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Should we try to pleasure our wives?
Should pleasuring one's wife be a focus of intimacy?
To the author of the kuntreisim on shalom bayis,
I put aside my shame and went to speak to an expert chosson rebbi about this subject. He is someone very wise, and is sought after for shalom bayis assistance too. His track record at helping set up healthy marriages is bh great. He is also a very erliche yid, but has a clear understanding of our generation's challenges. His mesora is to not teach chassanim about touching "over there". He said in his experience, women really prefer - especially in the beginning, to go without it. He feels the first months that a young couple is married, the focus should be on successfully doing the act and learning to express love for each other, and keep adrenalin rushing behaviors to a minimum. He keeps up with the guys after the chasuna and says many do come back to ask about touching. Of course he tells them it is mutar, but that they should not fool themselves into really believing that they are doing it for their wives. Most of the time, the husband is doing it out of a sexual pleasure that he has in making it happen. His experience is that most women usually prefer intimacy over ecstasy. On occasion a wife will hint that she would like it and then of course it should be done. However a wife usually enjoys simply being the focus of her husband and being together with him in a soft loving peaceful manner. They also have great pleasure knowing that they are fulfilling a need their husband has (that they know they will never really understand). He also said that most kallahs are taught that a great segulah in having good children is creating a bedroom environment that is loving and pleasurable, not erotic, and they very much want to feel that their husband shares the same ambition of having a healthy ehrliche child, and is not animalistically exclusively focused on the act and all that comes along with it. Kallah teachers put emphasis on allowing their husbands leeway in erotic behaviors due to the strong drives they have - but that does not mean they enjoy it. Bringing a wife to orgasm is not necessarily a contradiction to this, if that is what his wife really wants. But if not, he may be creating a lustfull bedroom environment. Of course this mehalech may be too idealistic for a chosson (or kallah) who received years of education from the online pornography industry and is entering marriage quite confused. On the other hand, it may be a possible chelek of his recovery if he can incorporate this mode of thinking at least as a goal that he would like to eventually attain. Please respond with your take on this. I know it is in contradiction with the kuntres for chassanim teachers on the site here, which gives clear instructions to teach chassanim how to bring their wives to orgasm. What do you think?
Response from the author of the Kuntress:
1) I personally know an adam gadol who does include female-orgasm-through-digital-
2) Rav Shlomo Wolbe’s letters on this topic clearly indicate that tashmish is supposed to be erotic for both husband and wife and he points to the Gemara in Shabbos 140b which talks about eliciting arousal through the act of stimulating the breasts and oso makom. Rav Wolbe also says that the wife should be a fully active partner in doing things that bring about arousal and that it is the husband’s obligation to get her to the point where she feels comfortable being a fully active partner.
3) I heard from another adam gadol that the Steipler Gaon zt”l also strongly encouraged men to stimulate their wife's oso makom with their hands. This adam gadol also brought other sources that indicate that for the man to digitally stimulate his wife’s oso makom is taken as a davar pashut.
4) From all of the above, as well as numerous other sources in Chazal, Rishonim, and Achronim (a number of which are mentioned in the kuntreisim I wrote), it is plainly evident that tashmish is supposed to be erotic and an experience of ecstasy. Of course, it is not that the eroticism and ecstasy is an end in an of itself, but it is a necessary vehicle for achieving unification (Rav Wolbe is maarich on this point). As such, in my opinion, those that are teaching kallahs that “a great segulah in having good children is creating a bedroom environment that is loving and pleasurable, not erotic” are teaching a falsehood. Furthermore, based on all of the above, the claim of the chassan Rebbi that his approach is the only “true mesorah” is simply not true.
5) Up until marriage, the tznius that girls are taught and absorb makes them feel extremely emotionally distant from physical intimacy with a man (this is a good thing). It can be difficult for a woman to get over this, even if she gets great hadracha. And, if, when a woman finally gets to the stage of life when physical intimacy with a man is about to become part of her life, she gets bad hadracha and is taught that eroticism is bad or a b’dieved, then, yes, it makes perfect sense that she will not like it. Or, perhaps put more accurately, she will feel conflicted if she experiences erotic pleasure. On the one hand, her body, and at least a certain part of her emotions, will be telling her, “this is great”; but, on the other hand, she will feel guilty and perhaps even “dirty” for the “decadent indulgence”. And, perhaps most of all, she will be terrified that her “decadent indulgence” could have a negative impact on her future children. As such, to my mind, it does not make any sense for the chassan Rebbi to attempt to prove his point from the fact that such women may come back with a response of, “it was nice, but let’s not do this so often”. He is trying to prove that women don’t really desire orgasm. But you cannot prove that unless a) you teach women that there is nothing wrong with orgasm, b) that, aderabah, it is davka a very positive thing, c) albeit not obligatory, d) you teach the men the right way to help their wives reach orgasm in a way that will be fully pleasurable, satisfying, and fulfilling and they execute it properly, and e) in general the man is behaving as he should in regards to shalom bayis in general and intimacy in particular. If you would have all those pieces lined up correctly, then if the women would still come back and tell you, “thanks but no thanks”, then you would have something to take under consideration. In as much as that does not at all seem to be going on with the population that the chassan Rebbi is dealing with, his proof, in my opinion, is not a proof at all.
6) As far as the point of a man not being “animalistically exclusively focused on the act and all that comes along with it”, in my opinion the litmus test for this is not if the man engages in erotic behaviors or not, but how he feels after the tashmish is finished. If he feels like just rolling over and going to sleep, then that may be a strong indication that all he was really interested in was satisfying his taivah, and he wasn’t really connecting and unifying with his wife. All the more so if after the act he feels a sense of distance from his wife. However, if he feels that he wants to continue lying next to his wife and feels a sense of contentment in experiencing her closeness despite the fact that the taivah is gone, then that is a good indication, in my opinion, that the eroticism was a tool and not an end.
7) It seems reasonable to posit that, for a variety of factors, many women will not reach orgasm during the first few months of marriage, and that there is no reason to feel unduly stressed that it has to happen.
8) I would be wary about claiming that someone has a good track record in fostering shalom bayis. The only way to really know that is if there would be robust follow-up spanning at least 5 years, perhaps 10, with either all of the people that he trained, or at the very least a representative, random sampling thereof, and that couples would honestly answer a battery of questions, included in which would be questions about the most sensitive delicate and private matters. In the absence of that type of evidence, you really cannot know if the individual is actually effective or not.
9) As far as whether or not any special intimacy-engineering is called for so as to facilitate the recovery of a struggling porn addict, I don’t have much to say about that (because I am not particularly knowledgable about sex and porn addiction and/or its interplay with marital intimacy) other than that I suspect that such a thing would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis by a therapist who is experienced with sex addiction and porn addiction.
10) I have gotten feedback from a number of people who thanked me for writing the kuntreisim and said that it greatly enhanced their shalom bayis. Based on this admittedly small amount of anecdotal evidence, I cannot help but suspect that couples who are getting hadracha along the lines described in the query are in fact suffering down the line, and at least some of them express a good deal of frustration over the fact that as chassanim and kallahs the hadracha they received was sorely lacking. Of course, as I wrote above, in the absence of doing a proper study, we cannot really know what the true epidemiological realities are; but, if anecdotal evidence is any indication, then that to which I have been privy would indicate that hadracha that does not include clear explanations of how to achieve real sexual satisfaction, and all the more so hadracha which discourages eroticism, is not helpful but harmful.
Mechaber Kuntreisim