Dr. Laura Berman Webcast Transcript

 

Valerie: Any time we want to bring a little glow to our faces.

Sarah: Instead of a facial.

Valerie: An orgasm will do the same.

Oprah: I think that's fantastic. Own your own orgasm.

Dr. Berman: There you go.

Oprah: Thank you, ladies. Thank you. Remember if you a specific question for Dr. Berman, call us at 866-Oprah XM. That's 866-677-2496. We have Cathleen on the phone from Manchester, New Hampshire. Go ahead.

Cathleen: Hi, I had a quick question. When I have an orgasm, sometimes I expel copious amounts of fluid. I've heard of female ejaculation before, but is this normal to ejaculate so much?

Dr. Berman: Yes. Here's the thing. You are talking about female ejaculation, and when they've looked at it, they used to think it was urine. When they've looked at it under a microscope and analyzed it, it's not urine. It is they think fluid from the Skene's glands, which is sort of equivalent of the prostate gland in men, and the studies have been really interesting because they've indicated that actually all women ejaculate during orgasm, but the majority of women for whom it doesn't come out it goes—it does what's called retrograde ejaculation. It goes back into the bladder. So they did this study where they looked at a whole bunch of women after orgasm. They looked at women who ejaculate after orgasm and they looked at women who don't ejaculate with orgasm, and there's a property in people ejaculate called PSA, which is also in semen, a prostate stimulating antigen. It's called PSA. And so the women who ejaculated, they looked at their urine after orgasm and there was no PSA in their urine. The women who did not ejaculate, they looked at their urine after orgasm and there was PSA in their urine. So the idea is all women ejaculate, except most of us, it goes back up into our bladder. So all women can learn to ejaculate, and there are people who teach this, I'm not one of them, but the idea is that we tend to clench and squeeze in when we reach orgasm, and if you relax and push out almost as if you're urinating when you orgasm, because it does come from the urethra, that you can learn to ejaculate and you can tell us, Cathleen, women who do ejaculate with orgasm say that they have much more intense orgasms that way than when they don't.

Oprah: I've been thinking just listening to you if you're a woman and you've never done that before, you would think you'll end up urinating.

Dr. Berman: Right. And it's embarrassing and scary, but that's important to know that it's totally normal.

Oprah: Okay, Cathleen, did that help?

Cathleen: Yeah, it does. I mean, it's just—it's inconvenient. It's messy. You have to prepare before sex—

Dr. Berman: Right.

Cathleen: —you have to put something down, because, I mean, it does kind of make a mess of the bed.

Dr. Berman: Yeah, yeah, it can.

Oprah: All right, thank you.

Cathleen: Thank you.

Oprah: Yvette's Skyping from her husband's home office in Tampa, Florida. Hi, Yvette.

Yvette: Hi, Oprah. How are you?

Oprah: I'm good.  

Yvette: I actually have two questions for Dr. Berman. My first question is, my husband says that I perform oral sex once a year if he's lucky. Do you have a technique for giving oral sex that's easier and takes less time? And then I'd be doing it a lot more often. Because I really don't have a problem. I just—it just takes so much time.

Dr. Berman: How much are we talking?

Yvette: Well, I mean, I—15, 10 minutes?

Dr. Berman: Well, that's not so much time. But it does feel like a long time when you're doing something that you're not enjoying.

Yvette: It's a lot of work.

Dr. Berman: It's a lot of work. All right. So one thing you can do is do other kinds of stimulation first until he's gotten much closer or do oral sex for a while first. Then go on to do manual stimulation or something else, and then go back to oral sex so that you're not doing only oral for the entire 15 minutes. And then you can also ask him what turns him on. For a lot of men it's visual so, you know, watching porn or watching you while you perform oral sex is stimulating to them. Or talking dirty to them is stimulating to them. So there are things that can move the process and make the arousal more intense, you know. But 10 to 15 minutes is, you know, it's not—it's not the average. The average is seven minutes. But it's not extremely long. Does that make sense?

Yvette: Yes. Yes, that makes sense. My second—it's funny when you said that about talking. My second question is that my husband feels like he's in a silent movie when we're in bed, and he wants me to talk dirty. How can I become more comfortable in talking dirty and get over the embarrassment?

Dr. Berman: Yeah, and it's something that a lot of women feel around this and a lot of men enjoy. You can start by just using nonverbal feedback. Moaning. Saying, "That feels good" when he's doing something that you enjoy. A lot of women find it easy to just give a running commentary, you know, you're doing this to me now you're—you know, they just sort of say what's happening. Or they say, "That feels really good." Those are easy ways to start. The other thing you may want to do is read some erotica out loud and practice using those words and maybe even read it to him and practice that because it's more about the practice and the fear that you're going to seem foolish or the inhibitions—

Oprah: I thought you were going to say "the wrong thing."

Dr. Berman: Or, "I said the wrong."

Oprah: "Oh my God, I said the wrong thing." Yeah.

Dr. Berman: I don't think it's easy to say the wrong thing unless you bring up another guy's name or something. As long as it's positive—

Oprah: Yeah.

Dr. Berman: —you know, they're happy. But I think also it's that sort of nice girl thing. It comes from those earlier messages, you know, that—

Oprah: Yeah.

Dr. Berman: —that it's sort of—

Oprah: I love that her husband says, "I'm in a silent movie."

Yvette: Yeah, he does say that.

Dr. Berman: So start off just like moaning—

Yvette: (Inaudible)—in a silent movie. But we do the moaning, we do the—the things that you said. I think he wants to take it to another level.