Category: Sexual Satisfaction

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What Causes A Sexless Marriage?

And How To Fix A Relationship Without Sex

By Pam Denton

There’s more to intimacy than sex.

If you find yourself trapped in a sexless marriage and don’t know what to do to restore the passion and intimacy, then it’s time to reframe your idea of what the problem in your relationship is.

Many married couples have less sex as time goes on, but it doesn’t hurt the connection and intimate times with one another.

So how can you fix a relationship when there’s no sex and you’re worried that you and your spouse are drifting apart?

The truth is that your sexless marriage likely does not have anything to do with sex.

In fact, in many cases, your sexual shutdown has more to do with your relationship versus any true lack of physical compatibility or desire for sex!

So, it’s time to give yourself (and your partner) a break — allow yourself permission to overcome the lack of sex in your relationships and reclaim the rightful pleasure in your marriage. You deserve a marriage filled with hot, sweaty, sweet, soulful, passionate, and intimate moments.

All roads lead to sex. After all, we were created from sex. Not to mention it’s one of the most natural ways to connect, intimately, in partnership and marriage. Yet, for so many marriages sex becomes a thing of the past and an “issue.”

Sexless marriage is rampant within our culture. Couples fall in love, get married, and their once hot connection dwindles out and the “flame of desire” dies. There are a lot of deep and intimate reasons why this happens, but these three are the most prevalent:

Unresolved conflicts.

First and foremost, when conflict goes unresolved it forces a wedge in a marriage. This wedge shuts down the passion and desire for intimacy, touching, and lovemaking. In many cases, the relationship becomes superficial, cold, and even hardened. Years of dormant, unresolved, issues fester like poisonous venom, leaking out in sarcasm and hurtful words. Or, words are rarely spoken, making intimate dialogue non-existent.

Stress.

Second, you may begin to feel that you love the person you’re with and, in your mind, you want sex but stress and tension have gotten in the way so you have put up walls of resistance. Here, the marriage becomes a melting pot of stress, fighting, disagreements and shut down.

Hormone imbalances.

Lastly, there’s the body. Body issues get in the way of intimacy and block contact because you “just don’t feel like it anymore.” The feelings that once had you loving sex, have switched off due to your physiological imbalances and lack of desire to connect.

No matter what the cause, these issues are all very tough to deal with, and can ruin a marriage … if left unattended. The great thing is, you can resolve them and make way for sex to reappear (better than ever) in your marriage!

Here are 5 ways to fix a relationship that’s missing physical intimacy, without even having sex:

1. Let go of what a “great sex life” looks like

Let go of all of your preconceived notions of sex in marriage and realize that we’re all human, with issues to resolve.

Let go of the shame and guilt you feel towards your relationship.

By letting go of your inner critic and the pressure you’re putting on yourself to have sex, you will begin to free yourself (and mind), in order to get to the root of the problem.

2. Believe in your partner’s good intentions

Relax, find comfort that you and your partner are together for a real, honest reason. And no matter what your circumstances, you can rekindle the flame of love.

The stress and unresolved conflict between you two will resolve with open honest dialogue.

3. Dig up the dirt

Society teaches us not to dig up other people’s dirt. But in marriage, you have to get down and dirty with the truth, in order to build an honest connection of love.

Relationships challenge you to grow in intimacy and love. When you carry a lot of baggage in a marriage, there is some deep dirt to tend to and you can use this dirt to fertilize your sexual pleasure.

4. Trust your partner to try

Trust is why you got married in the first place, right? It wasn’t really just about sex, it was because of a special connection. You trusted this person and you felt connected in a special and fantastic way.

So trust that you are in the partnership for a good reason; trust that your partner was the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, through the good and the bad.

Your sexless marriage is just the symptom of the bad. The raw truth asks you to get undressed, emotionally, and reveal your inner conflicts, as a step toward healing them.

5. Ask for help

Find a therapist, coach, or support person. When you ask for help to overcome the issues, then marriage gets much easier. It may prove difficult to deal with these alone, when you have been sexless and fighting.

So, you can receive the honest help that you need, when you’re able to openly ask and tell your partner that you are hurting with objective guidance.

Sex should always be an amazing experience, one that builds a strong partnership. But, sex is at its best when you can connect to your partner, in an adept and loving way. These 5 steps will help you ignite a new passion that may, possibly, be even better than when you first met.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Many Young Women Face a Seriously Underreported Issue When It Comes to Their Sex Lives

By CARLY CASSELLA

Anyone who’s heard of viagra knows that male sexual dysfunction is a widespread and overwhelmingly-researched issue. On the other hand, we know far less about female sexual dysfunction, even though its incidence is ‘alarmingly high‘, especially among young people.

New research now suggests roughly half of all Australian women aged 18 to 39 experience some form of personal distress related to their sex lives, whether that be guilt, embarrassment, stress, or unhappiness.

Around 20 percent of all participants reported at least one sexual dysfunction, including issues with arousal, desire, orgasm, sexual self-image, and responsiveness in the bedroom.

“It is of great concern that one in five young women have an apparent sexual dysfunction and half of all women within this age group experience sexually-related personal distress,” says clinical epidemiologist and senior author of the paper, Susan Davis from Monash University.

“This is a wake-up call to the community and signals the importance of health professionals being open and adequately prepared to discuss young women’s sexual health concerns.”

Female sexual dysfunction – or FSD as it’s known for short – is a complex, multifaceted disorder that is not well-defined or understood. Today, it is usually diagnosed when someone experiences pain during sex, has a persistent decrease in arousal or desire, or has trouble achieving an orgasm.

FSD can stem from a variety of issues including anatomical, psychological, physiological and social-interpersonal factors. And yet today, it is primarily treated with psychological therapy – that is, when it’s treated at all.

Currently only a small percentage of those with FSD actually seek medical attention for the disorder. And while things are gradually getting better – for instance, there’s a female viagra drug in the process right now – there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

In the United States, similar research suggests over 40 percent of women at the turn of this century had some form of sexual difficulty, while just over 30 percent of men experienced something similar. 

Overall, however, the data on FSD, especially in young people, is extremely limited and far from up-to-date. The 1999 study cited above is the most recent study on the prevalence of FSD in the US general population we could find.

What’s more, the little research we do have is usually based on heterosexual women who actively engage in penetrative sex, and many of these surveys fail to consider the full spectrum of sexual dysfunctions.

“The prevalence of low sexual self-image has not been reported in a large community-based sample, nor is the prevalence of sexually associated distress without a specific dysfunction known,” the authors of the new study write.

“Consequently, there is a need for research to fill gaps in the understanding of sexual functioning of young women.”

To do this, the team surveyed a group of 6,986 young females living in Australia, scoring them on their sexual wellbeing in terms of desire, arousal, responsiveness, orgasm and self-image, as well as their levels of sexual distress.

A third of the group was single and nearly 70 percent had been sexually active in the month leading up to the study. 

While nearly half the group reported distress in their sex lives, a concerning 30 percent experienced that distress without dysfunction at all.

Most people with an FSD had only one dysfunction, and this was usually related to sexual self-image and self-consciousness during intimacy, which was often tied to being overweight, breastfeeding, or living together with a partner.

Of those who had two sexual dysfunctions, the most common combo usually involved issues with arousal and orgasms, as well as arousal and sexual self-image.

What’s more, psychotropic medication like antidepressants had the most pervasive impact on sexual function, although, the authors warn, this may have more to do with the mental health issue itself than the pharmaceuticals.

When a whopping three dysfunctions were present, the trio usually included issues of desire, arousal, and self-image. And while issues with responsiveness were the most uncommon disorder, over half the people who did suffer from this issue also had three or four other dysfunctions involved.

Compared to older people, the authors say, younger people are less likely to experience low arousal or orgasmic dysfunction, but it seems as though this newer generation might be more distressed by such issues.

Nevertheless, research on this topic is still in its infancy, and there’s little context in which to place these findings.

For instance, the team discovered for some unknown reason that Asian women were significantly less likely to have an FSD compared to white women. And, for the first time, they also turned up a link between breastfeeding and sexual self-image dysfunction.

Today, evidence shows men are nearly two times more likely to orgasm during sex than women, and meanwhile, the safety and efficacy of new female viagra drugs have remained controversial.

Clearly, more solutions are needed other than what we are currently offering.

“That approximately one-half of young women experience sexually related personal distress and one in five women have an FSD, with sexual self-image dysfunction predominating, is concerning,” the authors conclude.

“The high prevalence of sexually related personal distress signals the importance of health professionals, particularly those working in the field of gynecology and fertility, being adequately prepared to routinely ask young women about any sexual health concerns and to have an appropriate management or referral pathway in place.”

Sexual wellbeing, they say, is a fundamental right for all people.

The study was published in Fertility and Sterility.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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On How To Create Your Sexual Potential

7 Lessons From A Sex Therapist

By Nan Wise, Ph.D, MSW, M.A., LCSW, CST

According to Canadian sexologist Peggy Kleinplatz, Ph.D., the vast majority of problems that bring people into sex therapy stem from what she calls the “North American sex script” that centers on having heterosexual intercourse with orgasms in all the right places, meaning, women should be experiencing orgasms reliably through sexual intercourse, which is actually not the case.

Even with additional clitoral stimulation, less than half of women (43%) report experiencing orgasm through intercourse 75% of the time. In other words, our cultural view of sexuality is narrow, limiting, and performance-oriented, favoring what does not appear to come naturally.

Inspired by Kleinplatz, I have gleaned seven lessons from my own research and work with clients. These lessons, or take-aways, offer an invitation to understand and explore yourself and your lover in a whole new dimension of sexual pleasure:

1. Do not judge your erotic self or the erotic experience.

Practice radical self-acceptance. Learn to love your body, exactly as it is. This is one of the biggest lessons, mentioned by nearly all of my participants. They also become curious about their own sexuality and went about exploring what turned them on. Learn to embrace your unique erotic fingerprint—whatever it is.

Let yourself be exactly as you are in the moment. And let the moment be exactly as it is. Sex is our willingness to be sexual beings, however that shows up. Remember first and foremost that good sex is about being present.

2. Tune in.

Shift your focus inward to listen closely to what you want and what your body yearns for. What are your fantasies? How do you like to be touched? Why not explore all areas of your body that can give you pleasure? Become keenly aware of what pleases you across the senses beyond touch—don’t forget about sounds and tastes. Are you interested in perhaps being more active when you tend to be receptive? More receptive when you’re usually more active? Making subtle shifts in your habitual roles may reveal new ways that you can be turned on.

Paying attention to sensations is key for pleasurable sex. If your mind wanders and starts to get into “spectatoring” mode—becoming goal-directed or self-conscious—simply notice that without judgment, letting those thoughts be exactly as they are while you bring your attention back to the senses. 

3. Be patient—about getting turned on.

When you want to have intercourse, for example, don’t begin until you and/or your partner are sufficiently aroused. Allow the sex to unfold without rushing into it. Although this advice may seem simplistic, it’s hugely important to experiencing the pleasure of sex. Slow down and savor the sensations. Let them build. Enjoy the journey without concern about the destination.

4. Stay connected to your partner.

You have a number of tools to use with your partner—to manage defenses, be an attentive and active listener, and be open to differences in erotic fingerprints or desire. Respect these differences and you will feel more connected. Often the best way to connect is actually going beyond words.

Look into your partner’s eyes and breathe with your partner while sitting silently. See the person in front of you, the being you fell in love with. Spoon your partner and hold them and synchronize your breath to synchronize your nervous systems. This actually works. We are like tuning forks and go into “cardiac” entrainment with lovers (and even our pets) when we settle into the connection. Good sex is connected sex.

5. Take risks.

We often feel hesitant to speak up with partners about parts of ourselves that we think they will judge or worry that if we tell them how we truly feel, we will hurt them. We tend to play it safe when in doubt. But another way to look at this is that there is a risk to not taking risks. If we don’t explore some of the scarier places with our partners, if we don’t explore the corners of our erotic selves, we tend to shut down and stagnate. And stagnation, itself, is dangerous to relationships.

Sexual potential unfolds when we bring all of ourselves into the mix. We are always, always shifting and changing and growing. Taking the risk to reveal how these changes affect us, our thoughts, our fears, our feelings, even our fantasies tends to revitalize the partnership.

6. Prioritize pleasure.

Allow sex to play a larger role in your life. Your work with your seven core emotions has paved the way for more keen awareness and insight into how and why pleasure is so important to your life, so allow sex to play a larger role. Make time for sex, expand your notion of what sex is, nurture it, and explore it. It’s a journey without an end.

7. Tolerate emotions and embrace the transformative nature of sex.

Because of the blend of emotional and physical drivers of sex, any type of sexual experience or activity has the capacity to stir up all kinds of emotions. One of the most important lessons for good sex and also good relationships, in general, is to learn how to more fully tolerate our feelings, other people’s feelings, and our feelings about other people’s feelings. And sometimes the most challenging feelings to tolerate, believe it or not, are intense feelings of pleasure—which for some can feel scarily out of control.

When we can learn to simply allow the feelings to be as they are, stay present to ourselves and to each other, the experiences we can have with and through sex can be truly healing and can revitalize our mind, body, and spirit. It is a tangible form of connection to others, a source of immune-boosting energy, and a vast reservoir for pleasure.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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I Spent Five Years Talking to Women Across the U.S. About Pleasure and Desire.

Here’s What I Learned About Inequality in the Bedroom

By Katherine Rowland

In the fall of 2014, I stood in a crowded auditorium as a parade of women described to regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration how their libidos had been whittled down to a fraction of their former power. For some it was a gradual decline. For others it was instantaneous, “like a switch that went off.” One woman lamented, “I don’t even think about sex.” Others spoke of how intimacy had become more a duty than a source of delight. “I am able to grit through it,” one woman said. Another: “I might not even want to have sex—but if he wants sex and I give it to him then, yes, I was a good wife today.”

The women were there to weigh in on whether female sexual dysfunction represents an unmet medical need. Their testimony, taken collectively, described the personal fallout of low desire which, along with related sexual concerns like difficulty reaching orgasm, experts estimate affect a quarter to a half of American women. Such complaints are commonly chalked up to female biology. However, as a journalist who spent five years talking with 120 women across the United States about their pleasure and desire, I rarely heard anyone say the main culprit was hormones, neurochemical balance or the biased stamp of evolution. Instead, the women I interviewed described how the greater culture had derailed their desire. Heterosexual women in particular shared that their partners routinely dismissed their pleasure or that they had themselves absorbed the idea that it was a lesser priority. What emerged was that a lack of sexual entitlement—much like the pay gap, the glass ceiling and the countless other ways women are systematically held back—diminished what they received and what they felt they could rightly claim in their lives.

These dynamics pervade women’s intimate relationships, contributing to well-documented struggles like orgasm disparities, chore-like sex, unenthusiastic consent and ubiquitous pretending. Moreover, they inform how women physically feel. The sole purpose of the clitoris, so far as science can surmise, is to confer pleasure on its owner. And yet, possession of this uniquely dedicated organ is no guarantor of delight, or even sensation. Numerous women told me they felt numb and disconnected—a lack of sensation that is especially poignant in an era when the control of their bodies so often comes into question. As one woman put it, “My genitals feel dead.”

Among the women I interviewed, direct experience or close knowledge of sexual trauma was a persistent undercurrent, and some women attributed their dimmed sensation to prior episodes of harm or to feeling objectified, inappropriately sexualized and socially unsafe. Numerous women also relayed that they were too caught up in their heads to register what was happening in their bodies. Distracted in the extreme, they were surveilling their performance, critiquing their physique, hastening an encounter to an abrupt conclusion or fixedly tending to their partners’ pleasure at the expense of their own. In those encounters, an intimate touch was no more arousing than a tap on the elbow.

Contemporary researchers use the term sexual concordance to describe the extent to which mind and body, or subjective report and genitals, are in sync. Studies using graphic sexual images have shown that men react bodily and report that they are most aroused by stimuli that conforms to their sexual orientation. Queer women also display a specific response, reacting most positively to images of other women. But heterosexual women are all over the place. Physiologically, they react to couples, men, women, even scenes of copulating bonobo apes. But when asked whether they find these images arousing, they state that they’re unmoved.

Meredith Chivers of Queen’s University in Ontario, a leading expert in this field, told me, “We continually underestimate women’s sexuality.” Yet she cautioned against concluding that women’s genital reactions are a truer marker of sexual interest than their verbal accounts. A pressing question for her is why heterosexual women display seemingly indiscriminate patterns of arousal and yet do not consciously detect that they’re being turned on. One possible explanation, she says, is that reward patterns our behavior: we desire certain things because we associate them with pleasure. For lesbian women, sexual intercourse is more consistently associated with orgasm and gratification, and so images of other women will activate a clear positive response. But for many heterosexual women, the status quo has left them underwhelmed, and there is no reinforcement of pleasure one way or another. Penetrative sex results in orgasm for only a minority of women, and for some, who equate it with, say, pain, guilt or obligation, it may spark outright aversion.

Chivers is not the first to note the tension between women’s capacity for sensuality and their actual enjoyment. A half-century ago, pioneering researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson documented women’s sexual athleticism, stating that the range and depth of their pleasure “infinitely surpasses that of man.” However, they also found that women internalized “prevailing psychosocial influences,” like the sexual double standard or the equation of desire with impurity, that might interfere with their sexual response. Anthropologists have similarly observed that in cultures that expect women to enjoy sex as much as men do, women have regular orgasms, whereas cultures that question the propriety of female pleasure are home to greater sexual difficulties. If the climate doesn’t cloak female pleasure in shame or mystery, or cast it as second rate, it may lie within easier reach.

Fortunately, these findings suggest that erotic potential is not etched in stone and women can become proficient in experiencing progressive states of pleasure. Among the women I spoke to, great sex was not a matter of mastering a particular technique or communicative style. In fact, it was not about what women did so much as how they did it, and for many that required unlearning what they thought sex and love were supposed to look like. Desire lay on the other side of giving up their freighted assumptions.

For one married lawyer, who for decades assumed she was “frigid,” kindling eroticism was a process of claiming the freedom to do as she pleased in her intimate life, which eventually meant having consensual relationships with men other than her husband. “It didn’t happen overnight. It was a bit of a roller coaster,” she said of prising open her monogamous partnership. “It takes time to feel you have the space to do whatever you want, to create whatever relationship structure you want, to have whatever kind of sex you want. And then, oh my God, it’s like the bottom drops out.” For another woman in her late 20s, experiencing desire meant drawing new boundaries. Raised to believe that she should make herself available and pleasing, she came to equate intimacy with allowing her body to be relentlessly accessed. After working with a sex coach, she gradually felt empowered to say, “I don’t want to be touched anywhere,” and to stop viewing sex as a grudging performance for her partner’s benefit. Through learning to say no, she was able to eventually start saying yes.

For the women I interviewed, low desire rarely stemmed from a medical malady or a psychological condition. Rather, it was often a healthy response to quietly unwanted or lusterless sex. My conversations revealed that persistent sexual dissatisfaction is a sign that many women do not feel free to enjoy their sexuality, or know how to do so, and so engage in activities that are not necessarily inclusive of their pleasure. If women struggle in overwhelming numbers to inhabit their own bodies, it is a measure of feeling, or being made to feel, undeserving or less than. As dire as this sounds, it is also cause for hope. It’s far harder to rewire biology than it is to alter belief. While their paths to sexual healing varied, the women I spoke to made plain that satisfaction was rooted in their social power, in being entitled to explore and express their sexuality and in feeling equal to their partners. Pleasure and its value can be learned, and once learned, are not readily relinquished.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to Have Good Sex,

According to a Neuroscientist

By Dr. Nan Wise

Look anywhere in the media or on the streets of any major city (or suburb or small town, for that matter) and we appear to be wholly focused on pleasure. Invitations to enjoy sex, food, sports, spas, exotic vacations, romantic escapes, and game-ified apps abound, all promising a hit of relaxation, a high of excitement, an emotional or physical reprieve, and an answer to our aching need to destress. From this vantage point, an anthropologist visiting our planet might conclude that ours is a culture gluttonous for pleasure and sexually ravenous.

We should be feeling tons of pleasure. But are we really that turned on?

The answer, unfortunately, is no. What I observe daily in my clinical practice is that for all of this pleasure-seeking behavior, all this wanting of pleasure, very few of us seem able to fully experience the sensations or satisfaction we seek. Interspersed with these pleas or promises for pleasure is an equally consistent message: almost continual advertisements for antidepressant and antianxiety medications. One in five Americans will experience an episode of mental illness, while the rates of major depression and anxiety disorders steeply rise.

This is where my work comes in. The experience of pleasure can be described as sexual and sensual but also intellectual and fanciful, physical and emotional. The brain is not only the command center for sex; it’s also a generator of pleasure. This is why for the past 12 years I have been working in the lab to study what happens in the brain during sex.

Like many a scientist before me, I began my research by using myself as a guinea pig for my own studies. I spent endless hours conducting brain-imaging studies of women having orgasms in the fMRI in order to understand more about how pleasure—in the ultimate form of an orgasm—plays out in the brain, showing that an orgasm not only feels good but is good for us.

I have gleaned seven lessons from my own research and work with clients about how to have good sex and why it matters. These lessons apply to all of us who want to leave anhedonia—the inability to feel pleasure—behind and truly embrace our sexual potential.

1. Don’t judge your erotic self.

Learn to love your body, exactly as it is. This is one of the biggest lessons, mentioned by nearly all of my participants. Become curious about your sexuality and explore what turns you on. Learn to embrace your unique erotic fingerprint—your sexual style reflecting how typically think about, experience, and desire sex—whatever it is. Sex is our willingness to be sexual beings, however that shows up. Remember first and foremost that good sex is about being present.

2. Tune in.

Shift your focus inward to listen closely to what you want and what your body yearns for. What are your fantasies? How do you like to be touched? Why not explore all areas of your body that can give you pleasure? As Beverly Whipple, my beloved mentor, and world-renowned expert on sexual health recommends, become keenly aware of what pleases you across the senses beyond touch—don’t forget about sounds and tastes. Paying attention to sensations is key for pleasurable sex. If your mind wanders and starts to get into “spectatoring” mode—becoming goal-directed or self-conscious—simply notice that without judgment, letting those thoughts be exactly as they are while you bring your attention back to the senses.

3. Be patient about getting turned on.

When you want to have intercourse, don’t begin until you and/or your partner are sufficiently aroused. Allow the sex to unfold without rushing into it. Although this advice may seem simplistic, it’s hugely important to experiencing the pleasure of sex. Slow down and savor the sensations. Let them build. Enjoy the journey without concern about the destination.

4. Stay connected to your partner.

Often the best way to connect is by going beyond words. Simply do what people who are in the ecstatic state of new romantic love spend tons of time doing—eye gazing. Look into your partner’s eyes and breathe with your partner while sitting silently. See the person in front of you, the person you fell in love with. Spoon your partner, hold them, and synchronize your breath to synchronize your nervous systems. This actually works. We are like tuning forks and go into “cardiac entrainment” with lovers when we settle into the connection. Good sex is connected sex.

5. Take risks.

We often feel hesitant to speak up with partners about parts of ourselves that we think they will judge or worry that, if we tell them how we truly feel, we will hurt them. We tend to play it safe when in doubt. But another way to look at this is that there is a risk to not taking risks. If we don’t explore some of the scarier places with our partners, if we don’t explore the corners of our erotic selves, we tend to shut down and stagnate. And stagnation, itself, is dangerous to relationships. Sexual potential unfolds when we bring all of ourselves into the mix. We are always, always shifting and changing and growing. Taking the risk to reveal how these changes impact us, our thoughts, our fears, our feelings, even our fantasies tends to revitalize the partnership.

6. Prioritize pleasure.

Allow sex to play a larger role in your life. Seeking pleasure that feels good and is good for us—what I call healthy hedonism—is not a luxury but a necessity for a healthy, balanced emotional brain. And sex is a potent form of healthy hedonism. Make time for sex, expand your notion of what sex is, nurture it, and explore it. It’s a journey without an end.

7. Embrace the transformative nature of sex.

Because of the blend of emotional and physical drivers of sex, any type of sexual experience or activity has the capacity to stir up all kinds of emotions. One of the most important lessons for good sex, and also good relationships, is to learn how to more fully tolerate our feelings, other people’s feelings, and our feelings about other people’s feelings. Sometimes the most challenging feelings to tolerate, believe it or not, are intense feelings of pleasure—which for some can feel scarily out of control. When we can learn to simply allow the feelings to be as they are, stay present to ourselves and to each other, the experiences we can have with and through sex can be truly healing and can revitalize our mind, body, and spirit. It is a tangible form of connection to others, a source of immune-boosting energy, and a vast reservoir for pleasure.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Real Orgasms And Transcendent Pleasure:

How Women Are Reigniting Desire

By Malaka Gharib

How can more women allow themselves to experience sexual pleasure?

That’s one of the central questions in The Pleasure Gap: American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution, a book published this month by public health researcher and journalist Katherine Rowland.

Rowland explores why American women aren’t happy with their sex lives — and what they can do about it. A landmark study from 1999 found that over 40% of women surveyed experienced sexual dysfunction — the inability to feel satisfied by sex. A contributing factor, noted the researchers, was the lasting psychological effects of sexual trauma.

The Pleasure Gap
American Women & the Unfinished Sexual Revolution
by Katherine Rowland

The Pleasure Gap highlights how desire and the mind are linked for women. “Pleasure is inextricable from our social status, compressed and constrained by financial factors, by safety factors, by objectification,” she says. We need to remove these barriers, she says, to experience sex with the “full freedom, expression, range and truth that we’re endowed with.”

Rowland argues that it is possible for women to take charge and reignite their libidos. She talked to NPR about why fake orgasms are a cause for alarm, how much sex couples should have per week and “sexological bodywork.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You take issue with some of the research that tries to quantify sexual frequency and the idea that once a week may be the “optimal” amount. So how much sex should we be having?

Our national obsession with sexual frequency and the terrifying specter of dead bedrooms overrides the fundamental importance of sexual quality. There is no volume of sex that’s more or less good.

For whatever reason, researchers have embraced this idea that we should be having sex once a week — that it’s enough to sustain relationships and that it keeps depression, heart disease and obesity at bay.

But none of that research looks at how participants actually feel about that sex — other than feeling good that they can check the box for having done it.

You interviewed more than 120 women for this book. Many in heterosexual, long-term relationships told you that sex was an act of drudgery and that they often did whatever it took to get the job done. This felt sad to me.

I found myself feeling beaten down by the near ubiquity of stories of faking it in that context.

We tend to treat faking it as such a jokey matter. When the media reports on studies that try and capture the percentage of women who fake orgasm during sex, it tends to be from a male perspective saying “ouch” — focusing more on the bruising of men’s feelings that occurs when women are lying to them as opposed to concerns surrounding the fact that women aren’t feeling good.

That women are feigning their pleasure in order to hasten that experience along — I think we need to treat that with real alarm. We need to ask: What’s going on in that women are engaging in spectacle as opposed to actually allowing themselves to feel sensation?

Your book explores how some women have a low desire for sex. How does this happen?

Among the women who I spoke to, the persistent low desire was heavily associated with the idea that sex should revolve around penetration as the main course, with maybe a polite prelude of a foreplay, rather than thinking about sex as a broader universe of intimacy.

It’s the combination of a larger culture that privileges male sexuality over women’s, a culture that doesn’t teach women that pleasure belongs to them. A lack of anatomical self-knowledge. And feelings of sort of persistent danger and women being often censored and censured for expressing their desire.

You push back against the idea that the female orgasm is mysterious and elusive, which is how the media has sometimes described it. What would be a more accurate way to understand the female orgasm?

It’s more like riding a bicycle. You learn how to do it. And what we see is that as women become more versed with what their body can do, orgasm becomes more readily achievable.

The female orgasm tends to get wrapped up in these fuzzy terms like “elusive” and “hazy” and “mysterious” because women aren’t encouraged to explore what actually feels good. But if they were encouraged to self-pleasure and explore in real, sincere ways by themselves and with their partners, I think they would find that there is a world of pleasurable sensation available to them.

In your book, you say that the goal is for women to have a “profound sexual experience.” What do you mean by that?

It can mean a number of things, and I don’t think it necessarily has to be a sexual encounter in terms of our often narrow understanding of sex. The women who I spoke to describe it to me as feelings of transcendence, of approaching sex not just as a way for getting off or feeling good, but as a portal into a deeper state of self-knowledge.

They often use the word “spiritual” — the alignment of self, sensation and possibility. Pleasure so deep it felt like a homecoming, like they had been restored to themselves, to the depths of their potential.

How can women regain control over their sex lives?

The first thing to do would be to stop absorbing [unscientific] outside knowledge. There is such a rash of faulty information out there as a result of our lack of sound science and solid education. We’ve seen this proliferation of experts pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Online, you’ll find doctors who promise that by injecting more blood into the vagina, it will give it a face-lift that will bolster orgasmic potential. Or self-proclaimed “sexperts” who put on female ejaculation retreats. Those kinds of offerings often exist side by side with credentialed and validated interventions.

The second thing is to get to know your body. I think the most powerful intervention that I documented in my book was the realm of sexological bodywork.

What is that?

It’s a somatic approach to sexual healing that can — but does not necessarily — include genital touch. There’s a profound opportunity there for ethical violations, especially because it’s not a regulated practice. But for some of the women who I spoke to, they’ve said that this was the missing link in understanding their bodies.

Sexological bodywork practitioners facilitate your self-knowledge of your body, pleasure, comfort, boundaries, feelings of confidence and being able to articulate “no.” For example, “No, I don’t want you to touch me here” and “I don’t want you to look at me here.” This helps women ask why they feel this way — and get to a point where they can say “yes.”

For women in a relationship with a man, how can male partners do more to help?

Men can — and should — play a central role in helping women fully engage with their desires and sensations.

They can do this by being compassionate and nonjudgmental listeners. By creating an erotic atmosphere in which men and women’s needs command equal importance, and by encouraging interactions that depart from the wearied script of male arousal and release. Just as society tends to overly complicate female sexuality, we oversimplify men’s, and they also benefit from shifting dynamics around.

Any ideas of how to do that?

I spoke with a number of couples, and one shared a story that made a deep impression.

They’re both middle-aged and both are experiential sexuality educators, so in many respects they’re versed in subjects like male privilege and the ways female satisfaction gets short shrift. But all the same, these issues were showing up in their intimate life.

At the woman’s request, they decided to make sex just about her — so that it flowed from her interest and followed the course of her arousal. She told him, she didn’t care how he took care of himself, but she didn’t want to be a part of it.

They came to call these sessions “The Experiment.” To their mutual surprise, it lasted for a whole year. As they recounted this experience, the woman thanked her partner for his generosity, and he immediately and firmly responded, “No, it was my pleasure.” They both felt they had benefited from the woman’s sexual growth and the shared opportunity to expand their erotic vocabulary.

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7 questions you always wanted to ask a sex coach

By Danielle Fox

When we polled our readers earlier this month on what they’ve always wanted to ask a sex coach, they flooded our DM’s with questions, concerns, and complaints about their partners’…techniques.

One thing to note: whatever is going on in the bedroom isn’t a “just you” issue, per se. According to the Cleveland Clinic, 43 percent of women and 31 percent of men experience some type of sexual dysfunction during their lifetimes, including low libido and low confidence. And so many readers submitted the exact same questions and the same deepest darkest secrets. You’re normal. Sex can be weird! Let’s talk about it.

Below, Gigi Engle, SKYN sex and intimacy expert and certified sex coach and author of All The F*cking Mistakes, answered questions submitted by HelloGiggles readers. Don’t see your concern below? Check out the rest of our State of Female Pleasure package for more sexpert advice.

How do I tell my partner that I’ve been faking my orgasms without hurting their feelings?

Your partner may have hurt feelings but the important thing is to assure them that you like everything they’re doing and you were faking orgasms because things felt good but you just felt you weren’t going to get “there.” Offer to show them exactly what feels good for you with gentle guidance.

How do I stop faking orgasms without offending my boyfriend?

Having an open conversation with your partner about this can be challenging. Sex is an emotionally charged thing and many of us lack the vocabulary to communicate our needs. Let your partner know that you want to try some new sex things together. You want to show him new ways to touch you and to have more orgasms. Tell them you love your sex life so he feels good about himself and then offer some guidance. When it comes to faking, if you feel like you’re not going to get there, offer some gentle guidance. Maybe you could use some more oral sex, or a toy during sex. Make those suggestions to him.

How can I be more comfortable in my body during sex?

Masturbate, masturbate, masturbate. When you get in touch with your body and internal energy, you start to feel so much more comfortable in your power. Having control over your own orgasm is empowering and will help you feel good when guiding someone in how to touch you. Body confidence is not something that happens overnight. Look at yourself in the mirror naked and tell your body how much you love it; how it takes care of you, gets you where you need to go, and is strong for you. It does not matter what you look like. You’re beautiful and sexy and powerful.

What can I do to get my partner to explore other fun sexual options? Ex: BDSM.

Make a sex menu. You write down three things you want to try and then have [them] write down three things [they’d] want to try. Then, swap lists and see what you both are interested in. This gives you a pressure-free way to learn about your partners desires and to share your own. Introduce [them] to new things slowly—maybe start out with a new lube or small sex toy. For BDSM specifically, you don’t need to go buy a bunch of expensive gear. Use a tee shirt as a blindfold and a necktie as handcuffs. It’s really not as complicated and scary as some people tend to think!

I can’t orgasm at all! Is there something wrong with me?

There is definitely nothing wrong with you. This is super common! Orgasms are 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical. So, you need to be in a positive headspace. If you believe you cannot come, your brain tells your body you can’t come, and then … you don’t come! The first thing to do is to step outside of this negative feedback loop. Take orgasm off the table for a while and focus on pleasure. Buy some sex toys (SKYN Vibes is my go-to). Take time to masturbate and see what you like. Don’t worry so much about orgasming and eventually orgasms will come.

How to move past (unknown) mental roadblocks that make it hard to orgasm with a partner?

Being present and in the moment can be very challenging when life comes at you. It’s key to remember that sex is important and life is always going to be busy. Breathe into your body and try to be more intentional. Watch some porn to keep you focused or listen to an erotic story while you’re having sexy time. Sometimes we need to ignite all of our senses to stay in the moment. Treat sex like a meditation: It’s a time to focus and breathe and enjoy.

How do you deal with extraordinary clitoral sensitivity?

Try different touch than straight up clitoral rubbing. Touch the labia, the mons, and vaginal opening. Try layering the labia over the clitoris when you use a sex toy on a low vibration setting. Sometimes having a barrier can provide comfort. You can also circle the clitoris rather than putting vibration or a tongue directly on it.
You might also benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy in tandem with working with and OBGYN. There may be an underlying medical issue that should be addressed. Seeking the help of a well-rounded team of professionals who are there to work for you is a grounded way to get the orgasms and sex you deserve.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What I learned talking to 120 women about their sex lives and desires

I spoke with widows, newlyweds, monogamists, secret liaison seekers, submissives and polyamorists and found there was no such thing as desire too high or low

By Katherine Rowland

Male desire is a familiar story. We scarcely bat an eyelash at its power or insistence. But women’s desires – the way they can morph, grow or even disappear – elicit fascination, doubt and panic.

In 2014, as experts weighed the moral and medical implications of the first female libido drug, I found myself unsatisfied with the myths of excess and deficit on offer, and set out to understand how women themselves perceive and experience their passions.

Over the course of five years, I talked with 120 women and dozens of sexual health professionals. My reporting took me from coast to coast, and spanned conversations from a 22-year-old convinced she was sexually damaged to a 72-year-old learning how to orgasm. I spoke with widows, newlyweds, committed monogamists, secret liaison seekers, submissives and proud polyamorists.

I also dropped in on psychotherapy sessions, consulted sexologists, went inside the battle to get “female Viagra” FDA approved and profiled practitioners blurring the lines between sex work and physical therapy. In Los Angeles, I sat with a group of determinedly nonplussed sex coaches as they took in a live flogging demonstration, while in New York I stood among a thousand women whipped into a fist-pumping frenzy by a guru who declared the time had come for them to reconnect to their sensuality.

Against the background claims that women are disordered patients who require a pharmaceutical fix, or that they are empowered consumers who should scour the market for their personal brand of bliss, I found that there was no such thing as desire too high or low. Rather, desire contains as many tones as there are people to express it.

Low desire isn’t a symptom

In five years of conversations, I heard frequent variations on a common story. Somewhere in the mix of parenting, partnering and navigating the demands of professional life, women’s desire had dimmed to the barest flicker. In place of lust, they acted out of obligation, generosity or simply to keep the peace.

“What’s wrong with me?” many asked of their medical providers, only to come away with confounding answers. “Your flatlined libido is perfectly normal,” they were told. “But it’s also a medical concern.”

Just what constitutes normal stirs intense debate, in part because female sexuality shoulders an immense weight. It’s where observers have long looked for clues about human nature and for proof of immutable differences between men and women. The chief distinction, we’re told, is that women are less desirous than men.

And yet, low desire is often cast as an affliction that women are encouraged to work at and overcome. Accordingly, some women I talked to consulted therapists to understand why intimacy was tinged with dread. Others tried all manner of chemical interventions, from antidepressants and testosterone supplements to supposedly libido-rousing pills. A number of women accumulated veritable libraries of spice-it-up manuals. No matter the path, I heard time and again how women compelled themselves to just do it, committed to reaching a not necessarily satisfying but quantifiable end.

Low desire is a healthy response to lackluster sex

However, as women further described their malaise, their dwindling desire seemed less the result of faulty biology than evidence of sound judgment. It was a consequence of clumsy partners, perfunctory routines, incomplete education, boredom and the chafe of overfamiliarity.

In short, it was the quality of the sex they were having that left them underwhelmed. As one woman put it: “If it’s not about your pleasure, it makes sense you wouldn’t want it.”

Straight women are struggling the most in their erotic lives

While all women, regardless of sexual orientation, experience dips in drive, the utter depletion of sexual interest might be more common to heterosexual women, because their desires are less clearly defined to begin with.

“I spent most of my life with no sense of what I want,” one straight woman in her late 40s told me. Another, also in her 40s, reflected that she and her husband “did sex the way [she] thought it was supposed to look”. However, she said: “I don’t know how much I was really able to understand and articulate what I wanted.”

For both women, along with dozens of others that I spoke to, dwindling desire was an affront to identity. It exposed the limits of what they had expected of themselves, namely that they should settle down with one man and be emotionally and physically content from there on out. Their experiences mirror what researchers have uncovered about the so-called orgasm gap, which holds that men are disproportionately gratified by sex.

The picture subtly shifts when you look at which women are enjoying themselves. A 2017 survey of more than 50,000 Americans found that lesbians orgasmed 86% of the time during sex, as opposed to 65% of straight women (and 95% of straight men). Investigators speculate that lesbians and queer women enjoy greater satisfaction because of anatomical familiarity, longer sexual duration and not revering penetration as the apex of erotic mingling.

I would further surmise that queer women are often more satisfied because, unlike a lot of straight women, they have fundamentally considered the nature and object of their desires.

There’s nothing funny about faking it

The subject of faking it tends to seed jokey reactions, which frame the issue of female pretending as a slight to the man’s self-esteem. When she fakes it, he is the wounded party: her absent climax becomes his loss.

According to one well-trafficked 2010 report, 80% of heterosexual women fake orgasm during vaginal intercourse about half of the time, and another 25% fake orgasm almost all of the time. (When CBS News reported on this study, the headline opened with “Ouch”; there was no editorializing on shabby male technique – all the focus was on the bruising consequences of women’s inauthentic “moaning and groaning”.)

Faking it was ubiquitous among the women I spoke with. Most viewed it as fairly benign, and I largely did too. That is, until the subject cropped up again and again, and I found myself preoccupied with an odd contradiction: as women act out ecstasy, they devalue their actual sensations.

On the one hand, this performance is an ode to the importance of female pleasure, the expectation held by men and women alike that it should be present. But on the other, it strips women of the physical and psychological experience of pleasure. Spectacle bullies sensation aside.

Women aren’t looking for a magic pill

One might think from the headlines that equal access to pharmacopeia ranks high among women’s sexual health concerns. After all, men have a stocked cabinet of virility-boosting compounds, while women have paltry options. But this was not my takeaway.

While some women opined that it would be nice to ignite desire with a pill, few saw the benefit of boosting appetite if the circumstances surrounding sex remained unchanged. While desire was frequently tinted by a sense of mystery, its retreat was rarely presented in a black box. Almost across the board, women spoke of their sexuality in contextual terms: it changed with time, with different partners and different states of self-knowledge.

In 2018 an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior surmised “Research has not conclusively demonstrated that biology is among the primary mechanisms involved in inhibiting sexual desire in women.” Rather, the authors said, body image, relationship satisfaction and learned values intervene to shape women’s experiences of lust. Even though FDA-approved drugs like Addyi and Vyleesi are marketed to suggest that desire dips independently of life circumstances, those involved in drug development are certainly aware of these other influences. The strength of their impact on women’s minds and bodies may even be contributing to the challenge of developing effective pharmaceuticals.

In the case of Viagra and its competitors, it’s assumed men want to have sex, but physically cannot, and so a feat of hydraulics allows them to consummate the act. But for women, the problem is more, well, problematic: they might be physically capable, but emotionally disinclined. Insofar as that is the case, we need to attend the reasons behind their reluctance.

Desire comes from liberating the erotic imagination

In the course of my reporting I attended a training session known as SAR, for Sexual Attitude Reassessment. The two-day workshops designed for sexual health professionals are intended to inundate participants with sexual material in order to highlight where they hold biases or discomfort, and they showcase a lot of explicit content.

The session I attended featured media depicting a gay head-shaving fetish, a medical-latex threesome and a wincing scene involving male genitalia, a typewriter and a miniature cactus. It also included frank confessionals from people whose bodies and lifestyles don’t necessarily accord with the culture’s rigidly gendered and ableist stereotypes – such as what it’s like for a trans woman to experience pleasure, or how a little person (the preferred term for adults with dwarfism) self-stimulates when his or her fingers cannot reach the genitals.

The idea, beyond highlighting all the “inscrutable, mystical loveliness” of sex, in the words of one facilitator, is to get participants to seek out what turns them on or disgusts them, or both.

In my recollection, the word “dysfunction” never surfaced in the programming. Rather, sexuality was framed in terms of accessing delight and accepting nonconformity. The subject of low desire was not viewed as a matter of sexual disinterest, but rather a result of how, owing to the greater culture, women hold themselves back, condemn their fantasies, foreclose on what they really want and sell themselves short on the idea that sex and love must look a certain way.

Women push themselves toward physical encounters that they either do not want, or for which they have not allowed desire to adequately develop. I came away with the impression that sexual healing had little to do with tricks or techniques, and almost everything to do with the mind, with sensing an internal flicker of I want that – and feeling empowered to act accordingly.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Examining The Cannabis Sexual Wellness Market

By Andrew Ward

Sexual wellness is a subject sweeping the globe that is expected to trend upwards in the years to come.

An April 2019 Arizton Advisory and Intelligence report on the global sexual wellness market projects it will rise to around $39 billion in value by 2024, with a CAGR of over 7%.

Little to no data on the cannabis sexual wellness market has been published at this time. Yet two once-taboo subjects have become more mainstream in recent years, with varying public acceptance.

Now, with consumers and a few lab studies suggesting efficacy exists, the market may be poised for significant growth.

Anecdotal evidence has long suggested there is a benefit to combining cannabis and sex.

Cannabis In The Bedroom

CBD use results in more intense orgasms as well as enhances a couple’s satisfaction in the bedroom, according to a survey conducted by Remedy Review. 

Daniel Saynt, the founder and “chief conspirator” of NSFW, a cannabis and kink community in New York City, discussed why cannabis may help sex.

“Cannabis is a social lubricant. Smoking the right strain is more effective than alcohol in making you feel comfortable in a sexual situation.”

Zachary Zane is a freelance writer who covers subjects including sex and cannabis.

Cannabis helps Zane to not “overthink” in the act, he said.

“Cannabis allows me to be more present in the moment and to really enjoy the experience.”

The Research On Cannabis And Sex 

In 2009 a research report concluded that endocannabinoid receptors are found throughout the human body, including sexual organs.

Dr. Sadie Allison, a sexologist, author and sexual wellness entrepreneur, recently expanded into the CBD space with the launch of GoLove CBD Sensual Lubricant.

The sexologist entered the market after research on the subject produced “very promising results,” she said. 

CBD has a beneficial effect on anxiety and pain perception as well as inflammation and increasing blood flow, Allison said.

Rachel Braun Scherl leads the female sexual health unit at biotech startup Manna Molecular Science in Massachusetts.

Scherl spoke directly to how she said CBD can benefit a woman’s sexual health.

“CBD is a clitoral and vaginal smooth muscle relaxant that, thus, facilitates clitoral engorgement and vaginal lubrication and ultimately orgasm.”

Alison Krongard, a co-founder of the recently launched Her Highness cannabis line, touched on the different applications cannabis has for men and women. Krongard, whos company produces CBD and THC sexual wellness products, said the rise in the number of products targeting females is a reflection of how much women love the plant.

And it’s healthier than many alternatives, she said. 

“A lot of women finish the day with a glass of wine and a Xanax.”

Cannabis Sexual Wellness For Men, Gender Neutral Consumers 

For men, NSFW’s Saynt said cannabis can desensitize the genitals due to its anti-inflammatory properties.

A potential area of benefit in Saynt’s view is cannabis suppositories, for those who enjoy anal stimulation.

“There is some demand, but there’s a lack of education and very little is being done to target the gay and bi community with these products,” he said.

GoLove’s Allison said she has seen an uptick in men purchasing sexual wellness and pleasure products over the past two decades, noting the expanding array of choices as a factor.

“Men are historically the largest buying segment of cannabis and cannabis-related products, [and] I have no doubt that the demand for male-focused cannabis sex products will grow in the same way as the adult products industry.”

Manna’s Scherl highlighted the importance of gender fluidity and gender neutral products.

“Today, we know so much more about the fluidity of gender, but as a society, we still have so much more to learn,” said Scherl. “It is no longer sufficient to have solutions focused on people who identify only as male or only female.”

On the other hand, Zane said many products like cannabis lubes can already be enjoyed by all genders.

“[Men and gender neutral people] don’t necessarily need specific products if it can work for all genders,” the writer said. “That said, if there are sexual issues and topics that specifically pertain to men and GNC folks that cannabis can help, let’s do it!”

Cannabis Sex Product Development

To ensure product quality and safety, companies often engage in years-long research.

Krongard said Her Highness worked for roughly three years on its product development.

“We went through a couple of different formulators before we found the team that really understood what we were doing.”

Saynt and NSFW are developing a strain of cannabis flower aimed at enhancing sexual wellness.

In collaboration with Cherry Kola Farms, the duo combined three separate strains known for their stimulating properties.

Club members have responded well to test runs, Saynt said.

“We’re hoping to create our own line of lubricant with this custom strain, as we feel the type of cannabis you use in your lube is important,” he said.

The Challenges Ahead 

While cannabis and sex are more widely accepted now, Krongard said it’s far from universal.

“I had one meeting with the guy who owns a dispensary who just could not wrap his head around talking to women about a pleasure oil.”

Others echoed a need for additional education and acceptance. They also believe a change could come through the marketplace. The interest and investment in the sectors will create a “sea change,” said Manna’s Scherl.

“We are already seeing consumers, buyers and patients voting for the products and solutions they want, and will pay for in dozens of categories related to both sex and cannabis.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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21 Things Scientists Discovered About Sex In 2019

By Kelly Gonsalves

Given that sex has existed as long as the human race has, you’d think our scientists, doctors, and psychologists would have collectively figured out all there is to know about sex by now. But the truth is, there are still many, many aspects of human sexuality that are a big, unexplored, confusing question mark. The good news is, 2019 has been quite the year in the world of sex research. Here are a few of the most fascinating findings we’ve made this year: 

1. Women are still struggling to talk about what they want in bed.

In 2019, more than half of American women were still struggling to talk about what they want sexually. A study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found 55% of women in the U.S. reported experiencing situations in which they had wanted to communicate with a partner about how they wanted to be touched and what sexually turned them on but decided not to say anything. About one in five women didn’t feel comfortable talking about her sexual desires at all, and one in 10 had never experienced sex in which she felt like her partner valued her sexual pleasure.

2. Just saying the word “clitoris” out loud is linked to better sex for women.

Yes, it really matters that much. As we’ve known for a while, the clitoris is the key to sexual pleasure for people who have them—but mainstream narratives and norms around sex prioritize P-in-V penetration as the main act of sex, despite the fact that the majority of clit owners can’t get off from that alone. Further proving how important the clit is, the same study cited above found that just being comfortable using the word “clitoris” is associated with greater sexual satisfaction and being less likely to fake orgasms. The researchers said their findings indicate why it’s so important for us as a society and as individuals to start talking openly about our sex lives. When you’re comfortable talking about sex—including the specific body parts where you like to get touched—you’re way more likely to convey that to your partners and then get the type of stimulation that actually feels good for you. 

3. Not all orgasms are good.

Orgasms are not the definitive marker of good sex, as it turns out. In another study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, researchers found 55% of people had experienced a “bad orgasm,” including orgasms that physically hurt, orgasms that didn’t feel as pleasurable as past orgasms, or orgasms that happened in sexually coercive contexts, such that having the orgasm led to intense psychological turmoil.

4. People in relationships really are having less sex.

Experts have been talking about a so-called sex recession for the last year or so, in which several different data reports have been showing people are having less sex these days than in generations prior. One multiyear study published in the BMJ this year found the majority of the dip is happening among married people and cohabiting couples. Some of their key findings: In 2001, 38% of women and 30% of men in serious relationships had no sex in the past month. In 2012, that number jumped to 51% for women and 66% for men in serious relationships. What’s more, even sexually active couples were having less sex than usual: In 2012, just 48% of women and 50% of men in serious relationships reported having sex at least four times in the last month, meaning about half of couples are having sex less than once a week.

5. But millennials don’t think they’re in a sex recession.

Cosmopolitan conducted a nationally representative survey on over 1,000 people. Their findings showed 71% of millennials feel “personally satisfied” with how much sex they’re having, and 62% of millennials think their friends are having “plenty of sex” too. So maybe it’s all relative?

6. Commitment and better sex are linked.

Researchers surveyed hundreds of couples in several weeks of couples’ therapy to ask about their commitment levels and sex lives each week. Published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, their study found commitment and good sex were definitely linked: Having good sex one week was associated with couples feeling more committed to each other the following week. The reverse was also true. Feeling more committed to each other one week was associated with the couple having better sex the following week. The two seem to feed off each other.

7. People who love casual sex are more committed to their relationships when those relationships are consensually non-monogamous.

If you think people who love casual sex are inherently less committed in their relationships, think again. A study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that, in consensually non-monogamous relationships, enjoying casual sex (i.e., “sociosexuality”) was associated with being more committed to your relationship.

8. Childhood trauma is associated with less sexual satisfaction in adulthood.

People with more traumatic experiences in childhood tend to have less satisfying sex lives in adulthood, according to a study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. Why? Experiencing trauma as a kid is associated with experiencing more daily psychological distress and with being less mindful, two qualities that may affect one’s ability to engage and feel pleasure during sex.

9. More than half of seniors are unhappy with their sex lives.

You know what you hear about people having less sex as they get older? That might be true, but it might not be because seniors want less sex. A study published in the journal PLOS ONE found 58% of men and women between ages 55 and 74 are not satisfied with their sex lives. In another study published in the journal Menopause, 78% of the more than 4,000 postmenopausal women surveyed were sexually inactive. Of these sexually inactive women, the top reasons for not having sex were not having a partner to have sex with, having a partner with a medical condition making sex out of the question, and having a partner dealing with sexual dysfunction.

10. These three key factors reliably turn women on.

A study of 662 straight women identified three factors that made women more likely to experience sexual desire for someone: intimacy (i.e., feelings of closeness and deep affection), celebrated otherness (i.e., seeing yourself as a separate entity from your partner instead of seeing yourselves together as a single unit), and object-of-desire affirmation (i.e., being told you are desirable).

This is an oft-repeated myth, but findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have officially disproved the idea that men are “more visual” than women are when it comes to sex. The researchers reanalyzed over 60 studies, each of which had hooked up men and women to fMRI machines while showing them porn to try to see how their brains reacted. Gender was the least predictive factor in determining how activated a person’s brain was while viewing the erotic material.

12. One in four women experienced pain during their most recent sexual experience.

In a study of over 2,000 women published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers found nearly a quarter of women had experienced pain the last time they’d had sex. Of those who’d experienced pain, 49% didn’t tell their partner about it. Those who’d experienced little to no pleasure during the sexual experience were also three times more likely to not tell their partner about the pain.

13. Vaginal dryness and atrophy begin in perimenopause.

During and after menopause, hormonal shifts tend to cause the vaginal walls to become thinner and lubricate less. Known as vaginal atrophy, these changes tend to cause vaginal dryness, which predictably leads to more difficulties having sex. (Nothing that a little lube can’t fix, of course.) However, a new study published in the journal Menopause has found that these symptoms of vaginal atrophy, vaginal dryness, and the sexual pain that comes with them may actually begin in perimenopause—the period of time right before menopause hits, around ages 40 to 55.

14. Better sex ed improves LGBTQ kids’ mental health.

Sex ed is important for supporting people’s sexual health and helping people navigate sex safely. But it also has important mental health benefits for people in the LGBTQ community, according to new research in the American Journal of Sexuality Education. The study found kids who received sex ed that was inclusive of people with diverse genders and sexual orientations tended to have less anxiety, less depression, and fewer suicidal tendencies.

15. Open-minded people are more likely to cheat.

A study published in the Personality and Individual Differences journal found the personality trait most associated with cheating was open-mindedness. In other words, people who are more open to new experiences and people tend to be more likely to cheat as well. Seems obvious, but open-mindedness is also correlated with being more welcoming, more creative, more sexually liberated, and more extroverted. So…uh-oh?

16. There are at least some psychological components to why some people struggle with their sex drive.

Researchers interviewed about 100 couples where one partner struggles with sexual desire and about 100 couples with no such struggles. Published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, the study identified a few common traits among the partners who struggled with desire: They were more likely to pursue sex simply to avoid negative consequences (like a disappointed partner) and less likely to pursue sex to experience positive outcomes (like orgasms and connection). The findings also suggested they may “have difficulties recognizing and responding to their partners’ sexual needs due to having fewer sexual needs themselves.”

You can’t make this stuff up! A study published in the journal Sex Education found female students who had taken a sexuality class that discussed the orgasm gap tended to have more orgasms and better orgasms after they took the class than before.

18. Parents have better sex when they like each other.

Yes, researchers talked to 93 couples and found those who complimented each other more and had higher opinions of each other tended to have higher levels of sexual satisfaction in the relationship. It might seem obvious, but many long-term couples (especially parents) will readily admit that just because they’re married and in love does not mean that they always like each other. That means couples should never dismiss the importance of making sure actual feelings of affection and positivity still live on in their relationship.

19. Postcoital dysphoria affects men too.

Postcoital dysphoria refers to inexplicable feelings of sadness, frustration, or distress after having otherwise pleasurable sex. Some people assume that women are more likely to be emotional after having sex, but a study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found 41% of men have experienced PCD, and 20% experienced it in the last four weeks.

20. How you feel about your genitalia affects your sex life.

Feeling self-conscious about your vulva or penis might actually affect how much pleasure you’re experiencing during sex. A study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found people who felt more confident about their genitalia tend to have less stress about their “performance” during sex and better sexual functioning, which includes getting turned on easily, having more vaginal lubrication, and being able to orgasm with ease.

21. Sexual desire is buildable.

For couples, experiencing sexual desire today makes you more likely to experience sexual desire tomorrow and have sex tomorrow, according to a study published in the Archives of Sexual Desire. That means couples who want to improve their sex lives should consider starting small: Just adding a few moments of heat and turn-on daily, even without having sex, will build up sexual desire over time.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How To Have The Best Sex Ever In 2020

By Ashley Tibbits

Of all the New Year’s resolutions you could make — better overall health, learning something new daily, practicing gratitude, etc. — arguably some of the best are those that involve improving your close relationships. And that includes your more (ahem) intimate ones. Regardless of whether your current sex life is stagnant or sizzling, there’s always room for improvement. That said, if one of your 2020 goals is mastering just how to have the best sex ever, you might be curious to know how the most satisfied people are behaving in the bedroom (and beyond).

Recently Pure Romance conducted a survey of 2,000 sexually active Americans, and the results might just surprise you. Overwhelmingly, the participants seem to genuinely be enjoying their sex lives, with 79 percent reporting that they were “happy” with how things were going in that department and 44 percent rating 2019 as their best year for sex yet.

Before digging into what these people may or may not have been practicing that kept them feeling satisfied, it’s also helpful to examine the factors that lead to a healthy sex life, according to the experts. “The elements that are essential for a healthy sex life include feeling good about your body, sexual thoughts, fantasies, feelings, and your overall well-being,” says Dr. Carolina Pataky, a certified sex therapist with Love Discovery Institute in Miami. “Healthy sex also requires comfort in sharing your sexual and emotional world with your partner. It means knowing what you want to do and what turns you on, but also what you don’t want to do and doesn’t feel good.”

Dr. Pataky also attributes the rise in sexual confidence and satisfaction to the fact that American culture has come so far in terms of being able to express certain desires — which includes preferences and orientation as well as fantasies. “The last three generations have grown up with hearing and learning about sex in ways that were previously unavailable,” she says. “Sexual expression and experimentation is not limited to the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, but new generations have now also grown up with it.”

Sexual openness seemed to be an ongoing themes in the studies findings — whether that means communicating better with your partner, experimenting with more toys (including a ton of women-designed ones), and switching up styles, time of day, and frequency. For more specifics, read ahead for the four main things to consider for an even better sex life in 2020, based on Pure Romance’s findings as well as Dr. Pataky’s advice.

Branch Out

With a reduction in stigma around sex, it seems that more and more people feel comfortable trying new things in the bedroom. This is reflected in the study’s data, with 38 percent saying they’d been more adventurous this year. More specifically, one in six tried phone sex and 29 percent tried a toy for the first time in 2019. But experimenting can mean different things for each and some may find it a bit harder than others.

If you’re open to expanding your horizons but are feelings a bit shy or unsure about just how, Dr. Pataky has some advice. “Exploring doesn’t mean doing it but it means giving yourself permission to reflect on what they are. Write out what [your fantasies] are and let yourself notice what you are telling yourself about them. You can also try talking about it with a partner letting them know what you are wanting. You can also join an internet forum or a sub-Reddit that gives you the privacy to share your fantasies and fears with others that feel the same and share the same fantasy.”

Do Some Research

To go along with the above, it might also benefit you to utilize the wide variety of resources available. “For those individuals that are still affected by taboos, I’d suggest reading books that help them understand their sexuality, desires, and fantasies as a natural part to the human component,” says Dr. Pataky. “One book I’d recommend for starters would be Tell Me What You Want by Justin J. Lehmiller. This book brings to light the commonalities we share regarding our sexual desires and fantasies.”

Make More Time For Intimacy

According to the survey, the biggest complaint about sex was not having enough of it, with 42 percent saying it was what they regretted most about their sex lives this year. While it may seem easier said than done, Dr. Pataky claims that if you want more intimacy for 2020, you’ve just got to carve out the time. “If you are wanting to have more sex, you need to prioritize it,” she says. To do this, the sex therapist explains there’s no better way than to just make it a part of your schedule. If you’ve got a partner, that might involve being open about your desire for more sex and coordinating your schedules and set aside some special alone time.

Keep Talking

Nearly half of those surveyed said they were able to communicate more with their partner about their likes and dislikes, while another 44 percent claimed this year they learned more about what makes their partner feel good. And while Dr. Patasky notes that having an open discourse about your desires is certainly beneficial, it’s important to keep the communication going even outside the bedroom. “One of the problems I’ve been seeing is that some people are open to positively discussing what’s going on between the sheets, but what’s going on in their relationships?” she asks. “While many of my clients do have plenty of sex, they sometimes erroneously use it as metric to measure how well their relationship is going.” That said, for those who are in a relationship, it’s important to focus on more than just that quality and quantity of getting busy. Chances are, having a healthy relationship overall will improve your sex life, too.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Why So Many Women Aren’t Enjoying Sex as Much as They Could

The messages you hear about sex while growing up have consequences in adulthood, a study suggests.

By Claire Gillespie

For many of us, sex ed doesn’t end in high school. It’s not unusual to have to do some serious work decades after the first mention of the birds and the bees––often to try to repair the harm that was done back then.

That’s the focus of a recent study, published in the American Journal of Sexuality Education, which asked nearly 200 women to share the types of messages they’d received about sex and sexuality when they were growing up. And the vast majority of them had only negative experiences to report.

Think of all the crappy messages you’ve received about sex and your body over the years, and you’ll relate: you shouldn’t have sex before marriage, having sex during your period is disgusting, masturbation is shameful. Those messages may come from direct conversations with parents, educators, or religious leaders, or they may come from the mass media, such as Facebook, YouTube, or chat rooms.

Wherever they stem from, their impact can be long-lasting. It’s not too much of a leap to connect negative messages about sex to difficulty reaching orgasm, body image issues, a lifeless libido, and less satisfying sex in general.

For the study, participants were asked to share memorable messages they received about reproductive and/or sexual health, and their responses prove just how crucial those early messages about sex are.

One participant said they “…wish that I wouldn’t have been taught about sex as if it were a bad thing, from my school.” Another revealed that her first encounter with shame around sex came when she had chlamydia in her early 20s, and the reaction of a family member made her feel “ashamed and disgusted.”

Several participants shared negative experiences connected to strong religious-based abstinence messaging around sex. “‘Don’t have sex. If you have sex, you’re going to get pregnant and we’re going to kick you out.’ This was my sex talk from my parents,” said one. “This stuck with me for years and still does.”

But the sole aim of the study wasn’t to remind women of just how much negativity they absorbed about sex. Study authors also share different ways to combat any unfavorable lingering feelings. When the women were asked what helps them develop more positive attitudes to their sex lives, here are the four main takeaways.

Having open dialogues about sex

Many participants said the “main catalyst” for a more positive attitude toward their own sexuality was having honest conversations with friends and family, as well as hearing more discussions about sex in society in general. One participant said she had “lost some of the shame associated with menstruation and sexual health” as a result of “growing older, educating myself, and falling into fairly liberal, well-educated friendship circles.”

Getting more (and better) sex ed

Many interviewees said their perceptions of sex, health, and their bodies improved thanks to further education about sex, menstruation, fertility, and reproductive health. “This education was often initiated by the individual and included conducting independent research, asking questions of friends, family, and medical practitioners, and reading further into topics on websites, blogs, and in books,” the researchers write.

Becoming body positive

A big part of sexual empowerment for the study participants came from working on developing body comfort and acceptance and autonomy. “This paradigm shift toward empowerment often stemmed from participants educating themselves about their bodily functions,” the researchers write.

“My perspective about menstruation and reproductive health has changed over time,” said one participant. “I now see them as amazing biological functions that are a testament to how impressive the human body is, thanks to friends who have empowered me to embrace my own fertility.”

Ditching gender stereotypes

The women in the study felt more positively about their bodies, sexual health, and sex in general when they questioned traditional beliefs about womanhood and femininity, as well as challenged stereotypical gender roles.

It’s undeniable that young women need positive messages about reproductive and sexual health as part of their upbringing. Perhaps a good starting point would be for every parent, educator and religious institution to get a copy of this study.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘Bi-erasure’

Bisexual people who are out to their partners may have worse sex

By Canela López

  • Research presented at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality annual conference last week found that bisexual people in mixed-gender relationships who are out to their parents have lower rates of sexual satisfaction than if they aren’t out. 
  • The study also found that rates of sexual satisfaction and romantic satisfaction were actually higher for the partners of bisexual people who feel “more negative towards their identity.” 
  • Researchers suggest that this sexual and romantic dissatisfaction comes from the fear of bi-erasure — or the “unique form of minority stress related to the erasure of their identity” as a bisexual person. 

The myth that bisexual people don’t exist might seem absurd, but is more commonly accepted than you may think. And when bisexual people engage in relationships with people of different genders, that myth can contribute to the erasure of their identity entirely.

For example, a bisexual woman dating a man might face a common form of “minority stress” called bi-erasure — or the fear that someone’s identity as a bisexual person might be ignored and they might be thought of as straight — just because she is in a relationship with a man.

While bi-erasure can have a variety of negative social impacts on bisexual people, including exclusion from LGBTQ spaces, isolation, and a feeling of invalidation, researchers found that it can have a tangible impact on their sex life as well.

New findings presented at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality annual conference last week found that for bisexual people in mixed-gender relationships, rates of sexual satisfaction were actually lower if they were out to their family, friends, and partners. However, the study also found that partners of bisexual people in mixed-gender relationships reported higher levels of sexual and romantic satisfaction when their partners were out.

Researchers tie these results to the internal conflict bi-erasure creates for bisexual people in mixed-gender relationships.

Bisexual people in mixed-gender relationships who were out to their families had lower rates of sexual satisfaction than those who weren’t

The study surveyed 142 mixed-gender couples, each composed of one bisexual person and one person who does not identify as bisexual. The couples on average had been together for 5 years, were 30-years-old at the time of the survey, and were primarily white.

Participants answered a series of questions about overall levels of sexual and romantic satisfaction with their partners. The results showed that factors such as whether bisexual participants felt their identities were recognized, whether bisexual partners were out to their families and friends, and how they felt about their own identity all had a strong impact on the level of sexual and romantic satisfaction of both partners.

Bisexual participants who felt that their identities were not seen reported lower rates of sexual satisfaction. Those who were out to their families also reported lower rates of sexual and romantic satisfaction.

Researcher Laura Vowels said the link between participants being out to family members and lower rates of sexual satisfaction could possibly be attributed to family members being unaccepting of participants’ identity as bisexual, which in turn leads to sexual and romantic dissatisfaction.

The study showed surprising results about the level of sexual and romantic satisfaction for non-bisexual participants

While bisexual participants across the board reported lower rates of sexual satisfaction when they were out to their families and felt that their identity was not seen, Vowels was surprised at the findings about their non-bisexual partners.

“If the bisexual partner felt more negative towards their identity, then their partner experienced higher levels of sexual satisfaction,” Vowels said.

Vowel said this might be connected to non-bisexual partners feeling insecure about their partners leaving them due to the stereotype that bisexual people are promiscuous and always looking for another relationship.

While the study is relatively small, the conclusions illustrate the tangible impacts that biphobia may have on the lives of bisexual people and their partners.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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“Having cancer changed my sex life irreversibly”

“Our sex life, which had kept us so close in the past, changed irreversibly”

By Jennifer Savin

Meredith, 27, was diagnosed with cancer twice in her twenties (first cervical cancer and then breast cancer). She explains how it impacted her relationship and sex life, and how it changed the way she feels about intimacy.<

There’s never a good time to be diagnosed with cancer, but it really felt like the bombshell hit me at the worst possible moment. In December 2016, I was about to start training for my dream career, had just moved house and was excited about the future, when a routine smear test revealed I had cervical cancer. It was a total shock as I’d had no symptoms. The world spun on its axis.

Before that day, I was the same as many twenty something women: I loved going to the gym, dressing up for nights out with friends and going to football matches with my boyfriend Gareth, a man whose zest for life drew me in from the moment we met at a student event in a pub.

When Gareth and I first got together our relationship was long distance. Which meant that whenever we met, we’d be so excited to see one another that sex happened naturally – being physical was fun, easy and a glue that bonded us. But all that changed once I began my treatment.

Before that day, I was the same as many twenty something women: I loved going to the gym, dressing up for nights out with friends and going to football matches with my boyfriend Gareth, a man whose zest for life drew me in from the moment we met at a student event in a pub.

When Gareth and I first got together our relationship was long distance. Which meant that whenever we met, we’d be so excited to see one another that sex happened naturally – being physical was fun, easy and a glue that bonded us. But all that changed once I began my treatment.

Sex slipped further down the list of my priorities, especially during chemotherapy. After one session I was so unwell, I pushed Gareth away when he tried to comfort me. My rejecting him was difficult for us both to understand, but drugs affect your moods and thoughts, and I’d gone into crisis mode. All my energy went on trying to survive.

Our sex life, which had kept us so close in the past, had changed irreversibly. I know Gareth found it frustrating at times and we both worried our relationship might not survive, but all we could do was acknowledge the situation was awful and push through anyway, hoping we’d be happier on the other side.

When you know the medical professionals you interact with are trying to save your life, asking for advice about what you can and can’t do in the bedroom feels trivial (although whenever I did ask, they were helpful – one for example, prescribed me a moisturiser to help deal with vaginal dryness, a chemo side effect).

Slowly, we learnt new ways to be intimate with one another, like talking truly openly about how we’re feeling and about how my body has changed. We attended talks about sex and relationships through Breast Cancer Care and Jo’s Trust, which helped, especially realising others were in a similar boat. Practical things like taking it slow, longer foreplay and using lots of lube help too. I’ve also cleared out all of my old bras and replaced them with new sets – my old underwear had negative associations, so this was another small way of me reclaiming back part of my confidence.

I’ve now been given the all clear and am back to work pretty much full-time, bar the odd day off for a check-up appointment. Some mornings, I look in the mirror and find the scar on my breast empowering, on others it gets me down – although Gareth tells me I look amazing regardless. Communication is key in any relationship, but my experience has really hammered that home. I’ve learned that intimacy isn’t just about sex but about the emotional connection between two people.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Slow sex

How embracing the ‘mindful sex’ trend could boost your wellbeing

By Mary-Jane Wiltsher

There’s no denying that our interest in slow sex, or mindful sex, is on the rise. From sexy audio stories to carefully curated ‘pleasure packages’, there’s a whole new world of thoughtful, creative approaches to sex out there – and for many brands, female pleasure is finally being made the focus.

Slow sex. What do the words mean to you? If it’s dimming the lights, blasting Marvin Gaye and taking the pace of your bedroom activities down a notch, then in this case, you haven’t quite hit the spot.

That’s because, while all of those things could well feature in a session of slower sex, in this instance ‘slow’ refers to mindfulness, not speed.

In the last two decades, our mile-a-minute, tech-driven lives have sent us in search of ‘slow food’ (lovingly prepared seasonal ingredients), ‘slow travel’ (offbeat, eco-friendly journeys) and ‘slow journalism’ (deep-dive features that go beyond the breaking news cycle). 

These mindful movements involve fully engaging in the moment and putting more thought into the choices we make as humans. Contrary to its name, mindfulness helps us reconnect with our bodily senses and dislocate from the everyday worries that rattle around in our brains. MBCT (mindfulness based cognitive therapy) has even been used by the NHS to treat recurring depression.

How does mindfulness translate to our sex lives, though? Slow sex sounds a bit, well, dull. How do we define the vastness of sex – swift and unhurried, wild and comforting, awkward and joyous – in a ‘slow’ or ‘mindful’ context?

Writer, sex educator and ambassador for sexual wellbeing brand Tenga, Alix Fox, describes mindful sex as follows: “Mindful sex is about being truly in the moment during an erotic experience. It involves being utterly present and focused, and paying attention to all the sensations and emotions flowing through you, without judging yourself for whatever you happen to feel.”

In a world where we devote more time to our screens than our sex lives, mindful sex may seem laughably impractical, but Fox explains that there are multiple benefits.

“Having mindful sex – indeed, practicing mindfulness full stop – can be challenging if you’ve got a lot on your plate, or you’re knackered or anxious. Yet mindful sexual sessions can help us to feel more rested, relaxed, calm and contented. It may sound hippy dippy, but mindful sex is certainly worth putting your mind to.” 

“It’s hard, especially for women, to really know what we want from sex. To separate what we want to do, from what is expected of us”

While mindful sex is moving into becoming a trend in 2019, it certainly isn’t a new thing. Tantric sex, or tantra, which centres on heightening the senses through mindfulness and connection, is an ancient practice that appears in Hinduism and Buddhism. Fast forward to the 00s and a string of books on tantric or slow sex appeared, published by the likes of couples therapist Diana Richardson, whose 2018 TED Talk on mindful sex has so far racked up almost half a million views.

We’re not only talking about the sensations of the act itself, though. Mindful sex encompasses anything that enhances our sex lives – from apps and websites to books – and that’s where a new wave of brands comes in.

With more women writing and theorising about sex than ever before, and greater numbers of women working and consulting in the sextech industry, a plethora of female-founded brands, publications and collectives have emerged. These range from Dipsea’s sexy audio stories for women, to mindful sex app Ferly, sex education website OMGYes and ‘pleasure package’ subscription service The Sway, via Flo Perry’s sex-positive book How to Have Feminist Sex, to name a handful.

United by a thoughtful and creative approach to sex, their focus is on female pleasure. Perry’s guide to bringing feminism into the bedroom is a great instructional tool for women who want to make more mindful choices about sex. Reliably smart, frank and relatable, it covers everything from masturbation to monogamy, pubes to sending nudes, and is crammed with her playful illustrations.

“I like the idea of more conscious sex,” says Perry. “I think it’s hard, especially for women, to really know what we want from sex. To separate what we want to do, from what is expected of us during sex.”

On the rise of ‘slow sex’, she says: “Not everyone wants to have romantic fireside tantric encounters, some people want to be fingered hard and fast on the back of a bus, and both of those fantasies can be done equally consciously, and full of feminism.”

The rise of audio porn or audio erotica, too, reveals a growing interest in slower, more immersive forms of stimulation. Gina Gutierrez, co-founder of Dipsea, the sexy short story app for women, sees a connection between the numbers of women working in sextech and the slow sex movement.

“While we don’t necessarily think about it as ‘slow sex’, we’re proud to be part of a movement that’s re-imagining sex as mind-first vs. body-first,” she says, adding that the wider societal change is likely down to, “a growing curiosity around, and interest in, serving women in all the ways they uniquely experience sexuality.”

Crafting fantasies through scene-setting and tension-building, Dipsea’s stories can be adjusted according to sexual orientation and explicitness, and listened to solo or with a partner. Based on research that, especially for women, tapping into sexual feelings has a lot to do with mood and context, Dipsea creates scenarios that listeners can envision as they like. As one subscriber puts it, “It leaves room for my own imagination to fill in the blanks”.

Gen de Rohan Willner and Sinead O’Hare, co-founders of The Sway – a subscription service that sends bi-monthly ‘pleasure packages’ full of thoughtful prompts and products discreetly to your door – believe “we are seeing a huge shift in sexual wellbeing as a whole being valued alongside physical health and mental wellbeing, which is fantastic.”

“Women are being more vocal than ever, demanding equality in all aspects of their lives””

The Sway was born out of that very change in perception. “Sex often took the backseat in our busy lives,” says de Rohan Willner. “Between the yoga, facials and green juices we were purchasing to ‘look after ourselves’, neither of us were lifting a finger to keep our sex lives alive and kicking. That little shift in our minds that sex is also something that needs ‘looking after’ is where The Sway started.”

Education and curation are important to the brand. Unlike other subscription services, each box is themed around a new ‘area’ of pleasure. This promotes exploration and communication while introducing subscribers to new products they may not have otherwise discovered.

Like Gutierrez, de Rohan Willner believes mindful sex is part of a wider zeitgeist in which “women are being more vocal than ever, demanding equality in all aspects of their lives”.

Interestingly, The Sway’s most popular products don’t involve vibration. Instead, orgasm enhancer balms and good old-fashioned lube are forever popular. The founders note that there’s also “a rising interest in massage products – the perfect example of a product that helps spice things up while slowing things down”.

The lack of ‘buzz’ may tie into what Alix Fox coins ‘The NoZap Movement’, referring to women who periodically give up vibrating sex toys, feeling they have become over-reliant on intense stimulation, which can make it harder to appreciate the comparatively delicate sensations of human touch. Similarly, some men may “give up porn and masturbation for a set period of time in an effort to ‘reset’ their mental outlook and physical sensitivity”.

Solo sex is alive and healthy, though, and also ties into the slow sex movement. Research by Tenga reveals that masturbation is starting to be seen as a form of self-care – a view which very much feeds into more mindful attitudes to sex.

 

The Self Pleasure Report, produced in May this year, revealed that 64% of Brits used masturbation as a form of self-care, with 52% saying it improved their wellbeing. British respondents ranked masturbation as more pleasurable and more stress-relieving than wellness activities like taking a bath or listening to music.

What does all this mean? Cheeringly, we’re thinking and talking about sex in broader, more explorative and progressive ways. Female entrepreneurs aren’t waiting for sextech to catch up to their needs. Ancient taboos about masturbation are beginning to be dismantled. We’re being kinder to our bodies.

Once we forget the idea of mindful sex as a specific kind of candlelit tantric experience, and instead see it as a much-needed shot of thought and imagination for our sex lives, it becomes a whole lot more accessible and, well, sexy.

Could we see people giving up sex toys altogether in favour of mindful sex and tantric practices? As with anything, it’s all about balance. We wouldn’t live on ‘slow food’ alone – sometimes we want a sugary snack – and our sexual appetites are just as diverse. You might want to dip into audio porn one day, and be gratified in an entirely different way the next.

So, while slow sex is on the rise, it remains part of a vast and colourful array of sexual pleasures – and that’s altogether more stimulating.

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