Month: September 2020

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Shere Hite, pioneering sex researcher

PARIS, FRANCE: US feminist and sexologist, now a naturalized German citizen, Shere Hite poses for the photographer, 12 February 1990, in Paris. Hite made waves in the 1970s and 1980s with her radical feminism, asserting for example that women could easily find sexual fulfillment and raise children properly without men.

“All too many men still seem to believe, in a rather naive and egocentric way, that what feels good to them is automatically what feels good to women.”

Such terse pronouncements made Shere Hite – a sex researcher who died this week at the age of 77 – both a feminist hero and a controversial figure in 1970s America.

Her pioneering work The Hite Report upended prevailing notions about female sexuality.

The book, which came out in 1976, laid out the views of 3,500 women on sexuality and the female orgasm. It challenged many male assumptions, and was derided by some, including Playboy, which dubbed it the “Hate Report

She endured intense and lasting criticism in the US, and eventually renounced her American citizenship in 1995.

Born Shirley Gregory in the conservative heartland US state of Missouri, she once worked as a model in New York.

To pay for her degree at Columbia University she appeared in a typewriter advert that capitalised on her blonde hair and attractive looks with the caption: “The typewriter that’s so smart that she doesn’t have to be.”

Her anger over its sexism inspired her to join protests against it.

At one meeting of the National Organization for Women, Hite said the topic of whether all women had orgasms came up. There was silence until someone suggested she look into the topic.

The Hite Report: A National Study of Female Sexuality became a huge international bestseller, totalling 50 million copies worldwide.

Thousands of contributors set out the pleasures and frustrations of their sexual lives in the work. More than 70% of the women interviewed said they could not reach orgasm through penetrative sex with men alone, and needed clitoral stimulus to reach climax.

“I was the only sex researcher at the time who was feminist,” she told the Guardian in 2011. “I tried to extend the idea of sexual activity to female orgasm and masturbation.”

Feminist writer Julie Bindel said that Shere Hite’s “groundbreaking” work “put women’s sexual pleasure first and foremost for the first time ever”.

“In many ways she began the real sexual revolution for women,” she told the Guardian.

But the work generated a huge backlash. Some accused her of hating men, while others said she was helping break apart families at a time of rising divorce rates

The controversy around the Hite Report and her later works – for which she received death threats – caused her to leave the US and move to Europe, spending time in Germany and the UK. She renounced her US citizenship in 1995.

“After a decade of sustained attacks on myself and my work, particularly my ‘reports’ into female sexuality, I no longer felt free to carry out my research to the best of my ability in the country of my birth,” she wrote in the New Statesman in 2003.

Her husband, Paul Sullivan, told the Washington Post that she had the rare neurological disorder corticobasal degeneration. She died at her home in north London on Wednesday.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to Have the Sex Talk With Your Teenage Kid

A cheat sheet for making that dreaded conversation a little less awkward, and a lot more effective.

By Charles Duhigg

According to experts, if your son is 12, he’s probably seen porn. Have you talked about this with him yet? Do you know what to say? Journalist Peggy Orenstein has interviewed more than 100 teenage boys about their experiences with sex, porn, and gender for her book Boys & Sex, and she says we need to pay more attention to boys’ sense of male identity. Masculinity doesn’t always have to be “toxic,” but we need to find better ways to teach our sons what it means to have a healthy understanding of relationships. In this recent episode on How To!, Peggy breaks down how to have a productive conversation with your son about sex in a way that won’t make you—or your kid—die of embarassment. This transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Charles Duhigg: How did you get to writing about toxic masculinity?

Peggy Orenstein: I have spent 25 years writing about girls and women—before Boys & Sex, my most recent book was Girls & Sex, which was about the kind of contradictions that young women still faced in their intimate encounters. As I went around the country after publishing that book, everywhere that I went, parents and boys themselves would say, “What about boys? When will you write about boys?” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, in fact, nobody was talking to boys. More importantly, nobody was really listening to boys. So I started doing some interviews and then very quickly after I started that, the MeToo allegations began and suddenly everybody was talking about sexual misconduct and the idea of toxic masculinity. It created this imperative to reduce sexual violence, but also, I thought, a positive opportunity to engage young men in conversations about issues of sex and intimacy and gender dynamics because we really have to know what’s going on in their heads so that we can guide them toward better and more informed choices.

And what is going on in their heads?

I felt there were two things going on at once. On the one hand, they saw girls as equal in the classroom, deserving of educational professional opportunities, and so on. But, on the other hand, when I would say, describe the ideal guy to me, it was like they were channeling 1955. It went immediately back to dominance, aggression, athleticism, and sex as status-seeking. And the really big one, of course, was emotional suppression. What they would say most often was that they felt that the two emotions they were allowed were happiness and anger. So that whole bucket of emotions that boys learn around sadness, betrayal, frustration—anything like that gets funneled into one emotion.

I would ask boys what they liked about being a guy and that was a lot harder for them to answer honestly. I think that with girls—this is not to say that everything is OK in girl world—but we’ve given them this alternative identity to traditional conventional femininity that they can embrace and grow into and feel good about, but that hasn’t happened with boys.

When you’ve talked to boys or their parents who have had conversations about sex and gender in positive ways, how did the conversation go?

I mean ideally, we start our conversations with our children from birth when we’re naming body parts correctly. We think about sex as this siloed thing separate from every other aspect of our humanity and citizenship, but it’s really not. It all connects. I liken it to table manners. If I said to you, “I want you to sit down with your child and tell them that, ‘This is your fork. This is your knife. Say please and thank you. Ask to be excused at the end of the meal. OK, go forth and be polite,’” that would be ridiculous. You know that you have to tell your child to say “thank you” a million times during their childhood before they do it reflexively. They don’t do it on their own. And so talking about all of these things about sex can’t be done in one conversation. They have to be then tiny things that are kind of peppered throughout.

And if you’re in a situation where you have two parents who are on board and, moreover, you have a male father figure who is really willing to talk to boys, that is gold. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to know all the answers. You don’t have to do it right every time. But just trying and indicating a willingness to have difficult, uncomfortable conversations that you don’t know how to have—what an amazing thing that is to show to your child.

I’ve read these things that say kids are exposed to sexualized messages and porn earlier. But when it comes to my 12-year-old, I don’t even know if he’s really seen porn. So if I have that conversation too early, I’m worried that he doesn’t know what I’m talking about and it’s weird and scary for him, but if I wait too long, then it’s too late.

So often the first exposure to porn is accidental. It’s not something that they’re seeking. It’s somebody forwarding a meme or somebody turning their phone around and thinking it’s funny. So they may be exposed to graphic sexual images before they’re looking for them for sexual gratification. But boys between 11 and 13 tend to start seeking porn out intentionally. So if your kids are that age, there’s a great website called amaze.org that does sex education for middle schoolers. They have some really good information for kids and parents on how to have an age-appropriate conversation about pornography.

Also, I think you need to look at mainstream media. I remember being with my daughter when she was 11, and I asked her if she knew what porn was and she said she did, but she hadn’t seen it. Then we went home and we were watching some movie on Netflix and it had a generic sex scene, but it was the kind of thing that we see a million times, which is kiss, kiss, rip off clothes, go immediately to heterosexual intercourse up against a wall or in bed. In two seconds everybody’s having a simultaneous orgasm and it’s over. They are getting a terribly distorted idea about sex! And one thing that I find in talking to older boys is that guys who are regular porn users express less satisfaction with their partnered interactions, with their own performance, and with their partner’s bodies. And so I think grounding these conversations in the idea that we want you to have a good sex life, but mainstream media is not showing you the way to get there.

I have a friend who says that her son will only have conversations with her if she’s sitting outside of his bedroom door, he’s sitting inside his bedroom, the door is closed except for a two-inch crack, and they talk through that. You might have to find creative ways so that you’re not sitting down looking him in the face during these conversations. It might be less squirmy if you’re engaged in some other activity at the same time.

Most of what our kids are actually seeing on the internet is social media, and they may see jokes that are insensitive or sexist. How do we teach our kids to be exposed to this barrage of information that we can’t control or really even know what they’re seeing?

That is the trick, isn’t it? I think the truth is that right now, all our kids are going to suddenly pop up with something in a conversation that’s going to make you go, “What the hell?” It’s really hard to know what your kid is looking at all the time, but I think that we, as parents, have a tendency to think that what’s going on in their online world is lesser or not really real. But it’s very real to them and it has a huge impact. Particularly during the pandemic when everything has moved online, they’re having their childhood online. So I just wanna express total empathy and support, because we are all, as parents, contending with this. It’s just so new.

I think it can all really come back to not just the golden rule—which is treating people the way that you would want to be treated—but the platinum rule: How does that person want to be treated? How do we see that person, whether it’s gender, sexual orientation, or just the individual person? Thinking about others from their perspective is an act of empathy and that is going to be good for your child in so many ways.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The complicated, and sometimes surprising, global fight for LGBT rights

Members of the LGBTQ community light candles in Kampala, Uganda, last November during a vigil to pay tribute to victims of hate crimes in Uganda and around the world.

By Bilal Qureshi

As 2019 drew to a close, Merriam-Webster declared the pronoun “they,” reconfigured as a non-binary gender identifier, its “word of the year.” The authoritative choice to cement a once-contentious usage affirmed the expansion of both the language and the politics of gender and sexuality in recent years. As of this summer, the United States has had five years of nationally legalized same-sex marriage, an openly gay presidential candidate, the expansion of federal workplace protections for transgender employees and many pop-cultural firsts. In the mainstreaming of LGBT identity, the 2010s could be seen as the lived promise of the rainbow-tinted arc of justice once denied to those confined to the emotional and physical violence of closets.

But beyond the privileged capitals of the United States, where pronouns are being respected and applied, the political and personal borders of LGBT life remain far more complicated, as the extraordinary new book “The Pink Line” reveals. South African journalist Mark Gevisser’s account of the global fight over LGBT rights is a hugely ambitious and exceptional work of long-form journalism. Eight years in the making, with stories from Malawi, South Africa, Egypt, Russia, India, Mexico, Israel and the Palestinian territories, this is a landmark study of unprecedented frontiers in the battle for civil rights. Gevisser, who is gay and came of age during the 1980s AIDS crisis, acknowledges in the introduction that reporting this story was also a personal quest to understand the dramatic shift between his generation and the current moment. But instead of a triumphant celebration of progress, this is a layered and surprising work about those living along these cultural fault lines — what Gevisser calls the world’s new “pink lines.”He shows how the unapologetic queer demands for dignity are colliding with moral panics and nationalist politics. Entrenched ideas about family and religion are being forced into conversations with rapid shifts in norms and discourse. As the recent debate over J.K Rowling’s comments about trans women reveals, social media identity politics are even igniting culture wars among progressives. To find through-lines in this swirling and shifting story, Gevisser focuses on case studies. He embeds with activists, lawyers, parents, LGBT refugees and those who are living and moving along the world’s LGBT frontiers. Migrations and technology have allowed for trends that seemed impossible in his own generation. “It was no coincidence that the notion of LGBT rights was spreading globally at the exact moment that old boundaries were collapsing in the era of globalization,” he writes. “The collapse of those boundaries meant the rapid global spread of ideas about sexual equality or gender transition — and at the very same time, a dramatic reaction by conservative forces, by patriarchs and priests, who feared the inevitable loss of control that this process threatened.”

In a chapter titled “Pink Dollars, Global Gay,” an international gay cruise sails into the harbors of the Caribbean nation of Dominica, where authorities arrest an American gay couple seen having sex on their balcony under stringent local homophobic strictures. In later sections, a Russian transgender mother struggles to be recognized as a rightful parent in painful custody battles for her daughter. A lesbian couple from Cairo, awakened by the Arab Spring, flee the country as the Tahrir Square revolution collapses and a spirit of rebellious freedom is brutally crushed. Gevisser’s book feels especially revelatory in this globalist approach, making thoughtful comparisons that illuminate just how privileged Western societies have become in the application of LGBT legal rights.

What makes Gevisser an especially compelling narrator and guide to this subject is his awareness of his privilege as a White, upper-middle-class South African from a country with one of the most progressive post-apartheid constitutions in terms of human rights. He writes openly about his struggles with “the white man’s savior complex” as he considers how to help an impoverished teenage gay Ugandan refugee seeking asylum in Canada, or how his passport allows for the freedom of movement unavailable to many queer people in the world. (Along with his considerable travels, Gevisser has studied and lived in the United States.) His self-disclosure liberates him from the sometimes insular and patronizing Western gaze on LGBT communities in postcolonial societies, understanding how American or European cultural power may have galvanized LGBT movements but can also serve to destabilize and in many cases endanger local struggles for sexual and gender diversity. These gray zones make the book riveting and morally complex.

I was deeply moved by these nuances in “The Pink Line” to reflect on my own coming-of-age and coming-out story. I began the last decade still in my 20s, still in the closet, and watched the 2010s unfurl with the most extraordinary transformation of the politics, culture and inclusion of LGBT lives in the United States. I remember the anti-gay-marriage mandates and frequent homophobic slurs in college in the early 2000s, now replaced with pop-cultural icons and sprawling pride weekends. I have friends whose pronouns are “they” and who are thriving professionally and personally. But I have also spent the past few years living outside the United States, married to my husband, and have experienced the humbling checkerboard of LGBT rights in different parts of the world, the unexpected moments one has to slip back into closeted skin — and the stories of enduring inequity and struggle. Like every queer person who crosses a border, I too have been living and thinking along pink lines.

Gevisser gives language and form to those experiences. As he explains, “The Pink Line” is a shifting border, sometimes porous but too often marked by defeat, discrimination, otherization and loss. His stories reveal how loves are disrupted, families torn apart, jobs lost and exiles enforced. But as he reiterates, there are daily triumphs, breakthroughs and, in some of his most moving stories, unprecedented transformations in families from the Palestinian territories to Malawi whose hearts and doors are opening where that once seemed impossible. While the author’s own sexuality certainly makes him a partial observer, this is by no means a memoir or a polemic. It is a work of clear-eyed analysis and exceptional reporting, and it deserves a wide and non-LGBT readership that wishes to understand these frontiers. What elevates the book is Gevisser’s poetic and queer gaze, his searching language about why he has dedicated almost a decade of his life to understanding a generational transformation. Dedicating his book to his husband, Gevisser notes, “Writing about it seemed, to me, to be my debt to love.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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10 Men’s Sexual Health Questions That Are Too Embarrassing to Ask

Sex, Viagra, & Ejaculation

1. Do Different Sex Positions Increase or Decrease Chances of Pregnancy? 

No. Regardless of what sexual position you use, vaginal sex can cause pregnancy. 

2. Can I Drink Alcohol With Viagra and Cialis?

Yes. There will not be a bad interaction between the two; but, keep in mind that when you drink alcohol, your erection may not be as firm and the medication may not work as well.

3. Is There a Surgery That Can Increase the Size of My Penis?

Even an implanted penile prosthetic will not increase the size of your penis. If you are overweight, getting to your ideal body weight will help restore some of the length you have lost since gaining weight.

Many men will ask about injections to add girth and if there is a procedure to increase penis length. The AUA (American Urological Association) considers fat injections, to increase penile girth, and suspensory ligament division surgery, which can increase length, to be unsafe and ineffective.

4. Is My Penis Average in Size Compared to Other Men?

This is a question that is hard to answer, and one that many men wonder about. There are many different techniques to measure penis length, including the amount of force the clinician uses to stretch the penis.

Also, some men will see a significant change in penis length once it is erect. Others will notice that their penis only becomes more rigid. There is not a number that men should set as their benchmark.

Some medical conditions and surgical procedures can reduce the length of your penis. We cannot always restore the length you lose. 

The biggest take-home for patients regarding this is to keep a healthy weight. Get care if you feel like your erections are not rigid enough or if you have other concerns about your penis.

5. How Long Should My Erection Last During Sex?

The answer to this question is completely different per person. There is not a standard time that all men should be able to maintain an erection.

For most men, the goal is to get an erection that is rigid enough for penetrative sex and that lasts until both partners are satisfied. We counsel patients that if an erection has lasted over three to four hours, they should get care with the nearest emergency room. (This is called priapism.)

6. What Is Considered Premature Ejaculation?

There is not a standard amount of time that an erection should last before ejaculating. The AUA defines premature ejaculation as “ejaculation that occurs sooner than desired, either before or shortly after penetration, causing distress to either one or both partners”.

There is not a lab test that can determine this. We make this diagnosis based on your report and a physician assessment. Treatment options are available. Your provider can help you decide which is best for you.

7. You Don’t Ejaculate After an Orgasm—What Causes This?

Various surgeries or medications can cause a man not to ejaculate after an orgasm. (The means the penis does not expel any semen). This is called aspermia. The semen can also go backwards into the bladder, which is called retrograde ejaculation. Common causes of aspermia can be a:

  • Prostatectomy or other prostate procedures such as transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP),
  • taking Flomax (Tamsulosin),
  • diabetes, or
  • nerve injuries.

8. Are Orgasms and Ejaculation Different?

Yes. Typically, an orgasm is the pleasure you experience while ejaculating. Men can have an orgasm without ejaculation. On the flip side, men can ejaculate before orgasm. It is also possible to have an orgasm and ejaculation without an erection that is satisfying for sex.

These conditions can have various causes, some that we can identify and treat, and some that we can’t.

9. How Much Ejaculate Should I Have?

Ideally, men should have at least 1.5mL of ejaculate. This is equal to 0.304 US teaspoons, so it is not a large volume. As men age, the amount of ejaculate begins to decrease, but if you notice a big difference, suddenly, you’ll want to contact your provider.

It’s OK to have more, but if you are noticing significantly less over time, especially during the time you are trying to get pregnant, we recommend seeking care with a urologist.

10. Is a Curved Penis Normal?

Some men have a slightly curved penis that has lasted for quite some time. If it is not painful and does not bother you, that is normal. If it is painful or bothers you, then make an appointment with a men’s health doctor. You doctor will evaluate your condition and discuss your treatment options.

If you notice a new curve to your penis and that bothers you with either pain or appearance, come see us. We can discuss next steps. This curve can impact your erections, which is another element we can evaluate and treat.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Want better sex?

Audio erotica and mindfulness could be the answer

By Alex Peters

Sexual wellness app Ferly is promoting female pleasure through mindfulness

For Dr Anna Hushlak it’s not about getting off, it’s about how you get there. That’s why she, along with co-founder Billie Quinlan, created Ferly, a safe space for women to help us get in touch with our bodies and learn about our sexuality, desires, and pleasures.

Part of a growing number of apps catering to female sexual wellbeing, Ferly focuses on the self-care aspect of sex with a particular interest in the mental and emotional side. Combining mindfulness and cognitive therapy with self-touch in immersive audio experiences, Ferly guides you through exercises involving body mapping, self-pleasure, fantasies, and nuturing desire so that you can get more sex-literate and have more positive, mindful sex. It’s like Headspace but with masturbation.

“In the UK, 51 per cent of women aged 16 to 64 have reported experiencing three or more sexual difficulties in the last year, everything from pain or anxiety during sex to low libido and issues with arousal,” Hushlak tells me from where she isolating in rural Canada. “For us, having good sexual wellbeing is as important as getting regular exercise or getting a good night’s sleep. It’s one of those things that’s just so fundamental to our health yet we haven’t historically seen it that way.”

Guiding their community on this journey towards sexual confidence and wellbeing is very close to Hushlak and Quinlan’s hearts – they’ve travelled down the same path as many of their community and they themselves are still discovering and navigating what works for them. Both founders have experienced sexual violence personally and shared similar feelings of guilt, shame and stigma around it. “Billie was sexually assaulted at work. I was raped when I was a teenager. And neither of those experiences we really had support around,” Hushlak tells me. “There was a feeling of having to rediscover ourselves and our sexual selves and our autonomy through sex. And that led to Ferly because it’s the support that we wish we had that wasn’t there when we went through it.”

We spoke to Hushlak to find out more.

How would you explain the concept of mindful sex to people who haven’t heard the term before?

Dr Anna Hushlak: It’s about really slowing down. It’s about understanding how you feel about sex, not just how you have it. Most of our education, if we’ve even had an education around sex, has been focused on the ‘doing it’ and it’s often come through a particular lens of heterosexual sex. Generally it’s two people, generally it’s penetrative, and generally it’s considered successful if it results in an orgasm – typically that’s male climax.

For us, mindfulness is about flipping the script. It’s about saying: how do you actually feel about it? What’s your mind-body connection? Have you taken the time to explore and discover your body? Have you taken the time to actually notice sensations in your body, to create awareness of your body? And it’s much more focused on things like cultivating intimacy, on playing with sensation and touch and experience. And it’s really about body awareness and bringing that into your sex life.

Why was an app the right choice for the platform?

Dr Anna Hushlak: Looking through the science around digital interventions and online therapy, there’s quite a bit of research showing that online interventions are as effective as offline and face-to-face. And another big aspect for us is accessibility. When you’re face-to-face, you’re required to be there physically and that assumes that you’ve got financial freedom to get there, that you’ve got physical mobility to get there, and that you’ve got time to be able to get there.

The other aspect to that was that not everybody is comfortable with the topic. If people are in relationships, their partners might not be supportive of it, or it might be kind of a tense topic for them. We know that not everybody is starting in the same place. So an app allows for a degree of privacy and a degree of going at your own tempo and your own rhythm in a way that’s yours and yours alone. An app was what we saw as the most accessible and the most affordable option for people to do that. And it also allows us to tap into countries around the world. We’ve got users in Saudi Arabia, we’ve got users in Argentina, we’ve got users in the Philippines. So it’s meant that we have that global reach in a way that we wouldn’t be able to do if it was just face-to-face.

One of the techniques that you use is cognitive therapy. Can you explain that a little bit?

Dr Anna Hushlak: There’s a really phenomenal researcher, Dr Lori Brotto, who’s pioneered using mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for sexual wellbeing and treating sexual difficulties. The principles of it are a combination of cognitive therapy, which focuses on reframing negative beliefs and ‘head tapes’ or ‘thinking areas.’ It’s different tools and techniques that help you restructure those thoughts so that they’re not so paralysing and overwhelming and you don’t get wrapped up in these thought cycles. That’s then combined with mindfulness-based techniques. So for example, breathwork, body mapping, focusing on non-sexual touch, really tapping into body awareness.

The combination of the two allows us to help our community members reframe a lot of the messaging they’ve been told and the beliefs they have around sex. For example, that good sex results in orgasm and to reframe that more to say, ‘What does pleasure mean to me? What feels good?’ Alongside doing physical practices that help them kind of ground themselves in the moment, either alone or with a partner. So mindful masturbation where instead of taking two minutes to get off, it’s taking 15 minutes to and touch your collarbone, to play with touch on the inside of your leg, to notice the movement of your breath, to play with different feathering techniques on the clitorus and so it’s much more about a combination of mental and physical practices working together.

What has been the effect of technology allowing such easy access to porn on women’s relationship to sex?

Dr Anna Hushlak: Mainstream porn brings up all these issues around toxic masculinity, around performance, around gender roles, around body image and what a body should or shouldn’t look like. We’ve definitely seen rates of labiaplasty on the rise. One of the reasons we decided on audio erotica for the app was because it allows us to move away from body ideals. It also allows us to tap into imagination and fantasy, which we know are incredibly important to healthy sexuality.

The use of fantasy and erotic stimulus is incredibly important in that it allows us to create the context and it helps us to get in the mood, which, or women and folks AFAB is particularly important because for them desire tends to be more responsive instead of spontaneous, whereas for men, it tends to be more spontaneous. Dr Emily Nagoski, writes about this and she describes it as this lightning bolt to the genitals, which is the main story we’ve been told about what desire and arousal looks like. But that’s actually not what most women experience.

Are women more inclined to prefer audio rather than visual erotica?

Dr Anna Hushlak: I’m not sure statistically the difference between men and women in that regard. A lot of our community comes from backgrounds where they’ve experienced sexual difficulties. People who have felt a lot of shame or stigma, whether that’s from trauma or just ‘meh’ average-type sex. Erotica has been a way for them to transition into opening up their own sexuality, whether there’s a difference between their preference for audio or visual. 

I’m completely making an assumption but I would think that because of the nature often of body insecurities and the pressure around women to have a particular looking body, I would say that audio allows for there to be more left to the imagination. Generally, in mainstream porn, there is a typical idea of what you have to look like and audio allows us to just kind of step away from the visual. A lot of us have actually lost the ability or muted our ability to imagine and visualise and fantasise because we’re fed images all the time.

The stories section of the app has a queer section, how have you tailored content specifically towards queer women?

Dr Anna Hushlak: What we’ve found is that thoughts around same sex often fall into two categories: either same sex is wrong or same sex is fetishised. One of our big things is how do we try to challenge our own limitations around thinking about it? How do we try to broaden the conversation around it? Having queer stories in there, but also, when we do our guided practices if we’re talking about people in relationships, not assuming that it’s a couple. It might be a polyamorous relationship. Not assuming pronouns, so by default using they instead of he or she. Making sure that we’re not describing sex as heterosexual penis and vagina penetrative sex, which is the default that most of us have been taught is ‘normal’.

It’s an opportunity for us to challenge those norms and to think about how we can support our queer community as well as how we can learn to be better allies to that community. Making sure that we’re not speaking for but we’re speaking with. I know that the stories are an interesting area for some of the queer folks in our community to start to explore that side that some of them haven’t necessarily had the opportunity to do based on more traditional upbringings or kind of shame and stigma around that kind of cultural taboos.

During lockdown you’ve seen an increase in downloads of 65 per cent and an increase in content such as the Body Mapping being consumed. Why do you think that is?

Dr Anna Hushlak: On one hand, you have the people who are now suddenly in lockdown with a partner and are now having to navigate a much more intense environment. A lot of the topics that came up around that were: healthy communication, fluctuations in desire, low libido, how do you keep your sex life going? On the flip side, we had the community members that were in lockdown on their own. So you’ve got the people that have been maybe using sex as a tool for confidence and self-esteem. So with them you had the switch to starting to look inwards as opposed to externally for validation. Taking the time to re-evaluate what sex means to them and develop a healthier relationship to sex

Then we had the other group of people who were on their own that were coming from a sex-neutral or sex-negative lens where it was like, I’ve never really masturbated before. I don’t really know how to do this. I’ve got a lot of shame or stigma around it, I don’t feel comfortable touching myself. We would see an increase in, for example, body mapping as a practice which is much more around shifting from a perspective of masturbation to self pleasure. Not being focused on this goal of getting off, not masturbating in the same way that we’ve kind of been masturbating our whole lives: vibrator on for two minutes, I’m done, scratched that itch. Self-pleasure is much more of a mindfulness approach: I’m going to just feel sensations in my body and I’m going to explore what I like and what I don’t like, what I may be curious about. And the whole purpose of it is just to be present with my body, not necessarily to come.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What Is Sternberg’s Triangular Theory Of Love?

A Closer Look

By Sarah Regan

There’s no question that a relationship will go through many phases over the years and that many emotions are involved in the development of said relationship. There are plenty of theories about the types of love and the emotions that go into it, but according to one theory, there are three main components of love. This theory is known as Sternberg’s triangular theory of love.

Sternberg’s triangular theory of love.

Developed throughout the ’80s and ’90s by psychologist and professor Robert Sternberg, Ph.D., the triangular theory of love identifies three main components of love: intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment. Each of the three encompasses different emotions, with all three resulting in what Sternberg calls complete or consummate love.

His original paper on the theory analyzes the works of Freud and other well-known psychologists to come up with the theory of his own. We asked him how he came up with it, to which he replied, “I was at a point in my life in which a relationship I was in was not going all so well. I thought about different relationships I had been in and came to the conclusion that there were three elements that dominated the relationships, at least in terms of love.”

And as a matter of fact, his theory was just proved universal through research on over 7,300 people across 25 countries.

The 3 components of the theory:

In Sternberg’s triangular theory of love, intimacy in a relationship deals with how close, connected, and trusting one feels toward another, Sternberg tells mbg. It also deals with communication, and namely, how well you can do it. Overall, it’s about feelings of closeness and connection, or “how intimate and tied to the other person one feels,” Sternberg says.

Passion, as you might have guessed, is about how passionate the relationship is. It encompasses “how excited one gets in thinking about or being with the partner,” Sternberg says, or “how much one feels one absolutely needs the partner.” And of course, it also deals with sexual attraction. When we have a relationship that feels electrifying and easy to obsess over, that would fall under passion, too.

The third element of the triangular theory of love is commitment, or “the extent to which one is in the relationship for good,” as Sternberg explains it. And it’s the only one of the three that’s conscious or intentional. There is a decision component to this in the short term, which leads to long-term commitment. Sternberg describes it as “the level at which one says ‘this is it; I don’t need to keep looking!'” and chooses to continue the partnership.

How the types of love intersect.

Interestingly (and importantly), the three components can and do interact in different ways, leading to different types of love.

As marriage therapist and certified sex educator Lexx Brown-James, LMFT, recently told mbg, “A relationship without intimacy and passion that solely has commitment is called empty love. These relationships can survive; however, partners might look more like roommates than lovers.”

The eight combinations of love, according to Sternberg:

  1. None of the three = non-love
  2. Intimacy = friendship
  3. Passion = infatuated love
  4. Commitment = empty love
  5. Intimacy + passion = romantic love
  6. Intimacy + commitment = companionate love
  7. Passion + commitment = foolish or fatuous love
  8. Intimacy + passion + commitment = complete or consummate love

Since its inception, though, Sternberg also became interested in how love actually develops, as opposed to focusing on what love is. This led to his theory of love as a story. “Different stories lead to different patterns of love in the triangular theory,” he says.

The combos people could have according to the triangular theory of love gave rise to Sternberg’s idea of love as a story, or “the idea is that we all have a set of stories of love.” According to him, these ideas we have of love tell us what we think a relationship should be and thus govern how our relationships play out. “Examples of stories are the fairy-tale story, the business story, the travel story, [etc.],” he notes. “Each story has two predefined roles. For example, the roles in the fairy-tale story are a prince and a princess, and in a business story are two business partners.”

How can I tell what type of love I have?

It’s worth noting that every relationship will have their own balance of the three components. But according to Sternberg, “different relationships highlight different aspects. If you feel like friendship dominates, you may be specializing in intimacy. If you feel like sex dominates, you may be experiencing infatuated love, and so forth.”

To figure out which of the eight combinations you have, consider the three components and to what degree they are present in your relationship. How much intimacy, passion, and commitment is there?

There are countless theories about what constitutes love, and only you can really understand your own feelings and relationships. Sternberg’s triangular theory of love, which has now been widely proved, is an excellent tool if you’re looking to figure out the emotions behind your relationship and even where it may be falling short. By working to strengthen the three components of intimacy, passion, and commitment, according to this theory, your relationship will be better because of it.

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6 Types of Orgasms You Didn’t Know You Could Have

By AnnaMarie Houlis

When we talk about orgasms, it covers a wide range of conversations. After all, orgasms manifest differently for everyone — they may feel different, come through different sensations, last for different durations and affect us in a wealth of different ways. In fact, they may even derive from different pleasure points. And some people aren’t even particularly wild about the feeling.

There’s a plethora of possible orgasms a person may be able to achieve, if that is indeed their intention. It’s important to note, however, that though a variety of orgasms exist, they’re neither feasible for nor necessarily appealing to all people — and that’s OK. Here, we’ll be focusing on orgasms for people who have a vagina and clitoris — not all of whom identify as women.

“If you don’t have certain types of orgasms, it doesn’t make you less capable of pleasure, and it doesn’t make you less of a woman,” Gigi Engle, certified sex coach, sex educator with The Alexander Institute and pleasure professional at O.School, tells SheKnows. “People experience pleasure and sexuality in such a variety and myriad of ways; whatever brings you pleasure is the most valid. It’s just important to have information so you have the tools you want or need for however you choose to explore your own sexuality… Because let’s be clear: Your body is amazing.”

Engle adds that putting pressure on yourself to achieve orgasm may actually have the opposite effect. Your narrative should focus on experiencing sexual pleasure in and of itself as opposed to reaching orgasm, which she calls a “happy byproduct.”

Regardless of how you choose to explore your sexuality, Engle reiterates a common misconception that achieving orgasm denotes the culmination of a sexual experience — that the goal of sex is always to orgasm and, if it doesn’t happen, the sexual experience was incomplete or invalid or that you or your partner didn’t perform well. “Sex should be about bringing your partner pleasure, bringing yourself pleasure and enjoying that intimate experience as opposed to seeing it as goal-oriented,” she explains.

Certified sexologist Barbara Carrellas adds that if you do want more or different orgasms, you should practice alone first so you can effectively communicate with your partner.

“Your partner is not responsible for your orgasms — you are,” she says. “The better you know your body, the more you’ll be able to bring yourself to orgasm with their help… Just don’t try so hard. Release your expectations about what an orgasm is ‘supposed’ to be like. Release your assumptions about how an orgasm happens. If it feels good, do it; if it doesn’t feel good, stop. If it works for you, do it; if it doesn’t, try something else. There is no ‘normal.’ Everything is ‘normal.’”

And most of all, remember that these are only possibilities to explore if you’re curious and comfortable. To each their own, always. With that said, here are six little-known potential byproducts of sexual pleasure you may or may not want to take a crack at some time.

Anal Orgasm

Anal sex is still largely a taboo topic, but evermore women are giving it a go — and quite liking it. In 2009, the National Survey of Sex and Behavior found that 94 percent of women studied had reached orgasm from anal sex — a higher rate of orgasm than the women who had vaginal intercourse or received oral sex. So, what it is about anal sex?

Though the anatomy of the clitoris is still largely debated, Engle says that in people with a clitoris, all orgasms, regardless of how they manifest, are clitoral — even orgasms that occur from anal penetration. The clitoris, she says, is the epicenter of all female pleasure. 

“There are some women — it doesn’t work for everybody — who have orgasms through anal sex; they’re able to reach the interior walls of the clitoris through the anus,” Engle explains.

The anal canal itself is rich in nerve endings, but the rectum, which sits just past the canal, shares a thin wall with the vaginal canal, she notes. This means that the G-spot, the internal apex of the clitoris, can be reached indirectly through the anus.

“The G-spot is actually the back of the clitoris. You’re just reaching it internally where the internal clitoris is — and it’s not a spot, per se, but it’s actually an area; it’s the area around the urethral sponge and urethral canal that connects to the back of the clitoris,” Engle adds. “So when you have a G-spot orgasm, it’s also a clitoral-based orgasm.”

The clitoris boasts some 8,000 nerve fibers. While nearly 37 percent of American women require external clitoral stimulation to experience orgasm, there’s no “normal.” So, yes, some women can orgasm from any sort of stimulation, including indirect internal stimulation via anal sex.

Energy Orgasm

An energy orgasm can be an erotic experience.

What happens during an energy orgasm is unique. An energy orgasm releases accumulated tension in both the body and mind and sometimes connects to the spirit according to Carrellas. Carrellas coaches individuals and groups in tantra workshops that cover conscious sexuality. She’s also authored three books on the subject. 

“An energy orgasm is the kind of orgasm we experience when we suddenly release stored-up tension and energy,” she says. “In many ways, it’s similar to the physical volcanic orgasm [characterized by a quick buildup, a rapid release and a cool-down] with a major exception — it does not feel as localized. It is still a genital orgasm, but afterward, you feel as though the tension has been drained out of your arms and legs. Your hands and fingers may tingle. Your chest feels more open, and you can breathe more easily and deeply. The relaxation is profound and satisfying.”

That said, while orgasms are seldom observed outside the realm of sexual activity, an energy orgasm is limited to neither sex nor any kind of physical stimulation. Rather, an energy orgasm will flow out to the “limits of your body and beyond,” Carrellas says.

“You may feel boundaryless, as if you can’t tell where you end and everything else begins,” she explains. “You may feel as if you are in a sort of alternate universe where everything is beautiful, quiet and peacefully connected. Your orgasm is happening everywhere and nowhere, and it may go on and on. Afterward, you may feel energized or you may feel peaceful and blissed-out.”

It’s also possible to have an energy orgasm through the act of giving of pleasure, Engle says. “I’ve worked with women in the past who can have an orgasm simply from giving a blow job, either through the sheer erotic energy of giving a partner who they love that kind of pleasure or giving a blow job while grinding against one of their legs, which can stimulate the clitoris and, because it’s such an erotic experience, orgasm,” she notes.

In fact, Corey Folsom, a certified tantric educator at the Source School of Tantra Yoga, says that energy is a more effective facilitator of orgasm than friction.

“We are learning to have energy sex in combination with friction sex,” he tells SheKnows.

On top of Engle’s example of an energy-friction combo, Folsom calls out a “heart orgasm” in particular, which he says can be initiated from a pure energy exchange between partners (read: eye-gazing).

Emotional Orgasm

Again, orgasms aren’t necessarily inherently sexual. “Emotion-gasms,” as Carrellas calls them, elicit the same buildup of energy — a combination of breath, movement, sound and muscular contractions — followed by a release. It may or may not be an erotic emotion.

“Emotion-gasms are ‘total’ experiences; you allow your body to express its emotions without trying to stifle them,” she says. 

Have you ever laughed so hard you thought you might actually die of laughter? Carrellas explains that in that instance, your diaphragm spasmed, and you could barely get a breath. When you finally did get a big breath and you eventually stopped laughing, she says the feeling could be similar to that of an orgasm. 

How about cry-gasms? According to Carrellas, this can describe that feeling of release and relief after a good cry. Or anger-gasms? Have you ever let yourself release years of rage in one long rage-gasm? “The physiological ingredients of an emotion-gasm are the same as a genital orgasm,” she explains.

Emotion-gasms don’t depend on any particular emotion, Carrellas adds. To reach an emotion-gasm requires a degree on concentration, however. And that concentration can be centered on nonsexual feelings or eroticism alike.

Nipple Orgasm

Nipples are well-known erogenous zones, but that women may have the ability to reach orgasm through intentional stimulation isn’t such common knowledge. A wealth of research dating back to the early ’50s, like one published in 2011 in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy, suggests that nipple stimulation can indeed lead to orgasm. 

“A nipple orgasm takes a lot of trust with your partner and a lot of patience and empathy because it can be a very emotionally intense and kind of nerve-wracking way to have an orgasm,” Engle says. “Women already have enough pressure on themselves as it is to have an orgasm. So if you’re trying to have one in an unusual way, it may not work for you unless you’re with someone you trust and have that intimacy.”

So how can a nipple orgasm happen? The body’s biggest sex organ is the brain, Engle explains, and all nerve endings, both from the nipples and the genitals, connect in the brain.

“Your nipples, especially, because they’re a specific erogenous zone, have a direct nerve ending that connects to the clitoral network,” Engle explains. “When you stimulate the nipples, you’re sending these connections to the clitoris.”

Essentially, sensory activity from the breasts projects to the same neurons that receive sensory activity from the genitals, and these neurons produce and secrete oxytocin all the same way according to a 2011 article published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

“No matter where in the body an orgasm may be triggered, all orgasms ultimately happen in the brain, and in different areas of the brain,” Carrellas adds. “Neurologically, orgasm seems much like meditation in that the areas of the brain that are activated depend in part upon what kind of stimulus brought us to the state of meditation or orgasm.”

Folsom adds that adopting a meditative — or rather, tantric — attitude can actually help you feel arousal on deeper levels.

“When we tune up our bodies and the practice of attention, we can have more varied orgasms — these include waves of pleasure that emanate from nipples, heart, G-spot…” he says. “The feeling in any of these pleasure centers can be transmuted into the crown chakra, resulting in a ‘pleasure wash’ in your brain. This replicates the pleasure that what we usually associate with our genitals inside our head.”

Zone Orgasm

Contrary to popular belief, genital stimulation isn’t necessary for some people to achieve orgasm. Research from 2011 calls a nongenital orgasm a “zone orgasm,” which the researchers had described as an orgasm that “occurs when a sensitive spot or zone on the body of a person not usually used for erotic stimulation is stimulated to a peak.”

Of the 216 people surveyed in the study, published in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 31 women said they’d had a zone orgasm, many of them experiencing this through stimulation of the neck, earlobes, underarms, hips, thighs, toes and fingers. In fact, some women reported to have reached orgasm from kissing alone.

“The backs of the knees are a really great place, and the inner thighs are a great place to start,” Engle says of erogenous zones. “The back of the neck, under the ears, even the scalp can actually be an incredible erogenous zone. Starting with a sensual head scratch can waken up sexual desire inside of you and get the juices flowing.”

But your entire epidermis, all of your skin, can be an erogenous zone if you want it to be, she explains. The mind is a powerful tool.

“I think people focus too much on finding these magical erogenous zones when, really, anything can be an erogenous zone if you want it to be and if you believe it enough,” Engle says.  

Engle isn’t the first to suggest that thinking erotically can manifest erotic experiences, either. Rutgers University’s Nan Wise, a cognitive neuroscientist, has investigated brain activity during imagined genital stimulation, for example, and his research suggests that women can actually activate the same regions of the brain that are active during physical stimulation by merely imagining stimulation. Perhaps that’s why some women have reported psychic orgasms (orgasms that occur during dreaming).

In other words, women may be able to “think off,” which means wanting and believing an experience to be sexually satisfying could really yield sexual results.

Coregasm

Exercise gets the heart rate pumping, the blood rushing, the muscles contracting and the breath intensifying. That sounds a lot like an orgasm, which might contribute to the fact that some women are actually having orgasms while doing it. A study from Indiana University published in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy in 2012 found that exercise can bring on orgasms — these are oft referred to as “coregasms” because, typically, abdominal exercises are what induces them.

The researchers administered an online survey to 124 women who had reported experiencing exercise-induced orgasms and 246 women who’d experienced exercise-induced sexual pleasure. They found that, of the women surveyed (ages 18 to 63), about 40 percent of women who had experienced exercise-induced orgasms and exercise-induced sexual pleasure had done so on more than 10 occasions. Most of them (51.4 percent) reported experiencing an orgasm in connection with abdominal exercises within the previous 90 days. That said, the phenomenon happened during different exercises, such as weight lifting (26.5 percent), yoga (20 percent), bicycling (15.8 percent), running (13.2 percent) and walking/hiking (9.6 percent).

While the reasons behind exercise-induced orgasms are still being studied, their intensity (like all orgasms) may waver with the breath. The breath is a potent tool — one that can deepen any pleasurable experience.

“Any type of orgasm sensation can be heightened and extended in time by the use of tantric breath practices,” Folsom says. “A five-second orgasm may be extended to 30 seconds, for instance.”

In partnered sex, partners are well-served to have a shared priority to practice open and skilled communication in addition to the couple’s breathing, energy and sexual movement practices, Folsom advises.

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Sex Therapist Says This Is the Most Common Issue I Treat

By Mary Grace Garis

Sex therapist and cognitive scientist Nan Wise, PhD, author of Good Sex Matters, has been exploring sex from all angles since becoming a psychotherapist in the 1980s (she became a certified sex therapist in 2008). And through it all, one common sexual problem keeps coming up in her work.  “As a sex therapist, I’ve observed that the biggest issue that stalls a sex life after the honeymoon glow of new relationship energy wears off boils down to one basic problem: the individuals’ libidos or sexual love styles that simply don’t match,” says Dr. Wise.

While sexual desire comes in different forms (think: spontaneous versus responsive desire) that can work together, Dr. Wise contends that it’s the “desire curve” that comes into play with new relationships that poses a big challenge to mismatched styles of intimate engagement and sex drive. That is, when we first date someone, our new relationship energy (NRE) makes our horniness spike, inviting us to kind of forget our resting or “baseline desire” rate.

“The desire curve is the natural path your sexual desire takes, from the lower point at baseline to the big juicy peak of NRE—followed by the inevitable and slippery slide down into post-NRE,” says Dr. Wise. “Whether you start off with a relatively high or a relatively low level of sexual desire at baseline, NRE is going to drive up your sexual energy. This is what fuels us feeling the post-NRE crash so acutely. “

And after the crash, it’s common to discover a conflict of what Dr. Wise calls erotic “love styles,” which includes both what turns us on and how we like to have sex. So in order to bridge the gap between mismatched libidos and get yourself excited again, she suggests a multi-pronged approach.

Dr. Wise says the most common sexual problem she treats is mismatched desire and love stye. Here are her 6 tips to bridge the gap.

1. Start by sorting out where you are on the desire curve.

Don’t sweat about where exactly you are, “enjoy the peaks and don’t sweat the valleys,” she says.

2. Identify your own and your partner’s erotic “love-style”

When you’re in the honeymoon period, love style maybe not even be something you notice, but since partners can have vastly different preferences, take note. For example, someone who needs soulful connection to access their sexual energy might have trouble with a rough-and-tumble lover who’s more interested in athletic sex than eye-gazing after the big NRE buzz wears off. At this point, if it seems you and your partner aren’t meshing well, don’t panic.

“Mismatched libidos can provide an opportunity to explore and expand your own erotic repertoire,” says Dr. Wise. “Use the bedroom as a playground to get inventive with your sexual styles.” Dr. Wise also developed a test for designating what your erotic love-style might be. Take the test, and also have your partner, and then use the results as a talking point to keep communication lines open.

3. Learn to stoke your own responsive desire

When the excitement of NRE wears down, we return to stoking the embers of our own responsive energy instead. Think about all the little rituals that came naturally during the early days of the relationship, like, say, flirting.

“Be the lover you want to have,” says Dr. Wise. “Show intense interest in your partner. And don’t be afraid to take matters in your own hands and get the juices flowing by giving your partner and yourself a jump-start with some physical strokes as well.”

4. Take risks to ask for what you want in the bedroom

“This is the way to keep your sex life alive,” says Dr. Wise. “Stop relying on your habitual sexual relationship and start relating in present time. Cultivate the courage to get bolder in conversations in and out of the bedroom. If you aren’t comfortable with taking risks, all the more reason to do so. And if you lack ideas, ask your partner what [they] really, really want. That’s taking a risk, too.”

5. Address lingering resentments that might be dampening your desire for your partner

This could be as serious as infidelity or as simple as them not ever doing the dishes. Whatever it is, talk it out.

“There’s nothing as dulling to a sex life as long-standing, low-boiling upsets or frustrations,” Dr. Wise says. “Make sure to spring clean the basement of your relationship by having regular and productive active-listening sessions—the number one tool I teach couples—so you can get mad and get over it!”

6. Learn to turn yourself on

Sure, that might mean tapping into your self-pleasure regularly and not neglecting your vibrator just because you have an S.O. But it also means really establishing your individuality, and having a life outside of your relationship that’s fulfilling and rich.

“People who cultivate lifelong sexual potential are those who are erotically engaged in living,” says Dr. Wise. “They pursue their passions for learning and experience as human beings. When we cultivate ourselves as separate individuals, we can be both part of and apart from our relationships in ways that enliven. Go out and fall in love with life and bring that home to your partner.”

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Kissing monogamy goodbye

Sex and relationship therapist knows from experience, open relationships can be pathway to happiness

By: Jen Zoratti

Before she literally wrote a book on open relationships, Winnipeg sex and relationship therapist Susan Wenzel was in a monogamous marriage with her husband Denys.

That is, until, he came to her wanting to discuss opening their marriage.

“It was a very scary time for me, because I had that idea of monogamy,” she recalls. “I remember feeling very dizzy, very confused, very hurt. All that anxiety kicks in.” She even kicked him out.

That was eight years ago. Now, Wenzel, 41, and her husband, also 41, are in a consensual non-monogamous open marriage, which means they are free to pursue relationships with other people — and she’s never been happier.

Her book, A Happy Life in an Open Relationship: The Essential Guide to a Healthy and Fulfilling Nonmonogamous Love Life, came out in March via Chronicle Books.

“I wanted something for people who are considering opening their relationship, so they could have a guide,” says Wenzel, who has worked with many couples who are either curious about open relationships or are currently in one through her therapy practice. Their struggles and challenges were familiar to her, and she shares her own story in the book.

“(The book) doesn’t advocate, it doesn’t say, ‘non-monogamy is the way to go’ — it just says, ‘if you are in a non-monogamous relationship or you’re considering opening up your relationship, this is a book that will help you maintain and navigate that relationship well.’”

When we think about the love stories we’re told, in fairy tales and rom-coms, monogamy — and, in particular, heterosexual monogamy — tends to be the norm, which is why some people find the idea of non-monogamy threatening.

“It questions all those beliefs we have about relationships, all the myths we have about relationships,” Wenzel says. “From the time you’re a little person, you’ve been taught that monogamy is the way to do it: you find your Prince Charming or your princess or whatever, and you live happily ever after. You’re special, you’re the true one person.

“Hearing a different story can really throw people off. People get very triggered when they hear about open relationships because of their own fears.”

“People get very triggered when they hear about open relationships because of their own fears.” –Susan Wenzel

Wenzel saw that first-hand when she and her husband came out. The response, she said, was mostly positive, “especially from my friends and people who know us; they do know we’re happy in our relationship,” she says.

But there were others who didn’t quite know what to make of it. “Again, it throws them off because it’s like, ‘How come you guys are so happy and you’re living this lifestyle that is not the norm to many people?’ But then they see we haven’t changed, we’re still relatable.

“Sometimes (monogamy) doesn’t work,” she says. “It works for some, and that’s great, but for those who are non-monogamous, I think they are worthy of finding happiness they are looking for. The common ground is people want to be happy in their relationships.”

And monogamy is not a sure route to happiness for many people, especially when one is expected to be everything to one’s partner.

“You are my confidant, you are my security, you are my lover, you are my friend, you fulfil all my sexual needs, all my emotional needs — you become everything to that person, (and) that’s doomed to fail.

“We also start taking people for granted — not because we don’t love them, but because they are ‘ours.’ There’s something about open relationships where you’re reminded that other people find your partner attractive, too.”

At first, Wenzel’s newly opened relationship was fraught, governed by control, fear and jealousy. Wenzel began to look inward in order to answer a question that both scared and excited her: “What would happen if I embraced this?” Through her own personal growth, she was able to pinpoint that a large source of her anxiety related to a childhood-rooted fear of abandonment.

“But that’s a story I tell myself because my partner is there for me in so many ways,” she says. “I know he’s reliable and dependable — that doesn’t change because he’s seeing someone else.”

Non-monogamy also opened other doors for her, including the freedom to pursue relationships with women — something she says that both her religious background and her belief in monogamy “would not have allowed me to even entertain — they’re those thoughts you have that you push away,” she says. “This is an opportunity to live my truth.”

“This is an opportunity to live my truth.” –Susan Wenzel

Wenzel and her husband have two kids, a 14-year-old son and a 13-year-old-daughter. The idea of a different family unit wasn’t completely unfamiliar to them: their Kenyan grandfather, Wenzel’s father, has two wives. “My son says, ‘No, that’s not for me’ and my daughter says, “It makes sense, sometimes I like different people,’” Wenzel says.

The couple maintains boundaries with their children: general questions only; their sex lives are not up for discussion.

In order for a non-monogamous relationship to work, trust, communication and consent are paramount. Otherwise, it’s not an open relationship. It’s an affair.

“Consent is vital,” Wenzel says. “If you step out and see other people without consent, you’re breaking the agreement that you committed with your partner, because that person thinks they’re in a monogamous relationship with you. And you’re depriving them of an opportunity to be a part of it. Maybe they’ve never brought it up because they thought it wasn’t on the table.

“When it’s consensual, you can create healthy boundaries. You can talk about safe sex. When it’s non-consensual, the other person is not aware of what’s going on.”

Which brings us to, as with all matters in 2020, to the pandemic. Wenzel has seen, especially in various Facebook groups, non-monogamous couples grappling with new challenges put in place by COVID-19.

“That is a concern, where one person wants to see their open-relationship partner, and the other person doesn’t,” she says.

Her advice is to approach the subject the same way one approaches other family members who aren’t in the same bubble. “Maybe it’s not the time to meet someone you don’t know right now, because you don’t know their history. But if you know someone’s history, you know they haven’t travelled, then that’s just like a family member outside the household. Maybe we’re not hugging, but we can still spend time with them,” she says.

“It’s important to hear your partner’s concerns, to validate their concerns if they have a problem — not just go ahead and do it. And then come up with a solution, to say, ‘Can I meet this person for coffee and no contact?’ Or, ‘Can I ask first where they’ve been?’ Making an effort to show your partner you are taking it seriously may help lessen their anxiety.”

“One belief system I changed is, ‘My husband is not the source of my happiness. I am the source of my happiness.’” –Susan Wenzel

For Wenzel, non-monogamy ended up strengthening the relationship with her husband.

“One belief system I changed is, ‘My husband is not the source of my happiness. I am the source of my happiness.’ And if I look to him to make me happy, he will fail every time. That happiness comes from within me,” she says.

“And also to know that he came into this life to do his life, and for me to do my life — and maybe we can walk alongside each other and do that life together.”

Wenzel views her open relationship as a gift that has allowed her to grow in all areas of her life.

“It’s not the open relationship that brought me happiness,” she says. “It’s the work around it.”

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What Do You Do When Orgasms & Sexual Arousal Give You a Headache?

By Claire Gillespie

It’s a common reason to give if you’re just not in the mood for between-the-sheets action. “Not tonight. I have a headache,” is a pretty effective mood-killer. But what if it’s not an excuse, but a serious health issue?

For one in 100 people, coital cephalalgia — also known as primary sex headache or headache associated with sexual activity — makes sex painful. According to Patient, there are two types of primary sexual headache: early coital cephalalgia and orgasmic coital cephalalgia.

Early coital cephalalgia is typically a dull, cramping pain occurring before orgasm and intensifying as sexual arousal increases. it is believed to relate to an excessive contraction in the head and neck muscles prior to orgasm. Orgasmic coital cephalalgia is more common and more severe, although it doesn’t last as long (around 15 minutes on average). It occurs during orgasm and presents itself as a sudden, extreme throbbing headache.

Additionally, a secondary sex headache known as late coital cephalalgia may occur after sex, causing extreme discomfort when standing, and can only be lessened when the sufferer lies back down. This type of headache associated with sexual activity can last for several hours or even days in extreme cases.

Anyone can experience headache associated with sexual activity, but being prone to migraines increases your risk of getting one, and men are three to four times more likely to suffer than women, possibly because men may exert themselves more during sex.

The last thing we want from sex is a headache, right? So what causes coital cephalalgia, and just how serious is it? Step forward neuroscientist in sexuality, Nicole Prause (who also used to work in a specialty headache clinic, so we can’t think of anyone better qualified to advise on this particular issue.)

“Headache after intercourse, masturbation or orgasm is very rare and tends to be rapid-onset and short-duration, making efforts to pinpoint a single cause very difficult,” Prause told SheKnows. “It is most likely related to simple exertion, just like from exercise, in most cases. So far as we know, there is nothing special about sex that promotes headache.”

While any rapid-onset head pain could signify a more serious condition, such as a hemorrhage, if a headache is experienced regularly during sex, it’s unlikely to be life-threatening. That doesn’t mean it’s not a threat to your sex life, but there are ways to relieve head pain following sex, masturbation or orgasm.

“You can treat prophylactically [take pain medications prior to starting sexual activity], but if the headaches are infrequent and not too severe, waiting to medicate until first pain is a likely a better strategy to avoid rebound headaches in the future,” advised Prause. “Also, consider the positions during intercourse. Posture can most certainly contribute to headaches. For a female-with-male partner, try straddling him over an armless chair to avoid shifting from laying to sitting positions rapidly.”

The good news is that experimenting with different sex positions and habits could be the key to figuring out how to stop primary sex headache.

“It may be that being sexual at a different time of day, using different positions or testing your headache propensity with exercise at a similar time of day to when you are having sex can identify what aspect triggers your headaches,” said Prause. “This could allow you to modify sex to reduce the chances you will end up with a headache, such as by having sex before dinner rather than after!”

As with all health issues, make an appointment with your doctor if you have concerns about primary sex headache.

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What to Do When You and Your Partner Have Wildly Different Sex Drives

For starters, know that this is a couple problem… not a you problem.

By Steph Auteri

My husband’s idea of a fantastic evening is to “Netflix and chill.” My idea of a fantastic evening is to pull on palazzo-style lounge pants, crawl into bed by 9 p.m., and read until I pass out.

I could blame motherhood. The pandemic. The overwhelming stress and exhaustion of being a woman who has just turned 40 and who happens to be juggling way too many responsibilities. All of these things are true.

But in all honesty, these elements only amplify a discrepancy in desire that has always existed between myself and my husband.

My appetite for sex has never been as large as his. And because I’ve spent much of our relationship assuming this was an indication of some sort of personal deficiency on my part, our sex life has been the source of much angst. For both of us.

But this desire gap between partners is common. According to one study, desire and frequency issues (both low sexual desire and desire discrepancy) are the most reported sexual concerns (34%) among women. A more recent study delivered similar results, with 40% of participants reporting low sexual desire. This call-out of “low sexual desire” is also likely an indicator of desire discrepancy between partners. After all, we often measure our desire levels in relation to the person we’re with.

Still, sexual desire discrepancy doesn’t have to be the bogeyman it’s often made out to be. According to new research published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, how couples respond to these discrepancies can actually improve their overall relationship satisfaction.

The Desire Gap Is a Normal Part of Most Relationships

Our levels of desire shift over the course of our lives and, by extension, over the course of our relationships. This happens as a result of many factors, including age, stress levels, and relationship status. Being mentally prepared for these shifts can make all the difference in the world in terms of sexual and relationship satisfaction.

Kristen Mark, Ph.D., MPH — a sex and relationships researcher, educator, and therapist and one of the authors of this most recent study — says that expectations play a huge part in how sexual desire discrepancy impacts a relationship. “What I see clinically with couples struggling is, ‘I thought our sex life was so amazing. I thought this is what it would [always] be,'” says Mark. This attitude ensures that the inevitable desire fluctuations that occur over the course of a relationship become a source of distress.

She says that couples who don’t catastrophize, on the other hand, have it easier. These couples acknowledge the ways in which desire shifts and, because they see these fluctuations as normal, they don’t necessarily treat them as a huge problem that must be fixed. Because of this, they can roll with the changes going on in the bedroom.

“When I first started dating my husband, we could have sex eight times in a weekend. We were just animalistic. Now, maybe it’s been eight months since we had sex. I don’t know. I’m just not counting anymore.” – Briana, 31

“I remember when I first started dating my husband and we could have sex eight times in a weekend. We were just animalistic,” says Briana, 31. Three kids later, “now, maybe it’s been eight months since we had sex. I don’t know. I’m just not counting anymore.”

The women I spoke to about their sex lives pinpointed various reasons for the desire gaps in their relationships. Like me, Briana has been feeling the stress of motherhood. She told me that sometimes, after an exhausting day of running after kids and breastfeeding her youngest, her body feels more like a tool than anything else. “At the end of the day,” she says, “there’s nothing left to give.”

Laura Zam, a sexuality educator and the author of The Pleasure Plan, echoes this. Adding to the average stressors of her day, Zam has spent her life grappling with painful intercourse. For her, the prospect of sex can seem especially daunting. “It’s a feeling of, sometimes, anger,” she says, speaking to how she used to feel blindsided by her husband’s desire when the day was over. “My body was finally mine and I did not want to share it.”

“His sex drive is much more influenced by outside factors. A tough week at work… depression… anxiety… he loses interest. But sex makes me feel better.” – Annika, 42

Annika, 42, meanwhile, points out the ways in which sex can sometimes hold different meanings for individuals. “The short version is that I’m horny more often than my husband,” she says. “The longer version is that his sex drive is much more influenced by outside factors. A tough week at work… depression… anxiety… he loses interest. But sex makes me feel better.

How the Desire Gap Can Place Strain on a Relationship

In many cases, these discrepancies between partners can cause distress — on both sides. The person with the higher libido may feel rejected, while the one with the lower libido may feel some combination of guilt and resentment.

“When we don’t have sex, my husband feels he’s not good enough or not attractive enough,” says Briana. “But it’s not that I don’t want to have sex with him. I don’t want to have sex with anybody. At the end of the day, I’m touched out. I don’t want anybody to need me for anything. It has nothing to do with my relationship with him.”

For others, it can be viewed as a lack of effort in maintaining intimacy. “My husband would say, ‘This is not important to you. You don’t seem to be really invested in this part of our relationship,'” Zam says. “I felt guilty. And it brought up these feelings of brokenness. I already felt broken, sexually. Obviously, something was wrong with me.”

How Some Couples Have Defused the Tension Caused by Sexual Desire Discrepancy

Happily, all of the women to whom I spoke feel that, as time has passed, they’ve been able to respond to these sexual differences in a healthier way. Their number one tip, of course, is a lot of communication.

“In the last few years,” says Annika, who has been with her husband for 22 years, “we started talking about our feelings and are much more on the same page.”

She explains how, at the beginning of their relationship, they handled their desire discrepancy poorly, both of them holding onto resentment. But in recent years, their coping mechanisms have changed. “Annoyingly, yes,” she says. “Communication is key.”

“I think it’s important to not let it become this elephant in the room,” says Mark. “To work together to come up with solutions.”

And in fact, Mark’s research shows that relational strategies developed by both partners — versus by just one partner — were associated with greater sexual and relationship satisfaction. Mark explains that desire discrepancy is a “dyadic issue,” an issue created by the interaction between two individuals. “This isn’t something one person has to bear the load of,” she says. “People tend to pathologize the individual with lower desire and that shouldn’t be the case. Why is lower desire worse than higher desire? It’s just desire.”

People tend to pathologize the individual with lower desire and that shouldn’t be the case. Why is lower desire worse than higher desire? It’s just desire. – Kristen Mark, Ph.D., MPH

And when couples begin to communicate about their desire, better solutions naturally arise. For Briana and her husband, for example, there is an ongoing conversation around how they can find a middle ground that makes both of them happy.

Sometimes, that means engaging in maintenance sex. “It’s about me fulfilling a need for him because I love him,” says Briana.

In other cases, it means redefining what sex is, and also embracing non-sexual intimacy.

“What I found was that, when I was declining sex, I was declining a very narrow definition of sex,” says Zam. “I started to ask myself what was interesting to me sexually… erotically. What I don’t enjoy is when [penetrative sex] is the be-all and end-all. I need a lot of variety. I like to go into a sexual romantic encounter with no preconceived notions of what the activity will be. It may or may not include orgasm. It just depends on what I’m in the mood for.”

She explains that she learned to “find her own ‘yes,'” even when her body was saying “no.”

“I’d respect the ‘no,'” she says, “but is there an authentic ‘yes’ there and where is it? What would be nice right now?”

Briana, meanwhile, spoke of how she and her husband became able to acknowledge the natural ebbs and flows in desire. “It’s not always going to be like this,” says Briana. “We can not have sex and still have fun with each other. We can find other things for our relationship to be based off of other than our sexual relationship.”

She mentions how she and her husband sometimes shower together, and how it doesn’t have to be sexual in nature, but can still be positive physical touch — a term that is often used by child psychologists to describe the sort of touch that encourages connection and bonding. “There are so many different ways to show your spouse positive touch,” she says. “It doesn’t always have to end in orgasm.”

In the end, when it comes to the research around desire discrepancy, Mark speculates that perhaps the solutions we’ve historically been given for managing the desire gap in our relationships aren’t necessarily the best solutions for the relationship itself.

Masturbation, for example, is one of the most commonly suggested (and used) strategies among couples whose desire levels don’t match up, but its use doesn’t actually lead to greater relationship satisfaction — unless it’s been discussed as part of a larger conversation.

“I think that’s the most important piece,” says Mark when asked about the biggest takeaway from her research. “Treating this couples issue as a couples issue.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Having an Amazing Sex Life During and After Menopause

By

When cartoonist Sharon Rosenzweig was 45 and going through a divorce, she felt the pressure to meet someone new right away. “By the time I’m in my fifties,” she remembers thinking, “I’m going to be so old, I won’t even be interested in sex anymore.” She had this idea that menopause would eradicate her sex drive.

Turns out, she was wrong. She met the man who would become her second husband in the middle of menopause and was surprised to find her sex drive was still quite active. But she did have things to figure out, namely vaginal dryness, a common issue of menopausal and post-menopausal individuals.

Her doctor prescribed her estriol cream and it has made all the difference. For Sharon, sex is now better post-menopause. “I’m surprised how [my body] keeps getting more responsive. Orgasms are longer and more powerful than they used to be. I don’t know if that is me being more comfortable, like being older actually helps, or if it’s this cream or it’s just having figured out a little bit more.”

By the way, estriol cream can be expensive. Sharon recommend looking into https://www.womensinternational.com/contact/ — an affordable pharmacy that does mail order.

Sharon tells her story in the new comic collection Menopause: A Comic Treatment. The embedded video is a promotion for the collection and tells Sharon’s story.

Sharon’s story is not uncommon. MaryJane Lewitt, PhD, RN, CNM, FACNM, is a nurse, midwife, and qualitative researcher who studies the sexuality of post-menopausal individuals. She is finding that, like Sharon has discovered, post-menopause is a time of life where many folks are able to prioritize their own sexuality and overall quality of life.

I interviewed MaryJane about her research. Below, you’ll find tips on navigating sex, relationships, and a holistic sexual self during and post-menopause from MaryJane and Sharon.

But first, a note on the gendered terms used in this article. Since MaryJane’s research has focused primarily on cisgender individuals born with vulvas, for this article, when I quote MaryJane, that’s who we are referring to; however, I hope anyone experiencing menopause can feel included.`

And actually, much of the advice is applicable to anyone in their later years regardless of gender, because much of the changes related to aging aren’t just about menopause. This is really about embracing your whole self through all of life’s changes.

1. Redefine Your Sexual Self

Many aspects of aging can impact one’s sexual desires and goals. You may experience changes in your relationships and your lifestyle, along with physical changes. Menopause (and aging in general) will bring changes to the texture, tone and sensitivity of your skin, including your erogenous zones. You’ll also experience changes to your body hair and natural lubrication.

Combined, these changes can impact what you find pleasurable, as well as how you view yourself as a sexual being. “Women have to deal with the way their body is now versus their expectation of who they were sexually before,” MaryJane said.

What’s important to remember is that these changes do not have to stop you from being a satisfied sexual being, they may just change what that means. And it does not need to be the same as what it was before or what it means to your neighbor.

“Every woman defines what her ideal sexual state is and what her own personal sexuality can be,” MaryJane explained. “It’s not the same for every single individual. Some people want to make sure that they continue sexual intimacy in their lives. Other women don’t necessarily need sexual intimacy in their lives for them to be sexual creatures.”

2. Schedule Time To Talk to Your Healthcare Provider About Sex

“One thing I’m hearing over and over again is that conversations about sexuality with healthcare providers — even OBGYNs, nurse practitioners and midwives — are not happening at the frequency that most patients’ desire.”

These conversations can be uncomfortable for both parties involved, and often, neither the provider nor the patient wants to initiate.

Another reason these conversations aren’t happening is that people assume that the problems they’re facing with their sex life can’t be helped. MaryJane explained this isn’t necessarily true: “A lot of things are starting to become available to women for addressing different elements of their sexuality.”

For instance, during menopause, the body produces less natural lubrication and some over-the-counter lubricants can dry out the skin even more and can aggravate the skin. Physicians can prescribe or offer suggestions for lubricants that will work better.

This is what Sharon experienced. She assumed her doctor would just suggest using generic OTC lubricant, but he was actually well-versed in this issue and had something better for Sharon to try (the estriol cream).

“You have to get past the embarrassment of saying what it is that you are having trouble with. I’ve known my doctor for 25 years, and it was really hard to bring up this topic of vaginal dryness and say those words to my doctor, even though he’s delivered babies,” she explained.

MaryJane recommends scheduling a specific appointment to talk about sex. “These take longer conversations with their healthcare providers to almost give women permission to explore different toys and really figure out what works best for them.”

To prepare for these appointments, she also recommends taking an inventory about what you want and what you’re experiencing. Here are examples of questions to ask yourself from MaryJane:

  • What are the things that you’ve tried to help improve your own personal satisfaction?
  • What are some of the things that have not worked?
  • When have you wanted to experience something different?
  • Was it related to desire? Was it related to something physical?
  • Were you having issues with urine leakage during intercourse which made you feel uncomfortable so you could not reach orgasm? Or was it a lack of that sensation?
  • Are you comfortable with masturbation?”

3. It’s Time to Play

If traditional sexual intimacy (penetrative sex and masturbation) is important to you, but you’re experiencing changes in what’s pleasurable, it’s time to play.

As you age, what feels good changes more quickly. “You’ve got to shift and adapt on a regular basis in order to continuously create those moments of pleasure and intimacy,” Maryjane explained.

To learn to shift and adapt, try new strategies in bed when alone and with partners, which will allow you to rediscover new avenues for pleasure and navigate your body’s changes.

As an example, let’s talk about orgasms. Per MaryJane, post-menopause, it can take people with vulvas longer to achieve orgasm, and the nature of the orgasms can change. “They have to either pregame with a lot more foreplay or different lubricants or, for the first time, they have to try more specific forms of external stimulation from the variety of toys out there.”

And play does not need to involve a partner. Want to really understand your body’s changes and get a sense of your sexual self? You’ll learn new things on your own and it’s good for you.

“Masturbation gives both short term and long term health benefits for women moving through the menopausal period,” MaryJane explained. “The act of masturbation itself increases circulation and lubrication and can maintain elasticity.”

4. Find Companions

Find folks you can open up to about changes to your body, your sex life, and your relationships. You might find that it’s a relief for them to open up as well. And if you’re dating and exploring, you might also find some partners-in-crime.

“Other women are your best allies,” Sharon explained. “They’re not your competitors, they’re your allies because they’re going to be out there dating and meeting people that they wind up not wanting to stick with, and they can pass them along. That’s what happened to me.” (Sharon was introduced to her second husband through a friend who’d dated him first.)

There’s no age limit on meeting new friends and lovers. There are rich opportunities through activity groups, alternative living communities, and more where older individuals are finding friendship and companionship. And people perimenopause are enjoying short-term or casual relationships perhaps more than they have in the past.

One dilemma, according to MaryJane, is that many older individuals were raised in cultures that did not encourage them to ask for what they need or be comfortable talking about sex or sexuality. This becomes a battle of habit and conditioning.

5. Consider The Opinion of Those Around You, But Live Your Own Life

After Sharon got divorced, she had to navigate dating with her teenage daughter in the house. She made the mistake of talking about moving for one potential partner without considering how it would affect her daughter. Here’s her advice for others navigating kids and dating: “I think it’s about being sensitive to what is going on with them. I missed it because my own needs were so central.”

It’s okay for your needs to be central; just be sensitive about how your own life changes affect those closest to you.

6. Be Proud

If you’ve gotten this far in the article, this issue is important to you, so let me leave you with one more thought. However you embrace this stage of life, you can set the example for future generations. You get to be a role model for younger folks like me on what it means to be vibrant and beautiful in the midst of life’s inevitable changes.

Here’s MaryJane: “There is a renaissance in terms of the sexuality of older women in the media right now. We’re seeing a lot of the women with dark gray or white hair — classic beauties — reassert themselves as very strong women at the end of their life. And they’re doing it from a sense of being alone or not having a partner, but their sexuality is very clear and very consistent in the images and in what they’re saying and what is coming forward from them.”

Case in point: about life at 59, author Gail Konop writes, “Contrary to the menopause myth, I am experiencing the sexiest, most vibrant, most intellectually and professionally fertile time of my life. Liberated from waiting for the next stage or event or person to define or save me, I am the leader of my own pod.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Why some women ignore sexual discomfort and settle for bad sex

Women aren’t just more likely to experience consensual sex that’s bad and painful; they are also socialised to prioritise men’s pleasure over their own.

By Kellie Scott

Amelia*, 38, recently told her long-term boyfriend she experiences pain during sex.

He asked, “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I did tell him the times it was unbearable … but there were times where the pain wasn’t ‘that bad’ so I endured it,” Amelia says.

“His question made me question myself as to why I hadn’t said anything.”

Amelia says she realised she felt a “looming threat” to keep him satisfied.

“Luckily my boyfriend is amazing, and he was very understanding. It’s such a shame that as women we grow up with and deal with this garbage.”

Women aren’t just more likely to experience consensual sex that’s bad, painful and unsatisfying, they are also socialised to prioritise men’s pleasure over their own, explains sex and relationship therapist Lisa Torney.

And those messages begin as early as childhood.

“My mother, when she would serve food, would always serve more food to men. Right from the start there is almost this ‘Your needs are greater than mine’.

“It’s this subtle social messaging throughout our lives that then turns into sexual messaging.”

Women ignoring discomfort and not prioritising their own pleasure is at the heart of many sexual issues.

So how can we unpack these issues to have healthier, more meaningful relationships and better sex?

Bad sex for women vs bad sex for men

Bad sex can look like a lot of different things for women.

Pain, discomfort and fear of being hurt are some, says Ms Torney, referring to 2010 research.

The study, led by feminist psychologist Sara McClelland from the University of Michigan, found men and women imagined a very different “low-end” of a sexual satisfaction scale.

“Female participants described the low end of the scale in extremely negative terms, using terms like ‘depressed’, ’emotionally sad’, ‘pain’, and ‘degradation’. No male participants used terms with this degree of negative affect,” Professor McClelland writes.

Ms Torney says basically for women it’s about protection and pain, whereas for men it’s about “getting it at all” and orgasm.

We also know straight women are much less likely to orgasm through partnered sex than men.

Why women are more likely to experience bad sex

More likely to experience sexual pain

Australian data shows 20.3 per cent of women have experienced painful sex, compared to 2.4 per cent of men.

Jane Ussher is a professor of women’s health psychology at Western Sydney University.

She says sexual pain is more common in the context of penis-vagina penetrative sex, and can arise in the context of lack of lubrication or vaginismus.

Because of a gender inequity in healthcare, helping men have better sex has been a higher priority than for women.

For example, journalist Lili Loofbourow found medical journal PubMed has five times as many clinical trials on male sexual pleasure than it has on female sexual pain.

It’s why so many women with conditions like endometriosis (which can cause painful sex) go undiagnosed.

‘Part of the contract’

Professor Ussher says many women feel having sex is just “part of the contract” in heterosexual relationships.

“A lot of women have sex without desire. A lot of women fake orgasms to pretend to enjoy it,” she says.

Women are also socialised to not hurt men’s feelings, says Ms Torney.

Ella*, 29, says she used to find speaking up in the bedroom difficult.

“I would occasionally mention [what I liked or didn’t like] to past partners but wasn’t firm about it so sometimes would just drop it.

“We’re told not to speak up and keep things to ourselves, especially for our partner’s sake.”

In cases of sexual violence, women may also not feel safe to say no to sex.

“Men are less likely to be subjected to that kind of violence,” Professor Ussher says.

Lack of education and shame

Not only are we not taught about pleasure as part of our sex education growing up, women are often told their first time will hurt.

“This is often how vaginismus starts for some people,” says Ms Torney.

“That’s heavy social messaging right there that can lead to a condition as debilitating and painful.”

She says women need to learn about their bodies and what feels good.

“There is lots [of information] about male genitalia and their health, less so about women.”

Ella says she was never taught her own pleasure mattered, or encouraged to explore her own body — two things that held her back during those early sexual experiences.

“Female sexuality and pleasure has been swept under the rug for centuries, so having any type of sexual urge or desire is often met with guilt, shame or a dirty feeling.”

Sex as a performance

Professor Ussher says there is an expectation for women to be sexy for men.

This “sex is a performance” messaging is reinforced through pornography, for example.

“The idea of your own desire within you, what you want, is really quite absent.”

She says men are also harmed by these representations; for example, the idea that sex should last a long time can lead to performance anxiety and erectile dysfunction.

Learning to prioritise our own pleasure

There are several things women can do to learn how to prioritise their own pleasure.

Masturbate

When Ella began to masturbate, she learnt more about what turned her on.

“So I wasn’t willing to just let things slide and accept that is how sex is like.

“It felt great, I felt more confident and I realised what I had been missing and never wanted to go back to that.”

Professor Ussher says learning about your own body and what feels good is important.

Widening your definition of sex can also help.

Professor Ussher works with patients who have been impacted by cancer and says when penetrative sex is off the table it leads to other enjoyable experiences.

“Massaging each other, mutual masturbation — they often say sex is better than ever.”

Janelle*, 27, says after years of feeling pressured to have sex with her ex-boyfriend, which was painful for her, she reframed her understanding of intimacy.

“It doesn’t always mean that it has to be sex. There are many, many other ways of showing this between two people.”

Talk to your partner

While it’s not easy, Ms Torney says talking to your sexual partner is important.

“Talk about what you find pleasurable and what you don’t — have an open conversation about the real nitty gritty.”

Ella is married now and says she really enjoys her sex life.

“I learned that communication is vital, and you need to be upfront with your partner, no matter what.

“Tell them — or even better, show them — what you like so there’s no disappointment or resentment.

“A good partner will always listen and want to make sure you’re satisfied.”

Outsource some help

Ms Torney also recommends seeking professional support, whether it’s therapy or from your GP. You can also chat to your peers.

“Ask friends how they talk about things. Talking about it is what will make it easier.

“Because we build this stuff up as awkward and embarrassing, then not talking about it just makes it worse.”

Prioritising your pleasure is worth it, she says, because everyone will benefit from women having better sex.

“Everyone can benefit when sex lives are improved, which includes people of all gender expressions.

“We need to be mindful of our partners’ sexual needs and enjoyment and ensure we check in with them during sexual encounters to make sure things feel OK.”

*Names changed for privacy.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Often Do Married Couples Have Sex?

What The Research Tells Us

By Kelly Gonsalves

If you’re married and not very happy with your sex life at the moment, it’s normal to wonder about…well, what’s normal. Here’s what we know about how often married couples have sex, according to research and experts.

But first an important note: “It’s important to know that a normal sexual frequency is determined by what the couple agrees is mutually satisfying,” sexologist Shamyra Howard, LCSW, tells mbg. And she adds: “Sexual frequency is not an indicator of sexual satisfaction.”

Average number of times per week married couples make love.

According to the 2018 General Social Survey‘s data on about 660 married people who shared details about how often they had sex in the past year:

  • 25% had sex once a week
  • 16% had sex two to three times per week
  • 5% had sex four or more times per week
  • 17% had sex once a month
  • 19% had sex two to three times per month
  • 10% hadn’t had sex in the past year
  • 7% had sex about once or twice in the past year

Other studies have found similar numbers. A multiyear study of 35,000 British people published in 2019 found about half of people in serious relationships have sex less than once a week.

How often married couples make love, by age.

In 2013, AARP reported that in a study of over 8,000 people over 50 years old conducted by sociologists Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., and James Witte, Ph.D., 31% of couples have sex a few times a week, 28% of couples have sex a few times a month, 8% of couples have sex once a month, and 33% of couples rarely or never have sex.

Among people in their 70s, a 2015 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found 33% of sexually active men and 36% of sexually active women had sex at least twice a month. For people in their 80s, 19% of sexually active men and 32% of sexually active women had sex at least twice a month. According to the International Society for Sexual Medicine, a 2010 survey from The Kinsey Institute found almost 25% of partnered women over age 70 had sex more than four times a week.

“Frequency of sex seems to decrease overall as couples age,” Howard says. Though citing the Kinsey study, she adds, “Age is just a number!”

Lauren Fogel Mersy, PsyD, psychologist and AASECT-certified sex therapist, adds: “All aspects of our sexuality can change as we age. Arousal and orgasms might take longer, desire can lower, and sexual frequency can certainly decline, particularly as a relationship matures over years. Of course, this won’t be true for everyone, but it is common.”

How often married couples should have sex.

There is no ideal number of times every married couple should be having sex. What each couple needs or wants will vary based on their own personal preferences.

“The frequency that a couple ‘should’ be sexual is the frequency that they negotiate based on their individual needs and levels of desire. There is no one size that fits all here,” Mersy says. “I hesitate to recommend a specific number because it won’t fit for a good portion of the population. When people use a statistic to determine their sexual frequency, it reinforces performative sex, which is when you go through the motions just to check the box.”

That said, Howard notes that a 2015 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science journal found couples are happiest when they have sex about once a week. Their happiness with the relationship decreased when couples had sex less frequently than that, but it didn’t increase if they had sex more often than that.

“It seems like the magic number to sustain positive sexual well-being in a relationship is once a week,” Howard says.

Is once a month a sexless marriage?

Generally speaking, a sexless marriage is defined as one where the married couple has sex 10 or fewer times per year. That said, people have very different definitions of what counts as a sexless relationship and how much sex they personally want. Some couples have sex once or twice a year or don’t have any sex at all, and they’re perfectly happy with that. Other couples may struggle if they have sex less than once a month.

Is having sex every day normal?

According to 2018 GSS data, just 5% of married people said they had sex four or more times per week. So no, it’s not very common for married couples to have sex every day. That isn’t to say it’s unhealthy or abnormal to have sex daily if that’s what works for you and your marriage, as long as both partners are open to it.

What to do if you’re not happy with how often you have sex:

“The first thing I recommend is for partners to have a discussion about their feelings and needs,” Mersy explains. “It’s important that this gets explicitly verbalized so there isn’t miscommunication or assumptions.”

Howard adds: “I will always recommend couples to keep an open mouth when it comes to discussing sex. Talk to each other often.”

“For couples who might be struggling with sexual intimacy but feel connected in other areas of the relationship, I recommend scheduling sex. Yes, I said schedule sex,” says Howard. “It doesn’t make sex less spontaneous. Scheduling sex is a way to show your partner that you want to prioritize sex just as you do other areas of importance in your life.”

How do you do that? Howard’s advice: “Scheduling sex doesn’t mean that your sex life will run on a schedule like, every Tuesday, at 8 p.m., in the missionary position, for six minutes. No, not like that. Sometimes scheduling sex is telling your partner to be naked when you get home.”

The method might not work for everyone, she adds, and that’s OK. Try it out and see how it feels. If it’s not working, time to try something else.

“For partners who are both committed to being more intimate together, I recommend that they broaden their definition of sex, so that it doesn’t feel too narrow or pressured,” Mersy says. “One of the main exercises that I recommend is for partners to plan a weekly intimacy date. This is different from a sex date, in that it’s pleasure-focused, not goal-oriented, and geared toward physical connection in its various forms. This can involve anything from kissing, lying naked together, cuddling, showering, massaging, or sexual activity.”

4. See a sex therapist or coach.

“A qualified sex therapist or sex coach can help you collaborate on the best methods to increase the sexual intimacy in your relationship,” says Howard.

This can be a lot more fun than it might sound. Yes, there will be some tough and vulnerable conversations, but there’s also often fun sexual homework and creative ideas to bring sexual energy back into the relationship. Most importantly, bringing in a third party can help you troubleshoot through recurring blocks and clear any negative energy that might have settled around your sex life so that you two can get on the same page and start fresh.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!