Women who live alone or do not have an active sex life with their partner some­times perceive them­selves to be sexu­ally needy because they start to doubt their ability to attract men.

Margaret (early fifties, chil­dren, rela­tion­ship 30 years) was confident that she was highly sexual and inter­ested in sex. However, her sexual rela­tion­ship with her partner had broken down and she admitted that she did not consider female masturb­a­tion remotely interesting.

Given that she made no mention of a lover, I found it diffi­cult to see that she had any outlet for her sexu­ality. When Margaret described herself as sexy, it was in terms of looking attractive, being young-at-heart and being phys­ic­ally active at her local tennis club with like-minded women.

“Nearly all (but not all) younger males are aroused to the point of erec­tion many times per week, and many of them may respond to the point of erec­tion several times per day. Many females may go for days and weeks and months without ever being stim­u­lated unless they have actual phys­ical contact with a sexual partner.” (p682 Sexual beha­vior in the human female 1953)

Women often define their sexu­ality by their emotional sense of well-being and their attract­ive­ness rather than by any ‘sex drive’. A man’s sexual arousal can be very flat­tering and women enjoy the compli­ment. As they grow older men worry about impot­ence; women worry about losing their attract­ive­ness. Female sexu­ality is often defined in terms of young women’s attract­ive­ness to men.

Men hope for sex for life

Older women often imply that marriage involves both sides ‘putting up’ with a non-ideal compromise. Today couple’s expect­a­tions have increased. In the past men may have been grateful for sex of any descrip­tion but now they hope that their woman will engage on a variety of sexual activ­ities and even that she will be enthu­si­ast­ic­ally orgasmic.

“Married women are facing more sexual prob­lems than single girls, with prob­lems ranging from a lack of interest in sex to failure to reach orgasm. What a surprise!” admits Linda Kelsey in her article ‘The truth about Married Sex.’ Linda acknow­ledges that “For married women today it’s diffi­cult to square our expect­a­tions of sexual fulfil­ment with the real­ities of long-term relationships.”

She suggests that the influ­ence of the modern youth culture means that middle-aged women today “still feel like a woman with sexual needs, or at least a woman who wants to feel she’s still sexu­ally attractive.” (pages 48/49 Daily Mail UK news­paper Thursday, October 6^th 2005)

One summer’s evening at a barbeque, a man in his fifties commented that he had almost forgotten what sex was because it was so long since he had had any. Under­stand­ably everyone was embar­rassed, including his wife, and a few years later I heard that they had divorced. I assume this stand-off explains why so many married women prefer to say nothing about sex.

The proposal of the sexual revolu­tion was that modern sexual rela­tion­ships should be mutu­ally pleas­ur­able. So we blame the wife for being ‘unloving’ even though we all know that he prob­ably has an orgasm during sex every time and she quite possibly has never had an orgasm in her life. A man needs to compensate a woman somehow for the sexual pleasure he enjoys.

Men enjoy sex fairly spon­tan­eously but it is much more diffi­cult for a couple to find ways of including some pleasure for the woman. In the marriage scen­ario, all pretence of romance or affec­tion leading to ‘making love’ can be lost. Everyday pres­sures and routine reduce sex to the minimum required to keep a man’s sex drive at bay, satis­fying neither party.

Long-term sexual rela­tion­ships involve making effort from time to time and a man needs to ensure that he is not the only person enjoying sexual pleasure from the couple’s sexual rela­tion­ship. Ways Women Orgasm would like to hear success stories from couples who have over­come these pitfalls in longer-term relationships.