Category Archives: Emotional intimacy

Women settle for emotional intimacy over sexual arousal

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On relating our exper­i­ence to others, we all tend to gloss over details or not own up to diffi­culties that were perhaps transient.

I told Linda, a mother of three in her late forties, that I had never had an orgasm during inter­course. Linda looked at me incred­u­lously and laughed as if I must be ignorant of the most basic sexual facts. Natur­ally, I died with morti­fic­a­tion at the Continue reading

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Intercourse does not facilitate female orgasm

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Men’s sexual arousal is usually easy, which gives them a natural advantage. As a consequence, while men can usually hope for orgasm from their sexual encoun­ters, most women have to settle for the more diffused sensa­tions of sexual arousal.

“Sex is a very different exper­i­ence for women and men. A man exper­i­ences pleasure primarily as a release of sexual tension. A woman exper­i­ences sex in an opposite way Continue reading

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Why sex is called ‘making love’

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The hetero­sexual act of vaginal inter­course is designed fore­most as an expres­sion of love between a man and a woman.

After all, if sex was purely about two people reaching orgasm, then we would more natur­ally engage in activ­ities that involve more direct genital stim­u­la­tion. Inter­course is a natural progres­sion from kissing to a man capit­al­ising on his sexual arousal to ‘make love’ to a woman Continue reading

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Female sexuality in perspective

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Humans are one of the few mammals known to have inter­course even when the female is not in estrus (the fertile period in the female’s repro­ductive cycle).

Intel­li­gent social animals learn that cooper­ative beha­viour can be far more successful than that of any indi­vidual alone. Thus human sexu­ality has evolved beyond the imme­diate needs of repro­duc­tion to allow for the forging of emotional bonds between part­ners vital to Continue reading

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Sex and love

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A BBC docu­mentary ‘The Human Body’ presented by Dr Robert Winston films a sex educa­tion class. First the teacher writes the word ‘SEX’ in large letters on the black­board and then asks the teen­agers to suggest other words asso­ci­ated with sex.

After the standard contri­bu­tions the teacher adds the word missing from the list: ‘LOVE’.

Despite contra­cep­tion, sex still involves a risk of preg­nancy, sexual disease and Continue reading

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Posted in Emotional intimacy | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

A man’s sexual arousal can be very flattering

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In the early days of a romance, a man feels loved and needed through sex. A man’s sexual admir­a­tion for a woman makes her feel cared for and appreciated.

“Men are motiv­ated and empowered when they feel needed… Women are motiv­ated and empowered when they feel cher­ished…” (p43 Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus)

Women’s key family role makes them more dependent on a supportive Continue reading

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Why do women not always appreciate displays of male sexuality?

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I have never seen any reason to be embar­rassed about my body. I am pretty. I have sensual skin that browns easily and a sexy figure. My parents were always relaxed about nudity.

So when I was eighteen, out in the South of France for the summer, I enjoyed going top-less sunbathing. Why have those bikini lines that make your breasts look like icebergs? One day, as I Continue reading

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Why do so many women dislike eroticism?

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Porno­graphy is defined to be ‘sexu­ally explicit material (verbal or pictorial) that is primarily designed to produce sexual arousal’.

Two women give their views on pornography.

Helen Longino, the Amer­ican philo­sopher: “I define porno­graphy as verbal or pictorial explicit repres­ent­a­tions of sexual beha­vior that … have as a distin­guishing char­ac­ter­istic ‘the degrading and demeaning portrayal of the role and status of the human female . . Continue reading

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Posted in Emotional intimacy | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Sheltering young women from eroticism

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Reading the word ‘sexy’, a boy of nine screwed up his face in a gesture of disgust and said “Yuck!”. I asked him why and he replied, “Because my parents told me it’s disgusting”. Presum­ably these parents are trying to warn their son away from the tempta­tions of sexual pleasure with its asso­ci­ated immoral behaviour.

For women, there has always been accept­ance of sex within the context Continue reading

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How to get laid

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Men should take comfort from the facts of female sexu­ality. Most women are unlikely to orgasm from inter­course alone (which provides insuf­fi­cient clit­oral stim­u­la­tion for orgasm) and yet amaz­ingly few women ask about lack of orgasm.

In addi­tion to the obvious personal embar­rass­ment, likely explan­a­tions include:

  • Not every woman is inter­ested in orgasm, whether from masturb­a­tion or from sex.
  • Relat­ively few women masturbate and so

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Posted in Emotional intimacy | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments