Young men wake up each morning with an erec­tion and have spon­tan­eous erec­tions throughout the day as sex-related thoughts occur to them or simply as a result of seeing someone they find attractive. A boy has no choice but to learn about his sexual arousal and orgasm but, for women, learning how to orgasm is a much more conscious process.

“What’s pink and hard first thing in the morning? Answer: The Finan­cial Times!” (The FT is a high-brow UK news­paper printed on pink paper).

Her man’s erec­tion is a novelty in a woman’s first sexual rela­tion­ship since her own anatomy provides her with no compar­able exper­i­ence. If a woman has an erec­tion (of the clit­oris) at all, it is only once she has the exper­i­ence to know how to become highly aroused. A man’s sexual arousal can be very flat­tering and in the early days, a man’s devo­tion is reward enough.

I remember that I was fascin­ated by the way my partner’s penis appeared to have a separate iden­tity of its own in our sex life! Whole books have been written about the person­ality of the penis, the cocky blighter, with or without his hat on. But the clit­oris? The clit­oris is like a demure flower that hides in the face of an audi­ence like a blushing virgin.

“There are two types of penis. One expands and lengthens when becoming erect (The Grower). The other appears big most of the time but doesn’t get much bigger (The Shower). A Men’s Health survey shows 79% of men have growers 21% have showers.” (p34 Men’s Health Magazine June 2007)

Male sexu­ality involves a high sex drive

Most boys discover masturb­a­tion fairly auto­mat­ic­ally in early teens. The penis is natur­ally the focus for phys­ical stim­u­la­tion and visual porno­graphy provides men’s psycho­lo­gical sexual arousal. Men’s sexual fantasies tend to relate well to sex with a partner and so trans­fer­ring orgasm tech­niques to sex is usually straightforward.

“It has been said that 90 per cent of men admit to masturb­a­tion and the other ten per cent are liars. … Masturb­a­tion is almost certainly less common among females than among males.” (Loving Touch 1993)

In her book ‘Hot Rela­tion­ships’ (1999) Tracey Cox tells how one lover was so engrossed in his book that, despite sucking him off, she failed to gain his atten­tion. This scen­ario is so far removed from my exper­i­ence of phys­ical intimacy with men that I have to wonder whether she was in bed with a shop dummy.

Male sex drive repres­ents a big part of how we define masculinity yet, due to embar­rass­ment over sex, differ­ences in sex drives are rarely admitted. Appar­ently there are even couples who never notice a differ­ence. Not every man has a strong sex drive but equally not every woman is willing to acknow­ledge her partner’s sexual needs.

“Women aren’t auto­mat­ic­ally excited the way men are.” (p10 Why men don’t get enough Sex and Women don’t get enough Love — 1993)

Men approach sex eagerly anti­cip­ating the easy pleas­ures of phys­ical intimacy. They often fail to appre­ciate that for a woman to want to demon­strate her love for a partner through sex she must feel that she has been a receiver else­where in the rela­tion­ship. Affec­tionate compan­ion­ship (emotional intimacy) is just as important to women as sex (phys­ical intimacy) is to men.

“Men want more sex than they usually get. … It’s no wonder, then, that couples argue most often about sexual frequency…” (p6 Why Men don’t get enough Sex and Women don’t get enough Love 1994)

Alcohol may slow men down a little but they still usually manage to come, espe­cially in their younger years. My exper­i­ence is that there is no chance of female orgasm after even one drink, whether through masturb­a­tion or during sex. So if the aim of a sex session is for the woman to enjoy orgasm, make sure you do all your wining and dining after sex not before.