker may be; it is a love that was interrupted. When I first started my research, 30 percent of the respondents who reconnected with a lost love said the reunion led them to cheat on their spouse. Because the Internet makes it so much easier not only to find lost loves but for these initial contacts to develop in a seemingly casual way, that figure is now closer to 80 percent. There’s more information as well as a message board at lostlovers.com.—Nancy Kalish, Sacramento, California

Thanks for writing. We’ve lost and found a few loves, though it’s never the same the second time around because both people have changed. If she hasn’t, we’re suspicious.

The Advisor takes a stand

What’s your position on withholding sex as a means of gaining power in a relationship?—M.L., Springfield, Ohio

Uh…we’re against it. If a person believes refusing sex is the only way to assert power, the relationship is out of balance in other ways. You also sacrifice your own pleasure.

How many is too many?

I can’t get over the fact that my girlfriend has had more lovers than I have. She is my first lover and is five years younger than I am. When I ask her for details, she refuses to say anything. That fuels my paranoia. I wish she would just tell me how far she went with the three guys I know about. If that would ease my mind, shouldn’t she tell me everything?—J.C., Chicago, Illinois

Your inexperience shows here, because unless you’re recruiting virgins for sacrifice, the number of notches on a woman’s bedpost has nothing to do with the future or strength of her current relationship. Someday your girlfriend may provide her history, but she’s a smart woman who recognizes that you’re already judging her. We’re often asked, usually by men, “How many is too many before I should get upset?” and find the question frustrating and ridiculous. We’ve never had any desire to know more than a woman volunteers; she’s not a used car. We find it more useful to quiz a partner about the best and worst behavior of her exes so we can refine our moves. We don’t have an easy solution to rid you of this insecurity. We suspect that as you mature and get more experience it will be less of an issue. You are worthy of being with this woman, and she wants to be with you. Don’t let the saps she left behind sabotage what you have.

You implied that J.C.’s concern is because of his insecurity or immaturity. Wrong! He has a right to know; the quantity and quality of her partners say something about his girlfriend’s character and commitment. (Six is reasonable; 60 suggests a pattern.)—P.N., Montreal, Quebec

A pattern of what? Meeting people? A better indicator of a woman’s character is how she treats waiters.

I’ve read that the average straight guy has 12 sex partners in his life, while the average woman has three. How is that possible? Even if there is a small percentage of women who have hundreds of partners, that still raises the average of the average woman.—E.M., Columbus, Ohio

Social scientists encounter this discrepancy frequently when they ask men and women how many partners they’ve had in their lifetimes. However, it all but disappears when researchers narrow the focus to the previous year. In other words, our memories can be imprecise. Two researchers addressed this issue in the
Journal of Sex Research
. After asking 1,800 college students how many sexual partners they’d had and how they arrived at that number, they concluded that men and women generally use different calculation strategies. Sexually promiscuous people usually don’t keep a running tally, so when they’re asked to come up with one, they take their best guess. Women tend to produce as accurate a count as possible, but they also underestimate. Men tend to make rough guesses, which skew upward. Cultural factors also play a role. Men may subconsciously exaggerate to appear macho, while women may understate to avoid being judged as promiscuous. There’s also the hooker factor. Researchers have estimated that about 65,000 Americans prostitute themselves full-time, and that each has an average of 694 clients per year. Added to existing data, these figures more or less eliminate the discrepancy.

The surveys about how many partners people have had in their lifetime never break it down by age. That is, a 24-year-old who has had 10 lovers is vastly different from a 50-year-old with 10. I have a female friend who estimates that most guys in their mid-20s have slept with 80 to 90 women. That seems high. I’m 36 and have been with 65 women. Is that above average? I had a 25-year-old girlfriend who had slept with 75 guys.—N.F., Austin, Texas

Those numbers are robust. In one study of 3,126 adults, about 10 percent of the respondents reported having had at least 21 lovers since age 18. That held true regardless of age, with the exception of 18- to 24-year-olds, who just need more time. The median was six partners for men and two for women, meaning that half the respondents had more and half had less. At the extreme, one man claimed 1,016 partners, and one woman said she’d been with 1,009. (What’s more amazing—their promiscuity or that they were both so precise?) In 1982 we surveyed 100,000 readers and asked them tally their lovers. The median for men was 16; the median for women was eight. Which goes to show that reading
Playboy
gets you laid more often—or at least it did in the 1970s.

Shrieking banshees

When I married I picked a woman who didn’t want children, and we’ve had a great 20 years. But her two sisters decided to start families when they were in their 40s. In the space of four years they have procreated a combined total of nine times. Now I’m stuck with these self-centered moms who feel their undisciplined brats are welcome at any event. When we were invited to a princess birthday party, I went to a ball game instead, and my sister-in-law blew a gasket. After working a 50-hour week, why should I drive three hours to spend a weekend with a pack of shrieking, sugar-intoxicated banshees? Am I being an ogre? My wife isn’t angry, but her sister is really pissed.—J.C., Buffalo, New York

Next time say you have to work. But you also need to lighten up about this. You can’t ditch every family gathering, and it doesn’t pay to irritate a sister-in-law (they can do a lot of damage). Some of this is your attitude going in. If you arrive thinking you’ll be miserable, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Enjoy the fact that they aren’t your kids.

SEMEN

The stuff of life.

Funky spunk

My husband wants me to swallow and I can’t stand the taste. I’ve read that pineapple juice helps prevent funky spunk. Exactly how much should a man consume, and how often, to alter the taste of his semen? And how soon should I expect to notice a change?—M.L., Virginia Beach, Virginia

Adam Carolla of
Loveline
has a great take on this. He says, “If a guy drinks 400 gallons of pineapple juice, his semen will taste like semen with a little bit of pineapple juice in it.” Nevertheless, many female readers insist that, in their experience, fruit juices work when consumed in large enough quantities at least a day before. But that could have more to do with the guy’s being well hydrated, which may dilute what’s commonly described as a bleachy, salty or bitter taste. Some women have told us they are happier swallowing when their partner eats less junk food and red meat. One recipe posted outside the
Playboy
test bedrooms calls for three stalks of celery (diced), two capsicums (minced), two bananas (sliced), half a cup of orange juice and half a cup of sweet sherry, but no pineapple. The brewmaster wrote, “Mix the ingredients and have the guy eat it for breakfast. He also should avoid dairy products, onions, garlic and fish for the day.” Good advice before any date. The only way to settle this is a series of blind taste tests, which are being arranged as we speak.

My husband and I tried a recipe from the newsletter
Batteries Not Included
. In a juicer, we blend a stalk of celery and a third of a fresh pineapple. My husband drinks six ounces of the mixture every day. The celery and pineapple contain high concentrations of aspartic acid and the amino acid phenylalanine, the same ingredients used in sugar substitutes. What do you think?—G.A., Chicago, Illinois

Your recipe may not work for everyone, but it will prevent outbreaks of scurvy.

All my past lovers have told me that my semen is bitter or salty. But my current girlfriend says it doesn’t taste like anything. Could it be that some women are more aware of the taste than others? After all, some people like broccoli and some don’t.—R.W., Colorado Springs, Colorado

Perhaps. Researchers have documented differences in the sense of taste. In one study, scientists asked test subjects to place a bitter synthetic chemical on their tongues. A quarter of the people tasted nothing. Half said it tasted bitter. A quarter found it so bitter they retched. The last group are “supertasters”—men and women who have a large number of taste buds (as many as 1,100 per square centimeter of tongue). For a supertaster, frosting tastes too sweet, coffee is too bitter and alcohol too sharp. Supertasters don’t like the feel of oil or fat on their tongues, and they dislike salty or spicy foods. Women are more likely to be supertasters—about 35 percent of Caucasian women fall into the category, compared with ten percent of white men.

Stopping the flow

As I’m about to come, my wife presses gently but firmly on the area between my balls and anus. She keeps the pressure on throughout my orgasm. This not only makes my climax feel a hundred times more intense, but she can control the rate of my ejaculation to the point where nothing comes out—very handy for cutting back on the mess. If your lady doesn’t like to swallow, she can follow through with the blow job without worrying about a surprise. It’s also been my experience that my recovery time is cut in half when we use this technique. My question is, does the constant pressure or the prevention of the semen from leaving pose any long-term health risks?—G.T., Rome, Georgia