Too sexy for her rocker

"Orgasms for Two" is more than just a love letter to Wilkinson. The book touts masturbation as key to enjoyable partner sex. "Couples have to liberate masturbation," Dodson says, "accept self-pleasuring in each other, show one another how they do it. And if a man can't handle seeing his lover use a vibrator, my advice to the woman is: Keep the vibrator and recycle the man."

The book also promotes women as men's guides in heterosexuality: "For partner sex to be good, the woman must know what she wants and be able to show her lover," says Dodson. "Women have to teach men about female sexuality, not pattern our sexual desires on what men want. That's the opposite of what typically happens -- young men who know little or nothing about sex end up taking the lead, and young women blame themselves when they can't have orgasms. So after years of saying that women need to be the leaders in partner sex, this gorgeous, sexy young man enters my life and says he wants to learn everything I can teach him. Is that great or what?"

"Orgasms for Two" also deals with the power struggles that mark all long-term relationships. "I could never figure out why I ended up hating every man I fell in love with."

"In my marriage and most of my other previous relationships," Dodson says, "there was this ongoing struggle over who makes the rules -- and women usually end up on the short end of the stick. Power struggles kill the joy in sex. This time around, both Eric and I talk about our power issues. Now that he's so good at sex, he's usually the top [leader] in bed, and I'm the boss in the business. But because I spent so much time feeling powerless in most of my relationships, I'm very conscious of not abusing my power."

Both Dodson and Wilkinson agree that the hardest part of their relationship involves issues of who's in control, in part because on the business side, she's his boss. "It's hard," Dodson says, "to be a good lover in bed and also be an effective CEO. But I can't be a wimp either. Sometimes a task has to be done a certain way, and I have to make sure Eric understands why he has to do it that way."

Wilkinson agrees: "We both work at not taking conflicts on the job personally. If I make a mistake, Betty is good about telling me how to correct it, and I know she still loves me. And if I call her on being overly critical, I always let her know I love her. We give each other lots of affection, and that helps."

"People enter couplehood with this idea that they'll share power equally," Dodson says. "But that rarely happens. It never happened to me. The question for couples is: How to balance the power?"

They work at conflict resolution. "We get irritated with each other. That's natural for two headstrong people. But we try not to let irritation boil over into anger. There are no wars between us. We don't hold grudges. There's no suffering in silence. We talk things out. We don't let hurts fester. We're good at resolving our conflicts without hurting each other's feelings."

They work at staying in the moment. "I don't treat this relationship the way I treated my marriage and other heterosexual relationships," Dodson says. "There's no expectation of living together happily ever after till death do us part. No pressure to buy into that fantasy, which is a lie anyway. We're committed to staying together as long as it feels good to both of us. Things stay lighthearted and pleasurable."

They give each other space. "We're together so much that we needed to create some time apart. We have some separate friends and often socialize without the other. We also have our own beds in separate bedrooms. But the first one to go to bed gets tucked in by the other, and we cuddle every night for 15 minutes or so going over our day."

The final element in the Dodson-Wilkinson balance of relationship power is nonmonogamy. Since her divorce in 1965, Dodson has been militantly and very happily nonmonogamous. When Wilkinson entered her life, she considered herself beyond jealousy.

She was wrong. "A girlfriend of mine was attracted to Eric, so with his permission, I gave him to her for her birthday. Afterward, she wanted to see more of him, and it pissed me off. I got angry -- and then felt embarrassed about it. I had to relearn what I'd learned in the '60s -- that we have a choice between being monogamous or enjoying the big wide world of sex. Since I've already had a fabulous sex life, it seemed unfair to Eric to demand monogamy. Especially since part of the foundation of our relationship is the mentor-student thing. He wants to carry on my sex-education work. But nonmonogamy made me uncomfortable at first. I was afraid he'd find some sweet young thing and run off. Finally, I took a long look in the mirror and said: Dodson, get it together. I knew that holding Eric back would ruin things between us. I made a decision to get over being jealous."

"Neither of us was into monogamy," Wilkinson says. "In our view, monogamy cheats each member of a couple out of being fully sexual by shrinking the world down to two people. By saying you'll limit your screwing to one person, you're screwing yourself. But believing something intellectually doesn't mean that it's easy to accept emotionally. So we spent a good deal of time discussing how we could make a nonmonogamous relationship work."

They came up with one simple rule: No one brings anyone else home or stays out all night without first checking in with the other to make sure it feels OK.

Since agreeing on this rule, they've had a few threesomes and foursomes, and Eric has had sex with a few women he's met through friends. "That's been fine with me," Dodson says. So far she's gone out with a few of her old girlfriends and has had sex with only one other man. Currently, neither one has any other regular lovers.

Both Dodson and Wilkinson view their nonmonogamy as one advantage of their big age difference: "I don't think I could ever have this kind of relationship with a woman my own age," Wilkinson says. "They're fixated on marriage and children. They're very threatened by nonmonogamy. It takes an older woman, a woman with Betty's experience, to let go of sexual possessiveness."

"I have a former lover," Dodson says, "a man I almost married, who is now 80. His wife is 40. She loved him at first, but she's in a different place now. She's chomping at the bit to have a life of her own, including sex with other men. But her husband insists on monogamy. In a relationship where one is much older than the other, I don't think it's fair for the older one to own the younger one's sexuality like that. If age brings wisdom, the older person should be wise enough to allow the young one to experience sex in all of its fullness. By insisting on monogamy, my old friend is no different than an overly possessive parent. Kids rebel against that -- and rightly so. I predict his young wife is going to bail out on him."

Dodson and Wilkinson also credit their nonmonogamy with keeping them devoted to one another. "We never take each other for granted," Wilkinson explains. "We make the decision to stay together every day."

Another thing that keeps them together and happy is affection. "We're always hugging, and cuddling, and smooching," Dodson says, "not just before bed, but throughout the day. In most couples that falls by the wayside pretty quickly. But not with us. Physical contact, sexual or not, helps keep us connected."

Some people -- usually women -- say that a good relationship makes for good sex. Others -- usually men -- counter that good sex makes for a good relationship. Dodson and Wilkinson are both solidly in the latter camp: "When I have a great orgasm with Eric," she explains, "I feel this welling up of love that deepens my appreciation for him. Sure, I can have great orgasms by myself, but Eric is so dedicated to my pleasure that being with him increases the intensity of my orgasms. At my age, I think relationships should be fun or why bother? Many women expect love to be profound, deep, meaningful -- and last forever. My adult relationships are based on sex, and sex is play. Remember, in our puritanical society, play and pleasure are very suspect."

Wilkinson agrees: "Many people believe that good sex is this magical thing that somehow falls into your lap when you're with the right person. I've never believed that. Good sex is like any other skill: It takes knowledge and practice. I was frustrated with lovers around my own age. I'd say: 'Let's try this, or talk about that,' but they weren't into it. They weren't as experimental as I wanted to be, and that caused conflict. Betty not only wants to experiment as much as I do, but afterward, we both tell each other what we liked, what didn't work, and what we can do better next time. She's a great person. She's had an amazing sex life, and now she's passing her wisdom along to me."

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