If you’re in a serious relationship, your gal may not be completely satisfied in bed—but don’t worry, she doesn’t care. Studies revealed that while many women aren’t completely satisfied with their sex lives, it usually doesn’t upset them.
“Studies find that while one-third to nearly one-half of women report sexual function problems,” according to Livescience.com, “only about 10 percent are worried about those troubles.”
In 1999, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that 31 percent of men and 43 percent of women admitted to sexual problems. As a follow-up, a 2008 study in Obstetrics and Gynecology found that only about a quarter of the 31 percent stressed about those problems.
There’s a reason why these numbers don’t match up. For guys, the problems are usually physical. Something like erectile dysfunction is easy to diagnose. But for women, the problems are more emotionally complex.
Part of the reason dysfunction and distress don’t match up, said Leonard Derogatis, the director of the Center for Sexual Medicine at Sheppard Pratt Health System, is that the average woman’s sexual desire is more contextual than a man’s.
“Women might be having sex for a dozen different reasons, only one of which might be that it feels good and is satisfying,” Derogatis told LiveScience. “It’s a path to intimacy, it’s a path to fulfilling a role of the woman or wife, it’s a means to keeping her partner happy, and on and on.”
In August, Kyle Stephenson, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, attempted to dig deeper into this conundrum:
They asked 200 heterosexual undergraduate women to complete questionnaires about their relationship quality and sexual satisfaction. The results, published in August in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, suggest a woman’s approach to relationships, as well as her level of intimacy with her partner, influence how distressing she’ll find sexual problems.
The researchers went into the study predicting that in intimate relationships marked by trust and openness, sexual problems would be less distressing. That turned out to be true only to a point, Stephenson said. Only women who were anxious about their attachment to their partners found intimacy soothing in the face of sexual dysfunction. In women with secure attitudes about their relationships, extra intimacy didn’t help.
They posited that women who were more anxious to be in a relationship tended to be satisfied with sex, possibly because they were just relieved to be having sex. Women in intimate relationships gave sex a higher precedence, requiring more to be truly satisfied. However, they argued, women in intimate relationships did not get as upset about sexual problems because they receive intimacy in other, nonsexual ways.
Stephenson is now analyzing the data on a case-by-case basis to find more concrete conclusions.
About Ryan O'Hanlon
This rang pretty true for me – and for those conversations that I’ve been in while speaking with other women – it does seem to me that there is a huge opportunity for conversation about sex with women that doesn’t deteriorate to feeling like porn – still a stigma about talking openly if you ask me…
Yep, the only reason I have sex is to keep the husband satsified. Otherwise, what’s the use beyond having children. Give me the hand holding, hugging anytime anyday over a few minutes of him messing me up!!
I am bad at sarcasm on the internet but this is a joke, yes?
And why stress over bad sex? It’s not like we women were created to have good sex feelings anyways.
Males will do masturbate if they don’t have sex cause it ALWAYS feels good whether masturbate or sex!!
Not so with women!! We were jipped in this physical way!
This is a very enlightening post that would help a lot of men who get themselves bent out of shape (excuse the pun) because they think they are not performing like a Hollywood stud man. It could also let the macho men know that intimacy is more about touching, hugging, kissing and sharing feelings with
their partners rather than just having sex because you are horny.
In my last serious relationship I had to tell my partner I did not want him to try to be such a macho stud man… some things dudes see in porn are so NOT hot when tried on a real life lady. Don’t get me wrong, the lazy weekends when we would go again and again and again were hot as hell, but when he’d try weird acrobatics or do strange bendyknee crouchy moves that made him look like some sort of drooly gorilla… not hot. If the acrobatics are a means to an end and they hit your lady’s spot in some new and unique way then go for it, if you’re just showing off then get over yourself and learn how to give killer head if you want to impress.
I prefer good W2 over good sex. I don’t like men who are not ambitious and can’t take of their families and leave all the burden to woman. My advice to men is this – get financially succesfull and then the woman you marry will have sex with you just to keep you happy. And yes, after the first few months of sex, it gets old and boring and the only reason to keep sex going is to keep man happy.. There is nothing in it for woman… Other than have baby and make man happy. I fake my orgasms just to make my husband happy, and all I want is him making good money for our family, bring me some gifts sometimes, remember my b day and hug me when I feel down. And pay all the bills!
Very vague article. First, I dont think women ‘expect’ to be satisfied sexually. Once they find a partner that reciprocates it’s different, you know that it’s not that difficult and grow to expect to fully enjoy sex as your partner does. Second, this article is by a male and may be trying to let men ‘off the hook’ trying to satisfy a women’s sexual needs. If a women doesn’t stress over being left haning and not being satisfied sexually, hrm, they are settling for less.