CNN – Want to have great sex? For world-renowned human sexuality professor Dr. William Yarber, now in his 41st year of teaching at Indiana University, there’s no big secret.
It comes down to asking and sharing with your romantic partner a mix of these magical words: “How do you like to be touched?” and “Here’s how I like to be touched.”
“The essence of sexuality is giving and receiving pleasurable touch,” said Yarber, 81, who is also lead author of “Human Sexuality: Diversity in Contemporary Society,” the perennially assigned textbook that more than 300 universities and colleges use across the country.
Some of Yarber’s students have followed his advice and reported back to him over the years, he said: “I tried it with my partner, and our intimacy is better.” “Our pleasure is better.” “It strengthened our relationship!”
Now Yarber is longing for his own romantic relationship.
He married Margaret Covher, a high school English teacher, in 2000, but she passed away in August 2021. As a couple, they were “emotionally intimate,” he said. “That was a real, powerful thing of our relationship.”
They were close in age and enjoyed going to the theater and seeing movies, especially foreign films.
Yarber and Covher had divorced by the time she suffered a stroke in 2017, but he became her primary caretaker. (He said they divorced because she wanted more independence, but they never stopped being involved with each other.)
“I still loved her,” he reflected. “I wasn’t looking for anyone else.”
‘Extraordinary compassion for others’
Now more than three years after her death, Yarber said he is lonely and hoping to find a partner who’s excited to build a dynamic bond together, one that includes affection and mutual attraction …
