ROOT: Masturbation promotes healthier marital sex life

Once upon a time, there was a couple. They were a very special couple; both had solid, conservative Christian upbringings. They respected authority. They paid their taxes and held decent jobs. They followed the rules and "saved" their virginity for marriage. They fell in love and got married and thought they would live happily ever after in sweet, marital bliss.

Yeah, that didn't happen. The special moment they had been waiting all their lives for was a disaster. Their wedding night was full of excruciating pain and panic attacks. After many "attempts," the couple gave up on sex before their honeymoon had even ended.

Several years later, the couple found themselves on the couch of a talk show host, discussing why they weren't having sex.

I wish I could say this occurred 60 years ago or even 20 years ago on an ancient episode of "Donahue" I found accidentally on YouTube. Nope. Instead, this was on the May 19 episode of "The Tyra Banks Show."

Tyra kicked off the show with a fascinating statistic, 15 percent of those attending sex therapy sessions are couples who have never had sex before. Considering that about five percent marry as virgins, according to the USA Today, this is very enlightening.

The couples on the show had several key traits that are very hard to ignore. None of the women could put a tampon in, all described sex as painful, and the majority were religious. One couldn't even look at a sex scene from a movie without getting terribly uncomfortable. And most telling of all, there was a huge emphasis on possessing virginity until the wedding night.

Just when I thought we'd made some progress in the realm of sexual acceptance, this show popped up. My heart goes out to those suffering; it must be incredibly frustrating and awful. You followed all the rules and did exactly as your god and your parents told you to do. And instead of being rewarded for your obedience, you are enduring a sexless and strained marriage.

While the majority of the show focused on sex, the one time Tyra asked what about what they were told about sex growing up, is extremely revealing. "Sex is the worst pain you will ever feel. It will always be really painful. It's horrible. You'll have to do it whether you want to or not. Once you're married, the husband owns you. … The women who do enjoy it are tramps," Kelsie, a woman in her thirties answered.

Whoa. That might be the scariest birds and bees talk I've ever heard. Having grown up with that message of sex, it isn't surprising that Kelsie has issues with owning her desire and sexuality.

"Feelings of shame can run deep, sometimes because they were planted so early, and sometimes because we live in a culture saturated with negative messages," according to Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller, authors of "I Love Female Orgasm."

Okay, maybe this is just talk show sensationalism. This can't be happening everywhere, right? I wish! There are several posts on medhelp.org about being unable to have sex after a virginal marriage.

"My husband and I are both in our early 30s and both virgins. My husband and I are unable to have sex. When it comes to that point, my muscles tighten up and I don't allow him to enter. It hurts," a person with the username hoping100 posted on July of last year.

Nor is it limited to the Christian community; Egyptian Islamic couple Ali and Nora posted a similar statement on islamonline.net: "From the beginning of our marriage until today, we have not been able to successfully perform full sexual relations – we are still virgins. We have nice, lovely, romantic times, but we have not been able to achieve full sexual intercourse. We don't know why."

I might know, but the answer isn't nice and neat. The couples above were pretty religious. Many religious traditions (by no means all) promote the idea that sex is something sinfully wicked and should only be used for procreation. Add this to the idea that the body is something shameful, and you have a recipe for what you read about above.

It is odd that conservative religious culture has an obsession with the status of virginity – see purity rings, purity balls and the uber creepy "The Man Who Is Thursday" blog posting "How to find a virgin to marry (if you are a guy)" etc. – yet having kept one's virginity doesn't appear to lead to a more satisfying marital sex life. Really puts a damper on the whole validity of the abstinence-only sex education movement, doesn't it?

Is the answer premarital sex then? Not necessarily. I've heard plenty of complaints from friends about their lackluster sex lives. Read enough sex advice columns, and you'll come to the same conclusion, too.

Seems like a catch-22, doesn't it? Either way, you're going to have an unsatisfactory sex life, right? Actually, you have the power in your hands right now to ensure a better sex life. It's time to love and honor our bodies. I'm not talking about exercising and saying, "Hey, you sexy thing!" when you see your reflection.

Both are stellar ideas and a great place to start, but there is a better way. In order to have a truly rewarding sex life, you need to not only love your body but also know how it works. In short, masturbate.

"Masturbation is the fastest and easiest way for many women to have orgasms, and the most common way for a woman to come for the first time," according to Solot and Miller.

You have the right to a good sex life with at least yourself. Whether or not you can handle a sexual relationship with another person depends on an entirely different set of skills.

However, masturbating does have benefits if you do have a romantic relationship, most notably better communication skills. "When we're asked what feels good, we will have the courage to let go of our little white lie, ‘Oh, everything you do feels good,'" says Betty Dodson, a sexology Ph.D, in her book, "Sex For One."