Assessing Wheat

This is the second in a series that assesses Intended for Pleasure, a text on sex that many consider a classic. In the process of coauthoring Sexual Intimacy in Marriage, I discovered many weaknesses with Dr. Wheat's book. The information below about the oral contraceptive pill was pointed out to me by my coauthor, Dr. William Cutrer, with whom I recently wrote The Contraception Guidebook.

On p. 117 of the updated edition of Intended for Pleasure in a chapter titled “For the Preorgasmic Wife,” it says, “Do not be concerned if your orgasm continues to come from manual stimulation of the clitoris. The idea that satisfaction for the wife comes from the penis in the vagina is only sometimes true. Your goal, now, is satisfaction given by a loving husband and achieving the fulfillment of orgasm.”

This is a good start. In fact about one in ten wives do not experience orgasm—ever. And two of every three (most!) wives report that they do not experience orgasm during vaginal penetration or penetration alone. I wish he had clarified that the goal is orgasm assuming that is what both husband and wife desire.

Dr. Wheat goes on to say this:

“Also do not anxiously work toward simultaneous orgasm with your husband. This is wonderful when it happens but has been far overemphasized in current literature. The purpose should be pleasure for both partners during the sexual relationship.”

He’s absolutely right here. For two people to judge the “success” of their time together based on the perfect timing of two involuntary responses is as about as logical as expecting to always sneeze at the same time after inhaling black pepper. He continues:

“Remember, skillful, gentle, appropriate stimulation of the clitoris and the nearby areas will almost always bring any wife to a higher level of desire and an experience of sexual release in orgasm.”

Hm-m-m. Not if she is ticked at him. Or exhausted. Or very distracted. And too bad he defines stimulation as male fingers on the female clitoris and/or surrounding area. Perhaps she would prefer something else? Many women say they like better other means, such as the less direct flat of the hand, rubbing against the penis, or oral pleasuring.

Now here’s the real killer:

“Each time the stimulated wife fails to reach orgasm, this represents some injury to the pelvic organs and to her emotions, often leaving her with nervousness, weakness, fatigue, and moderate to severe pelvic pain and low-back pain, which may be chronic. This also may lead to chronic vaginal discharge or heavy or irregular menstrual bleeding. Unfortunately many women undergo pelvic operations because of this pain. This repeated congestion may also contribute to significant enlargement of the uterus, which may fool a doctor into thinking that there is a disease requiring surgery. I suggest that you avoid surgery for pelvic pain until you have made every effort to learn how to achieve full orgasm on a regular basis” (p. 120).

That explains the goal orientation. And the information is absolutely false. Years ago doctors thought this, but it has been decades since this theory has been disproved. The normal female physiology is such that she does not have a “refractory period” and huge release of the congestion as a man does. She normally returns to a “plateau,” which is why she may experience orgasm again quickly. The “congestion” in a woman normally takes time to disperse.

It’s interesting to note what Wheat considers the cause of a female’s inability to experience orgasm: “Most cases of failure [word choice?] to attain orgasm that I have seen began with poor preparation for marriage, a frustrating and fearful honeymoon, followed by a prolonged period of disappointment, blundering, and boredom in marriage that conditioned the wife to feel there was no hope for fulfillment” (p. 121).

Interestingly, in one case with which I am familiar, such “failure” was due to reading Dr. Wheat’s book, which caused the couple to “get close for her” non-vaginally and then quickly shift to the “better” way—via intercourse. This couple was trying to “do it by the book.” They repeatedly found that the wife never “got there.” In one of her books Ruth Haley Barton describes a couple who told her a similar story.

Here’s another “gem”: “Now we all know that a husband is greatly stimulated by seeing his wife’s body” (p. 158). What’s missing is some sort of qualifier such as “most husbands” or “usually.” This is simply not true in all cases. About 17 percent of men report problems with low desire, and not all men are so “visual” in their orientation. After reading a statement such as these, the wife may wonder what’s wrong with both herself and her husband.

Eleven pages later, Dr. Wheat writes, “One of the most disturbing conclusions was made by researchers involved in a continuing study of forty-six thousand women in Great Britain begun in 1968. As reported in the Lancet, a leading British medical journal, the study’s authors conclude that pill users in general face a 40 percent higher death rate than women of the same age who never used the pill.”

This should have been edited out of the “update.” The information is very old, and the information was collected from women using levels of hormones that are different from those used over the past twenty-five years.

Dr. Wheat is right that God intended sex for pleasure. Certainly on that much we agree. But we do have some differences of opinion about some of the specifics of how that has to look.