5 Things Men Do to Ruin Their Own Sex Lives

5 You Can't Pressure Her into Sex

Sounds obvious, doesn't it? If you're surprised to find out that pressuring a woman into having sex is common among men, even if they don't know they're doing it, then I have a simple, no-effort research task for you. Scroll down into the comments section and ask an actual woman if she's ever had it happen to her. You'll hear stories that range from restless husbands who claim that they need to have an orgasm because it helps them get to sleep to flat-out ultimatums from guys they've dated. "We've been going out for three weeks, and we still haven't gotten anywhere. My dick is so neglected, I could fuck start a space shuttle. If we don't get naked soon, I'm finding someone else."

In another article, I mentioned the push-pull dynamic, which in basic terms means that the more one of you does something, the more the other person disconnects from it. Think about it in terms of lasagna. You both love it, and you happen to make a pretty damn mean one. So one day, she asks you to make her one, and you're like "Hell yes, I'll make you a lasagna. I am the Whitesnake of lasagna, baby!" Then the next day, she asks again. And every day after that until you finally snap:

"No, I'm not making any more fucking lasagna! What the hell, is that all you think I'm for? My perfect blend of mozzarella and not-too-tangy sauce? Well, I'm not your lasagna factory! I am more than just a vessel for delivering Italian food into your stomach! It wouldn't kill you to make me some food for once. Oh, that's right, just walk away and watch your cooking shows like you always do. Sometimes I think you love their preparation techniques more than you love me!"

If you press for sex too much, even if you don't think what you're doing is all that harmful, it is absolutely going to enter that push-pull model, and the very idea of having sex with you is going to become repulsive to her. It's Pavlovian in the respect that you're training her to loathe your dick.

The only way around that is to step back, take a breath and stop bringing up the subject for a while. Go out and do things with her as a couple. Not with the end goal of "If I do this, I can put my cock somewhere in or on her." If you're operating your relationship with that at the forefront of your mind, you're not ready for that relationship or the sex that comes with it.

4 Make Sure You're Not Disgusting

Have you ever noticed that when you put on deodorant or cologne, it smells really good right off the bat? But after about 15 minutes, you don't notice it anymore? It hasn't dissipated -- anyone entering the room will still be knocked back by the shot glass full of Brut you drowned your red neck in. Your nose, however, has reached the point of saturation, and your brain has literally shut down your ability to perceive it. Well, the same holds true for your stank ass.

I know you don't think you smell, but sometimes you do. Specifically the crack part of you. It doesn't have to be after a hard day's work, harvesting stink berries from your funk plantation. Hell, we've all had an occasional day where we decided, "I'm not getting in the shower right now. I haven't done anything strenuous today -- just hanging around the house. One day won't kill me."

The problem is that even if you haven't done any work, you've still been sitting on your ass all day, generating crack heat. Cultivating crack bacteria. And unless you wipe your ass with the same deodorant that you put on your armpits, it's going to generate some crack whiff. Add in the fact that we're guys, and we love to play the occasional butthole trumpet against the faux leather of our computer chairs and giggle, and we're pretty much always working up a good case of butt sauce.

Warning: I'm about to tell you the most blunt, unfiltered, raw thing I've ever said to another human. Much worse than what I already have. But it needs to be said, because you won't find a chapter on this in your health-class textbook.

Not all guys will have this problem, but after telling you about it, many of you are going to be shocked. The next time you get bad gas, feel free to bust out a few good ones (obviously, make sure your friends are around so you can get the most out of the situation ... you don't want them going to waste). Then after you've spent most of your ammunition in the ensuing fart war, go to the bathroom and -- without taking a crap -- wipe your ass. Don't throw the toilet paper away just yet.

Now, I want you to do two things: 1) Look at it. Some of you won't see anything at all, and that means you are probably born of supernatural seed. But some of you will immediately double check to make sure you didn't literally shit your pants. But wait, it gets worse. 2) Whether you see anything on that toilet paper or not, slowly start inching it toward your face and see how close you get before you stop yourself and say, "What in the unholy fuck is wrong with me that I'm doing this on the suggestion of a guy who writes cock jokes for a living?"

The reason I asked you to do that is because before you went into that bathroom, if your girlfriend were to have intercepted you, pushed you into your bedroom and told you she was about to give you the blowjob of your life right there on the spot, you wouldn't have stopped her. And after that test, I'm willing to bet that her head would have been a lot closer to your ass than that toilet paper got to your face. Knowing all that, try to estimate how many times she'd be willing to go back to that spot if she knew that every time she did, she'd be met with the aroma of shitsweat.

No matter what number you came up with, it was too high.

3 Your Attitude Could Be Your Downfall

An occasional bad mood doesn't destroy a sex life. If it did, you were in the wrong relationship to begin with. But there are those days when a bad mood can just stretch on forever, and nothing seems to help ease it. From the time you get home until your head hits the pillow, everything just sucks, and you either make it known vocally or you sulk around the house and tell the story with your body language. Like the way you keep slamming cabinet doors or giving your cat the finger for no reason.

So the day finally winds down, and you turn off the lights and slide into bed. You feel your partner's butt pressed up against your still angry dong, and it hits you: "Man, a quickie right before I pass out in a whimpering, pouting heap would do me wonders." And right there is the problem. You're thinking of her vagina as your own personal Prozac.

What you're probably not realizing is that she has been walking on eggshells since you got home, and the last thing on her mind is your balls angrily slapping off of her body. She wants the day to end just as much as you because you've been a huffy bitch every second that she's seen you today. Sadly, if she doesn't have sex, you're probably going to chalk that up as "Goddamn. Can anything else go wrong today?" You're now thinking of the absence of sex as if you had just poured a bowl of cereal before opening the fridge to find a human turd floating in your milk container.

But it's not just bad moods that can shut down the sex drive. It could be the way you divvy out the good ones. There's a turning point in every relationship where the impression stage fades and both people start acting like their true, honest selves. You stop laughing at jokes you don't find funny. If she does something embarrassing, you call her on it, and vice versa. You're not afraid to full-on tackle her in the hallway when she says you have woman hips. However, for most non-asshole people, that impression stage kicks back in when you speak to strangers.

It can (and usually is) something that you don't give a second thought to. Something that feels totally innocent to you. Maybe you smile a little more than normal when speaking to the waitress. Or perhaps you laugh at something the cashier says, even though both you and your girlfriend know you'd never find that funny. In your mind, you're just being polite. But to your girlfriend, you're flirting. Even if she doesn't go that far, she can easily see you being saccharine sweet to another woman and instantly reverting back to your normal old self with her, and it's insulting.

Either way, she's keeping her boobs in their holsters with the safety on tonight.

2 Never Assume Women Have the Same Turn-Ons as You

For the most part, men are a pretty easy machine to start. Show us some boobs, and we're good to go. Unfortunately for us, we can't expect any reaction other than laughter or screaming when we just whip out our cocks and exclaim, "It's go time, baby! You're about to take a cruise on the Fuck Boat!" As much as it makes teenage boys and sheltered men throw tantrums, women are far more complicated than that.

Yes, it's true that there are women who do occasionally like a quick, one-night "fuck me like a Prince song" fling, but overall it's safe to say that women take many factors into consideration before giving themselves to a partner. Especially in the relationship setting that we've been talking about. There's attitude, respect, trust, your willingness to listen, communication, foreplay, emotional connection, attention ...

No, it's not enough to have a good body and a nice car. Even if you're with a woman who's shallow enough to fall for that shit right out of the gates, the longer she's with you, the less all of that superficial bullshit means. And no, contrary to the ratings machines of pop culture television, the average woman doesn't fall for self-centered douchebags who constantly talk about how awesome they look. At least not the ones I've known. Maybe that's something else you could ask our Cracked ladies about in your comments section research.

The truly sad thing is that I know way too many guys who try to wrap their head around those factors that women take into consideration and instantly get pissed off because "I have to do all of that just to get into her pants?!" It's frustrating, because how are we supposed to keep all of that in mind while at the same time trying to appear interesting and charming on a date? And once we're locked into an actual relationship, how are we supposed to keep all of that up?

Here's the crazy thing -- and you'll want to really pay attention here, because it's vital to getting laid: If you're not a piece of shit at heart, and you truly respect her in the first place, you won't even have to try. That's what she's looking for.

1 Don't Expect Her to Be a Porn Star

This may come as a shock to some of our less-experienced readers, but sex isn't quite like what you see in porn clips. For most people at least. It's hard to keep that in mind when virtually every porn you see has guys slapping asses hard enough to leave hand-shaped welts, people spitting on each other's crotches and men twisting a woman's breasts into a contorted mass that looks like a lesser demon from the Hellraiser movies.

Even something as simple as dirty talk can be a mood killer if you don't know where the line is. That's kind of the point, though: knowing her well enough in a non-sexual sense to know what she does and doesn't like when it comes time to drop a fuck. You can't just bust a "You're my nasty little night elf whore" out of nowhere and expect her to explode in orgasm.

That's why you have to be careful with things like Internet porn. Did you know there's such a thing as "overstimulation"? Don't give me that look, this isn't even a debatable topic. It's Psychology 101, and what it means is that your brain adapts to the things that give you pleasure, causing you to seek out more extreme versions of that thing. Overstimulation is indulging in so much of that thing that your brain becomes desensitized to it, and you lose the ability to get excited about it. It's gotten so bad with Internet porn that recent studies are showing that men in their 20s consider erectile dysfunction completely normal for their age group. And here's how too much porn can give you a big ol' case of the flopdick:

You start out watching normal people having normal sex, and it's pretty damn cool. But the more you watch, the more your brain gets used to it. So you start watching more specific videos. Student/teacher sex, bondage, MILFs fucking the vacuum cleaner. When that gets old, you up the ante again and the cycle continues until one day you find that you're unable to get a boner unless you're watching East Brazilian mink farmers having sex with pregnant servants dressed in latex astronaut costumes.

Now that's not saying that one porn video is going to take away your dragon slayer. Pretty much every sex expert in the world says that watching a porno together is a good way to add some excitement back into a stagnating sex life. It's the habitual use that's bad. That's when regular everyday sex starts to feel bland, and you find yourself asking your partner if she could put on this plastic elephant trunk while you go to your stereo and put "The Humpty Dance" on a loop. And the more you expect her to conform to your every desire, the less you're involving her in the act. You've inadvertently turned her into a warm sack of meat that's only there to facilitate your orgasm.

Her needs and desires get put on the back burner because she's too busy trying to be the impossible fantasy taking place inside your head. No, unlike the porn videos show, not many women were built to handle the 14-inch dildo that's as big around as your forearm. Nor do most of them have a desire to have a cock jammed into the back of their throat until they convulse and try not to puke on your pelvis. That's why the women in those videos get paid to do what they're doing. And it's why many of their moans in those kinds of extreme scenes aren't ones of pleasure.

The woman you're with wants to please you, because that's how people behave in a relationship. But she doesn't want to do it by becoming something she's not. If she's into that sort of thing, fine. But even then, when she does act out those fantasies, she has to be doing it with you and not for you. Otherwise, they're going to start killing her mood more frequently until she finally has enough and the fantasies are all you have left. But don't take my word for it. The comments section is just a few inches below these words. Ask. Women are just as human as you, and they have no reason to lie. You'll learn more from them than you ever could from me.

John has a Twitter and a Facebook fan page where he regularly puts on live nude webcam shows for his premium members.

For more Cheese, check out 5 Ways You Know It's Time to Get Married and 5 Bits of Advice That Don't Make Sense Until It's Too Late.