Category: Sexual Satisfaction

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Too Stressed Out To Have Sex?

Do These 3 Things

By Myisha Battle

Anticipation is part of the reason why sex is so hot at the beginning of relationships

Inevitably, having sex becomes a part of most romantic relationships but, sometimes, there is a hindrance that couples can’t always stop from happening: stress.

A new client recently began our session with “I’m just not that into sex anymore. It’s not that I don’t think about it, I just don’t have the same kind of drive for sex that I used to have.”

Lack of interest in sexual intercourse is one of the most common concerns I see as a sex coach. It affects all kinds of people of all relationship statuses, but its roots can be found in similar areas.

Single men and women come to me explaining that they don’t think about themselves sexually and they feel out of touch with their own sexual energy.

Couples tend to come to me after dating for some time and feel that the sex they have now isn’t as fulfilling as the sex they had at the beginning of their relationship.

But, why are they feeling less into sex?

  • Stressed out singles

Today, the average person is busier and more consumed by distraction than ever before. Most of us work long hours, maintain busy social calendars and have numerous commitments to family and friends.

To stay on top of everything, the average person checks their cell phone approximately 80 times a day. Why should this matter when it comes to our desire for sex? Because we don’t have an endless supply of energy.

If the energy we do have is used to accomplish things outside of ourselves all the time, it can’t be used to connect to our deepest needs if it’s been depleted.

In my experience, this is the number one reason why people can go weeks or months without even checking in with themselves about their sexual needs.

On top of energy depletion, we are also tapped into what feels like an endless supply of potential sexual partners through online dating sites and apps.

Dating can be another stressor when you’re single. It can be fun, for sure! But there’s a lot that goes into finding a match, sparking up a conversation, and moving that conversation into real life.

Some single folks are so burned out by the process that online interactions are all these relationships end up being, which is fine if you’re a digisexual, but most of us are looking for in-person sexual experiences.

  • Long-term loving couples

Some married couples or couples in a relationship are concerned that they’re not having enough sex. This might be a legitimate issue if they’ve seen a dramatic drop in frequency or quality — or the concern may be rooted in the myth that the sex you have at the beginning of a relationship will continue to be the sex you have for the duration of your relationship.

In general, there is a natural bend towards less frequent and less explosive sex as a relationship develops over time. On average, most long-term couples have sex about once a week. Knowing these two facts can sometimes alleviate any concerns the couple might be having.

Couples are not immune to stress as individuals or as a unit, so some of the stressors mentioned previously for single people apply to couples as well.

Couples also have sources of unique stressors including but not limited to shared household and financial responsibilities, childcare, managing in-law relationships, finding time for individual pursuits and making sure that the overall health of the relationship is good. This is a lot of unsexy stuff that’s all part of a loving relationship.

If any of the above sounds familiar, then there are ways to help you tap back into your sexual connection with yourself and your partners.

Ask yourself, “What kind of sex life do I want?”

Answering this question is a worthwhile activity for anyone regardless of their relationship status.

Being single might mean that your sexual life is deprioritized because of your busy life, but it’s a good idea to take a few minutes to think about what kind of sex and sensual experiences you would like to have as part of your life. This can give you some clarity about what to work towards.

If you are partnered, do this activity separately and then share your results. There may be some things on your partner’s list that will surprise you and will even make your marriage better than ever!

So if stress has made you less interested in sex, here are 3 ways to fix that.

1. Respect your need for pleasure

Many clients tell me that they think about sex regularly, but that they don’t allow themselves to engage in fantasies.

Your body has natural sexual rhythms, and it will communicate to you what it wants. Your job is to listen to it. Of course, you do not have to indulge in every fantasy that pops into your brain, but take note of when you’re having fantasies and rather than pushing those thoughts away allow yourself to entertain them a little longer.

No one is going to know and you’ll benefit from maintaining your connection to your body’s need for sexual pleasure.

2. Find pleasure in everyday activities

When we’re stressed out and living in our head, we forget to use all of our senses, which are crucial for tapping into our sexuality. That’s why I encourage my clients to develop mindfulness as they move through the world.

This can start with the simple act of invoking all of your senses while enjoying your cup of coffee or tea first thing in the morning. Create time to hear the sound of the boiling water or coffee pot brewing, take in the sight of the liquid being poured into your cup, smell the aroma, feel the heat of the mug in your hand and notice the taste.

This is a classic mindfulness practice that can set the tone for your day and get you rooted in your body.

3. Put sex on the calendar

This may sound cheesy, but for some couples, putting sex on the calendar is a great tactic to build back that anticipation for sex that was there at the beginning of courtship.

Think about it this way: when you were dating you set up a time in the future to meet and you had all this time before the date to fantasize about how the night would go.

That anticipation is part of the reason why sex is so hot at the beginning of relationships, so building it back in is such a game-changer when couples need to recharge their sex life.

Single folks or individuals within a couple can benefit from calendaring in solo sex as well. I often recommend that busy folks put masturbation on their calendars. Think of it as part of your wellness routine or self-care.

A regular masturbation practice can help you maintain a healthy amount of sexual desire while also reducing stress. For these reasons, your sexual connection to yourself deserves a place on your calendar.

If you feel that you could use some help putting practices in place to re-connect to your sexual self, consider working with a sex and dating coach like myself.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What do we really know about male desire?

Not much, according to Canadian sex researchers

Winnipeg relationships therapist Sarah Hunter Murray found a male desire that’s less voracious, indiscriminate and skin deep, and more emotionally complex – fragile, even.

By Zosia Bielski

Although sex researchers historically gave male subjects centre stage, they paid surprisingly little attention to how men actually desire. Today, contemporary sexologists say our cultural understanding of men’s sex drive remains simplistic and leans on old clichés – that male libido is always sky-high, self-centred and ready to go, with practically anyone. Men who aren’t this way are still treated as exceptions, not the rule.

Canadian researchers and clinicians are starting to push back on these ideas by asking deeper questions about the inner world of male desire. They’re looking at how heterosexual men lust (and don’t) within their relationships, what motivates them to have sex with their partners, what frustrates them in their intimate lives and how they process rejection from the women they love. What they’re finding counters much of what’s been previously assumed about men.

“We’ve got this stereotype about men’s desire being constant and unwavering. More recently, we’ve got #MeToo highlighting stories of men’s sexual desire being dangerous, toxic and about power. But what else is going on?” said Winnipeg relationships therapist Sarah Hunter Murray.

Murray interviewed nearly 300 men and spoke to hundreds more over a decade in her therapy practice – executives, truck drivers, athletes, teachers and dads among them. Their insights are included in Murray’s recent book, Not Always in The Mood: The New Science of Men, Sex, and Relationships, which offers a rare glimpse into a world we think we understand, but possibly don’t at all.

Notably absent from Murray’s book are the usual tales of raging male libido. One husband is too stressed out by the family business to think about sex. A boyfriend turns down his girlfriend’s advances for two months as he dwells on an unresolved argument. Another husband tells Murray his sexual interest piques when he and his wife talk late into the night. In her conversations with men, Murray found a male desire that’s less voracious, indiscriminate and skin deep, and more emotionally complex – fragile, even.

While Murray offers a strikingly new perspective on heterosexual male sex drive, other Canadian researchers are studying men’s sexual problems in long-term committed relationships. In Halifax, clinical psychologist Natalie Rosen is looking at why men experience low desire with their partners. At the University of Waterloo, PhD student Siobhan Sutherland is exploring male and female partners’ sexual complaints, which happen to be the same. And at the University of Kentucky, Canadian researcher Kristen Mark mines “sexual desire discrepancy” in couples, finding it’s sometimes wives and girlfriends who are more interested in sex than husbands and boyfriends – guys who find this scenario particularly troubling because of social expectations about the supposedly more carnal male gender.

Their emerging research suggests serious blind spots around male desire are harming relationships and holding couples back from broaching what they want in their intimate lives.

“If we ignore the nuances of sexual desire in men, we risk continuing to perpetuate stereotypes – that men’s sexual interest is uniformly high and independent of context – to the detriment of the many men whose experiences are multifaceted,” said Halifax’s Rosen. “In enhancing our understanding of men’s sexual desire, we can improve individual and couple sexuality and ultimately promote the quality of intimate relationships.”

The Globe spoke to researchers – and men – about busting the most pernicious myths lingering around male desire.

Not in the mood

Despite stereotypical depictions in pop culture, real-world men aren’t always fired up.

“The myth is that men are a sex toy that you can pull out of your closet and it’s always ready to go when you are. Well, no, that’s not actually the case,” said CJ, a 41-year-old government employee in St. John’s who is divorced and now in a relationship with a woman he’s known for two decades. (In order to protect the men’s privacy, full names are not used). “If your time and energy is spent on the adulting – paying bills, working overtime, trying to keep your energy up for elderly parents or young kids – is there really time to connect emotionally and build that bridge that ends up in the bedroom?” said CJ.

Adam, a Kitchener, Ont., retiree who’s been with his wife for more than two decades, also disputed the notion that the male sex drive runs non-stop, no matter what. “If I’m focused on something or upset about something at work, I just want to be alone or work something out in my head. You don’t want to have any kind of interaction with anybody,” said Adam, 67. “My partner used to talk about the ‘tent time’ or the ‘bear time.'”

In conversation with Murray, the Winnipeg relationships therapist, men pointed out that sex wasn’t at the forefront of their brains when they were sick, tired, stressed out at work or feeling emotionally disconnected. “Men’s sexual desire is not a static trait that never changes and is impermeable to outside influences,” wrote Murray, who holds a PhD in human sexuality. “We’ve gotten used to talking about the complexities of women’s desire being affected by how much sleep they’re getting, how much stress they’re under or by being a parent, but we simply don’t talk about this with men,” she said.

Halifax’s Rosen is currently recruiting couples for one of the first studies to look at men struggling with lowered desire within their relationships. “There’s so much pressure in how men’s desire is supposed to conform to the stereotype of always being ready and interested in sex,” said Rosen, an associate professor in psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University and director of the school’s Couples and Sexual Health Research Laboratory. “The men I’ve seen clinically feel a lot of shame around it, like there’s something wrong with them. Their family doctors don’t bring it up with them and they don’t see representations of themselves.”

Faking it

During their first therapy sessions with Murray, men often boasted about their robust sex drives. Subsequent conversations saw them dialing it back. Numerous husbands and boyfriends confessed that “some of their desire was feigned rather than authentic,” Murray wrote.

Men told her that they agreed to sex they didn’t fully want because they felt they had to. Having been socialized all their lives about high-octane male desire, men were playing the part. They were also faking it for the sake of their girlfriends and wives, who took sexual rejection and lagging male libido personally. “Men talked about this fear that their female partner might not be open to them saying ‘no’ to sex,” Murray said.

In St. John’s, CJ copped to faking sexual interest before. “It’s almost on a scale of 1 to 10. I’m not really there but I’m at a 6 and a half so I can go along with it,” CJ said. “Other times you kind of take one for the team, realizing that she’s probably done the same thing for you.”

Through her first interviews, Halifax’s Rosen is finding that men with low sexual interest are still reporting they regularly have sex with their female partners. Rosen said the men felt guilt and obligation to “please their partner to maintain the relationship.”

The female gaze

The standard thinking still goes in heterosexual dynamics: Men do the complimenting (and the objectifying), the desiring and the pursuing – and are naturally content with the setup. Not exactly, the men interviewed said.

“Men really don’t get checked out very often,” said Alexander, a 22-year-old Toronto student who has been with his girlfriend Mary, 21, for more than a year. “We have better sex when she’s complimented me and encouraged me. …It changes the whole tone of the evening,” Alexander said. “If a woman initiates even just one component of sex, that is the biggest vote of confidence.”

In her conversations with hundreds of men, Winnipeg’s Murray found many wanted their spouses and girlfriends to look at them, compliment them and act on their own urges. “Interview after interview, it started to become very clear that the most salient and important experience that increased men’s sexual desire was feeling wanted by their female partner,” Murray wrote. “A lot of women don’t think to outwardly demonstrate their desire for their male partners.”

Waterloo’s Sutherland asked 117 heterosexual couples in long-term relationships about their problems in bed for a study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in March, and found men and women voicing pretty much the same concerns: frequency of sex, initiation and how much their partners showed interest. “We used to think that women just wanted to be romanced and men just care about sex. That’s not true. Men want to feel wanted as well, and for women to show interest in them,” Sutherland said.

Beyond skin deep

Current assumptions about male libido still often go like this: sex for men is about getting off, a practically robotic function.

Look deeper and many men balk at that assumption. For Kitchener’s Adam, intimacy is how he connects with his wife. “I may touch my partner … I’m not intending to be crude, but sometimes she reacts in a way that [suggests] this is the only motive I would have,” Adam said. “There are times when men are struggling to find a way to show intimacy. A touch is presumed to be a claim on the body, instead of just a way to connect and make some contact.”

Toronto’s Alexander expressed frustration with literature and pop culture that depict sex as solely about physical gratification for men. “If we’ve just had sex, I don’t want to go to sleep,” he said of his girlfriend. “I want to reflect on what just happened with her.”

In research interviews and therapy sessions with Murray, husbands and boyfriends described feeling their sexual-interest spike on date nights, long walks and during close conversations – the stuff of rom-coms. “To hear men talking about romantic and sweet things about their partner that turn them on, it challenged my own assumptions,” Murray said.

The therapist argued that women who are constantly cynical about the nature of their partners’ sexual desire might be missing the bigger picture. “When we have a limited belief about what turns our partner on, we unfortunately miss the more complex, nuanced, and meaningful ways that he feels desire for us,” Murray wrote. “Many of men’s emotional bids for connection go unnoticed.”

Mars, Venus and Planet Earth

Waterloo’s Sutherland found that women and men voiced virtually all the same desire-related problems in their relationships. Here, she hit on something sexologists increasingly note: When it comes to intimacy, there is often less difference between the genders than there is between individual people. “There used to be this idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus,” Sutherland said. “We find more and more in our research that it’s just not the case.”

Winnipeg’s Murray found gender norms were limiting couples’ experiences in bed, particularly the sexual scripts that tell men they need to pursue and women they need to be the gatekeeper. CJ agreed: “If you’re conforming to the same roles, if you’re not stepping outside a little bit, it has a detrimental effect. It becomes a flow chart: I initiate. You respond. If yes, then bedroom. If bedroom, then missionary.”

Speaking to distraught couples, Murray noticed that false assumptions about raging male libido left both men and women feeling inadequate: Some women questioned whether their own lower desire was dysfunctional, while some men who didn’t experience near-constant sexual urges told Murray they felt broken.

The author wants relationships to become a place of respite from gendered expectations about desire that have little, if anything, to do with individual couples.

“These misconceptions hold us in antiquated boxes about what men and women should be, and don’t leave room to have a new discourse around what we actually want to experience,” Murray said. “It doesn’t let us be our authentic selves.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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These Badass Women Are Fighting To Close The Orgasm Gap For Good

by Carrie Arnold

The big O can boost your mood, help you sleep better, strengthen your immune system, improve your relationship, and more. But it makes everyone—and we mean everyone (doctors, universities, government agencies)—flinch. WH investigates why women are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to getting off, and talks to the brave ladies who are cutting through the red tape, so you can.

Lora Haddock figured her company might be controversial in some circles. After all, she was starting a woman-oriented pleasure-tech company and designing a sex toy that mimicked all the motions of a human partner. Better still, the gadget stimulated the clitoris and vagina simultaneously, without needing a hand to hold it in place.

But Haddock thought the tech world was ready for a product that was part robot, part vibrator, and all about a woman’s sexual pleasure. The Osé (pronounced oh-SAY) that Haddock designed as the head of her company, Lora DiCarlo, had 52 complex engineering requirements, as well as a slew of patents pending before it hit the market. Haddock knew the Osé was something special—and groundbreaking—because it used the latest technology to give women what they want.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) thought so too, notifying Haddock last fall that it would be awarding the Osé its 2019 Robotics & Drones Innovation Award. But before the ink had dried on the notice of their honor, the CES revoked its award. “Our jaws hit the floor,” Haddock says.

In a letter Haddock shared with WH, CES quoted terms buried deep in the small print: “Entries deemed by CTA [Consumer Technology Association, the organization behind the annual CES show] in their sole discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane, or not in keeping with CTA’s image will be disqualified.” Never mind, of course, that current and past exhibitors had demoed augmented reality porn and a robot sex doll that can give blow jobs.

The double standard struck a nerve, and Haddock fired back with an open letter to CES, writing, “You cannot pretend to be unbiased if you allow a sex robot for men but not a vagina-focused equivalent.” In other words, the organization was okay with helping a guy get his rocks off, but not a woman. The implied message was that women’s sexual health is not worthy of innovation.

Months passed after that slap in the face. Then, fortunately, CES reinstated Haddock’s award in May 2019, right before this story went to press, stating that “CTA recognizes the innovative technology that went into the development of Osé and reiterates its sincere apology to the Lora DiCarlo team.”

As this debacle shows, in our boner-centric culture, female orgasm still remains taboo. Climaxing is all well and good if it gives a man another notch on his belt, but when a female-identifying individual has an orgasm for the sake of an orgasm, people start to squirm (and not in a good way).

“There’s an overvaluing of male sexual pleasure and a devaluing of female sexual pleasure,” says Laurie Mintz, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Florida and the author of Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters—And How to Get It. And this imbalance, more than anything else, is helping to drive what researchers call the orgasm gap. A large survey of American adults found that nearly 95 percent of men had an orgasm during their last sexual encounter, but only two-thirds of women did.

The big O can boost your mood, help you sleep better, strengthen your immune system, improve your relationship, and more. But it makes everyone—and we mean everyone (doctors, universities, government agencies)—flinch. WH investigates why women are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to getting off, and talks to the brave ladies who are cutting through the red tape, so you can.

Lora Haddock figured her company might be controversial in some circles. After all, she was starting a woman-oriented pleasure-tech company and designing a sex toy that mimicked all the motions of a human partner. Better still, the gadget stimulated the clitoris and vagina simultaneously, without needing a hand to hold it in place.

But Haddock thought the tech world was ready for a product that was part robot, part vibrator, and all about a woman’s sexual pleasure. The Osé (pronounced oh-SAY) that Haddock designed as the head of her company, Lora DiCarlo, had 52 complex engineering requirements, as well as a slew of patents pending before it hit the market. Haddock knew the Osé was something special—and groundbreaking—because it used the latest technology to give women what they want.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) thought so too, notifying Haddock last fall that it would be awarding the Osé its 2019 Robotics & Drones Innovation Award. But before the ink had dried on the notice of their honor, the CES revoked its award. “Our jaws hit the floor,” Haddock says.

In a letter Haddock shared with WH, CES quoted terms buried deep in the small print: “Entries deemed by CTA [Consumer Technology Association, the organization behind the annual CES show] in their sole discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane, or not in keeping with CTA’s image will be disqualified.” Never mind, of course, that current and past exhibitors had demoed augmented reality porn and a robot sex doll that can give blow jobs.

The double standard struck a nerve, and Haddock fired back with an open letter to CES, writing, “You cannot pretend to be unbiased if you allow a sex robot for men but not a vagina-focused equivalent.” In other words, the organization was okay with helping a guy get his rocks off, but not a woman. The implied message was that women’s sexual health is not worthy of innovation.

Months passed after that slap in the face. Then, fortunately, CES reinstated Haddock’s award in May 2019, right before this story went to press, stating that “CTA recognizes the innovative technology that went into the development of Osé and reiterates its sincere apology to the Lora DiCarlo team.”

As this debacle shows, in our boner-centric culture, female orgasm still remains taboo. Climaxing is all well and good if it gives a man another notch on his belt, but when a female-identifying individual has an orgasm for the sake of an orgasm, people start to squirm (and not in a good way).

“There’s an overvaluing of male sexual pleasure and a devaluing of female sexual pleasure,” says Laurie Mintz, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Florida and the author of Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters—And How to Get It. And this imbalance, more than anything else, is helping to drive what researchers call the orgasm gap. A large survey of American adults found that nearly 95 percent of men had an orgasm during their last sexual encounter, but only two-thirds of women did.

It’s likely that gap only gets wider when sex happens outside of a committed relationship, because in those circumstances men may not feel the need to reciprocate pleasure, and women may not know how to approach the topic. The impact is felt far outside the bedroom. Missing out on orgasm means not only that you’re unable to enjoy its health benefits, such as better mood, deeper sleep, relief from headaches, and glowing skin, but also that you’re missing out on a fundamental human experience that’s fun to boot.

Well, that blows (for lack of a better term). There’s a lot to unpack here, and it’s a twisted tale of gender-biased hookup culture, poor research funding, hypocritical subway advertising rules (we’ll get to those later), and oh-so-much more. But the promising news is that women are fighting back and taking charge of their bodies and their sex lives—for good.

Pleasure 101

It starts as early as our first class in sex ed. We learn the names and functions of the different genitals, and, if we’re lucky, we learn about more than just abstinence, including how to prevent pregnancy and STDs. There are periods and body hair, and that’s about it. One of the many things missing? Pleasure, especially for her.

It’s no surprise, then, that in a survey of college women, nearly 30 percent could not identify the proper location of the clitoris. Alison Ash, PhD, a sex and relationship expert in San Francisco, says it’s not just a lack of proper sex ed that’s causing this ignorance. “Scientists didn’t discover the full anatomy of the clitoris until 1998—decades after they put a man on the moon,” she says. So the results of being sidelined become apparent as soon as women start having sex.

As a doctoral student in sociology at Stanford, Ash studied heterosexual hookup culture and found that “a lot of women don’t know what they want or how to ask for it,” she says. “Women are prioritizing what they think is their partner’s well-being over their own pleasure.”

Her data revealed that hookups were focused on him. Only 11 percent of women experienced climax the first time with a new partner, although the percentage increased in long-term relationships. Researchers from Indiana University analyzed data from the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, with a pool of 1,931 adults in the U.S. ages 18 to 59, and found that this gap wasn’t just a youth phenomenon—it was happening at all ages. Men are 27 percent more likely to report having an orgasm than women during a sexual encounter, found research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

What’s more, in many heterosexual relationships, a woman’s orgasm is seen as a reflection not of her desire and satisfaction but of her partner’s sexual prowess and masculinity, according to a study in the Journal of Sex Research. It’s partly why 67 percent of women have faked an orgasm with a partner, compared with just 28 percent of men: Heterosexual women know that what’s at stake is not so much our own pleasure, but his ego.

Although it’s easier for people with penises to be sure they’ve climaxed because they release semen, another factor is that women understand so much less about what they want and what brings them pleasure. And that’s a major problem. Not only do orgasms boost immunity and help combat stress (yes, please!), but the chemical release actually helps partners bond. Fibbing about the big O or avoiding it altogether? It might be easier in the short term to avoid asserting your needs in bed, but over time, couples lose a valuable opportunity to communicate.

“You have to figure out what you like, then you have to be brave enough to ask for it specifically, and ask and ask again until your partner gets it right,” says sex therapist Aline Zoldbrod, PhD.

Paging Dr. Orgasm…

Hello? Is anybody there? With so much cultural and medical ignorance around female orgasms, you might think funding agencies would be willing to support scientists who are studying the problem. You’d be wrong.

Despite 43 percent of women reporting some type of sexual dysfunction, research on women and orgasms is shockingly sparse—or nonexistent. The National Institutes of Health funded no research over the past decade specifically devoted to improving women’s orgasms, according to a WH analysis of NIH grants.

Female researchers are feeling this discrepancy firsthand. As a junior faculty member at UCLA, neurophysiologist Nicole Prause, PhD, says the university ethics board refused to let her conduct experiments measuring the physiological responses of couples having sex in the lab without providing her with specific objections about why the research was blocked.

After a decade of trying to make it in academia, this obstacle was the last straw. Prause finally gave up and founded Liberos, an independent sex research institute in Los Angeles, to continue her work around sexual pleasure. (When contacted, a UCLA rep responded that “out of respect for all employees and consistent with university policy, we do not discuss circumstances surrounding change of employment status.”)

Blunt without being rude, Prause urges her colleagues to take female pleasure seriously and bring more rigor to their work. At a recent conference, she attended a session where researchers asked study participants to eat chocolate in order to measure pleasure.

“I asked why they didn’t have the participants stimulate their own genitals. And they looked at me like I was an alien,” she says. Prause points out that the general public is eager for this type of research. She never has problems recruiting participants for her studies. When she recently placed an ad on Craigslist for one, she had more than 400 calls and emails within 30 minutes. “Orgasm is safe, free, and accessible; why wouldn’t we want to fund research about it?” Prause asks.

University of Michigan bioengineering PhD student Lauren Zimmerman, 25, knows this problem all too well. Her lab at the university is devoted to the stimulation of nerves in the lower leg and near the genitalia for treatment of overactive bladder. What piqued Zimmerman’s interest was when she learned that stimulating these same nerves might also help women who couldn’t achieve orgasm. She received funding for a small pilot trial to see if small amounts of painless electrical stimulation on the tibial nerve in the ankle and a nerve near the clitoris could improve women’s ability to climax, but she ran into difficulties securing funding for follow-up research. When she talked with officials about her project, they seemed interested. “When it came time for decisions, it never seemed to fall in my favor,” Zimmerman says.

Clinical psychologist Erin Cooper, PhD, says this is par for the course among sex researchers. “We’re trying to understand the female orgasm, more than ever. But there simply isn’t much money going toward this research.”

After rounds of applications, Zimmerman found funds that would provide financial support for her as a scientist rather than for her specific project. She easily recruited participants and discovered that 12 weekly stimulation sessions could improve a woman’s ability to reach orgasm. But when she presented those results at one scientific conference, she says she was laughed out of the room. “They thought it was a dirty joke and not a real clinical need,” Zimmerman says.

Saying yes to feeling good

Entrepreneur Polly Rodriguez, 32, learned the hard way how lightly female desire is taken. When radiation treatment for stage III colon cancer sent the then 21-year-old into menopause, doctors told her she would never be able to have children but failed to mention that her sex drive and ability to enjoy sex could be affected.

It was only thanks to some online searching that she finally figured it out. (The places Rodriguez could find that sold vibrators in her rural corner of the Midwest felt far too seedy for her to ask intimate questions about climax.) To fill the void, Rodriguez launched Unbound in December 2014, an online marketplace providing a sex-positive space for women to share experiences and find products that meet their sexual needs, ranging from lube and vibrators to handcuffs. “Men have had Playboy and Viagra, and I want those kinds of brands to exist for women,” Rodriguez says.

Though her company’s growth has surpassed her wildest dreams, with more than 200,000 unique hits per month, Rodriguez built her brand without advertising on social media or public transit. Facebook’s policies allow only the advertisement of condoms as family planning aids or to prevent STIs; for vibrators, forget it. When Rodriguez pushed back against this prudish policy, a representative wrote her that advertising for adult products and services wasn’t allowed.

The explanation? “This is driven by an understanding of people’s sentiment for these ads,” the email read. (When reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson responded with the following: “We have long had a policy that restricts certain ads with adult content and adult products in part because Facebook is a global company and we take into account the wide array of people from varying cultures and countries who see them…As with all of our policies, our enforcement is never perfect but we are always improving.”)

And New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority refused to post an ad for Unbound, calling it “phallic,” despite Rodriguez’s efforts to show fully clothed women of various races with nary a penis in sight. According to Rodriguez, the same day she was rejected, the MTA green-lit ads for a company selling male sexual enhancement products that portrayed a limp cactus and a perky cactus—far more phallic than Unbound’s ads. (The MTA did not respond when asked for a statement.)

Where do we ‘O’ from here?

Despite these roadblocks, the breakneck pace of Unbound’s expansion and the buzz around—and ultimate recognition of—products like the Osé show that another sexual revolution is underway.

Women are tired of putting their desires on the back burner and have begun to realize it’s okay to ask for not only what they need, but also what they want, says Zoldbrod. Yet more research is critically important—in the lab, but also in your own bedroom.

“Only you can figure out what rings your bell,” she says. In the meantime, let’s hope the rest of the medical world gets on board so we can close the gap once and for all.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Modern Monogamous Marriage Is Built on Lies, Not Sex Research

By Carrie Weisman

With some exceptions, gender constructs have served men well in the modern world. It’s landed them in more high-powered positions. It’s gotten them higher wages. And, yeah, it’s given them license to pursue sex in ways that would lead women to be ostracized or shamed. In her new book Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women Lust and Adultery Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, author Wednesday Martin digs into the damage incurred through this “boys will be boys” mentality. And she blows a whistle on the many biases that have boxed their female counterparts into such sexually constrained identities.

Fatherly spoke to Martin about what authentic sexuality looks like in women and how men can help them find their own special shade.

A lot of Untrue is about adultery. Why was it important for you to look into how women function in relationship to non-monogamy?

Infidelity is really a great test case for how we actually feel about gender parity. We have people who believe women should make the same amount men do. We have people who believe that women should hold political office. But how do they feel when women seize a privilege that has historically belonged to men, the privilege of not being monogamous? We don’t have any autonomy if we don’t have the autonomy to do what we want with our bodies.

This book really looks at how science and social science has conspired to put out a narrative that keeps women from attaining sexual autonomy. We think it’s physical violence, coercion, and slut-shaming that keep women in their place within this culture, but it’s also bad science and bad social science. So much of it has been abused to coerce women into monogamy and to discourage us from being sexually autonomous.

How does that message relate to the current cultural climate? How does it relate to the ways in which women are now asserting their sexual autonomy?

In terms of the #MeToo movement, well, I feel like bad science brought us to this moment. There’s been inaccurate science that posits that men are naturally sexually aggressive and that the male sexual coercion of females is natural. There’s a lot of more recent science that tells us that’s not true. I think a lot of that bad, biased science helped bring our culture to a point of crisis.

What are some other misconceptions surrounding female sexual identity and desire?

There is some research to suggest that the institutionalization of a relationship, whether it’s marriage or moving in together, dampens female sexual desire even more than male desire. There are studies that document women talking marriage and long-term partnership as anaphrodisiacs, as something that dampens sexual desire. They talk about familiarity and security killing their libidos. Men need to understand this about the women that they’re with. These women need sexual adventure just as much as men do.

Okay. That’s probably going to unnerve or surprise some guys out there. And maybe that’s indicative of the issue. Why do you think so many women have a hard time coming out about their genuine attitude towards polyamory and other nonconforming sexual behaviors?

You pay a high price for being honest about your sexual desires in this culture. Everything from slut-shaming to lethal violence to someone just thinking that you’re weird. Women who do step out face a lot of danger. In this country, so many mass shootings involve men trying to control women who have left them. And a lot of the triggers don’t even involve infidelity, but the suspicion of infidelity. It’s still really dangerous for women to exercise that really basic form of autonomy within the U.S.

How can men help women feel safe speaking about their desires?

I think men need to educate themselves. They need to understand the female erectile network, the extensiveness of the clitoris, the possibility of multiple orgasms, the fact that we have no refractory period. This all seems to suggest, to me, that women really evolved for sexual pleasure and serial sexual pleasure.

What about guys in monogamous relationships with wives who are not likely to be experiencing serial sexual pleasure any time soon? How can they help their partners enjoy a more diverse sex life?

I wrote the book to be a conversation starter between women and their partners. Men should know that some women really struggle with monogamy. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re going to go invite a “third” into the bedroom as a way to attain novelty. But it should encourage men to step up their game. Buy her a sex toy. Talk about sexual fantasies. Watch porn together. Go on adventures that have nothing to do with sex. Go on a zip line. Learn to tango. Take a trip. Remember, adrenaline can deliver a similar feeling to what sexual novelty gives us. These are all options if you don’t want to seek out adventure by way of consensual non-monogamy.

What about men with daughters? How can they impart healthier sexual attitudes?

It would be extremely helpful to start educating kids about female sexual pleasure at home. It’s important we teach them that women are more than an extension of male desire. Girls are more than precious little things who have to protect themselves from the boys. They are thinking, feeling people who have an amazingly evolved sexual anatomy with an extremely high capacity for pleasure. This is really basic information that kids aren’t getting in school.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Women as likely to be turned on by sexual images as men – study

Neural analysis finds the brains of both sexes respond the same way to pornography

The research casts doubt on the idea men are more ‘visual creatures’, a common explanation as to why they are keener on pornography.

By

The belief that men are more likely to get turned on by sexual images than women may be something of a fantasy, according to a study suggesting brains respond to such images the same way regardless of biological sex.

The idea that, when it comes to sex, men are more “visual creatures” than women has often been used to explain why men appear to be so much keener on pornography.

But the study casts doubt on the notion.

“We are challenging that idea with this paper,” said Hamid Noori, co-author of the research from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany. “At least at the level of neural activity … the brains of men and women respond the same way to porn.”

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Noori and his colleagues report how they came to their conclusions by analysing the results of 61 published studies involving adults of different biological sex and sexual orientation. The subjects were shown everyday images of people as well as erotic images while they lay inside a brain-scanning machine. Noori said all participants rated the sexual images as arousing before being scanned.

Previously studies based on self-reporting have suggested men are more aroused by images than women, and it has been proposed that these differences could be down to the way the brain processes the stimuli – but studies have returned different results.

Now, looking at the whole body of research, Noori and his colleagues say they have found little sign of functional differences. For both biological sexes, a change in activity was seen in the same brain regions including the amygdala, insula and striatum when sexual images were shown.

“A lot of these regions are associated also with emotional information processing and part of it is also connected to the reward processing circuitry,” said Noori.

However, activity was more widespread in the case of explicit pictures than video, and there were some small differences in the regions activated linked to sexual orientation.

The team also analysed more than 30 published studies to explore whether there were differences between the biological sexes in the volume of grey matter in the insula and anterior cingulate – a previous study had suggested this may be linked to levels of sexual arousal. However, the vast majority of the studies considered did not find any difference in the volume of grey matter in such regions between the sexes. The few that did suggested women have a greater volume of grey matter in these regions than men.

The authors say differences in the way the brains of men and women respond to erotic images may have been overstated, with previous research possibly affected by small sample sizes or different attitudes to the material among participants.

But questions remain. The latest study was not able to look at whether the magnitude of the changes of brain activity were the same for both biological sexes.

What’s more, there could be other, social, reasons that one sex might be more likely to seek out pornography, or to report doing so. “Female sexuality has quite a lot of stigma around it,” said Noori, suggesting it may not be that women do not like pornography or are not as visual as men.

“Maybe the main reason is that for the woman there are secondary inhibitory effects that keep them away from expressing what they really feel,” he said. “At least at this moment, our study indicates that men and women are not that much different.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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A Big Reason Why Some People Don’t Enjoy Sex As Much

By Kelly Gonsalves

Some of the biggest things that can get in the way of good sex: performance anxiety, relationship stress, life stress, lack of variety, lack of time, physical conditions that cause pain, sexual dysfunction where certain parts don’t work the way they should, mental health, antidepressants, orgasm focus, clitoris negligence, selfishness, selflessness, lack of communication, lack of lubrication, internalized shame about having sex…and those are just the ones that initially come to mind.

But here’s one that we don’t often hear or talk a lot about: childhood trauma. And that doesn’t include only childhood sexual abuse (although that’s a large and pervasive type of childhood trauma). It also includes being neglected by your parents, seeing aggressive or emotionally abusive behavior between your parents, getting bullied or mistreated by peers, dealing with identity-related discrimination, and more. These early negative experiences can psychologically shape us and the way we behave, think, and move throughout the world. And new research suggests those traumas can actually affect the way we experience our sexuality in a very specific way.

Researchers surveyed 410 people currently in sex therapy about their sex lives, childhoods, levels of psychological distress in the past week, and how mindful they are as people.

The results showed people who’d experienced more instances of trauma throughout their childhood tended to have less satisfying sexual lives than those without childhood trauma.

Why a bad childhood can lead to a less satisfying sex life as an adult.

It has to do with those other two variables: psychological distress and mindfulness. Predictably, the findings showed people with more childhood trauma tended to experience more daily psychological distress (that is, moments of fear, worry, anxiety, or other negative emotions felt throughout the day) than those without childhood trauma. That psychological distress was linked to lower mindfulness (i.e., the tendency to be attentive and aware of what’s happening in the present moment as it unfolds), and that lack of mindfulness was what was making sex less enjoyable. 

“Psychological distress (i.e., depression, anxiety, irritability, cognitive impairments) may encourage the use of avoidance strategies to escape from suffering or unpleasant psychological states, which may in turn diminish attentiveness and awareness of what is taking place in the present moment,” the researchers explain in the paper. “The numbing of experience or low dispositional mindfulness may diminish survivors’ availability and receptiveness to pleasant stimuli, including sexual stimuli, therefore leading to a sex life perceived as empty, bad, unpleasant, negative, unsatisfying, or worthless.”

In other words, people who’ve experienced bad stuff as kids tend to deal with more stress, anxiety, and negative emotions, and because of that, they’ve developed a specific coping strategy that involves distancing themselves from being fully aware of their emotional and perhaps even physical senses. That lack of mindfulness, however, ends up making good things—like sex—also less enjoyable.

How mindfulness affects sexual pleasure.

Plenty of past research has demonstrated how important mindfulness is to enjoying sex. One study earlier this year found people who are more in tune with their senses tend to have more sexual satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, a higher sense of sexual well-being, and even more sexual confidence.

This isn’t just about woo-woo feel-your-feelings stuff—mindfulness is particularly key to physical pleasure. Here’s how the researchers explain it:

A lower dispositional mindfulness may be particularly detrimental to sexual functioning. Namely, individuals who are distracted, less present, less aware, or unmindful might report lower sexual satisfaction because (1) they may show less awareness of sexual stimuli or less capacity to identify and experience pleasant states as they unfold, therefore potentially experiencing less sexual satisfaction; and (2) their lack of self-regulation of attention might preclude psychological distance from anxious thoughts and decrease their contact with moment-to-moment experiences, hence tempering arousal reactions toward sexual stimuli. … A greater disposition to mindfulness has also been related to one’s ability to fully experience the sexual act.

If you’re someone who had a rough childhood for whatever reason, it’s possible that those experiences have shaped your ability to be fully present with your senses, which in turn can make sex just feel less good.

According to the study, the trauma-distress-mindfulness-pleasure connection accounted for nearly 20% of the variance in sexual satisfaction among people—in other words, these variables together were responsible for 20% of the difference between how good sex felt across all the people in the study, from the people with the lowest sexual satisfaction to those with the highest. That means this is something to seriously pay attention to if sex tends to not feel so great for you!

The researchers suggest people with childhood trauma consider spending time working to deal with their negative emotions via mindfulness—that is, learning to sit with those emotions instead of trying to avoid them. That practice, if mastered, can begin to seep into all parts of your life and change the way you tune into any and all experiences, good and bad.

“Higher levels of dispositional mindfulness may help to reroute one’s focus away from negative, critical, or anxiety-provoking cognitions and onto sensations that are happening during sexual activities with their partner, as they unfold from moment to moment, therefore promoting satisfying sexual experiences among partners,” the researchers write. “Partners presenting higher levels of dispositional mindfulness could be more aware of their internal (e.g., arousing sensations, thoughts, emotions) and external cues (e.g., erotic cues such as seeing the partner’s naked body).”

Here are a few of the best meditations for improving your sex life, plus a guide to staying present during sex itself.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Goodbye Bad Sex…

How To Rewrite Your Sexual Story

By Us

Now, the team behind the raved-about podcast, led by Lisa Williams and Anniki Sommerville, are putting their considerable expertise down on paper with their debut book, More Orgasms Please: Why Female Pleasure Matters. In the book, the collective, who firmly believe that sex, relationships and body confidence are feminist issues that can no longer be ignored, take on everything from feminist porn to body image and the menopause.

Like the podcast that inspired it, More Orgasms Please is like a great conversation with friends: at once punchy and playful, normalising and educational. Featuring insight from doctors, bloggers, politicians, therapists and celebrities, it’s an eye-opening read that puts women’s pleasure firmly on the map at a time when it couldn’t be more crucial.

In the extract below, Anniki recounts a bad sexual experience she had as a teenager, which left her feeling anxious about her future sex life. If, like so many of us, you too have had a less-than-brilliant encounter between the sheets, you’ll want to read on for The Hotbed Collective’s straight-talking advice…

ANNIKI: It’s the late Eighties. I’m fifteen. I’ve been out at a nightclub with a bunch of friends. We’ve drunk Grolsch, and been chatted up by some students from St Martin’s School of Art. They are channelling the Levi’s 501 ads and wear white T-shirts and baggy jeans.

One of them asks if I want to go back to his room. My best friend Hannah accompanies me. He lives in a hall of residence in Battersea. To cut a long story short, the boy and I snog while Hannah sleeps in the same bed. This is not unusual as beds are often at a premium and we’ve become used to sharing this way. Without warning the boy clambers on top of me and starts thrusting. Hannah mumbles, ‘Can you please stop?’ but the boy continues. Eventually after three minutes he groans. I am still wearing my thick Wolford tights. They must be at least 200 denier.

‘You are completely gross,’ Hannah says waking up. ‘I’m getting out of here.’

I don’t want to stay without her so we leave. On the early-morning bus up the King’s Road, I look down at my tights. There is a white sticky substance. ‘I can’t believe you had sex in the bed next to me,’ Hannah says.

The conversation ended right there. Had I had sex? Was that it? The problem was I lacked the necessary vocabulary to explain what had happened. My sex ed lessons hadn’t included a session on ‘dry humping’. ‘Could I be pregnant?’ I wondered. There were rumours that sperm was so powerful that it could survive outside your body and crawl up your leg if it was determined enough. I never talked about this experience with anyone – not even my best mate.

I also felt ashamed but wasn’t quite sure why. There was no one I could talk to about it. I spent many hours fretting that my future sex life would be one where I always had sex through a pair of tights because I didn’t know any better.

‘Bad sex’ experiences such as the one Anniki describes above unfortunately are the norm for many young women embarking on those first few formative sexual experiences. Without a meaningful, realistic idea of what to expect or useful education about how sex is supposed to be pleasurable, then it’s a miracle that we ever end up enjoying it at all

If you don’t know your own anatomy, what a clitoris is, or the difference between foreplay and penetration, then having sex through a pair of tights can be the unfortunate outcome. Sex education lays the groundwork. It also encourages us to talk about our experiences so we don’t think we’re abnormal. It gives us the information we need to make the right choices (and these will hopefully lead to more orgasms and less worry, anxiety and ignorance).

Bad sex probably shares a few common traits (for us anyway).

FIRSTLY: no orgasm. Of course, you can have nice sex without an orgasm but if you are physically capable of an orgasm, it’s a bit like eating rhubarb crumble without custard. Or not having a bun with your burger. Or going out with trainers and no socks so your feet get blisters (come up with your own analogy here). You can fake an orgasm (and sometimes it’s just simply the easiest thing to do: if it’s someone you haven’t had sex with much yet and you like them but you haven’t finished this book yet and are therefore still mid-journey to becoming a fully qualified sex goddess who can ask for what she likes) but this isn’t a sustainable way forward and the sooner you can put things right, the better.

SECONDLY: bad sex often hurts. This may be because you’re not lubricated enough and your sexual partner has no clue or has forgotten about foreplay, or because they’ve watched too much porn, and think frantic, crazy, Jack Russell-style action is what turns you on (maybe it does, in which case: thumbs up).

THIRDLY: bad sex sometimes entails something happening which is so humiliating that your face burns whenever you think about it, even when it’s twenty-odd years later.

We know from our own conversations and from feedback from The Hotbed that plenty of bad sex is happening each and every day. Here are some quickfire stories about bad encounters, shared with us by our listeners:

The time I tried to give a blow job but thought you had to blow instead of suck…

The time toilet paper was still stuck to my bum and I was really into a guy and he discovered it there…

I had to pee really bad and ended up weeing all over our sleeping bag…

My entire first relationship involved sex which was OK but which never made me have an orgasm…

His mum rang him while we were at it, and he answered and had a full conversation with her before carrying on again…

In Not That Kind of Girl Lena Dunham describes a bad experience of cunnilingus, ‘I felt like I was being chewed on by a child that wasn’t mine.’

Author and columnist Caitlin Moran refers to bad sex as ‘the straight-up awful hump – a tale you will tell for the rest of time’. She tells a story of going back to a famous comedian’s house in the Nineties: ‘As we began the “opening monologue” on the sofa, he reached around for the remote control – and put on his own TV show

Perhaps you too have your own bad sex story to tell. Often the accounts of these experiences share certain commonalities: we’re disempowered, passive, naïve and insecure. We do something stupid and embarrassing and we don’t have the guts to ride it out.

Our partner is too rough, not rough enough, too fast, too slow, rude, arrogant, or picks his toenails afterwards.

Samantha from Sex and the City famously declared, ‘Fuck me badly once, shame on you. Fuck me badly twice, shame on me.’ You will have noticed that we’re not blaming our sexual partners exclusively for our bad sex. Of course, they should get clued up: read about some techniques; buy lube; ask you what you like and dislike; and know that women don’t tend to get turned on by having their head forced down into the crotch area. But while they should be able to read your body language, they can’t be expected to read your mind.

Bad sex can happen when expectations are running very high. It can happen when you’re fifteen and it can happen when you’re eighty-five. Unless women take responsibility for their own pleasure and get educated about what pleases them, and have the confidence to tell or show their partners, bad sex can last an entire lifetime

Here’s our Hotbed advice:

REMEMBER IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO REWRITE YOUR SEXUAL STORY. Just as we can change jobs and have multiple identities, so we can change the course of our sexual history. Have a frank look at your own sex life – look at the overarching narrative from teen to now. What percentage has been bad? Are there any patterns in terms of things you’ve put up with but would rather not anymore? How can you build on the stuff you love?

THINK ABOUT THE BEST SEX YOU’VE HAD AND WHAT SHAPED THOSE EXPERIENCES. Was it a specific technique? A mood? Location? It might not be possible to recreate a summer in Spain when you were twenty-two, but there will be certain ingredients that you can integrate into your sex life now…

GET OVER THE IDEA THAT SEX IS BEST WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG. The reality is often quite the opposite. The Public Health England survey that we referred to earlier found that forty-two per cent of women aged between twenty-five and thirty-four complained of ‘a lack of sexual enjoyment’, but in the fifty-five to sixty-four age group this percentage falls to twenty-eight per cent. Bad sex can be edifying in that it teaches you what you don’t want from a sexual encounter, meaning you can learn and improve as you grow older (despite the media’s failure to portray any woman past thirty as fuckable).

TAP INTO FANTASY. When we’re younger we have rich fantasy lives. Usually these take the shape of imagining sex with pop stars and actors. How can fantasy help now? How can you tap into that teen mindset where sex lived in your imagination?

OF COURSE IT MAY BE EASIER TO FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT, ESPECIALLY DURING NEW ENCOUNTERS, BUT THERE’S NO REASON WHY YOU CAN’T HAVE GREAT SEX WHILE DATING HOT STRANGERS. Showing someone where and how you liked to be touched, bringing along a tube of lube, and saying ‘softer’, ‘this is amazing,’ or ‘ooh, that hurts a bit’, are all completely acceptable from the first bonk, and could spare you both some embarrassment and wasted time.

OWN YOUR BAD SEX STORIES. Talk about them. You’ll soon discover that they’re pretty much universal. A bad sex story shared is a bad sex story out in the open and you can have a good old hoot about it and relieve yourself of any shame. We’re talking about the sex-through-tights stories here, of course. If they’re about anything abusive or damaging in any shape or form then seek help from a counsellor or therapist. The experience of abuse can’t be brushed under the carpet and will oftentimes leave heavy imprints in your memory, but with proper support and therapy they don’t have to be a barrier to improving your sex life either.

Bad sex may be a rite of passage but as we’ve explained, it can also continue from our teens into our twenties, thirties and beyond. There may no longer be Wolford tights involved, but there will certainly be times when your partner can’t perform, or you lose interest, or the baby cries, or you’re too tired, or the quality of sex is just not there for you.

In order to stop the rot and make sure that it’s not happening all the time, look out for unhelpful patterns that emerge. Do you always tend to prioritise your partner’s pleasure more than your own? Do you feel grateful if your partner makes your orgasm a priority but then worry afterwards that you were being too demanding and pushy? Do you cringe when you tell your partner about what turns you on?

It’s also worth remembering that famous Nora Ephron quote about how you can turn embarrassing stories around so you become the heroine: ‘When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.’ That’s how Anniki feels about the whole tights story anyway. She’s ‘owning’ that bad boy.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Sex bans are manipulative and destructive to your relationship

By Rebecca Reid

There’s a Greek myth called Lysistrata.

It’s a story about how the wives of the Greeks, sick of their husbands pissing off to war and coming back with a limb missing or not coming back at all, took matters into their own hands.

To create peace between various Greek factions, they went on a sex strike. No nookie for anyone until the war was over. And basically, it worked.

Lysistrata was first performed in 411BC. 2,430 years ago. And yet women are still doing the exact same thing – going on sex strike to get what they want.

Earlier this year Alyssa Milano suggested that we women go on strike from sex until the Georgia six-week abortion limit is overruled.

If you Google ‘sex strike’ you find hundreds of stories from women who got ‘their own way’ by going on strike. One woman got a new kitchen. Another convinced her husband to have another baby. Other women simply use it as a disciplinary measure to correct their husband’s behaviour.

Doesn’t anyone else find this unutterably depressing?

It’s 2019 and apparently the axis of our power as humans is still whether or not we will open our legs for our partners.

Sex shouldn’t be a reward. It should be an expression of lust, or love, or anything else that you want it to be. It should be fun, gratifying, enjoyable.

Sex shouldn’t be the adult equivalent of giving a child a chocolate button for hanging their coat up after school.

By taking sex away from your partner as a punishment you send the message that it’s an activity that you partake in for them in the first place – it suggests that sex is a favour you’ve been doing them and will no longer be doing until they toe the party line.

In every single example I could find online, the person doing the banning is the woman and the person on the receiving end is a man, which further perpetuates an untrue stereotype that men like sex and women put up with it.

Another problematic aspect of the sex ban is that often it’s women putting one in place because she wants to make a financial choice – like a new car or a holiday – that her partner isn’t comfortable with.

Instead of compromising – the money belongs to both of you – or just paying it for themselves, these women perpetuate the idea that their husbands are Chancellors of the Exchequer in their marriage.

They might as well be applying for more housekeeping money.

If your sex life is so lukewarm that the idea of giving it up to punish your partner is appealing, then you’ve got a wider problem which needs addressing.

If however you enjoy sex and withdraw it at your own deprivation then you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. Even if it works, do you really want to have won an argument with your other half by taking away sex, just like you would get a child to do their homework by offering screen time?

Back in 411BC Greece, women really didn’t have much power. Sex was one of the few things you had the ability to grant. But the world has moved on, and we are equal partners within our relationships and therefore we do not need to withdraw sexual favours to claw back power.

We’re intelligent, mature, sensible women with critical reasoning skills. Why would we resort to such reduced tactics to alleviate conflict?

Of course there is an element of sexual politics in any relationship – when you feel happier and closer to your partner you’ll probably have more sex. When you’re fighting or struggling through issues it might well be less. That’s normal.

No one is suggesting for a second that you should have sex with your partner if you don’t want to or you’re not in the mood. You should only ever have sex when you want to have sex. The issue is when you use ‘I’m not in the mood’ as a bargaining chip, which is patronising and controlling.

If your partner doesn’t take you seriously when you say you’re annoyed about the division of labour within the household, or that you think you need to redecorate your kitchen, then they’re not a good partner.

If you ignore their responses to your marital problems and decide to ‘punish’ your partner rather than compromising, then you’re not a good partner.

Relationships that work don’t involve point scoring. They’re not based around depriving someone else of privileges to train their behaviour. That’s how you treat a naughty child, not a spouse whom you respect.

You might get what you originally wanted – your partner might do more housework or ‘let’ you buy a new car, but what cost is this ‘victory’ to the long term health of your relationship?

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Sexual Chemistry Isn’t Built In Bed

— Here’s What Couples Should Do Instead

By Jennifer Guttman, Psy.D.

When couples start experiencing dissatisfaction and dysfunction with the quality of their intimacy and sexual interaction, they tend to focus almost entirely on what happens in the bed. The problem is, by the time you’re in bed, it’s already too late. You’re doomed, just like when you face a big life challenge, test, or exam, and you haven’t put in the hard work and time to study and prepare adequately.

A loving, intimate, and happy sex life takes time to manifest, and most of the real work and “emotional foreplay” needs to happen before the sex occurs. When that doesn’t happen, one or both partners can become resentful about the lack of intimacy, potentially interpreting the behavior correctly or incorrectly as a function of attraction. This can lead to a negative spiral of self-confidence in the relationship and an even deeper negative feedback loop in the bedroom. But the truth is, many dips in a couple’s sex life have little to do with being attracted to each other or not.

If you’re finding there’s not a lot of heat in your relationship these days, it’s important to think about what you’re doing outside of the bedroom to facilitate more intimacy. Here are a few ideas:

1. Foreplay doesn’t start in the bedroom.

Be creative and start setting the tone and warming up to each other throughout the day. Foreplay is about the connection—really feeling “seen” by each other. This can start over a quiet dinner at home or in a restaurant where communicating helps with connecting, or you can use an activity that loosens you both up and brings you both together—a concert, watching a thriller in theaters, hiking, or whatever else you both enjoy. It can also start with playful texting throughout the day, communicating about a suggestion for a planned night out together.

When intimacy becomes more about the “connection” than just the physical act, it shows your partner that you want to have sex with them, not just anyone. Sex begets sex, so having intimate sexual encounters will also make room for opportunities for quicker physical sexual connections with your partner to flourish as well.

2. Find ways to connect about the private—in public.

Reminding each other throughout the following day or week about an intimate encounter that you experienced together is a great way to keep it alive. You can do this by taking a few seconds to send suggestive texts or quick phone calls. The message is “I haven’t forgotten about what we shared together,” and it also subliminally sets the stage for “more to come.” Even a wink at a dinner party can set the stage for a private moment shared between a couple. It may serve as a reminder of something shared the night before or something they’re anticipating.

3. Shower appreciation on each other in your normal lives.

We don’t often connect gratitude and domestic chores to sexuality, but in truth, they can be deeply linked. Most people appreciate follow-through because it indicates that they’re on their partner’s mind. People like to feel appreciated for the acts of kindness they do and all they provide in a relationship. That helps them feel “seen,” which in turn allows people to feel more vulnerable, open, and confident—feelings that are necessary for a healthy, energetic sexual connection. Remembering to follow-up with a question about your partner’s day or a comment of gratitude, for example, can go a long way toward making people feel seen, appreciated, and connected to the relationship.

4. Schedule dates, not sex.

Scheduling dates is much more important than scheduling sex. Scheduling sex can feel robotic, and when sex becomes robotic as opposed to organic, it becomes harder to ensure that on a given day and time, each of you is in a head space to “connect” on an intimate level. If the sexual encounter becomes purely physical on prescribed days, it may feel forced and drive a wedge between the partners. When one partner has an expectation on a certain night that another may not be able to provide, it will inevitably cause a disconnect. Performance anxiety or insecurity may follow, leading to sexual avoidance.

Schedule the date, and try to connect with each other as human beings that love and care about each other. If that leads to a sexual encounter, great! If it doesn’t, the more meaningful the connectedness continues to be, the more likely the sexual encounters will follow.

5. Have a real talk.

Pick a night on which you both agree you’re not having sex but want to come together to talk about it—and I mean really talk about it. Get into the details about what you want and what you’re feeling: Are you bored? Do you feel overwhelmed by your partner’s overtures? Does sex just not feel good or exciting to you right now? Is it hard to have sex when you have other ongoing problems in your relationship or in your life?

These aren’t easy things to talk about, and even if they’re about sex, they’re by no means “sexy.” (Which is why I recommend setting a night aside to talk about this that is separate from date night.) But if you ignore and don’t address uncomfortable issues, you are at risk of not being equipped to confront more challenging topics later. If one partner or the other is feeling resentful about too much or too little sexual contact, a conversation, albeit difficult, is necessary to understand what is in the way of a synergistic sexual relationship. Once the partners have a better understanding of each other’s needs, it’ll be easier to discuss solutions to find the right balance that accommodates both people’s personal preferences.

Consistent and reciprocal communication is imperative. You might want to set aside a specific night for this initially; then over time, hopefully you can develop a rhythm where it’s easy and comfortable bringing these topics up organically as necessary. In order to maintain a healthy sexual relationship, it is critical to reach a reasonable comfort level of communication with each other. Having these mindful albeit challenging discussions about how to break through barriers of boredom to meet each other’s needs is essential.

6. Nurture, nurture, nurture!

Healthy sexual relationships need to be nurtured on an ongoing basis like you would care for all other important aspects of your life. Getting it back on track is one thing; keeping it on track is another. Even as you do begin to build new energy in your intimate life, make sure to keep putting in the work and effort to prevent you from detailing again.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to Know If You Should Talk to Someone About a Low Sex Drive

Plus where to get help

By Carolyn L. Todd

Feeling concerned about a low libido can be such an isolating experience. When your psychological drive to have sex isn’t where you would hope it is, you might feel like you can’t even discuss it with a partner—the very person you may normally turn to for basically everything else. But a persistently low libido that bothers you is not something to ignore. Here’s what could be behind a low libido, as well as guidance on who to talk to and how to find them.

Factors that can affect your libido

“There are so many physiological, psychosocial, and environmental factors in a [person’s] life that can have a very strong negative impact on their sex drive,” Leah Millheiser, M.D., clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and ob/gyn at the Female Sexual Medicine Program at Stanford Medicine, tells SELF.

Some of the most common libido-killers include stress and fatigue, says Dr. Millheiser. Relationship issues like mismatched expectations about sex or a lack of emotional intimacy can also contribute. Additionally, hormonal fluctuations can sway a person’s libido, including the changes that occur during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause, as SELF previously reported. Several common prescription drugs, like some hormonal contraceptives and antidepressants can also affect your libido, according to the Mayo Clinic.

While tons of situational factors can affect your libido, this isn’t always necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you’re currently single, crushing it in like three different areas of your life, and honestly, sex and intimacy just aren’t top of mind for you right now. If you don’t really feel any type of way about that, carry on!

Conditions that can cause chronic low libido

So, we know there are situational factors that can impact libido, but health conditions can play a role too. Virtually every aspect of health can impact the physiological and psychological aspects of desire, which in turn can influence each other, Madeleine M. Castellanos, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in sex therapy and author of Wanting to Want, tells SELF.

That includes numerous conditions that dampen desire by causing pain during sex, including endometriosis, ovarian cysts, vulvodynia (terrible chronic pain surrounding the vaginal opening), and vaginismus (muscle spasms that make penetration uncomfortable). Circulatory issues caused by conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes can result in a lack of sufficient blood flow to the genitals that hinders physical sexual arousal (which can impact the mental portion), according to the Cleveland Clinic. Then there are mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, which can make sex feel like the last thing you want to do.

So what happens if you’re experiencing chronic low libido without any of the aforementioned risk factors? If your libido has been absent for more than six months and you really can’t pinpoint why, you may have a condition called hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), which some experts think is linked to a chemical imbalance in the brain.

In sum, there are plenty of reasons why you might be dealing with a low sex drive. Figuring it out on your own can be confusing. That’s where experts may be able to help.

When to see someone about a low libido

The expert wisdom here is pretty simple: If you’re distressed about your libido or it’s causing issues in your relationship, it’s time to talk to a pro, Dr. Millheiser says.

Not only could low libido be a sign of an underlying health concern, but enjoying sex regularly can be good for you. “It’s a wonderful connection with another human being, but it’s also an important piece of your health,” Dr. Castellanos explains. In some people, sexual activity can help do things like make you feel great and less stressed, take your mind off menstrual cramps, and maybe even help you get to sleep, as SELF previously reported. Being satisfied with your libido and having a fulfilling sex life can have a positive impact on your psychological well-being as well.

“Don’t put [low libido] on the back burner if it persists,” Dr. Castellanos explains. “The earlier you address it, the easier it is to correct the problem.”

But keep in mind: You should only consider seeing someone about your libido if you view it as a problem. If someone like your partner is trying to make it seem as though your libido isn’t “high enough,” that doesn’t necessarily mean anything’s wrong with you or your sex drive. Your partner might be making assumptions based on their own libido, or maybe your libido really has changed over time but it’s a change that you’re mentally aligned with. While it couldn’t hurt to talk to someone about a change in your libido, you should never feel pressured to do so.

Who you can talk to about libido issues

The person best equipped to help you depends on what’s causing your low libido and your access to care, Dr. Castellanos explains.

If you have no idea where to start: See your primary care provider (PCP) or a general internist. “Any physical condition can affect your desire, so it’s always worthwhile to get that checked first,” Dr. Castellanos says.

This type of doctor can discuss your symptoms, order tests to help you uncover potential underlying medical issues, and refer you to a specialist if necessary.

If you’re having vaginal health issues: See an ob/gyn. Symptoms like pain with intercourse merit an exam and discussion with a specialist, Dr. Castellanos says.

If you’re having mental health issues: See a licensed therapist or psychiatrist. They can help you figure out which mental health condition may be contributing to your low libido and potentially provide a treatment plan.

If you suspect the problem is a medication you’re taking: See your prescribing doctor. They can talk to you about how likely it is that your low libido is a side effect of the drug and possibly recommend potential alternatives.

If no underlying medical condition is at play: Consider seeing a sex therapist. Sex therapists have the interpersonal training and depth of expertise to “get into the nuance and the nitty gritty of the psychology of sexual desire with you the way other clinicians don’t,” Dr. Castellanos explains.

The Mayo Clinic recommends looking for a certified sex therapist with a certification from the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT). Here’s more help for finding a sex therapist in your area.

If you’re having problems with your partner: You may not be sure whether relationship wrinkles are to blame for your low libido. Ask yourself if you still feel desire when you think about somebody else (like your celebrity crush) but not your partner, Dr. Castellanos says. If you do, that could point specifically to your relationship as your issue

In that case, you might want to see a sex therapist or couples’ counselor. They can help you dig into dynamics that could be affecting your libido, such as poor communication in or outside the bedroom. (Not all couples’ counselors cover sex issues, though, Dr. Castellanos notes, so check about that before you make your first appointment.)

If you think you have HSDD: See any kind of clinician specializing in women’s or sexual health, Dr. Millheiser says. That includes a PCP, nurse practitioner, licensed counselor, or psychiatrist. Diagnosis involves taking a medical history, ruling out any other factors, and, ideally, using a five-question screener based on diagnostic criteria developed by the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH), Dr. Millheiser says.

How to talk to someone about your libido

Discussing sex in a medical setting isn’t always easy, and doctors know this. “I tell all my patients that I know talking about your sex life is very personal, especially if it’s not going well,” Dr. Castellanos says. “You might be anxious, but remember that only by saying what the issue is [can you] get help.” Here’s how to start the conversation.

1. Bring it up right off the bat.

“It’s very important to actually say why you’re there. If you don’t start off by telling them what the problem is, they don’t know what questions to ask,” Dr. Castellanos says.

Don’t wait until the last minute to see if your doctor brings it up. Unless this is their specialty, they may not. “That doesn’t mean it’s not appropriate to talk about with them. It just means that they’re busy thinking about other aspects of your health,” Dr. Millheiser says.

2. Be straightforward and specific.

It benefits both of you to be as open and honest as possible here, Dr. Castellanos says. Try something like, “Over the last three months, my sex drive has really dropped off and I’m not sure why. My partner and I used to have sex about twice a week, but now it’s more like once a month. We’re pretty happy otherwise.” And, of course, if you are having other symptoms, like fatigue or pain with intercourse, bring those up too.

3. Get a referral if necessary.

Some caregivers are more informed about libido or feel more comfortable talking about it than others, Dr. Castellanos says. If you’re not sure whether yours is the right person to help you or you’re not getting the care you want, Dr. Millheiser recommends asking your provider to connect you to someone else. Try something like, “If you don’t treat these things, can you refer me to somebody who does?”

“They probably know someone or can at least point you in the right direction,” Dr. Millheiser says.

And remember, your doctor has heard it all before. As Dr. Millheiser explains, “There is very little that could shock a clinician, and sexual function concerns are so common.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Men sometimes act less interested in sex – in order to get it

In a new study, women said they acted a little more interested in sex than they really were. Men are the ones who apparently play cool most often.

By: Steinar Brandslet

When heterosexuals have casual sex, previous research indicates it is typically the woman who sets the boundaries. If she’s not interested, usually nothing will happen.

“When men and women in the study met, about half of the men said they were interested in having sex with the woman, whereas most women were uninterested initially,” says Associate Professor Mons Bendixen at NTNU’s Department of Psychology.

So the women in the study basically have little interest in having casual sex at first – unless they find the man really attractive.

But a man who gives the impression of wanting to have sex with anyone, anytime, is definitely not what most women are looking for. That could be why men acted way less interested in sex than they really were.

“Men who are overly eager do not come across as attractive,” says Professor Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair in the same department.

The whole thing is a tactical game, say the researchers, and the new NTNU research suggests that men and women’s real intentions may be different from the signals they send each other.

Bendixen is the first author of a recent study dealing with the sexual signals that men and women send to each other.

Do women really want to have sex?

Men who report being the most interested in having sex reduce their signals of interest more.

Evidence from the study suggested that women, on the other hand, might pretend to be a little more interested than they actually are.

“We think this may be to keep the man’s attention a little longer,” says Kennair, but this study does not speak to that directly.

Or perhaps the strategy gives her more opportunity to assess the quality of the guy. And as long as the woman does not seem to be excluding the possibility of sex, men across the board are willing to spend more time with her – and enabling her to check out whether he’s a good choice.

And, if a man is of high quality, that could actually shift the woman’s interest, so that an initially uninterested woman becomes truly interested in the man.

“The exception to this general sex difference is when the woman is as interested as the man. In this case, women also pretend to show less interest.”

“Both men and women who are truly interested in a partner might be trying to ‘play it cool.’ In economic terms, it’s about supplies and demand. The most in-demand people are not the most available – they are a rare commodity in the mating game,” says Professor Martie Haselton of UCLA.

“By playing it cool, women and men can also avoid some of the sting of rejection if their partner is not actually interested in them,” says Haselton.
University intro week leads to more sex

The researchers collected two rounds of data from students at NTNU. The survey included questions such as when they last met with a potential sexual partner, and whether they eventually ended up having sex.

The first round of data collection took place in the spring, when most students are busy studying. The second round was in the autumn, right after the start of the semester and the introduction week activities.

The researchers found a significant difference between the two rounds. Sexual relationships were far more common during the autumn introduction week.

Women choose the most attractive guys

“Among singles, we found differences between men and women when it came to who ended up having sex,” says Bendixen.

Women were much more likely to have sex if they thought the potential partner was attractive. This was consistent with previous findings.

They were also far more likely to have sex if they were new students. Female students who had been at university for a while were much more selective.

“More than half of the new female students who had met an attractive partner the last time they were at a pub or at a party ended up having sex with him,” says Bendixen.

“This behaviour is probably related to two factors: one is the absence of ‘daughter-guarding’ or ‘sister-guarding’” once students arrive at university,” says Kennair.

Fathers – and siblings – might keep a watchful eye on young women’s sexual behaviour and dissuade them from having casual sex.

This can be explained by evolutionary biology. But new students in a new city no longer have those same obstacles hindering their free sexual expression.

“The second factor has to do with the perception of increased competition for the men,” Bendixen says.

Female students outnumber male students. So in a lot of groups it can seem like there’s some competition for the men.

In this kind of a situation, women are more willing to have sex. The few guys that are available are simply perceived as more attractive.

Some get a lot – a lot get none

The most important factor in whether men had sex was how many sexual partners they have had previously. This could contribute to their being perceived as sexually attractive and available.

“It’s really the same reason for both men and women – the man’s sex appeal – that decides whether they end up having sex,” says Kennair.

So there’s a lot for some, and much less for the rest. Once a woman decides to have casual sex, she usually chooses the man she finds most sexually attractive.

Other studies show that long-term relationships function slightly differently. In this case women may have to lower their expectations a bit, because the most attractive men are often already taken or because they are able to pursue short-term relationships instead of long-term ones.

“A lot of women have had sex with more attractive partners than the men they end up with in long-term relationships,” says Kennair.

“In our research, women did not appear to act coy in general; rather both sexes downplay their signals if they are very interested. These are novel findings,” Bendixen notes. “Further, men do not pursue women that send signals of low interest.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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5 Things Straight People Can Learn from Queer Sex

By Ariana DiValentino

Being queer, in some ways, is a blessing. If there’s one thing the queer world is good at, it’s having really, really good sex.

Of course, there’s no such thing as “the” queer world — it’s a multitude of communities, localities, subcultures, and identifications. Within queer spaces, there tend to be prevailing attitudes of sex positivity and adventurousness that are hard to come across elsewhere.

While things like consent, communication, and kink have entered conversations about sex on a grand scale, some aspects of these things are just baked into queer sexuality. When there’s no set script for a standard sexual encounter — who does what and to whom — it’s liberating. And it makes communication, exploration, and mutual comfort absolutely fundamental.

The first time I had sex with a woman, my partner asked if I enjoy penetration. I was taken aback, because I realized I had literally never thought about it. No previous partner had ever asked me. It had never occurred to me that as a woman, I couldn’t like penetration.

Simply being asked about the very basics of what you like can be powerful, because it centers your actual preferences and experience over the assumptions that go along with whatever social categories you’ve been assigned due to your gender identity, presentation, or having certain body parts. It gives you permission not to like whatever it is you’re supposed to like, and to like whatever you’re not supposed to.

But these moves shouldn’t be exclusive to queer sex by any means — anyone, including cishet (cisgender heterosexual) people — can learn a lot from queer sex. Here’s some advice from queer folks* that’s good for everyone.

*Some last names have been omitted in the interest of privacy.

Sex doesn’t have to follow the same basic hierarchy of acts

If you’ve been through middle school, you’re probably familiar with the baseball metaphor for sex: First base is kissing, second base is feeling up (usually boobs) or sometimes handjobs or fingering, third base is oral sex, and a home run — going all the way — is vaginally penetrative sex — typically with a penis.

But if both partners have a vagina or a penis — or they don’t ascribe to the gender roles typically assigned to those parts — the script sort of goes out the window. For queer people, going all the way can mean whatever we want it to.

“Sex doesn’t always have to happen a certain way,” Isaac Van Curen, an artist based in New York City, says. “You should check in on how you’re feeling that day, what will give you pleasure in that moment. I first and foremost think sex should be for pleasure.”

The main event doesn’t need to be vaginal penetration, or any kind of penetration at all. If oral sex or digital stimulation gets you there, perfect! A sexual encounter isn’t any less valid if it doesn’t follow an arbitrary progression of acts. Just focus on doing whatever gives you and your partner(s) pleasure.

Mutual safety, comfort, and enthusiasm come before all else

This one point was echoed by everyone I spoke to for this piece. Because sex isn’t necessarily expected to happen one particular way, communication is extremely necessary to find out what each of you likes and definitely dislikes.

Sam Smith, a storyboard artist based in NYC — and my partner — explains that his transness makes boundaries crucial to intimacy for him, even in relationships.

“I don’t like to remove my shirt, with or without a binder. I’ll only allow you to put your hand on my chest if I’m wearing a binder,” Smith says.

“In the heat of the moment, people think that anything is up for grabs, like literally up for grabs, but that’s not true.” When he explains to other people that these lines remain even after being with a partner for any amount of time, he says, they often express disbelief.

“They’re like, ‘What do you mean? Why not?’ Because that’s my boundary.” Many trans people have firm rules regarding where they do and don’t like to be touched and which clothing articles they don’t want to remove during sex, often because they experience dysphoria pertaining to sexualized body parts. Talking about these boundaries before sex is necessary to having a good time.

But by no means should this respect for boundaries and tendency to ask questions — not make assumptions — be exclusive to trans and queer folk. Any individual may need to put boundaries in place for any multitude of reasons, ranging from past traumas to simply feeling uncomfortable with certain parts of one’s body.

Absolutely everyone should feel secure in setting limits to protect themselves from emotional distress. Knowing your partner’s preferences and boundaries — not guessing them — is the foundation of any good sexual experience.

“There should definitely be a level of trust between partners. I should be able to stop in the middle of sex and say hey, this isn’t for me, and not feel weird trying to communicate that I’m uncomfortable,” says Van Curen.

In addition to consent, safety and comfort pertain to other factors involved in sex as well. Van Curen points to the existence of medications like PreP, which can prevent the transmission of HIV, as something that a person might require to feel safe during sex. For others, that might mean one or more other tools, like condoms, dental dams, or oral contraceptives.

Good communication creates room for trying new things

BDSM, when practiced properly, involves lots of boundary setting and advance communication, for the sake of the physical and emotional well-being of everyone involved. All that talk might seem exhaustive, but it shouldn’t feel that way — limits and terms are as important as pleasure.

Tina Serrano, an art director based in NYC, describes her first experience with a femme domme: “She asked if I was into BDSM and I said yes without thinking — so we sat and talked about it. She asked me a lot of questions, we talked about consent and limits, about our lives, who we’d loved, she talked about her field research,” Serrano says. “We didn’t even have sex that night, we sat and drank and talked until we fell asleep on the couch.”

Communication shouldn’t feel an obstacle to sex — it’s a kind of intimacy that happens before clothes come off. Talking openly and genuinely caring about your partner’s limits, even in a casual context, can be romantic and sexy.

Claire and Katja, a newlywed couple who have been together for six and a half years, iterate that feeling safe and comfortable enough to talk with your partner means not only avoiding bad experiences, but laying the groundwork for interesting, new, good ones.

“Provide space for your partner to bring up things they might want to try sexually with you. Listening doesn’t mean you have to do or try anything, but it does mean that you are building trust,” they tell Greatist.

It’s easiest to voice your desire to try out new toys, positions, or kinky behaviors in a situation that feels safe and comfortable for experimentation. And if things don’t go porno perfectly? No sweat.

“Embarrassing things happen. Laugh about them,” the couple says.

Don’t be constrained by gender or appearance

Just like men are so often positioned to be dominant and women to be submissive, even non-heterosexual pairings can sometimes be subjected to gendered assumptions. Van Curen emphasizes that his appearance, down to whether or not he has facial hair at a given moment, leads people to make assumptions about his preferred sex positions — i.e, whether he’s a “bottom” or a “top.”

In sapphic or lesbian settings, the butch-femme dichotomy can function similarly. Katja and Claire point out the tendency of other people to identify them as the butch and the femme, respectively, when in reality they don’t feel that this binary describes them very well.

Attached to both of these scenarios is the assumption that the more masculine partner “performs” the sex act while the more feminine person “receives” it. But here’s the secret that queer people know: Gender doesn’t have to mean anything more than you want it to.

Gender doesn’t have to determine what you do in bed — but it can function as a sex toy in and of itself. Gender play can involve heightening or swapping typically gendered roles and behaviors.

“Performing gender roles during sex is a kind of kink,” according to Claire and Katja. Lots of queer people strongly identify with labels like butch or femme, twink, bear, sub, dom, and so on — Isaac mentions having friends who proudly call themselves dom bottoms, sub tops, bratty tops, and more — and some people think of themselves as verses or switches. Sometimes dabbling in behavior you otherwise wouldn’t, in life or in the bedroom, can be sexy.

And finally, don’t neglect the basics of having a body

Whenever, wherever, and however you’re having sex, stay in touch with your body — not just what it likes, but what it needs. “Sex is a physical activity,” Van Curen advises. “I take water breaks. Sometimes I make sure I have a snack on hand.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Just Learning About The Orgasm Gap Improves Women’s Sex Lives

By Kelly Gonsalves

You’re probably familiar with the concept of the orgasm gap, which refers to the gendered orgasm disparity between straight men and women. A whopping 95 percent of straight men orgasm almost every time they have sex, compared to just 65 percent of straight women. This isn’t the case in non-straight sexual encounters by the way (89 percent of gay men and 86 percent of lesbians get off basically every time they have sex), and 94 percent of women typically climax while masturbating. So clearly this isn’t a biology problem.

A lot of the orgasm inequality between straight men and women can be explained by a combination of (1) lack of knowledge of female pleasure, namely how the clitoris works and why it’s vital to female orgasms, and (2) the male-oriented sexual scripts most heterosexual sexual encounters follow, in which P-in-V penetration is considered the main sex act, men’s pleasure and orgasms are considered mandatory parts of sex (the sex ends when the guy gets off), and women’s pleasure and orgasms are considered optional or incidental.

Researchers wanted to know if knowledge of the orgasm gap and the unequal gender scripts contributing to it could improve women’s sexual experiences. So they surveyed women before and after taking a Psychology of Human Sexuality course that specifically discussed the orgasm gap and inclusive, sex-positive sexual practices. To compare, they also surveyed women before and after taking a Human Sexuality and Culture class (which discussed sex from an anthropological point of view but didn’t mention the orgasm gap or the gendered social dynamics of particular sexual encounters) and a Psychology of Personality class (which didn’t discuss sex at all).

Their findings? Of the 271 women they surveyed in total, those who’d taken the class that talked about the orgasm gap saw a clear improvement in their sexual functioning. Not only did they have more and better orgasms, but they felt more entitled to sexual pleasure during sex and communicated more with their partner during sex. They were more able to advocate for their own pleasure in bed, more confident about how their genitals looked, and less distracted by performance anxiety or anxiety about how they looked during sex.

Those are some serious benefits from just a little more knowledge about sex!

Published in the journal Sex Education, these findings demonstrate that educating ourselves about how our bodies work, what gender dynamics might be in play during sexual encounters, and the importance of being confident communicating your needs in bed can make an actual difference in a woman’s ability to orgasm with ease during sex. Past research has similarly found taking classes about sex improves people’s body image, willingness to try new things in bed, health precautions during sex, and even sexual pleasure.

And by the way, sex education isn’t just for kids and college students. There are tons of excellent sex classes for adults available online and in person with professional sex educators, sex therapists, and other experts. Here are a few to consider and places to look for more:

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Sex on the first date is the perfect dating filter

By Rebecca ReidFriday

Conventional dating wisdom tells us to play hard to get.

You shouldn’t message someone back straight away, you should never say yes to a date if it’s requested less than 48 hours in advance, and of course you can’t have sex on the first date.

All of which, it turns out, is total bollocks.

According to research from IllicitEncounters.com, who surveyed 2,000 people, 58% of men and 56% of women have had sex on the first night that they met their long term partner.

So over half of the times when sex happens on the first date, it turns into a relationship.

Telling people (women, mostly) not to have sex on the first date is a long held way of policing our behaviour.

It uses the prospect of a relationship as a sort of carrot, dangled in front of a woman to bribe her into being chaste until she’s in a serious relationship. This theory seems to rather miss the point that not all women even want to be in relationships.

But for those who do want to settle down, we’re taught to use sex as a bargaining chip rather than something to enjoy.

It’s a bribe to be given in exchange for commitment, a reward to give to a man who allows himself to be trapped into commitment.

The idea that men want sex and women want commitment is outdated and sexist.

Plenty of blokes secretly lust over a house in the countryside and a pack of chubby cheeked children, and plenty of women want to live in a converted warehouse in central London, smoking Galois and taking ten lovers a week.

Which is why it’s so nice to see this research disproving the theory that sex on the first date ensures that you’ll never hear from them again, let alone become their long term partner.

It comprehensively proves that commitment is not a reward for chastity.

But perhaps there’s more to these statistics than just proving that sex on the first date doesn’t prevent a relationship from forming.

Maybe it’s the first date sex that’s the reason for the relationship.

I have always believed that sex on the first date is the perfect way to filter out dickheads.

It’s a bit like asking whether the person you’re on a date with is offended by vegetarian Percy Pigs, or whether they still listen to Gary Glitter. An easy insight into their moral code.

Anyone who respects you less because you have had sex with them is not a person you should be forming a significant attachment to.

There is nothing morally wrong with having sex – quickly or after a long courtship. To suggest that you are in some way more or less valuable depending on how much sex you’ve had is completely illogical

So, if you sleep with someone on the first date and they lose interest, or judge you, you’ve done yourself a favour. They’re out of your life and you have no need to deal with their nonsense. Easy peasy.

Plus, first date sex is a valuable research mission.

Sex is an important part of a relationship, so it makes sense to try it out.

Bad sex isn’t a reason to write someone off automatically, but it does give you an insight into their character.

Are they bad in bed because they are over enthusiastic and nervous? Or are they bad in bed because they are selfish, or applying the exact same moves to you that they’ve done on everyone else they’ve slept with?

The former speaks highly of their character. The latter suggests there might be bumps in the road.

People who condemn sex on the first date claim that it takes away any mystery from the future of your relationship. But do you really want to go out with someone who requires you to be mysterious in order to hold their interest?

Does it really make sense to have to play complicated mystery games to convince another human that you’re worthy of their attention?

Shouldn’t the kind of person you want to build a life with value you whether you had sex on the first or the fifteenth date?

If you’ve got a date this weekend and you find each other attractive, why not give first date sex a go? Best case scenario it’s great and you’ve found something special. But if not, you’ve used the first date sex dickhead filter to save yourself a whole lot of time.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Educate yourself in the sexiest way

By Gabrielle Kassel

Finding answers to questions relating to sex and sexuality is easier than ever before. No matter what you’re looking for, there’s likely a sexpert or a podcast or another source to point you in the right direction. There’s even a whole Netflix show, Sex Education, devoted to the filling in the gaps of our knowledge. Still, there’s a (tech-free) resource you’re probably not utilizing to the max that can seriously boost your sex IQ: books.

Below, Well+Good’s go-to sex experts and educators share their favorite sex-education books—including buzzy newer releases and tried and true faves alike—that’ll rock your mind.

Add the following 12 sexpert-approved reads to your TBR pile and boost your sex IQ in the process.

1. The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love, by Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton

“This was one of the most transformative books for me. I grew up in a community where having many sexual partners, engaging in kinky activities, or having relationships outside of strict monogamy was seen as abnormal, even immoral. The Ethical Slut changed my entire concept about what sex and relationships can be. It validated my sexual desires, encouraged exploration, and valued sex with consent and respect. Its explanation and understanding of jealousy also reframed my perception of the feeling. I would highly recommend this read for anyone who feels outside the sexual norm (whatever that is), who is looking to explore (whether they’re single or partnered), and/or who wants to transform how they think about relationships and sex.”

—Amy Boyajian, co-founder and CEO of Wild Flower, a sexual-wellness and adult-product online store

2. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá

“This book played a significant role in my journey of sexual self-discovery. The authors target and explain where many staunchly held oppressive beliefs about sexuality originate. They unravel the ways even scientists are affected by personal bias, social norms, and heteronormativity. The truth of the matter is that we all have to figure out what we think about sex, gender, and love for ourselves…through experience!”

—MacKenzie Peck, founder of Math Magazine, a modern pornographic magazine celebrating sex and sexuality

3. Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters—And How to Get It, by Laurie Mintz, PhD

“This is is a must-, must-, must- read for all vulva owners, and their sexual partners. Mainstream media has taught us that sex = penis + vagina, and that everything else is “foreplay,” or appetizers to the main course that is penetrative sex. The author explains how we’ve been thinking about sex all wrong, all this time, and how as a result, we’ve created a very real pleasure gap between women and men. The key to closing this pleasure gap? The clitoris.”

—Michelle Shnaidman, founder and CEO of Bellesa, a sex-toy company run by women

4. On Chesil Beach: A Novel, by Ian McEwan

“This isn’t a traditional sex-ed book, but On Chesil Beach is a beautiful depiction of how sexual shame can negatively impact your relationships. The young newlyweds think sex is supposed to be easy and come naturally, but it doesn’t. Even though the story takes place prior to the sexual revolution, I believe many couples still suffer from the inability to talk openly to each other about sex.”

—Brianna Rader, founder and CEO of Juicebox, a sex and relationship coaching app

5. The Pursuit of Pleasure, by Lionel Tiger

“This book is my all-time favorite, as it’s really about discovering why pleasure is important and what all the fuss is about. Tiger details our evolutionary entitlement and what we want our pleasure legacy to look like. Sex aside, this book will make you think twice before placing pain as your pathway to gratitude when pleasure is an option (and a far more rewarding one, at that). It’s witty and poignant in explaining that pleasure is impressively normal.”

—Dominique Karetsos, resident sexpert with MysteryVibe

6. Tabú, Kinkly, and O.school

“I wish there were more books that talk about sex education. But since anal sex has always been so taboo, I’ve found that for anal sex and butt-play information, blogs are best. Some of my favorite sex-forward blogs are Tabú (which is super visual) Kinkly (because it’s not afraid to go there and it takes a, well, kinkier approach), and O.school (which uses a more traditional approach, but has a lot of video content).”

—Evan Goldstein, MD, CEO and founder of Bespoke Surgical, a health-care provider that specializes in helping patients engage in anal sex acts

7. Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, by Emily Nagoski, PhD

“For those who are more into empirical evidence than abstract theories, Come As You Are offers an excellent exploration of sexuality. This book is a great companion for women who benefit from reassurance that they are perfectly complex and perfectly normal. Dr. Emily Nagoski uses scientific research to prove to women everywhere that they are not defective; there are just some central factors involved for women in creating and maintaining a fulfilling sex life.”

—Marissa LaRocca, author of Everyone Is a Freak: Intimate Confessions About Sexuality, Gender, and Desire

8. The Guide to Getting it On, by Paul Joannides and Daerick Gross

“My go-to sex book to recommend is The Guide to Getting it On. It’s on its 9th edition, because our understanding and research on human sexuality is ever-growing and evolving. I bought the 3rd edition when I was 17, and the 7th edition when I was 27. It’s thorough (1200 pages, and literally looks like a phone book) and is just so honest, so insightful, and cleverly written in modern language and helpful illustrations.”

—Jill McDevitt, PhD, sexologist and author of Fighting the Crusade Against Sex: Being Sex-Positive in a Sex-Negative World

9. The Erotic Mind: Unlocking the Inner Sources of Passion and Fulfillment, by Jack Morin

“In this book, the author unfurls the rationality underlying seemingly illogical desires within most human beings. He presents his readers with what he called the Erotic Equation: attraction + obstacles = excitement. Basically, that means that what we may hold as taboo, naughty or frightening is what becomes the engine driving our erotic curiosity and passion. This is a book for folks curious to understand or embarrassed by what they or their partner(s) find erotically compelling.”

—Sari Cooper, sex therapist and founder of Center for Love and Sex

10.Our Bodies Ourselves, by the Boston Women’s Health Collective

“A think a good one for anyone is Our Bodies Ourselves for anatomy lessons and open conversation about sex. It’s a literal bible.”

—Remy Kassimir, host of the How Cum podcast

11. Mating in Captivity Reconciling the Erotic + the Domestic, by Esther Perel

“This book challenges the concept of maintaining the sense of security in a love relationship and delves into the psychological implications behind sexual desire, eroticism, fantasies, and certainty and uncertainty. Where certain subjects or ideas might be too taboo, insulting, or uncomfortable for partners or individuals to bring up, Esther pitches the importance of erotic intelligence, the space that creates, and bringing that space to life within even a monogamous relationship. Whether single or in a long-term partnership, anyone who experiences points of insecurity in sex and love, dirty secretive fantasies, or simply desires to grasp a different perspective on the “taboo” boundaries established by society in general should read this book.”

—Grace Ho, leading pleasure expert with Sweet Vibrations, an online adult boutique

12. Jewel in the Lotus: The Sexual Path to Higher Consciousness, by Bodhi Avinasha and Sunyata Saraswati

“Recently I’ve been immersed in the book, Jewel in the Lotus: The Sexual Path to Higher Consciousness, which is one of the best books I’ve read about tantric sex. It has excellent breath work instructions and meditations that help relax and free the mind.”

—Alexandra Fine, CEO and co-founder sex-toy company Dame

For more sex wisdom, check out what Esther Perel has to say about why sex gets better as you age, and how to bounce back when your sex life becomes “blah”. Oh, and BTW, scheduling sex is actually great for your relationship.

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