Male V’s Female Sexual Desire
Why do males generally feel desire and become aroused in 5 minutes, whilst female arousal may go up and down and take A LOT LONGER? Men often have ‘Spontaneous Desire’ (i.e. they just feel like sex). Most women lack spontaneous desire and rather have ‘Receptive Desire’ (if the motivation and context is right they will feel desire). Female desire is more than just about the vagina.
For women a sexual experience generally needs to start with motivation. Motivation can lead to desire and if this continues it can lead to receptivearousal. When we experience arousal our body is able to prepare for sexual intercourse. If only it were that easy! Many women experience difficulty with aspects of this, that’s why for women the roadmap to a pleasurable sexual experience can look a bit like a maze. So many incidences where we can get lost and stray from our desired outcome (pleasurable intimacy with our partner). No wonder why men think we are complicated!
I mean the anatomy isn’t all that complicated really - we have a vulva (the outside lips), vagina (the inside part), and a clitoris (the highly sensitive area at the front). But in order to have desire and reach arousal it’s more than just the anatomy.
To have desire we need to feel like being intimate. Sometimes we need to help our body and mind prepare for this. It may mean having 10 minutes alone to take a shower, do some deep breathing, try some progressive muscle relaxation. For some women who experience pain with intercourse this may mean you need to spend some time specifically trying to relax the pelvic floor.
The relationship with our partner can also help with desire. Remember when you were young and you would hold hands, spend hours kissing? If you’re run off your feet and your partner helped you tick some of the jobs off your mental load would this leave more time for you to feel like being intimate? Sometimes it’s as little as cooking tea, doing the dishes, a quick shoulder rub. All of these nice things you do for your partner, or they do for you, can help to increase your desire. The path to female desire starts as soon as you walk in the door (not just in the bedroom)!
For the desire to continue and lead to arousal we need to be able to be present in the moment. A lot of us are not great at this. Our lives are so busy, we’re always thinking about the next thing. Try to practice mindfulness when having sex - the feel of the sheets on your skin, the smell of your partner, your partners touch. We can also practice getting better at this in our daily life - next time you are feeling anxious or stressed take a few minutes to take some deep breaths and listen to the sounds around you, feel the weight of your feet on the ground, take note of what you can smell.
We need to be happy with our body and the way it looks and feels. If there are parts of our anatomy that we don’t like how are we going to enjoy this with our partner? It may mean looking in the mirror every night and noting 3 things you like about yourself. Improve your confidence and give yourself some positive reinforcement.
We also need to associate desire with a pleasurable experience. This is why you shouldn’t have sexual intercourse if it is painful. We don’t want to train your mind and body to assume that intercourse will be painful. We don’t want something that was once a pleasurable experience to now be associated with pain or you will end up in a cycle of sex=pain and pain=sex.
See what I mean….a maze! For everybody when having sex there are going to be things that will make you want to put the brakes on. You need to find things that will take the brakes off. And when you are learning to do this remember the end reward doesn’t start with orgasm, it starts with a pleasurable sexual experience (orgasm is an added bonus 😉)
